crimsonbelvedere
There isn’t a gaming experience that matches up to this. A once in a lifetime gift from Junichi Masuda and Game Freak. A battle of idealism and truth with some of the best cutscenes in any game I’ve experienced. N is a being that feels so untouchable and ethereal, with his game intro, battle music, and moments where his entire portrait consumes the DS screen. Unova really feels like you are traveling, that you’re making progress as a trainer, becoming closer to touching the concept of who N is. Ultimately realizing how alike you were in inferiority.
My DS nostalgia game. A refined 2D platforming experience that I enjoyed as a kid and love now. SSU is what video games should look and sound like to me. As glamorous as Great Cave’s Crystal Area and as foreign and euphoric as Milky Way Wishes’ Halfmoon. This game is ever so welcoming but rewards perseverance and practice like nothing similar I’ve experienced. The Arenas are difficult and I could not beat them by myself and although that makes me feel somewhat inept, the DS nostalgia in me is ecstatic to be able to give my DS to someone else and let them have a try too. SSU unites.
There is too much to say about this game, it is as core Pokemon as it gets and it slaughters competition. This is where Pokemon found its game identity moving forward. It's certainly not as deep as I once thought it was as a child, even compared to other Pokemon games, but it has continuity and consequences for actions. Something the other games have never gotten right since. Everything came together correctly for Emerald and I wish the stakes could be even half as high as they were in Emerald.
A gacha visual novel with minimal combat, combat that level checks you, forcing you to grind the games events and daily missions. I don’t necessarily hate this but at the same time I have no push to come back to it, knowing the time I’ll need to spend to experience the story. I like that Reslieriana is a canon Atelier game and that it makes use of the gacha experience as a story plot. It’s just not compelling.
2017
As if you were opening a black and white Where’s Waldo book, it’s perfect for what it does but it can get pretty difficult, especially when things start moving across the screen that you need to find. It does its job well but I won’t return to it.
Created from what looks similar to RPG Maker, this is a visual novel-esque experience with basic controls. With its post-apocalyptic setting and thin, jarring movement of the dog companion, all against the dark black and purple sky, I felt just as trapped. There is no human life here. As if there never was and never will be, but that skyscraper horizon proves against that & the sky is laughing at you for contemplating that fact.
2023
A very barebones visual novel with extreme promise. Built like a PC-98 game with its hard black, white, and reds creating these characters trapped in a black box on screen. Cyberpunk characters where they thrive the most. There just isn’t anything similar to this.
2023
A pinnacle for the puzzle genre. Such a refined uniqueness I have never seen from something with such a dominant puzzle setting. Although the game does just enough hand holding to get you started, learning and translating multiple languages, while made easier and extremely basic, is still quite a daunting ask from a game. One which Chants executes so well and tactfully. Its overworld is built with modernity in mind, simplistic controls, and minimal UI, something this game uses as its backseat, letting the player fully focus on the puzzles. A bright and welcoming color palette paints each new area with some dark and dangerous areas/people and creatures to balance the discord of people who have lost the ability to communicate with each other and the harmony the player creates by mending and flowing these languages together. Playing this with a friend was certainly the way to go for me as memorization is the key to everything & that was absolutely not my strong suit. Between my ability to discern the linguistic differences and my friend’s ability to memorize everything to a tee, Chants became such an interesting experience, unable to be found anywhere else.
2019
I just had to get out.
198X feels obtuse as a playable game with time consuming menus and games with extremely basic and unforgiving controls. But that’s exactly how it should be. Mimicking the struggle of traveling to an arcade you know you shouldn't be to play the hardest, most unoptimized games. Its how it was always meant to be, and 198X knows it.
198X feels obtuse as a playable game with time consuming menus and games with extremely basic and unforgiving controls. But that’s exactly how it should be. Mimicking the struggle of traveling to an arcade you know you shouldn't be to play the hardest, most unoptimized games. Its how it was always meant to be, and 198X knows it.
2016
Ever-present, always watching, inevitable.
Atmospheric is an understatement. This game thrives off of its art style and perfectly compatible score against a plain hard combat system. Eerie synths constantly underlay a pixelated, decaying overworld. Massive mechanical humanoid beings cling lifelessly to the mountainous terrain, shown off as breathtaking views for the Drifter to sit and watch from a cliffside. The bosses in Hyper Light are just unnerving, especially toward the end of the game when you realize you know what’s coming and how unavoidable it seems.
Atmospheric is an understatement. This game thrives off of its art style and perfectly compatible score against a plain hard combat system. Eerie synths constantly underlay a pixelated, decaying overworld. Massive mechanical humanoid beings cling lifelessly to the mountainous terrain, shown off as breathtaking views for the Drifter to sit and watch from a cliffside. The bosses in Hyper Light are just unnerving, especially toward the end of the game when you realize you know what’s coming and how unavoidable it seems.
2024
The moment man devoured the fruit of knowledge, he sealed his fate... Entrusting his future to the cards, man clings to a dim hope. Yet, the Arcana is the means by which all is revealed... Beyond the journey you have taken lies the absolute end.
The content and story of this game feels like a 2000’s time capsule. Exactly how I believed the culture was when the original P3 released. This makes for such a unique experience, showing on one hand the wormhole this game can send you through, but I can also see it taking people out of the experience for being ‘dated’. I never played P3 but I absolutely did not need to. This feels like it is exactly what it needs to be. The story, although somewhat shallow at some points or a little too tell-not-show, the ending scene makes everything feel worth it. Aegis delivers one of my favorite monologues in media, with words so heartfelt and genuine that it put the entirety of my previous 75 hours of playing into a perspective I had not seen. P3R is a product of its time and I am so glad I didn’t get anything different.
The content and story of this game feels like a 2000’s time capsule. Exactly how I believed the culture was when the original P3 released. This makes for such a unique experience, showing on one hand the wormhole this game can send you through, but I can also see it taking people out of the experience for being ‘dated’. I never played P3 but I absolutely did not need to. This feels like it is exactly what it needs to be. The story, although somewhat shallow at some points or a little too tell-not-show, the ending scene makes everything feel worth it. Aegis delivers one of my favorite monologues in media, with words so heartfelt and genuine that it put the entirety of my previous 75 hours of playing into a perspective I had not seen. P3R is a product of its time and I am so glad I didn’t get anything different.
2020
CORA is everything and all of us. CORA is the provider and the caretaker and the disciplinarian. CORA holds out a closed fist, and we must push out our chin.
Stylized like everything is a thick pixel except for the void below and the heavy sky above, the nightlife of Nivalis shines through. I did not think for a second that I would connect with this game the way I did. I thought that with most Cyberpunk games, the rich shallowness of the world would take you in but instead I drove for the first time and was met with the voice acting of a very solemn man, who only grew more disdainful as the game progressed. Each new character showing how brutalized they have been by Nivalis. The overworld is barren of activities for the most part, it's there just to show itself off. It's while the main character, Rania, is driving through this showoff of a city that you find her story and you begin to resent Nivalis too.
Stylized like everything is a thick pixel except for the void below and the heavy sky above, the nightlife of Nivalis shines through. I did not think for a second that I would connect with this game the way I did. I thought that with most Cyberpunk games, the rich shallowness of the world would take you in but instead I drove for the first time and was met with the voice acting of a very solemn man, who only grew more disdainful as the game progressed. Each new character showing how brutalized they have been by Nivalis. The overworld is barren of activities for the most part, it's there just to show itself off. It's while the main character, Rania, is driving through this showoff of a city that you find her story and you begin to resent Nivalis too.
"Even if the morrow is barren of promises,
Nothing shall forestall my return,
To become the dew that quenches the land,
To spare the sands, the seas, the skies,
I offer thee this silent sacrifice."
Nothing shall forestall my return,
To become the dew that quenches the land,
To spare the sands, the seas, the skies,
I offer thee this silent sacrifice."
"That's been my biggest challenge with you. How do you take care of someone who is already so strong?"
Sometimes, I think I liked the tokens of your love more than I liked loving you.