crimson2877
2022
I don’t even know where to start, how to describe this game without spoiling it. I guess I can say, if the game looks interesting to you, go play it right now. If, in addition, you’ve ever liked a game made by Obsidian or a hyperlocal adventure game (Night in the Woods, Kentucky Route Zero, Norco), or some combination of the two (this section is here so I can mention Disco Elysium) then GO PLAY IT RIGHT NOW.
Beyond that, the task becomes workable. When my girlfriend asked me what I thought of the game, I said “I think it’s probably one of the best works of art I’ve ever experienced”, and I stand fully behind that text message I sent like 10 minutes ago. Somehow, Josh Sawyer and his team at Obsidian have crafted a wonderful murder mystery with themes around class consciousness and theology, and a lovely, tender story and cast of characters, and they made it entirely out of historical references you’d literally need an encyclopedia to fully understand. And don’t fret, the encyclopedia is ALSO in the game.
Admittedly the introduction is a little dry. It leans heavy on establishing the setting, your place in it, and a calm before the fall, and it’s important, but until things get going it was feeling a bit like what I was worried it would be: interesting and intellectual, but lacking in heart. Once you get used to the game though, things pick up quick and all of a sudden you’ve been playing for 6 hours straight and it’s 1 in the morning and you don’t want to stop, because you don’t know if the next person you talk to, or the next meal you eat, or the next setpiece you explore could throw mysteries and answers at you in equal measure, pulling you deeper and deeper until the next chapter break.
I don’t think I know how to talk about this game at all actually. Not the way I usually do. Mostly you just have to decide what leads to follow based on what information you have, and what your character can provide based on their background and standing with each member of the community. But that doesn’t really get to the heart of what’s so good about the game, what I love about it. That lies in the seemingly endless depth on display, a hyperfocused depth of character and setting that only exists in those other hyperlocal adventure games and Obsidian-style RPGs, to my knowledge.
It’s just that good, and it gets better and better as you go along. The layers peel back, pulling the sardonic exterior away so you can tug at the core underneath. I’m surprised a game like this could be made still, and by a company of the size Obsidian is. It’s got all the references of a game made by 3 nerds in a basement, all the heart of a game made by 3 indie devs in a basement, and all the technical prowess that being owned by Xbox gets you. I don’t get how a game can be so seemingly mired in itself and yet still so affecting, still such a triumph, and I don’t get how Josh Sawyer’s been doing stuff like this for 20 years. I’ll be buying the collectors edition if it materializes though, you can count on that.
Beyond that, the task becomes workable. When my girlfriend asked me what I thought of the game, I said “I think it’s probably one of the best works of art I’ve ever experienced”, and I stand fully behind that text message I sent like 10 minutes ago. Somehow, Josh Sawyer and his team at Obsidian have crafted a wonderful murder mystery with themes around class consciousness and theology, and a lovely, tender story and cast of characters, and they made it entirely out of historical references you’d literally need an encyclopedia to fully understand. And don’t fret, the encyclopedia is ALSO in the game.
Admittedly the introduction is a little dry. It leans heavy on establishing the setting, your place in it, and a calm before the fall, and it’s important, but until things get going it was feeling a bit like what I was worried it would be: interesting and intellectual, but lacking in heart. Once you get used to the game though, things pick up quick and all of a sudden you’ve been playing for 6 hours straight and it’s 1 in the morning and you don’t want to stop, because you don’t know if the next person you talk to, or the next meal you eat, or the next setpiece you explore could throw mysteries and answers at you in equal measure, pulling you deeper and deeper until the next chapter break.
I don’t think I know how to talk about this game at all actually. Not the way I usually do. Mostly you just have to decide what leads to follow based on what information you have, and what your character can provide based on their background and standing with each member of the community. But that doesn’t really get to the heart of what’s so good about the game, what I love about it. That lies in the seemingly endless depth on display, a hyperfocused depth of character and setting that only exists in those other hyperlocal adventure games and Obsidian-style RPGs, to my knowledge.
It’s just that good, and it gets better and better as you go along. The layers peel back, pulling the sardonic exterior away so you can tug at the core underneath. I’m surprised a game like this could be made still, and by a company of the size Obsidian is. It’s got all the references of a game made by 3 nerds in a basement, all the heart of a game made by 3 indie devs in a basement, and all the technical prowess that being owned by Xbox gets you. I don’t get how a game can be so seemingly mired in itself and yet still so affecting, still such a triumph, and I don’t get how Josh Sawyer’s been doing stuff like this for 20 years. I’ll be buying the collectors edition if it materializes though, you can count on that.
2020
Bleh. This is the most bleh crpg I've bothered to finish. Crazy production values it might have, but to what end?
The implementation of 5th edition here is slow and clunky, and incredibly unforgiving, even on the lowest difficulty. Sure, it's tactically interesting, but combat takes forever and is filled with tons of tiny little annoyances, and honestly far too swingy for a modern AAA game. Even Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil, which sports a very similar combat system (though it's 3.5 instead of 5) feels faster, though it suffers from many of the same issues regarding clunk. Even rolling skills in dialogue is slow as hell, even when you skip the main part of the animation it's just leagues slower than any other game I've played. The dice rolling animation is cute the first time but my god does it drag on the 500th time.
One thing ToEE didn't suffer from that this does, though, is camera issues! The camera's kinda goofy. When you zoom in, it tries to pull behind your character a bit (or just provide a cinematic viewpoint), but when you zoom out it angles flatter, to be a tactical camera. It only zooms out so far though, and just loves to get stuck on the multileveled terrain battlefields, which are a good idea in concept but really just feel annoying, partially because of this camera.
The world is beautifully realized, but feels a bit off, at least from my idea of the forgotten realms. It's been Larianized, I guess? No matter how serious things got, there was just this undercurrent of lightheartedness. Not as bad as their other games, but still not great. The maps don't really draw you in any direction, which made my pass through the underdark feel pretty aimless. It's got a bit of that quest-marker driven map design in it, I guess.
Finally, the story is interesting. Not as a narrative, it's pretty weak, but as an exercise in making a story that adapts to your players. That's the real strength here, right? The game lets you take many different paths through the story, and even story-critical moments are wildly variable. That's a lot of work to build, and it worked out, but not really to the benefit of the story. Player agency is crazy high, but as such the story feels meaningless, just a set of events you go through. The companion stories are a bit better, their issue is kind of a Marvelly quippy writing style (though again, less so than previous games of Larian's).
I've probably been a bit over-mean in this review, so lemme list some things I liked: Being able to go into turn based mode at any time, following multiple sidequest threads in Baldur's Gate (the city), the Gauntlet of Shar dungeon (minus the trials), most of the story beats around ketheric thorm. It's a well made game, it's just horribly uneven and imo hampered by some large issues
It just felt like an exercise in recreating the experience of playing 5e at the table, with a little bit less math and a story that, while free, still can't match the adaptability of a GM or something. It's a frustrating, often unbalanced game, and although it occasionally falls into stride (the city of baldur's gate was fun, though not really well split up) I finished the game glad it was over, with the feeling that nothing here really meant anything, no matter how pretty it looked or free it felt.
Just play fucking 5e
The implementation of 5th edition here is slow and clunky, and incredibly unforgiving, even on the lowest difficulty. Sure, it's tactically interesting, but combat takes forever and is filled with tons of tiny little annoyances, and honestly far too swingy for a modern AAA game. Even Troika's Temple of Elemental Evil, which sports a very similar combat system (though it's 3.5 instead of 5) feels faster, though it suffers from many of the same issues regarding clunk. Even rolling skills in dialogue is slow as hell, even when you skip the main part of the animation it's just leagues slower than any other game I've played. The dice rolling animation is cute the first time but my god does it drag on the 500th time.
One thing ToEE didn't suffer from that this does, though, is camera issues! The camera's kinda goofy. When you zoom in, it tries to pull behind your character a bit (or just provide a cinematic viewpoint), but when you zoom out it angles flatter, to be a tactical camera. It only zooms out so far though, and just loves to get stuck on the multileveled terrain battlefields, which are a good idea in concept but really just feel annoying, partially because of this camera.
The world is beautifully realized, but feels a bit off, at least from my idea of the forgotten realms. It's been Larianized, I guess? No matter how serious things got, there was just this undercurrent of lightheartedness. Not as bad as their other games, but still not great. The maps don't really draw you in any direction, which made my pass through the underdark feel pretty aimless. It's got a bit of that quest-marker driven map design in it, I guess.
Finally, the story is interesting. Not as a narrative, it's pretty weak, but as an exercise in making a story that adapts to your players. That's the real strength here, right? The game lets you take many different paths through the story, and even story-critical moments are wildly variable. That's a lot of work to build, and it worked out, but not really to the benefit of the story. Player agency is crazy high, but as such the story feels meaningless, just a set of events you go through. The companion stories are a bit better, their issue is kind of a Marvelly quippy writing style (though again, less so than previous games of Larian's).
I've probably been a bit over-mean in this review, so lemme list some things I liked: Being able to go into turn based mode at any time, following multiple sidequest threads in Baldur's Gate (the city), the Gauntlet of Shar dungeon (minus the trials), most of the story beats around ketheric thorm. It's a well made game, it's just horribly uneven and imo hampered by some large issues
It just felt like an exercise in recreating the experience of playing 5e at the table, with a little bit less math and a story that, while free, still can't match the adaptability of a GM or something. It's a frustrating, often unbalanced game, and although it occasionally falls into stride (the city of baldur's gate was fun, though not really well split up) I finished the game glad it was over, with the feeling that nothing here really meant anything, no matter how pretty it looked or free it felt.
Just play fucking 5e
2022
Live a live feels so absurdly ahead of its time it’s not even funny. Like, I know this is a remake and slightly modernized and stuff, but from what I can tell most of what was changed was the visual style (duh) and the translation (which is one of the best translations for an rpg I’ve ever SEEN) (also duh) and everything else was like, slightly rebalanced? But the vast vast majority of what’s fantastic and creative and bursting with life here was just as breathtaking in the original version, and that’s genuinely insane to me.
If you don’t know, Live a Live is made up of a bunch of mini-rpgs, usually running anywhere from 1-3 hours apiece. Each of these picks the genre conventions apart in a slightly different way, with almost none having a traditional dungeon crawl/town experience (and when they do, you can tell there’s an understanding of the genre built upon the deconstructions they’ve perpetrated elsewhere).
One scenario has you exploring one huge dungeon that reveals itself in more of a metroidvania-type way. One has you spending most of your playtime preparing for a bossfight at the end. A few have extremely novel and fun forms of progression, beyond the standard “kill and level up” loop. A few of them diverge so far from how rpgs typically work that they completely cross genres.
But it’s not just interesting in this way. This experimentation goes beyond the structural and mechanical and bleeds into everything about the game. Each chapter takes place in a different time period and location, exploring a certain kind of pulpy fiction story and how you can mold rpg mechanics around the feelings those stories deliver. The wild mechanics are used to build story, character, and really connect you to the material in a unique way.
That kind of brings me to this game’s legacy. These short, experimental rpgs, that play with the genre and conventions in such a loving way, yet not very sentimentally, are the kind of thing I associate most with little indie rpgs on Itch.io. Sure there’s a lot of “earthbound-inspired indie rpgs”, but these days if you look in the right places you can find stuff that feels more varied and unconventional, stuff that until now, I didn’t think had ever been released by a larger studio. Games like An Outcry, Facets, Cataphract.io, even Dujanah to an extent, feel like the kind of bold interesting games that would not feel out of place next to any of Live A Live’s chapters.
Beyond even that though, the way this game ends (which I don’t want to get too into for spoiler reasons) is almost as perfect as I could’ve even wanted. It ties the themes of all these disparate stories together so well and so meaningfully, and gives you a right challenge too (which the rest of the game doesn’t really focus on). It nearly left me speechless, and gave me all the warm feelings finishing a more traditionally laid out rpg would.
If you like rpgs at all, you’ve gotta play this. Like, as soon as you can. This is one of the most interesting and cool and fun expressions of the genre to ever come out, especially from a studio as large as Square. Go in with open eyes.
If you don’t know, Live a Live is made up of a bunch of mini-rpgs, usually running anywhere from 1-3 hours apiece. Each of these picks the genre conventions apart in a slightly different way, with almost none having a traditional dungeon crawl/town experience (and when they do, you can tell there’s an understanding of the genre built upon the deconstructions they’ve perpetrated elsewhere).
One scenario has you exploring one huge dungeon that reveals itself in more of a metroidvania-type way. One has you spending most of your playtime preparing for a bossfight at the end. A few have extremely novel and fun forms of progression, beyond the standard “kill and level up” loop. A few of them diverge so far from how rpgs typically work that they completely cross genres.
But it’s not just interesting in this way. This experimentation goes beyond the structural and mechanical and bleeds into everything about the game. Each chapter takes place in a different time period and location, exploring a certain kind of pulpy fiction story and how you can mold rpg mechanics around the feelings those stories deliver. The wild mechanics are used to build story, character, and really connect you to the material in a unique way.
That kind of brings me to this game’s legacy. These short, experimental rpgs, that play with the genre and conventions in such a loving way, yet not very sentimentally, are the kind of thing I associate most with little indie rpgs on Itch.io. Sure there’s a lot of “earthbound-inspired indie rpgs”, but these days if you look in the right places you can find stuff that feels more varied and unconventional, stuff that until now, I didn’t think had ever been released by a larger studio. Games like An Outcry, Facets, Cataphract.io, even Dujanah to an extent, feel like the kind of bold interesting games that would not feel out of place next to any of Live A Live’s chapters.
Beyond even that though, the way this game ends (which I don’t want to get too into for spoiler reasons) is almost as perfect as I could’ve even wanted. It ties the themes of all these disparate stories together so well and so meaningfully, and gives you a right challenge too (which the rest of the game doesn’t really focus on). It nearly left me speechless, and gave me all the warm feelings finishing a more traditionally laid out rpg would.
If you like rpgs at all, you’ve gotta play this. Like, as soon as you can. This is one of the most interesting and cool and fun expressions of the genre to ever come out, especially from a studio as large as Square. Go in with open eyes.
2023
System Shock 1 is loaded with ideas that almost feel lost to time, things that never made it into System Shock 2 or any of the other imsims that came later. Maybe that's because it's barely an imsim, feeling more like sci-fi survival horror-lite mixed with progression reminiscent of an enormous zelda dungeon.
I won't really spend much time talking about what's good about the original game. You know what's good about it, it's what got carried over into System Shock 2 and Bioshock and Prey. The good parts defined the imsim genre, and they're still that good.
The bad? Well for one, it's a much harsher game than it's successors. Ammo is more scarce, encounters rarely dip beneath a level of challenge where you could die in a few hits, and stealth isn't really an option. The hacking segments are interesting as an alternate mode of gameplay, where ammo doesn't matter but enemies come at you much faster, but are just as difficult if not tougher than the rest of the game. Also, I just found myself being ready for the game to end around 5 hours before it did, which is also around the time things got unreasonably hard.
The remake is pretty good. For the most part I like the visuals, though I wish they'd strayed a bit further from the original game's art and played up a bit of the horror, or helped the floors of the ship stand out from each other a bit. Besides that, it's wonderful to have a version of the game with controls I can easily wrap my head around.
I know most of this was negative, and maybe that's because the last few hours' difficulty left a bad taste in my mouth, but I really did like this game, and I bet it would be much more fun with a lower difficulty selected (you can't change the difficulty mid-campaign though). It's a cool look into the past, and it's good that the game is accessible like this again, but I also feel like it's pretty outclassed by its younger brothers.
I won't really spend much time talking about what's good about the original game. You know what's good about it, it's what got carried over into System Shock 2 and Bioshock and Prey. The good parts defined the imsim genre, and they're still that good.
The bad? Well for one, it's a much harsher game than it's successors. Ammo is more scarce, encounters rarely dip beneath a level of challenge where you could die in a few hits, and stealth isn't really an option. The hacking segments are interesting as an alternate mode of gameplay, where ammo doesn't matter but enemies come at you much faster, but are just as difficult if not tougher than the rest of the game. Also, I just found myself being ready for the game to end around 5 hours before it did, which is also around the time things got unreasonably hard.
The remake is pretty good. For the most part I like the visuals, though I wish they'd strayed a bit further from the original game's art and played up a bit of the horror, or helped the floors of the ship stand out from each other a bit. Besides that, it's wonderful to have a version of the game with controls I can easily wrap my head around.
I know most of this was negative, and maybe that's because the last few hours' difficulty left a bad taste in my mouth, but I really did like this game, and I bet it would be much more fun with a lower difficulty selected (you can't change the difficulty mid-campaign though). It's a cool look into the past, and it's good that the game is accessible like this again, but I also feel like it's pretty outclassed by its younger brothers.
Front Mission is exactly the kind of tactical RPG I like: one without permadeath. Beyond that it's very 80s Gundam, difficult but not overly so if you plan well, and really ends fantastically, in classic 90s Square fashion.
The real meat here is the Mech customization, with a massive amount of parts to combine and try out as much as you want, as long as you're not averse to grinding up a bit of money in the arena (it's not bad at all). I ended up building most of my units similarly as the game went on, just having a couple specialized long range units and close up bruisers and everyone else being normal short range gunners, but you can absolutely get more creative than that with it.
The remake seems good, though I admittedly haven't played the original. The mech designs are all good to great, doofy in that classic way, and the stages actually look pretty good too. Parts of the remaster look a bit "vanilla" maybe, but it definitely feels good. The underlying flavor of the game gets through, is what I guess I'm saying. The uprezzed Amano art looks... fine, but I wish they'd used new scans of the old art instead, though who knows if that was even remotely an option for this team.
Anyways, I'm jazzed about this series now, and I'm gonna play the second campaign now (on my DS this time though, to get the older-style experience). At some point I'm gonna actually have to start playing armored core games to actually get ready for VI, but until then it's Front Mission timeeeeeeeeeeeeee
The real meat here is the Mech customization, with a massive amount of parts to combine and try out as much as you want, as long as you're not averse to grinding up a bit of money in the arena (it's not bad at all). I ended up building most of my units similarly as the game went on, just having a couple specialized long range units and close up bruisers and everyone else being normal short range gunners, but you can absolutely get more creative than that with it.
The remake seems good, though I admittedly haven't played the original. The mech designs are all good to great, doofy in that classic way, and the stages actually look pretty good too. Parts of the remaster look a bit "vanilla" maybe, but it definitely feels good. The underlying flavor of the game gets through, is what I guess I'm saying. The uprezzed Amano art looks... fine, but I wish they'd used new scans of the old art instead, though who knows if that was even remotely an option for this team.
Anyways, I'm jazzed about this series now, and I'm gonna play the second campaign now (on my DS this time though, to get the older-style experience). At some point I'm gonna actually have to start playing armored core games to actually get ready for VI, but until then it's Front Mission timeeeeeeeeeeeeee
2022
tactics Ogre is one of those games that I’d kinda resigned myself to never playing, almost purely on the basis that I’d heard it was a hard SRPG, and the only SRPGs I’ve ever gotten through are the newer fire emblem games, with the more lenient death mechanics. I did want it though. I’m a huge fan of Yasumi Matsuno’s work, and this (along with FF Tactics) are usually considered his best works, his most complete works. So, when a new remaster of tactics ogre came out, I picked it up and decided to give it an earnest try. This year was already a banner year for me getting into genres I never thought I’d be into (souls and fighting games), and I was quietly hoping there would even be an easy mode added (there was not, but nonetheless!!).
50ish hours and about a month later and yeah, it’s fantastic, and this is also a fantastic remaster. Tactics ogre kinda rides the line between RPG and SRPG perfectly, and Reborn only solidifies that balancing act. Gone are random battles and grinding, replaced with a level cap that rises as the story progresses and training at any of the cities that are friendly to you. There’s more focus on smaller skirmishes with more importance on individual units than fire emblem, but this is still a tactics game first, and an RPG second.
But that’s not really what I love about the game. Sure, the battle system has near infinite depth, but this is a matsuno game! Not only that, it’s a really large scale matsuno game, taking a massive conflict and putting you in the shoes of its leader. It’s huge! And yet often very intimate, really zeroing in on the most effective characters and letting them shine. All of this is couched in matsuno’s usual almost shakespearean writing style, and gorgeously soundtracked by Hitoshi Sakimoto.
The remaster has been a bit divisive though. The visuals were redone, there’s this weird skill card system, and there’s voice acting now. Well, the voice acting is superb, really bringing the characters to life. The visuals I ended up liking, as they really do get the look of the original down, but with added sharpness and clarity. Seriously, when it’s blown up big on a tv it looks great, nowhere near as blurry as the trailer made it seem. The skill card system is really my only gripe with the remaster, and really only because it doesn’t really feel necessary? It’s just kinda simple, in a game that takes great pains to be full of depth. Also they’re very “video gamey”, kinda breaking the medieval war diorama look of the game. Honestly that’s a minor complaint in the grand scheme tho, I promise.
Bottom line is this is a great way to play a classic. If you don’t like the looks and the cards, play the PSP version, but otherwise, bask in the glory of full voice acting for one of the best JRPG stories.
50ish hours and about a month later and yeah, it’s fantastic, and this is also a fantastic remaster. Tactics ogre kinda rides the line between RPG and SRPG perfectly, and Reborn only solidifies that balancing act. Gone are random battles and grinding, replaced with a level cap that rises as the story progresses and training at any of the cities that are friendly to you. There’s more focus on smaller skirmishes with more importance on individual units than fire emblem, but this is still a tactics game first, and an RPG second.
But that’s not really what I love about the game. Sure, the battle system has near infinite depth, but this is a matsuno game! Not only that, it’s a really large scale matsuno game, taking a massive conflict and putting you in the shoes of its leader. It’s huge! And yet often very intimate, really zeroing in on the most effective characters and letting them shine. All of this is couched in matsuno’s usual almost shakespearean writing style, and gorgeously soundtracked by Hitoshi Sakimoto.
The remaster has been a bit divisive though. The visuals were redone, there’s this weird skill card system, and there’s voice acting now. Well, the voice acting is superb, really bringing the characters to life. The visuals I ended up liking, as they really do get the look of the original down, but with added sharpness and clarity. Seriously, when it’s blown up big on a tv it looks great, nowhere near as blurry as the trailer made it seem. The skill card system is really my only gripe with the remaster, and really only because it doesn’t really feel necessary? It’s just kinda simple, in a game that takes great pains to be full of depth. Also they’re very “video gamey”, kinda breaking the medieval war diorama look of the game. Honestly that’s a minor complaint in the grand scheme tho, I promise.
Bottom line is this is a great way to play a classic. If you don’t like the looks and the cards, play the PSP version, but otherwise, bask in the glory of full voice acting for one of the best JRPG stories.
2024
I was gonna write up a whole blog post about this, but upon reflection I don't have a whole lot to say. It's a good remake, one that updates the source material so it feels like it hasn't aged a day, but keeps the core of the original intact. For ex, cutting out transphobic jokes, and adding more opportunities to bond with your team, are both much appreciated changes.
That being said there's some things that I feel got lost in translation. For one, a couple of the original's animated cutscenes are now in engine, and every time that happened they were just much blander, which was disappointing. That's my one concrete criticism.
Beyond that, I don't like new tartarus as much as old tartarus. It feels like there's too much going on, like the game is pulling away from its dungeon crawler roots, and it just makes it a little tough to completely chill out while exploring like I did in the original. Plus your teammates talk a LOT more, which went from endearing to annoying after about 30 hours of it.
The other criticism I have is just about the general feeling of the game. Persona 3 is now a modern game, one that bends over backwards to make things nice and convenient for you. Social Links seem more stable, it's harder to get locked into things, etc. And that's not a bad thing, but I think there's a little lost when you move a game that used to be somewhat hostile to players into a more welcoming direction, especially a game with themes and tone like Persona 3. It feels like the balance between social sim and wish fulfillment sim has been tipped even further towards the latter. I appreciate that they seem to have made it impossible to 100% the game in one run though, you have to actually choose which relationships to foster.
Again, it's a good remake, one with the original atmosphere fully intact (once you bring the default brightness down 3 or 4 pips), and it's one that to 90% of people I would recommend over the original. But even if this had all of the content that'd ever been released for persona 3, I don't think I'd call this the definitive best version.
That being said there's some things that I feel got lost in translation. For one, a couple of the original's animated cutscenes are now in engine, and every time that happened they were just much blander, which was disappointing. That's my one concrete criticism.
Beyond that, I don't like new tartarus as much as old tartarus. It feels like there's too much going on, like the game is pulling away from its dungeon crawler roots, and it just makes it a little tough to completely chill out while exploring like I did in the original. Plus your teammates talk a LOT more, which went from endearing to annoying after about 30 hours of it.
The other criticism I have is just about the general feeling of the game. Persona 3 is now a modern game, one that bends over backwards to make things nice and convenient for you. Social Links seem more stable, it's harder to get locked into things, etc. And that's not a bad thing, but I think there's a little lost when you move a game that used to be somewhat hostile to players into a more welcoming direction, especially a game with themes and tone like Persona 3. It feels like the balance between social sim and wish fulfillment sim has been tipped even further towards the latter. I appreciate that they seem to have made it impossible to 100% the game in one run though, you have to actually choose which relationships to foster.
Again, it's a good remake, one with the original atmosphere fully intact (once you bring the default brightness down 3 or 4 pips), and it's one that to 90% of people I would recommend over the original. But even if this had all of the content that'd ever been released for persona 3, I don't think I'd call this the definitive best version.
I feel like I say this every time but damn if there was a game I was certain I wasn’t gonna like upon revisiting it, Skyrim would’ve been my number one choice. It’s a big budget western game made by the developers of all of my least favorite Fallout games, it simplifies the remaining Elder Scrolls RPG systems even more than Oblivion did, and, I mean, it’s just so lame to be like “I LOVE SKYRIM” in 2023. BUT JUST LOOK AT WHAT HAPPENED!!!
Basically, as much as Skyrim’s design builds heavily off of Oblivion’s, it’s setting and mood are much more reminiscent of Morrowind. Not that it feels the same, Morrowind is all alien and ash-covered, where Skyrim is all vikingy and snow-covered. It’s a more classic setting for sure, but there’s a lot of unique flavor on top that Oblivion simply didn’t have, with its throwback-to-daggerfall tone. There’s a culture to explore, a land to learn, and a complex system of faction relationships to untangle, whether they be classic TES guilds or almost Fallout-ey political factions. What’s really great about these factions is that the division between them, the civil war that sets the scene for the game, is incredibly morally ambiguous, in that classic way that no matter who wins, so, so many people lose. Morrowind had wonderful factions as well, but the factions in Skyrim feel more active, more direct, like you should choose a side even if you don’t really want to. The flora and fauna are less varied and less… strange than Morrowind’s, but put Oblivion’s collection far to shame. All this to say Skyrim feels fleshed out and thick in the places Morrowind did, in all the places Oblivion felt thin and repetitive.
The design systems Skyrim continues from Oblivion aren’t my cup of tea generally, but they’re also not the kinda things you can walk back. In particular, the non-diagetic fast travel cat is out of the bag, and the amount of people who want it removed and/or the game designed to be fully playable without it is.. not that large, and it was certainly tiny back in 2011. However, in the recent versions of the game, there’s a survival mode you can enable. Basically, it makes you need to eat, sleep, and stay warm, and removes your ability to fast travel. Since I wanted a more detail-oriented experience than my fast-travel-laden sprint through Oblivion, I decided to try it out, and honestly I’m glad I did. While it’s suuuuuuuper tacked on and clear the game is not built around it at all, for most of the game it was great to have to plan my routes, stock up on food, and make sure to rent a room every time I went into a city. I used the carriage to travel from city to city all the time, and would hide out in caves along paths if I was getting too cold. I would definitely recommend trying it out, but also being ok with turning it off at certain points of the game (at one point I almost froze to death during a particularly long story-required dialogue on top of a mountain). It’s dumb and tacked on for sure, but putting it on during the early and mid game really accentuates the rpg elements of the game, and makes you treat the world as a place instead of a backdrop.
Really my only large issues with the game are that 1. they really needed to hire more voice actors, so many (sometimes major!) characters have one of two voices and it really hurts the immersion, and 2. for a special edition rerelease of one of the most successful games ever made, wow there’s so many bugs and weird bad-feeling failure modes. Like, and this is carried over from oblivion, if you’re walking up a slope and it becomes too steep to walk up, you just stop. You can’t jump, but you can move laterally?? And if you stop moving you VERY SLOWLY slide down the slope. Feels terrible. Also like, the shouts and the magic are tough to use in a pinch, as their animations have strange timings and the shouts in particular just like, don’t happen sometimes. I’m ok with this kinda stuff in general, and most people know skyrim is buggy as hell, but it’s also wild that it’s so buggy at this budget and level of success.
But yeah, broadly, Skyrim is a return to form while still keeping the grandeur of Oblivion, in a way I’ve never really seen a studio pull off before. It feels bigger and more streamlined, but also well detailed and deep if you look at it, and most importantly it lets you know “HEY, LOOK AT THE DEEP COOL PARTS, DON’T JUST GLOSS OVER THEM”. It’s considered and well made and goddamn I feel so lame for gushing on Skyrim lmao
Basically, as much as Skyrim’s design builds heavily off of Oblivion’s, it’s setting and mood are much more reminiscent of Morrowind. Not that it feels the same, Morrowind is all alien and ash-covered, where Skyrim is all vikingy and snow-covered. It’s a more classic setting for sure, but there’s a lot of unique flavor on top that Oblivion simply didn’t have, with its throwback-to-daggerfall tone. There’s a culture to explore, a land to learn, and a complex system of faction relationships to untangle, whether they be classic TES guilds or almost Fallout-ey political factions. What’s really great about these factions is that the division between them, the civil war that sets the scene for the game, is incredibly morally ambiguous, in that classic way that no matter who wins, so, so many people lose. Morrowind had wonderful factions as well, but the factions in Skyrim feel more active, more direct, like you should choose a side even if you don’t really want to. The flora and fauna are less varied and less… strange than Morrowind’s, but put Oblivion’s collection far to shame. All this to say Skyrim feels fleshed out and thick in the places Morrowind did, in all the places Oblivion felt thin and repetitive.
The design systems Skyrim continues from Oblivion aren’t my cup of tea generally, but they’re also not the kinda things you can walk back. In particular, the non-diagetic fast travel cat is out of the bag, and the amount of people who want it removed and/or the game designed to be fully playable without it is.. not that large, and it was certainly tiny back in 2011. However, in the recent versions of the game, there’s a survival mode you can enable. Basically, it makes you need to eat, sleep, and stay warm, and removes your ability to fast travel. Since I wanted a more detail-oriented experience than my fast-travel-laden sprint through Oblivion, I decided to try it out, and honestly I’m glad I did. While it’s suuuuuuuper tacked on and clear the game is not built around it at all, for most of the game it was great to have to plan my routes, stock up on food, and make sure to rent a room every time I went into a city. I used the carriage to travel from city to city all the time, and would hide out in caves along paths if I was getting too cold. I would definitely recommend trying it out, but also being ok with turning it off at certain points of the game (at one point I almost froze to death during a particularly long story-required dialogue on top of a mountain). It’s dumb and tacked on for sure, but putting it on during the early and mid game really accentuates the rpg elements of the game, and makes you treat the world as a place instead of a backdrop.
Really my only large issues with the game are that 1. they really needed to hire more voice actors, so many (sometimes major!) characters have one of two voices and it really hurts the immersion, and 2. for a special edition rerelease of one of the most successful games ever made, wow there’s so many bugs and weird bad-feeling failure modes. Like, and this is carried over from oblivion, if you’re walking up a slope and it becomes too steep to walk up, you just stop. You can’t jump, but you can move laterally?? And if you stop moving you VERY SLOWLY slide down the slope. Feels terrible. Also like, the shouts and the magic are tough to use in a pinch, as their animations have strange timings and the shouts in particular just like, don’t happen sometimes. I’m ok with this kinda stuff in general, and most people know skyrim is buggy as hell, but it’s also wild that it’s so buggy at this budget and level of success.
But yeah, broadly, Skyrim is a return to form while still keeping the grandeur of Oblivion, in a way I’ve never really seen a studio pull off before. It feels bigger and more streamlined, but also well detailed and deep if you look at it, and most importantly it lets you know “HEY, LOOK AT THE DEEP COOL PARTS, DON’T JUST GLOSS OVER THEM”. It’s considered and well made and goddamn I feel so lame for gushing on Skyrim lmao
2022
Soul Hackers 2 seems like it’s been the victim of a lot of negative sentiment. People calling it bland, saying it’s missing the heart of something like a Persona game (a criticism also levied against SMT V), and really criticising the hell out of the dungeon design. I can see why people might be dissatisfied with this game, even in those parts specifically, but I certainly don’t get why there’s such vitriol around a game that at worst these people are calling… bland?
For me though, this is anything but bland. It’s not as “loud” as a Persona game in tone or style, but why would it be? Persona games are about 15 year olds. The stories they tell are great and thematically deep, don’t get me wrong, but they’re stories starring children. Soul Hackers 2 stars adults. Adults who’re caught up in something between a gang war and a JRPG plot, who’ve internalized the hate and pain that conflict has brought, and mostly seem built out of coping mechanisms.
For example, you’ve got Arrow, my personal favorite of the main cast. He seems pretty standard for like, a game of this style, an everyman who doesn’t seem off-putting, and I get why that comes across as bland to people, but to me he just seems tired. Tired in a way that he doesn’t complain about, or even acknowledge, because it’s just part of life for him. They’re not drawn, but you can almost feel the bags under his eyes in the way he talks, the words he chooses. And that is infinitely more compelling as a character beat to me than anything from Persona 3-5.
The rest of the cast feels equally mature and understated, even the seemingly loud Saizo, who’s built himself out of noir stereotypes to cover up an unobtainable desire for peace and tranquility, and an idealism to rival any shounen protagonist. Those things don’t fly in the fairly grounded world of Soul Hackers though, lacking the adventuresome nature of Persona and (most of) the philosophical musings of SMT proper. So he builds walls of sarcasm and wittiness to protect himself.
It all feels pretty true to life I think, and the game takes itself rather seriously as well (outside of one joke character in the introduction). There’s a huge focus on not just the philosophical ideal of what it means to “be human”, but on people and the choices they’ve made, the compassion they’ve shown and to whom it was shown to.
Beyond that, I also really loved the dungeon crawling. I don’t think any game since Nocturne has really captured the old school maze-style of classic SMT in full 3D so well, nor has any made it so accessible. The couple of reused themes for dungeons are a little disappointing, but the themes themselves are just as understated-yet-vibey as the rest of the game. If you’ve played Tokyo Mirage Sessions, the dungeon crawling and combat here are heavily based that game, and I think this game is a much more successful use of those mechanics.
That’s pretty much what the whole game is. Just small character moments and dungeon crawling, and if you like the characters and the old-skool-ness of it all, I don’t think you’ll have any issues here at all. Just don’t forget about the side quests if you want the true ending, yeah? Though the non-true ending is really really good regardless, ending on a nice unresolved note (delivered via monologue) like a true noir film would.
For me though, this is anything but bland. It’s not as “loud” as a Persona game in tone or style, but why would it be? Persona games are about 15 year olds. The stories they tell are great and thematically deep, don’t get me wrong, but they’re stories starring children. Soul Hackers 2 stars adults. Adults who’re caught up in something between a gang war and a JRPG plot, who’ve internalized the hate and pain that conflict has brought, and mostly seem built out of coping mechanisms.
For example, you’ve got Arrow, my personal favorite of the main cast. He seems pretty standard for like, a game of this style, an everyman who doesn’t seem off-putting, and I get why that comes across as bland to people, but to me he just seems tired. Tired in a way that he doesn’t complain about, or even acknowledge, because it’s just part of life for him. They’re not drawn, but you can almost feel the bags under his eyes in the way he talks, the words he chooses. And that is infinitely more compelling as a character beat to me than anything from Persona 3-5.
The rest of the cast feels equally mature and understated, even the seemingly loud Saizo, who’s built himself out of noir stereotypes to cover up an unobtainable desire for peace and tranquility, and an idealism to rival any shounen protagonist. Those things don’t fly in the fairly grounded world of Soul Hackers though, lacking the adventuresome nature of Persona and (most of) the philosophical musings of SMT proper. So he builds walls of sarcasm and wittiness to protect himself.
It all feels pretty true to life I think, and the game takes itself rather seriously as well (outside of one joke character in the introduction). There’s a huge focus on not just the philosophical ideal of what it means to “be human”, but on people and the choices they’ve made, the compassion they’ve shown and to whom it was shown to.
Beyond that, I also really loved the dungeon crawling. I don’t think any game since Nocturne has really captured the old school maze-style of classic SMT in full 3D so well, nor has any made it so accessible. The couple of reused themes for dungeons are a little disappointing, but the themes themselves are just as understated-yet-vibey as the rest of the game. If you’ve played Tokyo Mirage Sessions, the dungeon crawling and combat here are heavily based that game, and I think this game is a much more successful use of those mechanics.
That’s pretty much what the whole game is. Just small character moments and dungeon crawling, and if you like the characters and the old-skool-ness of it all, I don’t think you’ll have any issues here at all. Just don’t forget about the side quests if you want the true ending, yeah? Though the non-true ending is really really good regardless, ending on a nice unresolved note (delivered via monologue) like a true noir film would.
At first I thought Oblivion might actually be great. Mechanically it didn’t seem much shallower than Morrowind at all, and now the world felt so much more alive! People moved around on a schedule, the grass and the sky threatened to poke out of the screen with their vibrant colors, and when I swang my gotdam sword I could tell if I got a hit or not finally. Vvardenfell was a land under blight, in the shadow of a volcano, and Cyrodiil is almost the opposite; despite literally being under attack by the forces of hell, it feels like all the crap has been cleaned off my windshield (funny, considering the bloom-filtery nature of Oblivion’s graphics). What a false omen.
Oblivion feels thin. Not particularly bad in any way, just thin. It’s a great large world full of dungeons and epic quests and ancient ruins and yet, once you start actually doing these things, journeying across mountains and into portals to hell, once you get used to the way things work, it all goes stale. Part of this is a lot of visually similar locations. All the portals to hell look and feel the same, even if they’re laid out a little differently. All the castles and cities (excepting the Imperial Capital, which is honestly visually striking in a way few things are, even if it’s just medieval skyscrapers). Of course cave dungeons and ruin dungeons are samey as well, but I’m not as pressed about that, and I’m not sure I’d even be able to explain this issue at all if I hadn’t just come from Morrowind.
Morrowind’s cities, or at least the group of cities in each part of the map, all had different feels to them. Houses were made out of different things, guards wore armor that looked different beyond a sigil and color on their chest, and the game went out of it’s way to highlight these differences in the main quest. There’s a similar beat in the main quest here as well, going around to each city doing something there, but this beat is much less involved. Morrowind made you figure out where each member of the city council was, how you could gain their trust (even if you really just needed to find the right one to start with), and what the ~drama~ in that city was. Oblivion has you go to the ruler of each city and ask for aid. They all say their forces are tied up with the nearby hell gate. You close the hell gate. They agree to send aid. It’s so rote, and with the new fast travel system it’s SO repetitive. Maybe I should’ve hung out in each city, done some sidequests or something to break up the main quest, but I never really had a reason to. The cities didn’t feel like they had unique histories outside of being ruled by a different person, and by rights they should’ve. Why do the city in the upper mountains and the city all the way to the south feel so similar, when they border different regions populated by different people.
I get that the larger size of the game probably took focus away from quest writing and location diversity, but man I don’t think it was worth it at all. Oblivion tightened up Morrowind’s loose parts, but accidentally cut the part I loved out and replaced it with empty spectacle, and I’m not convinced the rest of the game has the heft to make up for it. Why would I play this when I could play Morrowind, or Fallout New Vegas, or any of a million other RPGs that care enough about the worlds they’ve built to push you to explore their intricacies, rather than just assuming you will because it’s what players do.
Oblivion feels thin. Not particularly bad in any way, just thin. It’s a great large world full of dungeons and epic quests and ancient ruins and yet, once you start actually doing these things, journeying across mountains and into portals to hell, once you get used to the way things work, it all goes stale. Part of this is a lot of visually similar locations. All the portals to hell look and feel the same, even if they’re laid out a little differently. All the castles and cities (excepting the Imperial Capital, which is honestly visually striking in a way few things are, even if it’s just medieval skyscrapers). Of course cave dungeons and ruin dungeons are samey as well, but I’m not as pressed about that, and I’m not sure I’d even be able to explain this issue at all if I hadn’t just come from Morrowind.
Morrowind’s cities, or at least the group of cities in each part of the map, all had different feels to them. Houses were made out of different things, guards wore armor that looked different beyond a sigil and color on their chest, and the game went out of it’s way to highlight these differences in the main quest. There’s a similar beat in the main quest here as well, going around to each city doing something there, but this beat is much less involved. Morrowind made you figure out where each member of the city council was, how you could gain their trust (even if you really just needed to find the right one to start with), and what the ~drama~ in that city was. Oblivion has you go to the ruler of each city and ask for aid. They all say their forces are tied up with the nearby hell gate. You close the hell gate. They agree to send aid. It’s so rote, and with the new fast travel system it’s SO repetitive. Maybe I should’ve hung out in each city, done some sidequests or something to break up the main quest, but I never really had a reason to. The cities didn’t feel like they had unique histories outside of being ruled by a different person, and by rights they should’ve. Why do the city in the upper mountains and the city all the way to the south feel so similar, when they border different regions populated by different people.
I get that the larger size of the game probably took focus away from quest writing and location diversity, but man I don’t think it was worth it at all. Oblivion tightened up Morrowind’s loose parts, but accidentally cut the part I loved out and replaced it with empty spectacle, and I’m not convinced the rest of the game has the heft to make up for it. Why would I play this when I could play Morrowind, or Fallout New Vegas, or any of a million other RPGs that care enough about the worlds they’ve built to push you to explore their intricacies, rather than just assuming you will because it’s what players do.
2007
Beaten: Feb 02 2022
Time: 8 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X (via MCC)
There was a tweet, a few days ago, that said something like “Halo’s whole thing is that it’s got the best gunplay and then every few minutes someone says something that doesn’t make sense but sounds like it came out of the Bible”. I read it on Monday, and it got stuck in my brain as I finished FF8 and An Outcry. This morning, I booted up a playthrough of Halo 3 I’d started at the beginning of the month but dropped when I got way too into FFXIV, and now I can in fact confirm: That is Halo’s whole thing.
It also struck me that the second part of that tweet, the way that the original Halo trilogy is written, might’ve impacted me more than I ever thought? I mean, “someone says something that doesn’t make sense but sounds like it came out of the Bible” is kind of my whole thing with games these days. What that means, at least to me, is specific kind of grandiosity to dialogue. In my favorite games, this serves the tone of the game, adding a sense of poetic uncertainty to every word as it drips out of a character’s mouth. In Halo I’m pretty sure the idea was “how can we make this feel more epic”. This isn’t unique to 3 by the way, but 2 and 3 are the games with the largest focus on your enemies, the Covenant and the Flood, which gives them the most speaking roles. The humans in Halo don’t talk this way. Just the biblically-referenced Covenant and the just, large and ancient and near-all knowing Flood.
This “epicness” feels like the base idea behind the game. The music sounds lush and large and rich, the sound effects echo off canyon walls like they’re too big to crack, like the explosions just can’t be contained by your speakers. The levels are generally large too, leaning on battles in open valleys and absurd, outsized scale. Rather than trying to be cinematic in a grounded way, an Oscar-ey way like loads of modern triple A games aim for, Halo just wanted to be big. That’s most of what I wanted to say I think. I wouldn’t call the writing here great or even all that good in places, but I just don’t care. It works tonally and atmospherically, and the more games I play, the more I realize those are what’s most important to me. I will say that I uh, haven’t loved any of the post-Bungie Halo games. As to why, it’s kinda weird to put my finger on. I think the gunplay is just a bit off-feeling? Bungie’s gunplay has this thickness, this heaviness to it, and that heaviness gives me just loads of tactile satisfaction? The Destiny games also have fantastic gunplay imo, though the business aspect of those games makes it tough for me to get into them (I’d love to start Destiny 2 from, like, the beginning? Not allowed tho lmao).
Anyways that’s my disorganized set of Halo thoughts. Halo 3 is loads of fun, just like it was when I was a kid, but now I’m also just in awe of the theming and presentation
Time: 8 Hours
Platform: Xbox Series X (via MCC)
There was a tweet, a few days ago, that said something like “Halo’s whole thing is that it’s got the best gunplay and then every few minutes someone says something that doesn’t make sense but sounds like it came out of the Bible”. I read it on Monday, and it got stuck in my brain as I finished FF8 and An Outcry. This morning, I booted up a playthrough of Halo 3 I’d started at the beginning of the month but dropped when I got way too into FFXIV, and now I can in fact confirm: That is Halo’s whole thing.
It also struck me that the second part of that tweet, the way that the original Halo trilogy is written, might’ve impacted me more than I ever thought? I mean, “someone says something that doesn’t make sense but sounds like it came out of the Bible” is kind of my whole thing with games these days. What that means, at least to me, is specific kind of grandiosity to dialogue. In my favorite games, this serves the tone of the game, adding a sense of poetic uncertainty to every word as it drips out of a character’s mouth. In Halo I’m pretty sure the idea was “how can we make this feel more epic”. This isn’t unique to 3 by the way, but 2 and 3 are the games with the largest focus on your enemies, the Covenant and the Flood, which gives them the most speaking roles. The humans in Halo don’t talk this way. Just the biblically-referenced Covenant and the just, large and ancient and near-all knowing Flood.
This “epicness” feels like the base idea behind the game. The music sounds lush and large and rich, the sound effects echo off canyon walls like they’re too big to crack, like the explosions just can’t be contained by your speakers. The levels are generally large too, leaning on battles in open valleys and absurd, outsized scale. Rather than trying to be cinematic in a grounded way, an Oscar-ey way like loads of modern triple A games aim for, Halo just wanted to be big. That’s most of what I wanted to say I think. I wouldn’t call the writing here great or even all that good in places, but I just don’t care. It works tonally and atmospherically, and the more games I play, the more I realize those are what’s most important to me. I will say that I uh, haven’t loved any of the post-Bungie Halo games. As to why, it’s kinda weird to put my finger on. I think the gunplay is just a bit off-feeling? Bungie’s gunplay has this thickness, this heaviness to it, and that heaviness gives me just loads of tactile satisfaction? The Destiny games also have fantastic gunplay imo, though the business aspect of those games makes it tough for me to get into them (I’d love to start Destiny 2 from, like, the beginning? Not allowed tho lmao).
Anyways that’s my disorganized set of Halo thoughts. Halo 3 is loads of fun, just like it was when I was a kid, but now I’m also just in awe of the theming and presentation
SMT If… is pretty poorly considered by people who go through it today, and while I kinda understand that (it’s the meanest one of the SNES ones), I also think what it does is incredibly interesting and ambitious. In terms of structure and scope it paved the way for both the Persona and Devil Summoner series, and there are decisions made as late as Persona 5 and SMT V that I could trace back here. Plus, at its core, its still SNES SMT, and that’s just a damn good time.
Honestly on a gameplay front there’s not a whole lot to talk about. The party has been split into a front and back row, but all that affects is whether basic attacks can hit or not, and enemies have a completely different party system still. The guardian concept, a proto-Persona idea that requires you to die to upgrade the demon possessing you, feels a little underbaked. It just feels like the guardians would (and do!) feel better when they affect your stats less and your abilities more, which is exactly what they do in later games. I like the dying mechanic though, its a nice buffer at the beginning.
Besides that, it’s still SMT. The dungeons are a bit prettier and sliiiightly less labyrinthine now, and there’s much less of them (only 6-8 depending on how you count it in the main game), but they’re still goofy and mean little mazes at their core. Each dungeon is themed around overcoming one of the seven deadly sins, so like in Greed you make the boss harder if you pick up more loot, or in Sloth you have to wait just beyond the point of boredom/frustration (lots of people despise this dungeon, but idk it wasn’t too bad for me. maybe i just like grinding tho lol)
The story is quite personal compared to the mainline games, focusing on just a couple characters and their interactions, without needing to save the world (instead, just gotta save the school!). I don’t really wanna say more about it, but make sure you play Reiko’s route the first time, as it unlocks an extra dungeon and the true final boss, who is INCREDIBLY thick and difficult.
But yeah, not totally sure why this one gets so much flak, it mostly seems like a slightly different and super interesting spin on the SNES SMT formula. Big recs!
Honestly on a gameplay front there’s not a whole lot to talk about. The party has been split into a front and back row, but all that affects is whether basic attacks can hit or not, and enemies have a completely different party system still. The guardian concept, a proto-Persona idea that requires you to die to upgrade the demon possessing you, feels a little underbaked. It just feels like the guardians would (and do!) feel better when they affect your stats less and your abilities more, which is exactly what they do in later games. I like the dying mechanic though, its a nice buffer at the beginning.
Besides that, it’s still SMT. The dungeons are a bit prettier and sliiiightly less labyrinthine now, and there’s much less of them (only 6-8 depending on how you count it in the main game), but they’re still goofy and mean little mazes at their core. Each dungeon is themed around overcoming one of the seven deadly sins, so like in Greed you make the boss harder if you pick up more loot, or in Sloth you have to wait just beyond the point of boredom/frustration (lots of people despise this dungeon, but idk it wasn’t too bad for me. maybe i just like grinding tho lol)
The story is quite personal compared to the mainline games, focusing on just a couple characters and their interactions, without needing to save the world (instead, just gotta save the school!). I don’t really wanna say more about it, but make sure you play Reiko’s route the first time, as it unlocks an extra dungeon and the true final boss, who is INCREDIBLY thick and difficult.
But yeah, not totally sure why this one gets so much flak, it mostly seems like a slightly different and super interesting spin on the SNES SMT formula. Big recs!
I haven’t played a Bethesda game all the way through since Fallout 4 came out, and every time I’ve tried I’ve fallen off. The earlier ones start slow and open, with almost no direction (let alone plot) and RPG systems that seem designed to intimidate. This isn’t necessarily that unique among 90s RPGs, but compared to my favorites of the time they just felt focused on different things. The more recent ones have gone all in on what those older games hinted at, throwing out almost all of the strenuous, simulation-ey flavor in favor of a more frictionless experience that lets you indulge in expansive escapist tourism in a medieval world. Morrowind sits in the middle, intimidating and slow at the beginning and diving into wide open tourism as it goes on, but once I pushed past that opening and began paying attention to the tourism, I found an island that’s refreshingly alien and starkly gorgeous in a solemn way.
Trudging around from city to city, taking stock of the unique (or at least non-traditional for a western RPG) architecture, and just breathing in the destroyed air. Vvardenfell is a surprisingly small place for an open world game, but it’s packed full of cities different cultures, set in a couple different biomes, none of which feel normal. The forests are filled with giant mushrooms, the entire north side of the island is covered in dark destroyed wastelands, and the swamps seem to grow directly out of the forests. The greenery is a dark deep green, verdant and comforting, and as that falls away in the mid game, the wastelands’ scarred rocky landscape pull that back.
The landscape just hints at the insular culture of the Dark Elves, or Dunmer, who live on Vvardenfell. Most of the game is about you exploring their myriad cultures from an outsiders perspective, learning to be respectful and diplomatic of their customs, their legends, and their religion. I’ve got a soft spot for games that do this, and I really think Morrowind might be one of the more interesting in that crop. I won’t go too far into it because, you know, it’s a huge part of the game, but I just loved the way the whole dunmer and ashlander societies were set up and explored. Not to mention the way that the game provides you with a near-infinite amount of reading material to explore the lore if you want it.
The RPG elements are fun but admittedly not incredibly deep once you get used to them, but that works for me, as that’s not the focus in this game. Morrowind set the future focus for Bethesda at the time, and it’s still the high water mark, the most specific and intentional, and for me the most beautiful.
Trudging around from city to city, taking stock of the unique (or at least non-traditional for a western RPG) architecture, and just breathing in the destroyed air. Vvardenfell is a surprisingly small place for an open world game, but it’s packed full of cities different cultures, set in a couple different biomes, none of which feel normal. The forests are filled with giant mushrooms, the entire north side of the island is covered in dark destroyed wastelands, and the swamps seem to grow directly out of the forests. The greenery is a dark deep green, verdant and comforting, and as that falls away in the mid game, the wastelands’ scarred rocky landscape pull that back.
The landscape just hints at the insular culture of the Dark Elves, or Dunmer, who live on Vvardenfell. Most of the game is about you exploring their myriad cultures from an outsiders perspective, learning to be respectful and diplomatic of their customs, their legends, and their religion. I’ve got a soft spot for games that do this, and I really think Morrowind might be one of the more interesting in that crop. I won’t go too far into it because, you know, it’s a huge part of the game, but I just loved the way the whole dunmer and ashlander societies were set up and explored. Not to mention the way that the game provides you with a near-infinite amount of reading material to explore the lore if you want it.
The RPG elements are fun but admittedly not incredibly deep once you get used to them, but that works for me, as that’s not the focus in this game. Morrowind set the future focus for Bethesda at the time, and it’s still the high water mark, the most specific and intentional, and for me the most beautiful.
Beaten: Nov 26 2021
Time: 11 Hours
Platform: Switch
Between this and Disco Elysium, I feel a new maturity in games writing. Maybe it was always there, but prose like this has never gotten such attention before. Kentucky Route Zero confidently steps away from the puzzles that define the point and click adventure genre, opting instead to put its knotty intellectualism squarely in the written word. More simply, if you like the kind of books whose language doesn’t give itself to you easily, you’ll like this game.
KRZ is upfront with what it is. The game begins at a gas station shaped like a horse, where you have a meandering conversation with an attendant, talk to your dog, and try to get directions. It takes its time, loads you up with casual symbolism, and sends you on your way. You’ve only got street names for directions, so you’ve gotta look for landmarks and pay attention to where you are. The map isn’t too big, so it’s not too hard, but it does get you immersed in the world in no time.
As a game, it’s just a very simple point and click adventure. You walk around til prompts come up, click on em, and get started reading. It has a strong aesthetic sense, especially in the backgrounds, which are detailed and concrete as often as they’re composed of stark abstract vector graphics. The character models leave a bit to be desired in their simplicity, and personally I feel that a more expressive style might’ve suited the game a bit better, but what’s here is strong and gets everything across well enough.
KRZ is an enormously affecting piece of media. It stirred memories in me, good and bad, every couple of minutes. Sometimes I’d rediscover an old dream, or a newfound anger, or just a vague emotion. If ya like books and feeling things, check it out
Time: 11 Hours
Platform: Switch
Between this and Disco Elysium, I feel a new maturity in games writing. Maybe it was always there, but prose like this has never gotten such attention before. Kentucky Route Zero confidently steps away from the puzzles that define the point and click adventure genre, opting instead to put its knotty intellectualism squarely in the written word. More simply, if you like the kind of books whose language doesn’t give itself to you easily, you’ll like this game.
KRZ is upfront with what it is. The game begins at a gas station shaped like a horse, where you have a meandering conversation with an attendant, talk to your dog, and try to get directions. It takes its time, loads you up with casual symbolism, and sends you on your way. You’ve only got street names for directions, so you’ve gotta look for landmarks and pay attention to where you are. The map isn’t too big, so it’s not too hard, but it does get you immersed in the world in no time.
As a game, it’s just a very simple point and click adventure. You walk around til prompts come up, click on em, and get started reading. It has a strong aesthetic sense, especially in the backgrounds, which are detailed and concrete as often as they’re composed of stark abstract vector graphics. The character models leave a bit to be desired in their simplicity, and personally I feel that a more expressive style might’ve suited the game a bit better, but what’s here is strong and gets everything across well enough.
KRZ is an enormously affecting piece of media. It stirred memories in me, good and bad, every couple of minutes. Sometimes I’d rediscover an old dream, or a newfound anger, or just a vague emotion. If ya like books and feeling things, check it out
2017
(This is specifically for Trials of Mana in this collection)
I played the Trials of Mana remake closer to when it came out, I think sometime in 2020. I liked that game a lot, but the presentation was a bit lacking, especially for the remake of a game oft touted as the “best looking SNES game”. The overhauled combat was fun, if a bit simple, and the dub/cutscenes were.. kinda bad actually. At the time, I switched the game to the Japanese dub (mildly better but not great) and wrote the story off as a kinda goofy not-too-serious game.
At the same time I’d picked up the Collection of Mana, the first three Mana games but on switch, and played the first two. I’d loved the first one, Final Fantasy Adventure, which is still one of my fav Gameboy games, and mildly disliked its incredibly popular sequel, Secret of Mana. For some reason, I waited until now to play the original Trials of Mana, and god damn I wish I hadn’t waited so long.
Guys
Guys this game is so damn good
There’s parts of it that are obviously good, stuff like the art (it is, indeed, probably the most gorgeous and spectacular SNES game, FF6 eat your heart out), the music (just stunning), and the cool pacing/story structure. Basically, there’s six playable characters, all with their own interweaving stories, and you choose one as the main character and two as sidekick-type computer (or friend!) controlled characters. Mix this tapestry-style storytelling with the incredible world building, which has been even more expanded upon from the other Mana games, and you get an experience that’s just plain stunning.
The SNES version’s presentation also (imo) greatly enhances the gravity of the story. There’s no goofy VA or overly plucky animations spoiling the serious scenes. Instead you get a gorgeous pixelart scene and somewhat moody OST setting the tone for what end up feeling like serious monologues and dramatic twists. It’s not all dark and edgy or anything, but there’s a range of emotions confidently displayed here.
What I wasn’t expecting was to like many parts of the game that are, uh, more on the infamous side of things. In particular, the combat is… weird? I don’t even know how to describe it honestly. It kinda feels like a rtwp or ffxii-style system but done on hardware that can’t quite handle it. Now, I had my share of frustrations with this system, stuff like “oh apparently while this character is in this stage of an attack animation she cannot be told to cast a spell” or “wow the enemy just cast two spells immediately after each other, really wish I could cast something while he was charging up that second one”, but broadly I liked the system. It was fun and fast during dungeons, and had a good bit of weirdo complexity and hidden numbers in the back half to give it some depth.
I definitely preferred it to Secret of Mana’s combat, which is more responsive, but (like a lot of SNES games for me) has very touchy hitboxes and that weird goofy meter at the bottom that discourages attacking when it’s not full. Honestly I thought everything people love secret for this game does better, from the music to the art. I guess it doesn’t have three player support without a mod, so that’s a point in secret’s favor, but this one’s fun by yourself so HA.
Obviously I recommend this game, whether you play a fan-translation or the official release it’s still a great time. You can feel it pushing the SNES to its limits, but as usual for me that’s kinda cool (and only noticeable in the menus really). Play it whether you like or dislike Secret, play it if you want a weird but also modern-feeling SNES RPG, play it if you’re in the mood for RPG comfort food that pushes your boundaries more than you would think. Just give it a shot, and see if you vibe.
I played the Trials of Mana remake closer to when it came out, I think sometime in 2020. I liked that game a lot, but the presentation was a bit lacking, especially for the remake of a game oft touted as the “best looking SNES game”. The overhauled combat was fun, if a bit simple, and the dub/cutscenes were.. kinda bad actually. At the time, I switched the game to the Japanese dub (mildly better but not great) and wrote the story off as a kinda goofy not-too-serious game.
At the same time I’d picked up the Collection of Mana, the first three Mana games but on switch, and played the first two. I’d loved the first one, Final Fantasy Adventure, which is still one of my fav Gameboy games, and mildly disliked its incredibly popular sequel, Secret of Mana. For some reason, I waited until now to play the original Trials of Mana, and god damn I wish I hadn’t waited so long.
Guys
Guys this game is so damn good
There’s parts of it that are obviously good, stuff like the art (it is, indeed, probably the most gorgeous and spectacular SNES game, FF6 eat your heart out), the music (just stunning), and the cool pacing/story structure. Basically, there’s six playable characters, all with their own interweaving stories, and you choose one as the main character and two as sidekick-type computer (or friend!) controlled characters. Mix this tapestry-style storytelling with the incredible world building, which has been even more expanded upon from the other Mana games, and you get an experience that’s just plain stunning.
The SNES version’s presentation also (imo) greatly enhances the gravity of the story. There’s no goofy VA or overly plucky animations spoiling the serious scenes. Instead you get a gorgeous pixelart scene and somewhat moody OST setting the tone for what end up feeling like serious monologues and dramatic twists. It’s not all dark and edgy or anything, but there’s a range of emotions confidently displayed here.
What I wasn’t expecting was to like many parts of the game that are, uh, more on the infamous side of things. In particular, the combat is… weird? I don’t even know how to describe it honestly. It kinda feels like a rtwp or ffxii-style system but done on hardware that can’t quite handle it. Now, I had my share of frustrations with this system, stuff like “oh apparently while this character is in this stage of an attack animation she cannot be told to cast a spell” or “wow the enemy just cast two spells immediately after each other, really wish I could cast something while he was charging up that second one”, but broadly I liked the system. It was fun and fast during dungeons, and had a good bit of weirdo complexity and hidden numbers in the back half to give it some depth.
I definitely preferred it to Secret of Mana’s combat, which is more responsive, but (like a lot of SNES games for me) has very touchy hitboxes and that weird goofy meter at the bottom that discourages attacking when it’s not full. Honestly I thought everything people love secret for this game does better, from the music to the art. I guess it doesn’t have three player support without a mod, so that’s a point in secret’s favor, but this one’s fun by yourself so HA.
Obviously I recommend this game, whether you play a fan-translation or the official release it’s still a great time. You can feel it pushing the SNES to its limits, but as usual for me that’s kinda cool (and only noticeable in the menus really). Play it whether you like or dislike Secret, play it if you want a weird but also modern-feeling SNES RPG, play it if you’re in the mood for RPG comfort food that pushes your boundaries more than you would think. Just give it a shot, and see if you vibe.