cazaparilla
This review contains spoilers
for people who really just wanted more of BOTW in all the good and bad ways. all of BOTW's issues still exist in TOTK, including the janky combat and hysterical UI. this time i actually feel like the UI issues were worse because i was really in there for about half the game just endlessly scrolling through shit i could attach to my arrows. all my favorite parts of the game were, once again, the mindless exploration parts, but how much more of this kind of zelda game can we really take before i finally turn into the joker?
re: story: TOTK's story was comically weak and the ending was a major letdown. the game spent nearabout its entire runtime setting up a genuinely moving, gorgeous tragedy that could've completely upended the series' storytelling reputation and become a story that haunted me into the rest of my life the way earlier games do for so many of us. you also can't spend an entire game building up the tragedy that zelda can't be returned to her time and true form, then flat-out tell us that is the case, and then do some whack-ass cop-out at the end that is summed up as "unexplained ghost magic just cuz :3"
re: story: TOTK's story was comically weak and the ending was a major letdown. the game spent nearabout its entire runtime setting up a genuinely moving, gorgeous tragedy that could've completely upended the series' storytelling reputation and become a story that haunted me into the rest of my life the way earlier games do for so many of us. you also can't spend an entire game building up the tragedy that zelda can't be returned to her time and true form, then flat-out tell us that is the case, and then do some whack-ass cop-out at the end that is summed up as "unexplained ghost magic just cuz :3"
2023
this is the game i turned off comments for because i am Not here to get yelled at by sweaty-ass D&D shills and tiktok girlypops who love a problematic white man.
lemme be clear homie. 150 hours in this game. i have played it to hell and back (lol), and i loved a lot of it. but the shine starts wearing off around hour 120, especially as you start to notice that your interest always drops off at one specific point in the game. yes. it was act 3. you've heard everyone talk about it.
what larian did here whips, let's just get that absolutely clear. as far as the RPG landscape is concerned, they took a mold that was frankly mistreated as hell for a very long time (hi Bioware) and completely reshaped it. shit's rad. it's fun. it's awesome. half the appeal of it now is how much the cast seems to have loved working on it, and how communicative the devs have been about supporting it.
and like, the most i'm going to say about the story? act 3 tanks it for me. it just does. acts 1 and 2 were polished to such an insane degree that to go from that to the clown car of cliches and mixed messaging about the urgency of it all just gave me a bit of whiplash.
that's really all i'm going to say about story issues because i'm going to be That Guy and start talking about the queerness of this game. yes. we are going to talk about the romances. we are also going to talk about that genital slider.
larian took that RPG mold and reshaped it, but i think they maybe should've just broken it altogether. i've been a longtime believer that romances are handled pretty terribly in this vein of games and they shouldn't be in them as just more video game shit to min-max for achievements. if the romance isn't baked into the story itself, cut it. don't act like fanfiction and spotify playlists don't exist to fill in the blanks, bitch.
but back to the point, this game really, really makes romance a priority in such a strange way. having a romantic relationship isn't baked into the plot for tav, but you can't build friendships or to show your party members any amount of physical or verbal affection without it being not just romantic, but sexual.
i think it's such a bizarre choice. you can't cuddle karlach, who's in your corner from the word go, and who's been literally unable to touch anyone without hurting them for A While, without wanting to have sex with her? you can't goof off and dance with wyll without him asking you out the night after? i personally would die if i lived in a world where no platonic love existed, or was so unheard of that to have Big Fun and A Hug means y'all need to start planning your wedding yesterday. whack.
i also just couldn't stop thinking that all the romances were written with a savior complex in mind. besides astarion's added interactions in dark urge playthroughs, i couldn't really come up with anything specific that anyone else did for tav. it was kind of just always them helping the party members enough to date them. i understand that these kinds of games tend to be created for the savior complex shit, but we can surely do better, be a little more honest? but this part verges so hard into nitpicking that i, personally, would probably not include in a formal review. i just don't really care much for one-sided relationships in my life, and not in the media i consume unless it's in there for a reason.
my final queer nitpick is that i don't want anyone on this earth to go around their whole lives thinking that BG3 changed the fuckin game with queer rep. don't think i didn't notice that every single party member is cisgender, and don't think i didn't notice that if i played a transgender character, they would be mirroring my exact discomfort of being the only trans person in a room full of people because i would not find any other friend in my party who understood me in that way. this weeeird, weird burgeoning trend with mainstream RPGs where you get to mix and match pronouns and genitals feels like old navy's jank-ass gender-neutral clothing line. it's weak, it's pandering, and it's shallow. truly, i could not give a smaller shit if your game lets me choose pronouns or whether or not i decide i want to piss sitting or standing up this playthrough. i care about seeing characters like me who are literally just out here trying to vibe like everybody else. i don't know why that has to be such a huge ask, or why people don't seem to understand it when they are asked.
all in all, sure, play the D&D game. it helped me understand the 5e system more than any DM explaining it to me ever could. the voice acting is perfect. the voice actors are all suspiciously hot themselves. the mo-cap adds a sense of depth to characters that used to only exist in players' imaginations. it does shlocky fantasy pulp like no other. its memes are endlessly funny. it's a good game and i look forward to seeing how it influences future games in this genre. it's a good game. it's just not groundbreaking.
lemme be clear homie. 150 hours in this game. i have played it to hell and back (lol), and i loved a lot of it. but the shine starts wearing off around hour 120, especially as you start to notice that your interest always drops off at one specific point in the game. yes. it was act 3. you've heard everyone talk about it.
what larian did here whips, let's just get that absolutely clear. as far as the RPG landscape is concerned, they took a mold that was frankly mistreated as hell for a very long time (hi Bioware) and completely reshaped it. shit's rad. it's fun. it's awesome. half the appeal of it now is how much the cast seems to have loved working on it, and how communicative the devs have been about supporting it.
and like, the most i'm going to say about the story? act 3 tanks it for me. it just does. acts 1 and 2 were polished to such an insane degree that to go from that to the clown car of cliches and mixed messaging about the urgency of it all just gave me a bit of whiplash.
that's really all i'm going to say about story issues because i'm going to be That Guy and start talking about the queerness of this game. yes. we are going to talk about the romances. we are also going to talk about that genital slider.
larian took that RPG mold and reshaped it, but i think they maybe should've just broken it altogether. i've been a longtime believer that romances are handled pretty terribly in this vein of games and they shouldn't be in them as just more video game shit to min-max for achievements. if the romance isn't baked into the story itself, cut it. don't act like fanfiction and spotify playlists don't exist to fill in the blanks, bitch.
but back to the point, this game really, really makes romance a priority in such a strange way. having a romantic relationship isn't baked into the plot for tav, but you can't build friendships or to show your party members any amount of physical or verbal affection without it being not just romantic, but sexual.
i think it's such a bizarre choice. you can't cuddle karlach, who's in your corner from the word go, and who's been literally unable to touch anyone without hurting them for A While, without wanting to have sex with her? you can't goof off and dance with wyll without him asking you out the night after? i personally would die if i lived in a world where no platonic love existed, or was so unheard of that to have Big Fun and A Hug means y'all need to start planning your wedding yesterday. whack.
i also just couldn't stop thinking that all the romances were written with a savior complex in mind. besides astarion's added interactions in dark urge playthroughs, i couldn't really come up with anything specific that anyone else did for tav. it was kind of just always them helping the party members enough to date them. i understand that these kinds of games tend to be created for the savior complex shit, but we can surely do better, be a little more honest? but this part verges so hard into nitpicking that i, personally, would probably not include in a formal review. i just don't really care much for one-sided relationships in my life, and not in the media i consume unless it's in there for a reason.
my final queer nitpick is that i don't want anyone on this earth to go around their whole lives thinking that BG3 changed the fuckin game with queer rep. don't think i didn't notice that every single party member is cisgender, and don't think i didn't notice that if i played a transgender character, they would be mirroring my exact discomfort of being the only trans person in a room full of people because i would not find any other friend in my party who understood me in that way. this weeeird, weird burgeoning trend with mainstream RPGs where you get to mix and match pronouns and genitals feels like old navy's jank-ass gender-neutral clothing line. it's weak, it's pandering, and it's shallow. truly, i could not give a smaller shit if your game lets me choose pronouns or whether or not i decide i want to piss sitting or standing up this playthrough. i care about seeing characters like me who are literally just out here trying to vibe like everybody else. i don't know why that has to be such a huge ask, or why people don't seem to understand it when they are asked.
all in all, sure, play the D&D game. it helped me understand the 5e system more than any DM explaining it to me ever could. the voice acting is perfect. the voice actors are all suspiciously hot themselves. the mo-cap adds a sense of depth to characters that used to only exist in players' imaginations. it does shlocky fantasy pulp like no other. its memes are endlessly funny. it's a good game and i look forward to seeing how it influences future games in this genre. it's a good game. it's just not groundbreaking.
2021
remember how we all collectively agreed on how annoying it is that a JRPG party's character arcs resolve about 50% into the game when there's another 50% to play? remember how some of us also have repeatedly been commenting on how maybe JRPGs don't need to be a minimum of 60-70 hours to beat, not including side content, if the game is gonna noticeably dip in story and pacing quality midway through? me too haha.
For such a visually distinct and lore-rich game, Horizon Forbidden West is most memorable to me for its bland, overwritten main plot and profoundly annoying over-explanation of every single puzzle you find in the game. And the game is huge. With a lot of puzzles. If I never hear a AAA protagonist tell me I need to pull the lever, Kronk, to open the door approx. 5 seconds before I'm even aware there's a lever and door to be opened at all, it will be too soon.
I don't know how I played through the entirety of the first game because I also don't remember a single thing that happened besides the reveal of Aloy's ~true origins~ and Lance Reddick's character being evil, or something? If nothing else, Forbidden West is admirably consistent with the first game in that way; forgettable characters and stiff or awkward voice acting makes it hard to buy into what's happening, much less follow any of it. I came back to this game a total of three times and got about 12 hours in before deciding there were much better uses of my time, not to mention much more respectful ones. I'm not entirely sure how the game creation process works step-by-step, especially regarding the melding of writing and gameplay, but Forbidden West follows the trend of telling a grave story of Evil That Must Be Stopped Yesterday in a game that directly bucks against the immediacy of the plot. Aloy needs to make her way west ASAP to stop the end of the world? That's crazy. Let me finish my side quests, inspect these lore sites, get this sick-ass armor, and fully upgrade my weapons first. Also if we have time can I take a detour and go scan that Tall Neck to fill out my map? It'll only take me an entire in-game day. Maybe three. The best thing about open world RPGs like Elden Ring and Witcher 3 is that the game compliments the pacing; there are certain points of no return but by and large, the entire game is not trying to cajole you into believing the end is nigh while also firmly nudging you to explore every nook and cranny.
I will say that the mo-cap is at first arresting in how good it is. Technology sure has come a long way and whatever. However, because characters can talk for minutes and minutes without saying a single thing, you get more than enough time to stare at their faces and wonder why something about it just isn't sitting right. It strikes an uncanny valley chord where you start to notice the nuances, and it becomes more of a performance of those deeply unsettling faux-skin wearing robots that are supposed to replicate human behavior and expression than anything.
Sticking to the subject of technology coming a long way, I'm continually stunned at the sheer amount of money AAA companies sink into graphical fidelity over gameplay feel. I don't personally think open world games should work to emulate "realistic" movement because it interferes with how the exploration should feel. Climbing and grappling especially feel awkward, and sometimes you're tricked into thinking you needed to press the jump button to make a jump when instead, you absolute buffoon, you veritable mayor of Clown Town, you should have simply tilted the left stick in the correct radial direction.
I could really go on forever about how much of a wet fart this game is, and I haven't even addressed the time-honored Only Savages Live In These Uncolonized Lands trope this game predictably perpetuates as Aloy finally crosses borders and is told, and shown, that these new faces and cultures respond and deal predominantly in violence. It's the usual anti-indigenous, white colonizer bullshit we've all been fed before. It's backwards and unimaginative, same as always. There's not much more to say about it.
I'll probably spend the rest of my life wondering at what place it's supposed to occupy in the pantheon of incredibly mid AAA games. I don't know anyone who really loves this series, I don't know who out there is absolutely begging for more of it, and yet we keep moving forward in this baffling direction of Marvel-style writing (derogatory) and throwing players into their gamer diapers. Western developers don't seem to trust that any of us have working brain cells, or that any of us would want even a little bit of tangible substance to the media we consume. But hey; cool robot dinosaurs.
I don't know how I played through the entirety of the first game because I also don't remember a single thing that happened besides the reveal of Aloy's ~true origins~ and Lance Reddick's character being evil, or something? If nothing else, Forbidden West is admirably consistent with the first game in that way; forgettable characters and stiff or awkward voice acting makes it hard to buy into what's happening, much less follow any of it. I came back to this game a total of three times and got about 12 hours in before deciding there were much better uses of my time, not to mention much more respectful ones. I'm not entirely sure how the game creation process works step-by-step, especially regarding the melding of writing and gameplay, but Forbidden West follows the trend of telling a grave story of Evil That Must Be Stopped Yesterday in a game that directly bucks against the immediacy of the plot. Aloy needs to make her way west ASAP to stop the end of the world? That's crazy. Let me finish my side quests, inspect these lore sites, get this sick-ass armor, and fully upgrade my weapons first. Also if we have time can I take a detour and go scan that Tall Neck to fill out my map? It'll only take me an entire in-game day. Maybe three. The best thing about open world RPGs like Elden Ring and Witcher 3 is that the game compliments the pacing; there are certain points of no return but by and large, the entire game is not trying to cajole you into believing the end is nigh while also firmly nudging you to explore every nook and cranny.
I will say that the mo-cap is at first arresting in how good it is. Technology sure has come a long way and whatever. However, because characters can talk for minutes and minutes without saying a single thing, you get more than enough time to stare at their faces and wonder why something about it just isn't sitting right. It strikes an uncanny valley chord where you start to notice the nuances, and it becomes more of a performance of those deeply unsettling faux-skin wearing robots that are supposed to replicate human behavior and expression than anything.
Sticking to the subject of technology coming a long way, I'm continually stunned at the sheer amount of money AAA companies sink into graphical fidelity over gameplay feel. I don't personally think open world games should work to emulate "realistic" movement because it interferes with how the exploration should feel. Climbing and grappling especially feel awkward, and sometimes you're tricked into thinking you needed to press the jump button to make a jump when instead, you absolute buffoon, you veritable mayor of Clown Town, you should have simply tilted the left stick in the correct radial direction.
I could really go on forever about how much of a wet fart this game is, and I haven't even addressed the time-honored Only Savages Live In These Uncolonized Lands trope this game predictably perpetuates as Aloy finally crosses borders and is told, and shown, that these new faces and cultures respond and deal predominantly in violence. It's the usual anti-indigenous, white colonizer bullshit we've all been fed before. It's backwards and unimaginative, same as always. There's not much more to say about it.
I'll probably spend the rest of my life wondering at what place it's supposed to occupy in the pantheon of incredibly mid AAA games. I don't know anyone who really loves this series, I don't know who out there is absolutely begging for more of it, and yet we keep moving forward in this baffling direction of Marvel-style writing (derogatory) and throwing players into their gamer diapers. Western developers don't seem to trust that any of us have working brain cells, or that any of us would want even a little bit of tangible substance to the media we consume. But hey; cool robot dinosaurs.
Great to play if you're looking for a Digimon game that doesn't demand more than an approximate 2 brain cells to play because it's dummy easy. I wanted to like this one more than I did, or at least finish it, but I've met at least one woman in real life so unfortunately I have standards for female characters.
2023
i'm too much of a baby to play it for more than 1-2 hours at a time. do it for her (control).
2011
i had to add this one for all the obvious reasons.
you ever play a game that changes your brain chemistry and how you think about and consume media for the rest of your life? lemme be clear, i played demons' souls first. i also MAD cheated in it with the item duplicating glitch. i also only played it because a friend guilt-tripped me into it. but dark souls is the one that changed the game (ahyuk).
i think about stories differently. i think about how a game feels to play, the intention behind it. i think about accessibility more. i think harder about whether the difficulty of anything is meaningful or not, and if it's really worth all the trouble of those first fifty-seven times that smough ends your bloodline with the sheer weight of his fucking ass.
there's not much else to say that you haven't already heard. i don't know if there are more video essays about anything than there are for dark souls, except video essays about majora's mask being a metaphor for the stages of grief. it's just a weird fucking game that changed the landscape of games forever, and i should like to grab lunch with miyazaki sometime right after i give him a bear hug and ask if he's good.
you ever play a game that changes your brain chemistry and how you think about and consume media for the rest of your life? lemme be clear, i played demons' souls first. i also MAD cheated in it with the item duplicating glitch. i also only played it because a friend guilt-tripped me into it. but dark souls is the one that changed the game (ahyuk).
i think about stories differently. i think about how a game feels to play, the intention behind it. i think about accessibility more. i think harder about whether the difficulty of anything is meaningful or not, and if it's really worth all the trouble of those first fifty-seven times that smough ends your bloodline with the sheer weight of his fucking ass.
there's not much else to say that you haven't already heard. i don't know if there are more video essays about anything than there are for dark souls, except video essays about majora's mask being a metaphor for the stages of grief. it's just a weird fucking game that changed the landscape of games forever, and i should like to grab lunch with miyazaki sometime right after i give him a bear hug and ask if he's good.
i wanna give it a 5 because the front half was so fucking good, but i also wanna give it a 1 because the back half was so mindbogglingly bad.
i found it very odd that the game's writing dropped off when the main plot started coming to the fore. legitimately, everything up to that point was golden. toe to tip, the writing was way beyond what AAA RPGs have been shitting out for the last eternity. so why, then, did none of it last through the unraveling of its own story?
as soon as the game starts pushing you more heavily into the main plot, all the intricate character writing seems to fly out the window and the whole party devolves from characters into plot devices. if you asked me what was going on in the last 10 hours of that game, or why any of it even happened, i genuinely could not tell you. i wish i could. it was epilepsy-inducing light shows happening back-to-back in a bloated, wet fart of a boss rush for 3-4 hours only to then turn around and smirk at you like, "wasn't that shit awesome?"
i wanted to love this game very much. the open world stuff was common fare but couched in enough nostalgia and clever/funny bits of writing that i had full intentions to complete all the side content. i could not, in good faith, recommend this game to anyone unless they get it for free or at super discount.
2.5/5. i am absolutely fucking begging people to stop letting tetsuya nomura and kazushige nojima write stories.
i found it very odd that the game's writing dropped off when the main plot started coming to the fore. legitimately, everything up to that point was golden. toe to tip, the writing was way beyond what AAA RPGs have been shitting out for the last eternity. so why, then, did none of it last through the unraveling of its own story?
as soon as the game starts pushing you more heavily into the main plot, all the intricate character writing seems to fly out the window and the whole party devolves from characters into plot devices. if you asked me what was going on in the last 10 hours of that game, or why any of it even happened, i genuinely could not tell you. i wish i could. it was epilepsy-inducing light shows happening back-to-back in a bloated, wet fart of a boss rush for 3-4 hours only to then turn around and smirk at you like, "wasn't that shit awesome?"
i wanted to love this game very much. the open world stuff was common fare but couched in enough nostalgia and clever/funny bits of writing that i had full intentions to complete all the side content. i could not, in good faith, recommend this game to anyone unless they get it for free or at super discount.
2.5/5. i am absolutely fucking begging people to stop letting tetsuya nomura and kazushige nojima write stories.
2023
the stellar production value, bonkers set pieces, and two earnestly dope boss fights could not save this game for me. if we as a collective moved away from fantasy slavery as a storytelling device and dark fantasy a la Game of Thrones, it would be too soon.
2023
i never played chrono trigger or super mario RPG so the stuff in this game that borrows from those two had to be relayed to me by someone else LOL. i did, however, play golden sun, the long lost love of my life who got done so dirty, and sea of stars had a lot of its DNA. what a soothing experience.
i most appreciate this game from a development standpoint because it is utterly bonkers to me in the best way that sabotage is building a cohesive narrative universe between two wildly different games. i loved plaguing my roommate, who's playing the messenger, with "wow that's from sea of stars" every 5 minutes, and he managed to get in "wow that's from the messenger" yesterday. good stuff.
i wish i had more specific things to say about this game? i'm giving it a 4.5/5 because it accomplishes everything it set out to do in a pretty satisfying way. i won't say i personally loved it, but it does deserve the praise and success it's getting.
great game, i love an RPG that is under 50 hours long.
i most appreciate this game from a development standpoint because it is utterly bonkers to me in the best way that sabotage is building a cohesive narrative universe between two wildly different games. i loved plaguing my roommate, who's playing the messenger, with "wow that's from sea of stars" every 5 minutes, and he managed to get in "wow that's from the messenger" yesterday. good stuff.
i wish i had more specific things to say about this game? i'm giving it a 4.5/5 because it accomplishes everything it set out to do in a pretty satisfying way. i won't say i personally loved it, but it does deserve the praise and success it's getting.
great game, i love an RPG that is under 50 hours long.
2020
my favorite assassin's creed game
barring the painful heteronormativity of trying to convince everyone that cal and merrin had any amount of romantic feelings for each other, this game absolutely whipped. all the shit people say about the gameplay being tight as hell is correct and i always love a range of appearance customization options. the story is neat, although i personally still don't care for jedi/force-sensitive characters being the only real options for heroes in such a vast, interesting universe where it's been established a billion times that anyone, regardless of space magic, can be a hero.
also, not sure why people keep giving stormtroopers personality if they're just gonna keep making us murder them.
also, not sure why people keep giving stormtroopers personality if they're just gonna keep making us murder them.
2020
This review contains spoilers
i want so badly to give this a 5/5 because it will stick with me forever and i think of it often. i remember it like a long-time ex who sticks with me forever not just because of how much i loved them, but because of how it could've been and how it all actually ended.
i personally felt that the major story twist was a mistake. the game spent so much time building out this beautifully written story about the nightmare that is losing a loved one to suicide, from aubrey's unprocessed rage and lashing out to sunny's awful descent into delulu lemon levels of depression. and the grief. the way OMOCAT wrote the cast's varying levels of grief was so complicated, contrary, and honest, and the time we spend with sunny in particular broke my heart over and over again. it was so easy to be in the white space with him, and easier still to keep him getting out of bed every day because i just wanted him to keep going in spite of it all.
i will be completely frank, my attachment to that part of the story is mine. omori isn't a bad game by any means, and i don't even think the story itself is bad. basil's relentless guilt and the burden of protecting sunny from what they'd done wouldn't make much sense if it'd really been a suicide in the end. my connection to stories about dealing with the aftermath of a loved one's suicide my own, and i take accountability for that. i'm always going to feel something warm and deep about this game and the soundtrack's leitmotif is always going to break me. but i'm also always going to keep thinking about how it ended, and how it could've been.
i personally felt that the major story twist was a mistake. the game spent so much time building out this beautifully written story about the nightmare that is losing a loved one to suicide, from aubrey's unprocessed rage and lashing out to sunny's awful descent into delulu lemon levels of depression. and the grief. the way OMOCAT wrote the cast's varying levels of grief was so complicated, contrary, and honest, and the time we spend with sunny in particular broke my heart over and over again. it was so easy to be in the white space with him, and easier still to keep him getting out of bed every day because i just wanted him to keep going in spite of it all.
i will be completely frank, my attachment to that part of the story is mine. omori isn't a bad game by any means, and i don't even think the story itself is bad. basil's relentless guilt and the burden of protecting sunny from what they'd done wouldn't make much sense if it'd really been a suicide in the end. my connection to stories about dealing with the aftermath of a loved one's suicide my own, and i take accountability for that. i'm always going to feel something warm and deep about this game and the soundtrack's leitmotif is always going to break me. but i'm also always going to keep thinking about how it ended, and how it could've been.
2015
you ever just play a game that completely rewires your brain and lives in it and everything you do from that point forward?
this game legitimately changed my life, as we all know it has for a billion other people. this game also is one of my least talked about loves because the fandom is a nightmare, and to be called an undertale fan is also to be called an irredeemable sex pest. we also can't forget matpat giving a copy of the game to the actual pope.
but if we can stretch our imaginations and pretend like undertale isn't inextricably tied to the nastiest corners of tumblr and also the catholic church, we can just call a spade a spade: undertale is a great game with an earnest need for kindness to win in a world that isn't kind to us. it's small, it's goofy, it's not everyone's cup of tea, and i will always be shit at the actual combat portions, but it changed me for the better. just please don't ask me if i'm an undertale fan in public. i will ignore you.
this game legitimately changed my life, as we all know it has for a billion other people. this game also is one of my least talked about loves because the fandom is a nightmare, and to be called an undertale fan is also to be called an irredeemable sex pest. we also can't forget matpat giving a copy of the game to the actual pope.
but if we can stretch our imaginations and pretend like undertale isn't inextricably tied to the nastiest corners of tumblr and also the catholic church, we can just call a spade a spade: undertale is a great game with an earnest need for kindness to win in a world that isn't kind to us. it's small, it's goofy, it's not everyone's cup of tea, and i will always be shit at the actual combat portions, but it changed me for the better. just please don't ask me if i'm an undertale fan in public. i will ignore you.
2019
This review contains spoilers
Overhype killed this one for me. I just can't finish it. I am legitimately afraid of those giant angler fish, not a fan of the time loop mechanic, and handling the spaceship makes me want to run headfirst into a wall (these are all 100% Me Problems).
I genuinely feel kind of bad about not clicking with this game because everyone who's played it says it's the best and smartest game ever but every time I try to play it, I bounce off super hard for one reason or another. I hesitate to say the game is truly inaccessible, but it didn't really feel accessible either. At times, this game really clicked with me, but most times it felt bad and I was low-key dreading the next thing coming.
I will say the vibe is nearly immaculate and the idea is sooo so sick. The idea of a time loop is interesting but the execution gives me a lil anxiety and I hate feeling like I don't truly have all the time in the universe to explore and take in the lore. I really, REALLY wish I felt differently about this game but repeated attempts at getting into it lead me to the same result.
In most cases like this, I would just boot up a video essay or something but when you're cautioned over and over that it just ""isn't the same"" as it would be if you finished it yourself, I feel like I'd be losing out on The Experience if I watched video essays about it without having finished the game myself. I would love to know if I ever come back to this game and actually enjoy it, but I have that strange feeling that everyone else seems to have played a different game than me.
I genuinely feel kind of bad about not clicking with this game because everyone who's played it says it's the best and smartest game ever but every time I try to play it, I bounce off super hard for one reason or another. I hesitate to say the game is truly inaccessible, but it didn't really feel accessible either. At times, this game really clicked with me, but most times it felt bad and I was low-key dreading the next thing coming.
I will say the vibe is nearly immaculate and the idea is sooo so sick. The idea of a time loop is interesting but the execution gives me a lil anxiety and I hate feeling like I don't truly have all the time in the universe to explore and take in the lore. I really, REALLY wish I felt differently about this game but repeated attempts at getting into it lead me to the same result.
In most cases like this, I would just boot up a video essay or something but when you're cautioned over and over that it just ""isn't the same"" as it would be if you finished it yourself, I feel like I'd be losing out on The Experience if I watched video essays about it without having finished the game myself. I would love to know if I ever come back to this game and actually enjoy it, but I have that strange feeling that everyone else seems to have played a different game than me.