So uh, I don't know what happened here. I've been playing through the yakuza series and even though I was so-so with Judgment I've had a good time with all of them so far. Kiryu is one of my favorite characters in all of gaming and while they certainly weren't without faults I thought all the other games were at the bare minimum pretty great. This ones not. In fact, its bordering on being a bad one. I imagine not many share the sentiment but to put it simply while playing this I was just straight up not having a good time.
The first issue is the plot. Its really really really (and I cant stress this enough: really) stupid. Now, the previous yakuza games have had their fair share of silly moments but Yakuza 4 goes past that. The moments arent dumb fun, they're just plain dumb. The same exact plot twist happens MULTIPLE times, and it was already barely believable the first time. Not to mention some incredibly baffling character decisions and poor writing. I am gonna refrain from going deeper into this to save my remaining braincells but the amount of time I stopped paying attention to the game to text my boyfriend about how stupid what just happened was, was astronomical (he's currently playing through it too, he's enjoying it more than I am at least!) Beyond the frequent stupidity was that the actual plot was just kinda boring? and uninteresting? Out of the five or so main antagonists, only one of them was actually interesting and they didnt even make it to the end. Out of three that are in the finale, one of them is about the most pointless character ever and nothing is done with him, while the other two are incredibly dull and forgettable. Then theres our new protagonists. And honestly? All of them are interesting. I wanna know more about them. But Yakuza 4 only gives you 4 chapters with each of them, which is absolutely not enough time to get attached to them or any of the side characters in their respective stories, so the big meetup in the finale while cool didnt really felt earned and the whole game I was just waiting for daddy Kiryu to show up. (it was glorious when he did) But as awful as the plot is told, I cant say I disliked all of it. There were a couple moments, particularly the end of Tanimura's section that I really liked a lot and at some point I had even considered giving the game as high as a 4/5 (before the disappointing finale) but.. if only the bad plot was the worst thing about the game. No no, that award goes to the gameplay.
Yakuza 4's final boss consists of said boss running around the arena shooting you while you 10 armored goons, some with knives, swarm you, stun lock and knock you down constantly. He respawns these endlessly until you are able to defeat him first. This is what I believe to be the worst final boss fight I've ever partaken in. Bloodborne while blindfolded would be a less infuriating experience. Now Yakuza 4 isnt the hardest game, as you have a large inventory you can easily stock up with healing items and essentially stall your way through the whole thing. But I would be lying to myself If I said I had a fun time with the combat. If the final boss was the only example of garbage game design, I could be pretty forgiving. But what if I told you: the entire game is like that. From bosses that spam evade to stunlock you from behind and then repeat the same combo over and over again knocking you down (this is literally every boss) to swarms of enemies that just spam grapple you and, because of course, one of the sections ends with an hour long fight full of bullshit grapple enemies and shotguns that you do indeed to have to restart in its entirely if you die. This section happens right after I began getting invested in the story. As you can imagine, after finally getting through it I wanted nothing more than for it to be over
Now, there are some redeeming qualities to the game I haven't mentioned. Obviously its not the worst thing ever as a 2.5 isnt exactly the worst score. The music is fantastic and the music reminded me of Danganronpa(non-derogatory) and this is the first of the series to my knowledge that actually lets you skip the mini game tutorials, which after forced golfing in Y3 was very appreciated. There were also a handful of genuinely funny scenes. But these dont make up for the rest of the game and if anything only make my disappointment in it greater. After this review Im gonna try to remove Y4 in its entirety from my memory. I beat it on normal difficulty, and I wont ever be beating it again. I hope Yakuza 5 is better, I'm still looking forward to it.

Also I couldn't figure out where to add this in the review, but nearly every finale taking place at the millennium tower is really getting old. It doesnt really affect story quality but it is way overdone and makes it hard to take seriously

Trophy Completion - 21%
Time Played - 20 hours 53 minutes
Nancymeter - 49/100
Game Completion #24 of 2022
March Completion #3

I was never really one for point-and-click adventure puzzlers - more due to lack of trying than anything else. Maybe I should get into them in a bigger way - there are certainly some banger entries that have flown under my radar, but the ones I've earnestly attempted have been clangers, and I don't want to dedicate too much of this review to throwing namedrops under a bus (besides Deponia, that one deserves being nailed to the autobahn). Even as much as The Neverhood was a stylistically formative pillar of my life in my developing years and one that I swear by even now, I can never entirely escape the little conceit in my head that I know the game itself banks off of that style hard enough to leave actual design and writing by the wayside.
It's great, but is it Monkey Island 2 good? God no.

MI2 is a wonderfully transformative twist on the first game that understandably leaves many people behind. I personally adored its shift into a creepier, sadder atmosphere - where the first game's player experience is akin to a child discovering a new favourite theme park ride, excitedly exploring the sets in doe-eyed awe at the light and magic of it all. 2 is like finally stepping out of the funhouse and catching glimpses into the employee backrooms, seeing mascot characters take their mask off and putting out a cigarette on an animatronic. Everything here seems to just work in the game's favour; the puzzles are somewhat more streamlined and give me the impression of ride designers running out of ideas and budget. The palette's increase from 16 to 256 on screen colours at a time afforded the illustrators more licence to breathe some character into the environments, which funnily enough is the exact opposite of what they did - Monkey Island 2 feels downright dead to look at at times, even the vibrant front-end stages the amusement park designers want you to see have a sickly dingy grotty energy to them. The writing is just as funny as the first game but comes across far less comedic because of the dryness to the character delivery. These employees are here to pay their rent and go home, dead-eyed hucksters here to exploit the dream factory. Love it so much it all just works, and creates a uniquely textured feel to so many of the interactions in the game that for all intents and purposes should be childhood idyll. Which is what makes the ending so good to me, one of the few times I've seen "it was all a dream" handled so well because it recontextualises not only everything that happened earlier in the game, but the first entry too where the signs become strikingly obvious when pointed out. Without explicitly giving away too much, it's clear that Guybrush is an unhappy child coming to learn that his fantasy happy place is giving diminishing returns. The problem with dreams is that you have to wake up eventually.

I am dreadfully excited to see how Return to Monkey Island pans out. MI2’s ending hook has been prosperous for me in how effectively it made me think back on and contextualise the games up to that point, but there is something to be said about a complete package. I think I can trust Ron Gilbert.

I have a weird love hate relationship with games that pride themselves on being "subversive".

On the one hand I have no problem with media that wants to break social norms and taboos so long as what their making as an overall point to it and isn't just "lol isn't this fucked up, crazy right.". If done right you can get masterpieces of subversive media like A Clockwork Orange, Funny Games, Pink Flamingos and Freddy Got Fingered, unfortunately I can count on one hand the amount of video games I've personally seen that've tried and failed at tackling subversive media. When most games set out to tackle this level of writing and story tell it can either go two ways, It's either by a group of creative individuals who have a strong view of what their game is trying say along with having strong narrative themes that intertwine with the gameplay and narrative, games like Undertale, Cruelty Squad, Death Stranding, Hotline Miami 2, Spec Ops The Line, and Conker's Bad Fur Day. On the other side of the coin you have games that say they have a strong message and a subversive narrative but either fail from sheer incompetence of storytelling and thematic elements and tone deafness; even if they did try to incorporate the gameplay by tying it in with the game’s overall point it can still fail by not having a strong enough concrete vision of their game causing the rest of the game to fall apart in the process, game like Hatred, Twelve Minutes, Postal, Bioshock Infinite, Last of Us 2, Mafia 3, and Saints Row 3.
The real question here is what camp does Harvester fall into.

Harvester is a tough sell for me because while I really love the late 90’s early CG visuals and the use of crunchy FMV for their character sprites and cutscenes; and the acting is………camp, very……very camp. Unfortunately for all the elements of the game I really liked it’s weighed down by the biggest problem with the game being that it’s not a very good game to play plus I don’t respect what the game is trying to say.
As a point and click game it’s way to linear, almost railroading you down one single path with almost no diverging pathways for puzzles unlike other much more simpler point and click games, even better though during the last hour the game changes ganreas from point and click to dungeon crawler. And it has some of the absolute worst combat I've ever played, I’d respect the idea and change if it didn’t feel so half baked and poorly thought out. You also get a wide variety of dialogue options for NPCs even for ones that have no real use in the overall game, but besides a handful of character a lot of them just feel like flavor text and don’t add anything besides giving the town the game takes place feeling a lot more empty; it probably also doesn't help that a lot of the areas in the game only really matter to one puzzle and that’s it or other times some areas will have almost no point at all and are just there for a joke or “irreverence social commentary”, like the towns nuclear missile station run by a PTSD riddled commie heating Vietnam veteran who had entire torso blown and now stand guard and will blow you head off if you enter a conversation with him and mention anything that isn’t wholesome a-ok american pride, and if he does shot you he accidentally falls over and launches the nukes killing every in the town giving you a game over and sending you back to your last save. It’s funny ... .for like the first time but after awhile it just gets tiresome and that can be said for a lot of the games “irreverence social commentary”.

The main games overall message and themes are…I think “violent media does not create violent individuals but rather the people around them create monsters through the act of allowing disgusting degenerate behavior influence their actions”. The game is very much a response to the violent games panic of the 90s and while I do think they did a decent job tying the game’s message and themes into the world of the game and the game itself it still left me with a bad taste in my mouth. It might be because of the really lame twist at the end but I think a large part of it mostly comes from how much of a strawman argument this game feels like at times. Pretty much every other character in the game are inherent violence sociopath with a lot of them either having vices of porn, murder, arson, being racist, incest, child kidnapping, child murder, grooming, being gay?, and since the game takes a page from Blue Velvet where it portrays quiet suburban middle america but under that thin vale it’s a seedy underbelly of degeneracy. But here it’s trying to do its message with the most tone deaf straw man character I’ve seen since Postal and overall it just kinda leaves me feeling like a big fat load of nothing. Don’t get me wrong I’m not trying to disagree with the game’s overall intent I just don’t like how they went about executing the set ideas in the most late 90’s way possible, lude, dumb and somehow racist.

I think my overall take away from Harvester is it’s a game I really wanted to like and still do like from a purely visual perspective, but on almost every other side I either just don’t vibe with parts of the game or actively dislike other parts that are very important parts of the game. I know this game had a really rushed development and as a result the late game feels very unfinished but I don’t know I feel like even if I lived in a timeline where it was fully released like the studio wanted I still don’t think I’d really vibe with it. Maybe I’m just getting older and find the absurdist and counter cultural way of telling a story and delivering a message frustrating and annoying………………………..naa I still like Freddy Got Fingered, it’s probably the games fault.

Near unmatched style and presentation for a PS1 title. Parasite Eve boasts a stupid, out-there, and self-serious B-movie tier story paired with an insanely good OST. Combat is surprisingly fun, short, simple, and easy for the time, which makes exploration less of a chore than most JRPGs that came out around this time. If I had any gripes about this game it's the limited inventory space and sometimes confusing intractability.

Basically, Mitochondria Eve makes me feel hot.

This is the most opprobious game of the year. Desperate for attention, this visual novel lives and dies by a single evident gimmick, which is to shock the player with anime girls and a dating sim facade to reveal later a profane horror game, like a creepypasta. This shallow premise's effectiveness is destroyed by the game's own writing, since the script attempts to subvert harem anime clichés by adding more anime stereotypes, most prominently the yandere trope and an incessant amount of androcentrism by portraying girls unable to contain their attraction to a guy - this is handled as insultingly as it sounds, since the villain is a girl who mauls her rivals in order to be alone with you forever and be on an eternal date. In addition to that, Doki Doki Literature Club adds fourth-wall breaking such as glitching out the game, messing with the files, expecting the player to clear the game multiple times for the good ending and adding "creepy images and text files" to your disk drive as its pretense to horror, but on an age where meta narrative is a trend among trashy self-referential indie hits (Undertale, Pony Island, Luna Game), the game keeps falling on trends and becoming predictable, turning the experience into merely seeing what is going to be the next trick on the checklist now that the true face of the game is unveiled. How is a game that attempts to surprise going to even achieve this purpose if its own writing and design is completely counterproductive? Bonus points for throwing a warning of disturbing content at the start, defeating the whole purpose of the game.

The game's apologists might argue that it's a parody, but the game's endings suggest that the story is supposed to be taken seriously. Some might argue that it's a portrayal of depression, but its horror elements end up making the issue more insensitive towards it under this perspective. At the end of the day, Doki Doki Literature Club is a game about nothing and without a single original idea. Even peruvian horror B movies have more dignity than this crappypasta.

[This is from the elk vault, a fully finished review that i never posted. Written back in february. I thought better release it before the leakers get it, u know what im saying? pls enjoy.]

I’ve given this game so many chances. When i was playing hollow knight i was thinking “damn its so good when i play a critically acclaimed game and it lives up to the hype.” Well why don’t I go back in time and dunk myself in a pool of cat bones for jinxing it so hard? I have been playing this game since 2019. I started when I was in high school and now it’s been so long that it’s become creepy for me to play this. Nothing in this game was cut, they threw all the shit they wanted in there with no regard for anything. With every second that goes by I dislike the game more. Which sucks for the game because it's 100 billion hours long. The game overall just feels like it’s only working because all the parts are stuck together with sticky tack and rubber bands. Your character controls soooo shittily. So crap. The way you maneuver around is so unnatural and weird and bad. It feels like I’m controlling a car in the shape of an anime boy with 3 kilograms of hair. Some parts you can only progress by using the detective vision to see which of the 3 little steps you have to press x on to jump. Or rather activate the jump cutscene and to teleport you onto the next platform. There is nothing in this game that feels smooth or natural except the turn based combat, which is pretty fun and stylish but oh my god it gets so old. I’m sick of it. The same song every time and usually in dungeons you fight a pool of like 4 or 5 enemies total. Once u figure out their weaknesses you use the same moves with the same animations on the same dudes and u stun em and u ask for their money or do the big all out attack animation again.

“Oh elk u hate turn based combat”

No I don’t, assface… Chrono trigger is fun. Like a dragon is fun. This is a cool system with some cool stuff I admit. But the enemies u fight r lame. The dungeons are boring too. They try to do a little baby stealth thing and tell u to ohh maybe sneak around but the stealth is soooooo dogcrap-diabetes tier that you can stand in front of a guy and he won't see you. You hide on a corner and wait for him to pass and go. If you wanna get rid of him you gotta fight 4 of these guys you already fought. You hit em with the attack they’re weak to, wait 35 minutes for the outro animation where ann does a strip show for the camera and u can continue with the game. Gameplay? MOSTLY BAD.

Story? Don’t get me started. This is anime. And not good anime like 1 punch man. This is crap anime like that stuff YOU watch. (sorry elksters I don’t mean to insinuate that you have bad taste in anime. I'm sorry! -editorial) I legit was considering fully dropping the game by the beach cutscene. And they still keep the -san, -chan, whatever stuff in the english dub. So they're saying hey john chan do you want to go eat at that restaurant? And it's weird cause it's in english but they've got the chan stuff. Whatever. U know what? I don’t care. I just remembered how much I don’t care about the story. It’s bad and that’s all you need to know. I just want to go home. So i’m gonna write a couple dozen more paragraphs on why I hate every one of the characters and you can like the review and we can leave, okay? Does that sound good to you? Good. That’s good. Hang in there pal.


Ryuji. My buddy. My homie. You’re alright. You’re safe from my wrath. You were the only one I could stand. Morgana. Shut the fuck up and stop being so mean to Ryuji. Stop following me into the bathroom. You’re not a cat, you're a dude that looks like a cat. It’s creepy. Ann. You’re also sort of chill but your voice is annoying. Stop inviting me to your modeling things. Yusuke. You’re kind of funny but I wouldn’t want to be friends with you in real life. You’re an anime stereotype. If you were a real person I would request a restraining order. You’re like the Pierce Hawthorne of the group. No offense. Pierce was my favourite. Well, actually Troy is my favourite but Ryuji is Troy. Kawakami. Get the fuck out of my dm’s before I demolish you. Creepy bitch. Grown ass woman hitting me up at night calling me master. Restraining order on this chick too. Reporter chick, same as above. Mishima. Same as above but just the ‘get out of my dms’ part. Maybe not a restraining order, maybe I’d just block his number and avoid him at school. Makoto. Anyone ever told you it’s not cool to come to a group of friends and say “let me join you or else I'm telling the teacher you’re excluding me” ? and then you come in and be mean to Ryuji. If we’re letting you in, I know you won’t stop being a total nerd loser but at least don’t be mean to Ryuji. Futaba. Wahhh my mom my mom wahhh get over it and get over it NOW. I don’t care, stop crying about it and go take a shower. Shut up about being a gamer and push your glasses up; they look like they're about to fall. And stop being mean to Ryuji. Iwai. Hiiii how are you hahahahhaha gosh Iwai you’re so cool. Can you tell me what THIS gun does? Oh my goshhhh you’re so freaking smart hahahhaa loll. Haru. You are fine. I hope you have a wonderful and fulfilling life. Good luck on those plants. But you are rich and I’m still the one buying all the guns and shit for the phantom thieves. It’s like Clark Kent buying the justice league a space station on a daily bugle reporter budget with Bruce Wayne right there. Akechi, why do you talk like that? Your voice is weird. You talk like one of those “boyfriend comforts you after a nightmare” ASMR audios. Not that I would know.

The music is great at least and the hud stuff is unique and cool. I love the subway system. The whole first palace was really fun and actually pretty hype. It’s a unique setup having to go to school and balance life and secret dream dungeon stuff, even if it was really shittily done. I hope a competent developer takes over that idea and we get, like, a shazam game where you have to go to school and at any time during any cutscene or whatever you can press a button to say shazam and turn into captain marvel and get arrested and game over. Wouldn’t that be sick?

What else? Oh whatever, I’m done. This game sucks, the story sucks, and you have one friend who you can stand while random older chicks spam your dms all the time while you’re trying to do pull ups in the attic. Well, I guess it is pretty accurate to my high school experience in that way.

Played it for about an hour but it's not clicking. The rhythm "battles" really seemed more like bullet hell segments to me where you just dodged attack after attack and the tracks were... alright, but none of them stood out to me in particular. There were times where I thought I was experiencing sensory overload from the sheer amount of color bleeding from the screen, which kinda annoyed me when I also had to dodge a million obstacles. It also doesn't help that visually this game is essentially trying to be Undertale, but also doesn't do enough in my mind to try and establish an identity outside of the Undertale vibe. Again I can see why people would like Everhood, but I don't think it's for me and I wasn't engaged enough to go beyond the hour mark.

I really wanted to enjoy Dual Destinies, but I seriously struggled to play this game to it's conclusion.

To sing some praises however, the presentation is phenomenal. Character models are incredibly crisp and feel like a perfect evolution of the 2D sprites of the previous entry. The music is also banging as usual.

Now on to the bad things...
Dual Destinies feels like a parody of what Ace Attorney is. Character writing obnoxiously wacky and the mysteries are Danganronpa levels of ridiculousness. This isn't helped by the gruelling pace the game goes at.

While there are glimmers of quality, I don't see myself ever coming back to this entry unless they do an HD re-release on modern consoles.