eliasco
272 Reviews liked by eliasco
pretty good but I must admit the game's a bit fast-paced, the 5 FPS during Labyrinth Zone was a little too quick for my liking
I can't believe how well this holds up.
The first-person dungeon crawling is primitive compared to games like Etrian Odyssey, but it is surprisingly deep for its time! The 3D effect still looks really good! Honestly, I would love to see a version of Phantasy Star 4 with these kinda dungeons.
Primitive in all the ways you would expect of an 8-bit JRPG, but the SEGA Ages port by M2 added some creature comforts that made it a pretty breezy experience! Oh! And if you do play this version, make sure to turn on the FM Synth! The soundtrack is waaaaay better with this sound chip on!
The first-person dungeon crawling is primitive compared to games like Etrian Odyssey, but it is surprisingly deep for its time! The 3D effect still looks really good! Honestly, I would love to see a version of Phantasy Star 4 with these kinda dungeons.
Primitive in all the ways you would expect of an 8-bit JRPG, but the SEGA Ages port by M2 added some creature comforts that made it a pretty breezy experience! Oh! And if you do play this version, make sure to turn on the FM Synth! The soundtrack is waaaaay better with this sound chip on!
The moment at which I knew this game would go down as one of my favourites was when I found the Lomei Labyrinth. I was venturing up the northeast part of the map, making my way to the Ancient Tech Lab. On my way I ran into a grounded guardian, an encounter which ended with me getting blasted off a cliff. It was raining, so I couldn’t climb my way back up, so instead I decide to venture north along the shoreline. As I made my way around the cliff base, the rain escalated into a thunderstorm, that’s when through the rain, illuminated by the lightning, I spotted the silhouette of this massive, imposing, monolithic structure off in the distance. This incredible, atmospheric sight, like a scripted vista you’d see in something like Shadow of the Colossus, is something I happened across by chance, just one of the many, many, many times this game’s world and mechanics all coalesced to create something breathtaking.
Say what you will about this game’s shortcomings when it comes to dungeon and enemy variety, but I’ve yet to play another video game that gives me the same feeling of exploration and wonder that comes with this one. Moments like this, like the first time I climbed a rock formation looking for ore and it stood up and tried to kill me, like the first time I realized lightning was about to strike my sword so I quickly threw it at an enemy just in time for the thunder bolt to strike and blast them away, like the time I decided to take a chance and make a frantic sprint for my sand seal to try and outrun an angry Molduga bearing down on me, jumping out of my seat as I make it by the grit of my teeth, these moments have stuck with me and will continue to stick with me far longer than any scripted random encounter I'm seeing for the 27 millionth time in any other open world game.
Say what you will about this game’s shortcomings when it comes to dungeon and enemy variety, but I’ve yet to play another video game that gives me the same feeling of exploration and wonder that comes with this one. Moments like this, like the first time I climbed a rock formation looking for ore and it stood up and tried to kill me, like the first time I realized lightning was about to strike my sword so I quickly threw it at an enemy just in time for the thunder bolt to strike and blast them away, like the time I decided to take a chance and make a frantic sprint for my sand seal to try and outrun an angry Molduga bearing down on me, jumping out of my seat as I make it by the grit of my teeth, these moments have stuck with me and will continue to stick with me far longer than any scripted random encounter I'm seeing for the 27 millionth time in any other open world game.
This review contains spoilers
Breath of the Wild was a game I loved and I’m still very fond of. I think its weaknesses are pretty clear-cut and acknowledged by a lot of people, but the reason I still hold it in high regard is because of how cohesive it felt. Without sounding too corny or sycophantic, for a Nintendo who (especially at the time) were increasingly attached to an image of coddling and handholding, a Zelda game starting with the objective to “destroy Ganon” and declaring everything else to be optional felt like an important statement, it felt like a shift away from the streamlined, prescribed experiences of Twilight Princess and Skyward Sword and toward a vision of natural discovery, which landed for me because of how much it felt like the game was constructed around it: A breathing, living world, the sound of nature and the swaying of trees, puzzles revolving around non-discrete physics and grounded temperatures, world design intended to accentuate the simple desire to climb on top of things and jump off them, looking at something in the distance and thinking “I want to go there”. They were so committed to this vision that they abandoned the heroic, melodic field themes of the past in favour of something restrained, which was guaranteed to piss some people off. I’m under no illusion that Breath of the Wild was a perfect game, in fact, its an extremely flawed one, but as my tastes in games have aged and (hopefully) matured I’ve come to value thematic completeness over "content" more and more, which Breath of the Wild achieved, despite its flaws.
Make no mistake, Breath of the Wild had a lot of flaws. Arguably outside of that core experience of free exploration, it was a game composed almost entirely of flaws. This seemed to be common knowledge for everyone but Nintendo, who saw the praise and thought it would be sufficient to replicate its core systems verbatim. I think if you asked someone what their wishlist for a BotW 2 would have been, practically nobody would have imagined what Tears of the Kingdom actually ended up actually being: More Koroks? Identical combat? More shrines? Cooking and healing unchanged? Clothing and inventory slots unchanged? Weapon durability? Still no traditional length dungeons? I don’t think many people would ask for that. This isn’t to say that Tears of the Kingdom has improved nothing: Enemy variety is significantly better here and the world in general is much denser and has more to discover - the Elden Ring influence being obvious in the depths and caves. Bosses are also much better and even have multiple ways to defeat them, bringing them in line with the freedom on offer in the rest of the puzzles. These things were “asked for” and they’re good, but they’re very much “more of the same”.
I think the most emphatic success of the game is the new powers. In BotW, powers were rarely useful outside of the shrines that required them, whereas here so much of the experience is curated for them. Caves and ascend create this beautiful continuous flow where exploration never comes to an arbitrary stopping point, and rewind feels like it perfectly accompanies ultrahand as well as being a general programming marvel. Fuse is the one I’m most sceptical of. Doubling down on weapon durability - a mechanic which was almost universally complained about in BotW - is a design decision I respect on paper, but I feel in practice it serves to make a lot of the weapons more interchangeable. If the majority of weapon attack power comes from fused monster parts, then the base weapon barely matters, meaning getting a weapon in a chest is just as shrug-worthy as it was in BotW. That this system hasn’t been fixed by fuse is evident in the late-game, which has the identical problem to BotW in that you have so many weapon slots and so many equally good weapons that each individual weapon becomes meaningless. Ultrahand, however, is easily the star of the show and feels like this inexhaustible source of hijinks which the whole game is constructed to support.
One of my favourite reviews on this website by nrmac, a review I think about frequently, talks about how a lot of great art wasn’t “asked for”. I don’t think this game in general fits that bill but ultrahand feels like it does; something great that nobody asked for. In concept, it feels like a perfect elaboration of the ideas in BotW - drawing attention to the environment as a source of problem-solving and furthering the theme of freedom, the new crystal-fetching shrines that were integrated into the world ended up being consistently my favourites for how they encouraged building hilariously dumb contraptions. At the same time, I do have a problem with ultrahand. It seems likely to me that ultrahand is a mechanic designed with the Twitter clip in mind, something aimed toward the potential limits of play rather than the average situation. I say this because throughout the entire game I only really needed to build about 3 different things to solve these problems: Fanplanes for long horizontal distances, hot air balloons for long vertical distances, “thing with rocket” for everything in-between. Granted, I had fun building these things, it didn’t get old, but it never felt like the game coaxed me into the complex depths of this mechanic, something which the shrines should have done. This is evident in the frequently ignored building materials that litter Hyrule’s roadsides, which might be fun to build with but never actually time-efficient, why build a car when you can just fast-travel?
This creeps into one of my biggest problems with TotK. Not the shrines alone but their connection to the new verticality offered by the floating islands. The paraglider in BotW was a tool that risked breaking a lot of the experience by allowing the player to traverse great distances with little effort, but it was rationed and balanced by high places being a goal. There was this flow to exploration where mountains would invite you to climb them, then once at the top you could paraglide to anywhere you could see, it was core to the exploratory loop. In TotK, however, verticality is cheap, not only because every tower catapults you so far into the sky, but by how you can just fast-travel to a floating island and paraglide wherever you please. This greatly exacerbates the problem that shrines pose. Shrines were disappointing in BotW not just because they offered lacklustre experiences, but because they were one of the only few things in the game which offered permanent rewards, as well as permanent progress in the form of fast-travel points, which put this awkward focus on them which they couldn’t live up to. It was a necessity imposed by this that shrines were obfuscated by the geometry. If it was possible to spot shrines easily, the whole game would just be about running from one shrine to the next, which would only further highlight their problems. In TotK, however, this essentially happened. I frequently found myself jumping off floating islands, paragliding to a shrine, then fast-travelling back to the floating island to jump off to another shrine. The majority of the shrines I completed were found this way. At the end of the game, my “Hero’s Path” was very frequently just straight lines toward shrines.
There’s this point in Matthewmatosis’ BotW video, (starting at 28:28, I recommend you watch these few minutes, it’s incredibly relevant to what I’m saying here.), about how free traversal isn’t actually what leads to memorable encounters. Personally, my most memorable moment from BotW was the path to Zora’s domain, which I did very early on and felt like something special. It’s telling that in TotK, a similar setup occurs with the path to the domain being blocked by mud, trying to encourage the player to find creative ways to clean up the path before them, but whereas in BotW I was forced down that path, in TotK I simply paraglided right into the domain from a nearby sky island, which I knew the location of anyway, and so its effect was completely nullified.
Here’s the moments in TotK which I loved the most and were memorable to me: The buildup to the Wind Temple, finding the entrance to the Korok forest, and the entire Mineru questline (the least spoiler-y way I can put it). I imagine the first of these will find general agreement as the best setpiece from either of these games, but the second, to me, was this amazing eureka moment where I finally figured out how to get there. But imagine for a second if you could just glide into the Korok forest from a sky island. Do this, and it illustrates my problem with the rest of the game.
A lot of this would be alleviated if shrines were better, but they are shockingly just as bad in the exact same way that BotW shrines were bad. The introductory shrines on the Great Sky Island are the same level of complexity as all the rest of the shrines, they mostly start off with an idea that’s “very simple” and iterate on it until it’s “simple”. Many solutions are just “use recall on a thing then jump on it”, or “build something incredibly rudimentary with parts that the game gives you anyway, making it obvious what the solution is”, or “use ascend on one (1) thing”. Practically every “combat training” shrine is insulting, even to the intelligence of young children, and every demeaning jingle that played when I did something incredibly easy had me questioning whether I was in Nintendo’s target age range anymore. While BotW’s premise of “freedom” seemed to be Nintendo letting go of their coddling tendencies, shrines were evidence that they couldn’t let go entirely. I was expecting the sequel, at the very least, to develop this part of the game, or at least skip the shrines dedicated to tutorialising basic mechanics, but it still has the problem that some tutorial shrines will be found dozens of hours into the game. Personally, I found a sneakstrike tutorial and bow-bullet-time tutorial over 30 hours into my game, which would not only be bad on its own, but considering the previous game made the same mistakes 6 years ago, it’s embarrassing. I’m sorry if you like these shrines but I fundamentally think they are a bad idea; a game about discovery and exploration is at odds with the aesthetic homogeneity they offer. It’s still possible to solve them in multiple ways, but when the solutions are this easy, why spend any time experimenting?
Intrinsic motivation was an important concept in BotW, but intrinsic motivation needs to work in conjunction with extrinsic motivation in order to be compelling. A player may wander in a certain direction out of the intrinsic desire to go towards something that looks interesting, and the game may reward them with a shrine, but if an extrinsic reward is easily accessible without doing anything intrinsically interesting, the only thing stopping the player from bypassing it is their own willpower and ability to curate their own experiences. I could build a big mecha car with laser beams on it and roll into a moblin camp to commit war crimes, but when I can jump from a sky island directly to four shrines in the same timeframe, it dramatically challenges the lengths I need to go to “find my own fun”; I could spend 30 minutes experimenting with the most hilarious way to break the solution to a shrine, but when the intended solutions take about 2 minutes, it gets to the point where only the most dedicated players can make the most of the experience (again, why I think this game is designed with the Twitter clip in mind). In short, the intrinsic and extrinsic parts of this game are out of sync with each-other, or to put it in another way, there’s too much freedom.
This is starting to sound incredibly negative, but to be clear, I do think this is a good game, but in many ways it has exacerbated the problems latent in BotW, when many many other problems it hasn’t iterated on at all. It’s easy to ask for “more stuff” in a sequel, but despite BotW’s relative lack of content, it still inspired a sense of wonder in me that lasted throughout the majority of the game, some of which is lost simply by knowing where things are. When I stumbled upon Zora’s domain in BotW, it was magical. When I paraglided my way there in TotK, it was expected. When I found my first dragon, or maze, or the blood moon rose for the first time in BotW, it was special. When I found these same things in TotK I was bitterly disappointed that they reused them.
The story makes this all even more disappointing. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Link and Zelda have a fatal encounter with Ganon/dorf and some amount of time passes, Link, far into the future, travels around Hyrule enlisting the help of four champions/sages, a Rito, Gerudo, Zora and Goron, he finds the master sword, which Zelda had prepared in advance for him, and collects memories of the past which inform him of what happened. Finally, he travels into the interior/depths of Hyrule castle to confront Ganon/dorf, who turns into a beast and is ultimately defeated by Zelda and Link together in a mechanically dull cinematic final boss. Beneath the Zonai stuff, it's the exact same story, set in the same world.
It’s a good game, how could it not be? but during the marketing cycle, I was hoping it would be to BotW what Majora’s Mask was to Ocarina. Something that, despite using the same assets, offered a different experience and used its direct sequel status as an opportunity to tell a radically different story to the typical Zelda fare. This isn't a Majora's Mask, it’s a Twilight Princess, something with a superficially edgy veneer that ultimately struggles to find an identity distinct from the game it models itself on, something that feels "asked for", despite its parts that definitely weren't. I think I’m self-aware enough to realise that pontificating about the reception of a game is a waste of time, but given the glowing feedback this has received, I think we’re likely going to see the next Zelda game also retread the same ground, here’s hoping that once the new formula becomes stagnant again, we can see another Breath of the Wild, not in its flawed superficial mechanics, but in essence.
Make no mistake, Breath of the Wild had a lot of flaws. Arguably outside of that core experience of free exploration, it was a game composed almost entirely of flaws. This seemed to be common knowledge for everyone but Nintendo, who saw the praise and thought it would be sufficient to replicate its core systems verbatim. I think if you asked someone what their wishlist for a BotW 2 would have been, practically nobody would have imagined what Tears of the Kingdom actually ended up actually being: More Koroks? Identical combat? More shrines? Cooking and healing unchanged? Clothing and inventory slots unchanged? Weapon durability? Still no traditional length dungeons? I don’t think many people would ask for that. This isn’t to say that Tears of the Kingdom has improved nothing: Enemy variety is significantly better here and the world in general is much denser and has more to discover - the Elden Ring influence being obvious in the depths and caves. Bosses are also much better and even have multiple ways to defeat them, bringing them in line with the freedom on offer in the rest of the puzzles. These things were “asked for” and they’re good, but they’re very much “more of the same”.
I think the most emphatic success of the game is the new powers. In BotW, powers were rarely useful outside of the shrines that required them, whereas here so much of the experience is curated for them. Caves and ascend create this beautiful continuous flow where exploration never comes to an arbitrary stopping point, and rewind feels like it perfectly accompanies ultrahand as well as being a general programming marvel. Fuse is the one I’m most sceptical of. Doubling down on weapon durability - a mechanic which was almost universally complained about in BotW - is a design decision I respect on paper, but I feel in practice it serves to make a lot of the weapons more interchangeable. If the majority of weapon attack power comes from fused monster parts, then the base weapon barely matters, meaning getting a weapon in a chest is just as shrug-worthy as it was in BotW. That this system hasn’t been fixed by fuse is evident in the late-game, which has the identical problem to BotW in that you have so many weapon slots and so many equally good weapons that each individual weapon becomes meaningless. Ultrahand, however, is easily the star of the show and feels like this inexhaustible source of hijinks which the whole game is constructed to support.
One of my favourite reviews on this website by nrmac, a review I think about frequently, talks about how a lot of great art wasn’t “asked for”. I don’t think this game in general fits that bill but ultrahand feels like it does; something great that nobody asked for. In concept, it feels like a perfect elaboration of the ideas in BotW - drawing attention to the environment as a source of problem-solving and furthering the theme of freedom, the new crystal-fetching shrines that were integrated into the world ended up being consistently my favourites for how they encouraged building hilariously dumb contraptions. At the same time, I do have a problem with ultrahand. It seems likely to me that ultrahand is a mechanic designed with the Twitter clip in mind, something aimed toward the potential limits of play rather than the average situation. I say this because throughout the entire game I only really needed to build about 3 different things to solve these problems: Fanplanes for long horizontal distances, hot air balloons for long vertical distances, “thing with rocket” for everything in-between. Granted, I had fun building these things, it didn’t get old, but it never felt like the game coaxed me into the complex depths of this mechanic, something which the shrines should have done. This is evident in the frequently ignored building materials that litter Hyrule’s roadsides, which might be fun to build with but never actually time-efficient, why build a car when you can just fast-travel?
This creeps into one of my biggest problems with TotK. Not the shrines alone but their connection to the new verticality offered by the floating islands. The paraglider in BotW was a tool that risked breaking a lot of the experience by allowing the player to traverse great distances with little effort, but it was rationed and balanced by high places being a goal. There was this flow to exploration where mountains would invite you to climb them, then once at the top you could paraglide to anywhere you could see, it was core to the exploratory loop. In TotK, however, verticality is cheap, not only because every tower catapults you so far into the sky, but by how you can just fast-travel to a floating island and paraglide wherever you please. This greatly exacerbates the problem that shrines pose. Shrines were disappointing in BotW not just because they offered lacklustre experiences, but because they were one of the only few things in the game which offered permanent rewards, as well as permanent progress in the form of fast-travel points, which put this awkward focus on them which they couldn’t live up to. It was a necessity imposed by this that shrines were obfuscated by the geometry. If it was possible to spot shrines easily, the whole game would just be about running from one shrine to the next, which would only further highlight their problems. In TotK, however, this essentially happened. I frequently found myself jumping off floating islands, paragliding to a shrine, then fast-travelling back to the floating island to jump off to another shrine. The majority of the shrines I completed were found this way. At the end of the game, my “Hero’s Path” was very frequently just straight lines toward shrines.
There’s this point in Matthewmatosis’ BotW video, (starting at 28:28, I recommend you watch these few minutes, it’s incredibly relevant to what I’m saying here.), about how free traversal isn’t actually what leads to memorable encounters. Personally, my most memorable moment from BotW was the path to Zora’s domain, which I did very early on and felt like something special. It’s telling that in TotK, a similar setup occurs with the path to the domain being blocked by mud, trying to encourage the player to find creative ways to clean up the path before them, but whereas in BotW I was forced down that path, in TotK I simply paraglided right into the domain from a nearby sky island, which I knew the location of anyway, and so its effect was completely nullified.
Here’s the moments in TotK which I loved the most and were memorable to me: The buildup to the Wind Temple, finding the entrance to the Korok forest, and the entire Mineru questline (the least spoiler-y way I can put it). I imagine the first of these will find general agreement as the best setpiece from either of these games, but the second, to me, was this amazing eureka moment where I finally figured out how to get there. But imagine for a second if you could just glide into the Korok forest from a sky island. Do this, and it illustrates my problem with the rest of the game.
A lot of this would be alleviated if shrines were better, but they are shockingly just as bad in the exact same way that BotW shrines were bad. The introductory shrines on the Great Sky Island are the same level of complexity as all the rest of the shrines, they mostly start off with an idea that’s “very simple” and iterate on it until it’s “simple”. Many solutions are just “use recall on a thing then jump on it”, or “build something incredibly rudimentary with parts that the game gives you anyway, making it obvious what the solution is”, or “use ascend on one (1) thing”. Practically every “combat training” shrine is insulting, even to the intelligence of young children, and every demeaning jingle that played when I did something incredibly easy had me questioning whether I was in Nintendo’s target age range anymore. While BotW’s premise of “freedom” seemed to be Nintendo letting go of their coddling tendencies, shrines were evidence that they couldn’t let go entirely. I was expecting the sequel, at the very least, to develop this part of the game, or at least skip the shrines dedicated to tutorialising basic mechanics, but it still has the problem that some tutorial shrines will be found dozens of hours into the game. Personally, I found a sneakstrike tutorial and bow-bullet-time tutorial over 30 hours into my game, which would not only be bad on its own, but considering the previous game made the same mistakes 6 years ago, it’s embarrassing. I’m sorry if you like these shrines but I fundamentally think they are a bad idea; a game about discovery and exploration is at odds with the aesthetic homogeneity they offer. It’s still possible to solve them in multiple ways, but when the solutions are this easy, why spend any time experimenting?
Intrinsic motivation was an important concept in BotW, but intrinsic motivation needs to work in conjunction with extrinsic motivation in order to be compelling. A player may wander in a certain direction out of the intrinsic desire to go towards something that looks interesting, and the game may reward them with a shrine, but if an extrinsic reward is easily accessible without doing anything intrinsically interesting, the only thing stopping the player from bypassing it is their own willpower and ability to curate their own experiences. I could build a big mecha car with laser beams on it and roll into a moblin camp to commit war crimes, but when I can jump from a sky island directly to four shrines in the same timeframe, it dramatically challenges the lengths I need to go to “find my own fun”; I could spend 30 minutes experimenting with the most hilarious way to break the solution to a shrine, but when the intended solutions take about 2 minutes, it gets to the point where only the most dedicated players can make the most of the experience (again, why I think this game is designed with the Twitter clip in mind). In short, the intrinsic and extrinsic parts of this game are out of sync with each-other, or to put it in another way, there’s too much freedom.
This is starting to sound incredibly negative, but to be clear, I do think this is a good game, but in many ways it has exacerbated the problems latent in BotW, when many many other problems it hasn’t iterated on at all. It’s easy to ask for “more stuff” in a sequel, but despite BotW’s relative lack of content, it still inspired a sense of wonder in me that lasted throughout the majority of the game, some of which is lost simply by knowing where things are. When I stumbled upon Zora’s domain in BotW, it was magical. When I paraglided my way there in TotK, it was expected. When I found my first dragon, or maze, or the blood moon rose for the first time in BotW, it was special. When I found these same things in TotK I was bitterly disappointed that they reused them.
The story makes this all even more disappointing. Stop me if you’ve heard this before: Link and Zelda have a fatal encounter with Ganon/dorf and some amount of time passes, Link, far into the future, travels around Hyrule enlisting the help of four champions/sages, a Rito, Gerudo, Zora and Goron, he finds the master sword, which Zelda had prepared in advance for him, and collects memories of the past which inform him of what happened. Finally, he travels into the interior/depths of Hyrule castle to confront Ganon/dorf, who turns into a beast and is ultimately defeated by Zelda and Link together in a mechanically dull cinematic final boss. Beneath the Zonai stuff, it's the exact same story, set in the same world.
It’s a good game, how could it not be? but during the marketing cycle, I was hoping it would be to BotW what Majora’s Mask was to Ocarina. Something that, despite using the same assets, offered a different experience and used its direct sequel status as an opportunity to tell a radically different story to the typical Zelda fare. This isn't a Majora's Mask, it’s a Twilight Princess, something with a superficially edgy veneer that ultimately struggles to find an identity distinct from the game it models itself on, something that feels "asked for", despite its parts that definitely weren't. I think I’m self-aware enough to realise that pontificating about the reception of a game is a waste of time, but given the glowing feedback this has received, I think we’re likely going to see the next Zelda game also retread the same ground, here’s hoping that once the new formula becomes stagnant again, we can see another Breath of the Wild, not in its flawed superficial mechanics, but in essence.
There exists a version of this game that's my favorite ever, but for every genuinely amazing and astonishing thing ToTK does there's gotta be three ways it undermines itself, wearing all the excitement off. For a game where you supposed make your own fun, more oftent than not you have to drag this fun out with tweezers.
Genuinely the most exhausted I've felt after beating a fantasy adventure game, taking the crown from Dark Souls III.
If I were meaner I'd drop 1 star but I'd be remiss not to acknowledge the technical and presentation aspects of this. As fun as it is to compare it to Gmod, it far exceeds it in many practical ways, though of course not being nearly as deep.
I don't have the energy to list out everything detail by detail but I think what killed a lot of my enthusiasm which peaked in the 10-20 hour mark (thus, spent close to 40-60 with a sense of "is it over yet?") was just the sheer lack of ambition in shrines and general quest design. For a game so heavily built around its lego pieces it sure is scared to make the player put more than 2 pieces together (and if it does, it leaves out a preassembled example 9/10 times.). There's little way to tell whether or not the shrine you're entering is worth your time, an easy "avoid" is if it's right alongside the main roads of the map, but even near the edge of the map or more far away regions I found the game reminding me for the 3rd time post-tutorial how to throw an item or how to stack objects. Late into the game I just started skipping shrines wholesale, unless they were convenient for fast travel i.e. in the sky islands or mazes or I just had a REALLY good feeling they'd be at least decent.
In many ways the Zonai stuff was the most consistently disappointing to me, with much of the slog of the game wrapping around to it. I scraped by with only 5 notches of battery(!!!) for 90% of my playthrough and felt like I had more than enough breathing room for any puzzles, bordering on bypassing many outright due to headroom. I said this shortly after leaving the great sky island, that they should have doubled charge capacity as a baseline; and I think they agree because any zonai task that looks like it'd ask for more also has batteries lying around to offset anyone who has an unupgraded charge.
By the time I wanted the game to be over it just kept sending me on absurdly long fetch quests. It might sound silly but do you know how often I completed a temple or major questline and thought "man I could've replayed Ico"? A lot more than just once lol. That's a new feeling for me really, in regards to singleplayer games; I may joke about it but I'm almost never serious if it's anything legitimate, but I really felt that here. In many ways I just don't think the game respects the players time, and I don't mean in an endearing / engaging way like you'd see in Demon's Souls or Faster Than Light. It doesn't help by this point it repeats the shit out of bosses in a way that would make Elden Ring blush, and unlike Elden Ring there's no easy way to tell if what you're doing is underpowered vs you based on map location; it feels arbitrary,
Really where this game shines is.. where most 3D Zeldas shine, which is the world and characters. and to that end it's very good imo. The music is also mostly lovely. I'm now too tired to write more, kind of like the average shrine quality walking from the outer tenth of the map inwards.
If I were meaner I'd drop 1 star but I'd be remiss not to acknowledge the technical and presentation aspects of this. As fun as it is to compare it to Gmod, it far exceeds it in many practical ways, though of course not being nearly as deep.
I don't have the energy to list out everything detail by detail but I think what killed a lot of my enthusiasm which peaked in the 10-20 hour mark (thus, spent close to 40-60 with a sense of "is it over yet?") was just the sheer lack of ambition in shrines and general quest design. For a game so heavily built around its lego pieces it sure is scared to make the player put more than 2 pieces together (and if it does, it leaves out a preassembled example 9/10 times.). There's little way to tell whether or not the shrine you're entering is worth your time, an easy "avoid" is if it's right alongside the main roads of the map, but even near the edge of the map or more far away regions I found the game reminding me for the 3rd time post-tutorial how to throw an item or how to stack objects. Late into the game I just started skipping shrines wholesale, unless they were convenient for fast travel i.e. in the sky islands or mazes or I just had a REALLY good feeling they'd be at least decent.
In many ways the Zonai stuff was the most consistently disappointing to me, with much of the slog of the game wrapping around to it. I scraped by with only 5 notches of battery(!!!) for 90% of my playthrough and felt like I had more than enough breathing room for any puzzles, bordering on bypassing many outright due to headroom. I said this shortly after leaving the great sky island, that they should have doubled charge capacity as a baseline; and I think they agree because any zonai task that looks like it'd ask for more also has batteries lying around to offset anyone who has an unupgraded charge.
By the time I wanted the game to be over it just kept sending me on absurdly long fetch quests. It might sound silly but do you know how often I completed a temple or major questline and thought "man I could've replayed Ico"? A lot more than just once lol. That's a new feeling for me really, in regards to singleplayer games; I may joke about it but I'm almost never serious if it's anything legitimate, but I really felt that here. In many ways I just don't think the game respects the players time, and I don't mean in an endearing / engaging way like you'd see in Demon's Souls or Faster Than Light. It doesn't help by this point it repeats the shit out of bosses in a way that would make Elden Ring blush, and unlike Elden Ring there's no easy way to tell if what you're doing is underpowered vs you based on map location; it feels arbitrary,
Really where this game shines is.. where most 3D Zeldas shine, which is the world and characters. and to that end it's very good imo. The music is also mostly lovely. I'm now too tired to write more, kind of like the average shrine quality walking from the outer tenth of the map inwards.
obvious fortnite copy
Not all of this works - once the initial appeal wears off it loses some luster and the story is woefully thin, even by Pokemon standards - but man, as an exercise in atmosphere and experimentation it's pretty great. The open world is filled to the brim with stuff and that stuff are little creatures that all have their own cycles, personalities, and disposition. The more you understand them, the less they attack. It feels alive and brewing, even if the graphics are struggling to keep up.
It helps the actual gameplay loop is so engaging. Even by the end, I couldn't help but find new things to love and appreciate, and there is always something new to do. The boss fights are unique for the series and tons of fun (if challenging), the cast is engaging and carries the weak story, and the lack of focus on battling means that when you do have battles they are more frantic and kinetic. Great game, even if it's flawed at points.
It helps the actual gameplay loop is so engaging. Even by the end, I couldn't help but find new things to love and appreciate, and there is always something new to do. The boss fights are unique for the series and tons of fun (if challenging), the cast is engaging and carries the weak story, and the lack of focus on battling means that when you do have battles they are more frantic and kinetic. Great game, even if it's flawed at points.
If you’re gonna give your game a defining gimmick to make it stand out in literally any way from the past games and that’ll help it keep sticking out when developing future games in this style, probably not a good idea to make it something that you’ll only see if intentionally grinding very specific enemies (that the GBA version doesn’t indicate) on incredibly low percentiles. It has value in proving the style is addicting enough to work on handhelds but little beyond that.
Neon White
2022
The greatest strength of Neon White is how exceptionally laid out its core design is, and how its gameplay loop is expanded upon from world to world in a surprisingly beefy campaign if you’re trying to get Ace Medals (Platinum Relics, basically) through it. Almost every one of the new chapters introduces a new gimmick with a new kind of gun and its two uses, feeling like it makes the most out of whatever power a level gives you.
As the game goes on, levels have you hot swapping between these constantly, and it feels like a great amount of thought, effort and detail went into to making every single one feel distinct, in a similar way to games like the first two Super Monkey Balls or Donkey Kong (1994). I do think some levels can stretch the length quota; any stage that go on for 2+ minutes can feel aggravating to replay, but the majority are able to keep things interesting. Often more than certain main stages, I really got a lot from the side challenges from each of your companions, and how these stages operated in different ways that let their distinct personalities show without incessant painful dialogue. In particular, I really liked Yellow’s penultimate stage and how it felt like the game briefly became a boomer shooter.
Although level progression can be enjoyable when everything clicks, some stages force styles of movement progression on you that can turn the method of controlling into an aggravating stress test. It’s very easy for the 360 turns the game forces you to do for level optimization to ruin your mouse position when trying to say, circle around a tall structure, see the sky after using the stomp power that faces you toward the ground, or rocket launch up a building to be met with a stuck-out structure covering your camera. I can't imagine playing with a controller for lacking precision aim but even with a mouse it was incredibly unfun to have my view wrecked by being unable to move around in a circle without straight up lifting the mouse up, which would cause an immediate reset if it got stuck during a run. The final gift sequence felt less like a fun challenge and more like a tedious slog when dealing with a 360-tower scale at the end of a 2-minute level gauntlet where a single screwup meant doing the entire stage all over again. I feel similarly in regard to the second boss fight; the first and the final one do compelling work to translate the level moment to moment feel into a run that feels quick even if you lose, despite the wimpy finishers, but the second boss got so overly indulgent with the scripted sequences that the slight chance of screwing up in the middle of that 4-5 minute battle felt painful every time I felt like I wanted to restart.
As many others have pointed out, it's really the writing that's the most able to turn heads. To its credit, it’s able to be skipped almost in its entirety and doesn’t directly affect the strong core gameplay level progression I noted above. But in a way it affected my attitude through it, because every time I power through a new world, the story dialogues meant to break it up only show me how thoroughly uncool the character I’m playing is as a person. It feels like there’s a fundamental disconnect between euphoria for mastering a stage and White’s personality compilation of referential animeisms outside of it, despite Steve Blum’s best efforts.
It’s no secret that Sonic games have been wildly inconsistent, often for mechanical reasons, but one place I think most of them succeed in is properly communicating the spectacle, fun and thrilling sequences a player is meant to be experiencing in the stages through Sonic as a character, be it the expressive sprites of the 2D titles or his modern version’s trick posing and light comments chirped from time to time. They connect the intention between what personality the character is feeling versus what you, the player, are meant to feel while playing that just doesn’t exist in Neon White because of how divorced those sides of his character are.
Yet, for all the writing’s incessant need for forced references, incel humor (there’s a blatantly obvious 2019 Joker line, flat asses, and S-tier insults among other things) and all the tediously tepid character tropes that have me rolling my eyes even in actual anime, it’s the constant emoticons that deal the killing blow. They’re used so often, even in scenes trying to be emotional, from pretty sparkles to overly saturated blushing and depression lines that just makes any dialogue they’re paired with that much more performative. There’s even the very literal throwing up emoji, something that’s not even an anime effect so I’m genuinely baffled it’s present.
When it comes to weeaboo style writing goes, it's bordering the same level as RWBY, with worse jokes and slightly better thematic cohesion. Just like the first two seasons of that show, the best parts are, ironically, when the action director oversees the story. The side quests for your companions communicate their personalities in a way far more suitable to Neon White’s status as a video game than any dialogue unlock (which feels like if you gave an AI a Danganronpa script). There’s a lot more meaningful emotion to glean from your very first sequence of finding one of Green's gifts, conveying a creepy, yet sorrowful mood purely from gameplay, than almost any dialogue sequence where the writing is either comically bad or just borderline nothing (any conversation with the cat characters comes to mind).
The end of Neon White left me satisfied with how well everything had progressed by that point on a structural level just as much as relieved I’d never have to endure its unfun execution to justify its concept. But dammit, I felt something almost the entire time. And is that not the purpose of art, to make you want to feel, even when it’s intensive negative emotion? Neon White is a pendulum swing of a game I think succeeds at being a well-made and lastingly developed experience on numerous design levels despite its off-character cohesion and the incessant annoyance of its skippable writing. The tightly put together building blocks alone make it a recommendation, but it’ll be up to others to make the most of what’s surrounding them.
As the game goes on, levels have you hot swapping between these constantly, and it feels like a great amount of thought, effort and detail went into to making every single one feel distinct, in a similar way to games like the first two Super Monkey Balls or Donkey Kong (1994). I do think some levels can stretch the length quota; any stage that go on for 2+ minutes can feel aggravating to replay, but the majority are able to keep things interesting. Often more than certain main stages, I really got a lot from the side challenges from each of your companions, and how these stages operated in different ways that let their distinct personalities show without incessant painful dialogue. In particular, I really liked Yellow’s penultimate stage and how it felt like the game briefly became a boomer shooter.
Although level progression can be enjoyable when everything clicks, some stages force styles of movement progression on you that can turn the method of controlling into an aggravating stress test. It’s very easy for the 360 turns the game forces you to do for level optimization to ruin your mouse position when trying to say, circle around a tall structure, see the sky after using the stomp power that faces you toward the ground, or rocket launch up a building to be met with a stuck-out structure covering your camera. I can't imagine playing with a controller for lacking precision aim but even with a mouse it was incredibly unfun to have my view wrecked by being unable to move around in a circle without straight up lifting the mouse up, which would cause an immediate reset if it got stuck during a run. The final gift sequence felt less like a fun challenge and more like a tedious slog when dealing with a 360-tower scale at the end of a 2-minute level gauntlet where a single screwup meant doing the entire stage all over again. I feel similarly in regard to the second boss fight; the first and the final one do compelling work to translate the level moment to moment feel into a run that feels quick even if you lose, despite the wimpy finishers, but the second boss got so overly indulgent with the scripted sequences that the slight chance of screwing up in the middle of that 4-5 minute battle felt painful every time I felt like I wanted to restart.
As many others have pointed out, it's really the writing that's the most able to turn heads. To its credit, it’s able to be skipped almost in its entirety and doesn’t directly affect the strong core gameplay level progression I noted above. But in a way it affected my attitude through it, because every time I power through a new world, the story dialogues meant to break it up only show me how thoroughly uncool the character I’m playing is as a person. It feels like there’s a fundamental disconnect between euphoria for mastering a stage and White’s personality compilation of referential animeisms outside of it, despite Steve Blum’s best efforts.
It’s no secret that Sonic games have been wildly inconsistent, often for mechanical reasons, but one place I think most of them succeed in is properly communicating the spectacle, fun and thrilling sequences a player is meant to be experiencing in the stages through Sonic as a character, be it the expressive sprites of the 2D titles or his modern version’s trick posing and light comments chirped from time to time. They connect the intention between what personality the character is feeling versus what you, the player, are meant to feel while playing that just doesn’t exist in Neon White because of how divorced those sides of his character are.
Yet, for all the writing’s incessant need for forced references, incel humor (there’s a blatantly obvious 2019 Joker line, flat asses, and S-tier insults among other things) and all the tediously tepid character tropes that have me rolling my eyes even in actual anime, it’s the constant emoticons that deal the killing blow. They’re used so often, even in scenes trying to be emotional, from pretty sparkles to overly saturated blushing and depression lines that just makes any dialogue they’re paired with that much more performative. There’s even the very literal throwing up emoji, something that’s not even an anime effect so I’m genuinely baffled it’s present.
When it comes to weeaboo style writing goes, it's bordering the same level as RWBY, with worse jokes and slightly better thematic cohesion. Just like the first two seasons of that show, the best parts are, ironically, when the action director oversees the story. The side quests for your companions communicate their personalities in a way far more suitable to Neon White’s status as a video game than any dialogue unlock (which feels like if you gave an AI a Danganronpa script). There’s a lot more meaningful emotion to glean from your very first sequence of finding one of Green's gifts, conveying a creepy, yet sorrowful mood purely from gameplay, than almost any dialogue sequence where the writing is either comically bad or just borderline nothing (any conversation with the cat characters comes to mind).
The end of Neon White left me satisfied with how well everything had progressed by that point on a structural level just as much as relieved I’d never have to endure its unfun execution to justify its concept. But dammit, I felt something almost the entire time. And is that not the purpose of art, to make you want to feel, even when it’s intensive negative emotion? Neon White is a pendulum swing of a game I think succeeds at being a well-made and lastingly developed experience on numerous design levels despite its off-character cohesion and the incessant annoyance of its skippable writing. The tightly put together building blocks alone make it a recommendation, but it’ll be up to others to make the most of what’s surrounding them.
you may see this star rating and think im fucking insane, but hear me out. as always, large stream of thoughts style review.
i fucking loved this game. im pretty sure that right now this is the only review on this website for this game thats higher than 4 stars or so, and i completely get why. the game has a certain look to it that isn't to everyone's taste and theres a small chunk of the game, around halfway through, where you have absolutely 0 idea what you're even supposed to do, and to top it all off the second castle doesn't really compare to the symphony of the night reverse castle
but i really don't mind!
i'll admit i got a bit frustrated at feeling lost halfway through, but i felt that same frustration in symphony of the night and aria of sorrow. both games had a segment that lasted about an hour maybe where i needed to check maps to figure out where im supposed to go. but even with that, i enjoy the way castlevanias play even at their simplest so it really doesn't get to me, especially with how damn short these games are. i got 200% and got all of the furniture and this game was still the shortest of the 3 i've played, clocking in at 6 hours. however i do need to mention that the progression definitely isn't the best but it isn't that terrible either? once you know where you're supposed to go you get into a flow where you're getting everything you need and unlocking more and more of the castle. the keys being a thing are stupid as hell though.
i also love to death how juste looks and how he controls. something about him just feels so smooth and great to play as in a way that i didnt get with soma and alucard even if theyre both great to play as. juste also feels like he has a lot more going on even if it still isn't a ton, maxim and lydie do a lot more for him than the few moments alucard has with his mom and dracula in symphony even if i'd say the quality of those interactions are higher. it also helps that the writing isn't super cheesy like in aria of sorrow. theres still some cheese, but it didnt irritate me like aria.
in terms of the music, you never hear people stop bitching about this games music and i do not understand why at all. 8 bit osts are easily the best castlevania has to offer music wise aside from a few good bits in every games, and this is no different. i found myself enjoying the music in this game way more than other castlevanias.
to wrap up my thoughts, i don't think this is the best castlevania game i've played. any day i'd tell you to play aria of sorrow or symphony of the night over this one. but it's my personal favorite that i've played and i think it gets way too much hate for what it is. if you played symphony of the night and aria of sorrow and wanted more iga goodness to play, play harmony of dissonance. go into it with an open mind and you might like it.
tl;dr, harmony of dissonance goes hard when you don't have a bitch in your ear telling you it doesn't
i fucking loved this game. im pretty sure that right now this is the only review on this website for this game thats higher than 4 stars or so, and i completely get why. the game has a certain look to it that isn't to everyone's taste and theres a small chunk of the game, around halfway through, where you have absolutely 0 idea what you're even supposed to do, and to top it all off the second castle doesn't really compare to the symphony of the night reverse castle
but i really don't mind!
i'll admit i got a bit frustrated at feeling lost halfway through, but i felt that same frustration in symphony of the night and aria of sorrow. both games had a segment that lasted about an hour maybe where i needed to check maps to figure out where im supposed to go. but even with that, i enjoy the way castlevanias play even at their simplest so it really doesn't get to me, especially with how damn short these games are. i got 200% and got all of the furniture and this game was still the shortest of the 3 i've played, clocking in at 6 hours. however i do need to mention that the progression definitely isn't the best but it isn't that terrible either? once you know where you're supposed to go you get into a flow where you're getting everything you need and unlocking more and more of the castle. the keys being a thing are stupid as hell though.
i also love to death how juste looks and how he controls. something about him just feels so smooth and great to play as in a way that i didnt get with soma and alucard even if theyre both great to play as. juste also feels like he has a lot more going on even if it still isn't a ton, maxim and lydie do a lot more for him than the few moments alucard has with his mom and dracula in symphony even if i'd say the quality of those interactions are higher. it also helps that the writing isn't super cheesy like in aria of sorrow. theres still some cheese, but it didnt irritate me like aria.
in terms of the music, you never hear people stop bitching about this games music and i do not understand why at all. 8 bit osts are easily the best castlevania has to offer music wise aside from a few good bits in every games, and this is no different. i found myself enjoying the music in this game way more than other castlevanias.
to wrap up my thoughts, i don't think this is the best castlevania game i've played. any day i'd tell you to play aria of sorrow or symphony of the night over this one. but it's my personal favorite that i've played and i think it gets way too much hate for what it is. if you played symphony of the night and aria of sorrow and wanted more iga goodness to play, play harmony of dissonance. go into it with an open mind and you might like it.
tl;dr, harmony of dissonance goes hard when you don't have a bitch in your ear telling you it doesn't
Live A Live
2022
"How strange. A construct without heart or soul. Whence comes compassion? Whence arises love?"
- Introduction
it's been a few months since i've played live a live which is currently (and i'd imagine for quite a while) my favorite game of all time. despite this, my initial review, despite an edit i did to it last month, is not one i'm too happy with so i thought i'd remedy that. this review might just end up be me talking about what live a live means to me, but i think maybe thats okay. this is going to probably be the longest review i have written, and most likely the longest i will write unless we somehow get a sequel to live a live in the future. i also plan on trying to format this a bit differently, starting with my history with the game before transitioning into my experiences with each part of the game in the order i played them and what each part meant to me. i understand that this one is going to be pretty long and won't be for everyone, so don't worry too much if it's too much to read.
mild spoiler warning for the middle ages and dominion of hate chapters, but otherwise i will be keeping this review as spoiler free as possible, with only a few minor spoilers sprinkled in.
as with most of my writing, this is going to be very self indulgent and written for myself. regardless, i hope you enjoy! it's almost 6000 words so please feel free to read by section instead of all at once! i also don't claim to be much of a writer, so apologies if this is hard to read
- My History with Live A Live
my history with live a live is probably like a lot of other peoples' experiences: it was this weird japanese only game that we had only heard of because of toby fox, and perhaps we figured out more about it because of octopath traveler, a game which takes a lot from live a live but ultimately fails to live up to it. but there was something utterly tantalizing inside of octopath, a lingering echo from roots that were clearly there, even if most of the western audience didn't realize it at the time. it was an odd feeling having played octopath traveler around the time it released. most of my play time went towards a replay i attempted after finishing live a live, but when even when i initially played it i felt like there was something more, something just like this that it had to have been taking from, something that it seemed most people around me and mainstream gaming media didn't notice. so many people were in love with this game that felt like it was a hollow shell of something i had never even played before, a shell of something i didn't realize it was a shell of. this prompted me to look a bit more into octopath traveler, and by extension, learn a bit more about live a live. it was all very minimal, i mostly just learned that the scenarios were all different time periods rather than different characters in the same world and that was about the size of it. i think i maybe watched a bit of gameplay from sundown and masaru's chapters but that was about it, but more on that later. it was incredibly interesting from the outset, but the only option to play it was a fan translation that to this day i'm still not the biggest fan of the work done by the group who made it. oh well i thought. i could just play it eventually just to say i had played this game my friends had never heard of, and it seemed neat regardless of that. for the most part, that was the space live a live had occupied in my brain.
- February 9th, 2022. A Classic Comes Alive
on the 9th of february, my girlfriend and i had woken up to watch the nintendo direct, which had come to be something of a tradition for the two of us at this point. upon hearing "a classic comes alive" i joked to her that we were finally getting a remake of genealogy of the holy war, which had been buzzing around in leaks for some time. however, for some reason i can hardly explain, upon seeing masaru's training room in this beautiful hd-2d art style, i jumped up and yelled. i had only possibly seen this room a single time, a time that i struggle to even recall, and it evoked a reaction out of me that would make anyone assume this was a game that was deeply special to me, but at the time it wasn't. live a live was this niche rpg that people only ever mentioned in relation to toby fox's megalovania, or occassionally in the same conversation as one discusses octopath traveler.
honestly this wasn't even that good of a nintendo direct to me. there were some neat things announced, some interesting ports and remakes, and two sequels with "3" in the title that i had absolutely 0 reason to be excited over at the time, even though one of them i had enjoyed the series quite a bit at that point. but for some reason i felt deeply excited, even if the way that excitement manifested was weird and didn't make any sense to me. in terms of rpgs, my mind was mostly occupied with the dragon quest III hd-2d remake, a beautiful remake of one of my favorite games of all time. we still haven't gotten that game, but part of my mind assumed we were getting that first. after all, it had been announced first, right? months passed, and uncharacteristically of me, i did absolutely 0 research into any of the prerelease talk or news of a game i was excited for. i think part of me was bitter when i had realized that this game was impeding the "imminent" release of the dq3 remake, but i have a hard time remembering. regardless, the game's hype cycle chugged along for the next 5 months, and i had honestly forgotten about it until my girlfriend asked if it had released yet.
thank god she reminded me.
- The Wild West, The Wanderer
"I've come to miss the warmth of good company. And a home to hang your hat…"
i managed to start playing live a live only a few days after it released and it was immediately a great time. i started with sundown's "wild west" chapter, and as someone who is a complete and total sucker for the wild west and jrpgs, i was having a great time. the focus on time management was a very interesting direction, even if the time limit was pretty lenient like most other games that present a hard time limit. i will however attribute this to the fact that in the remake, objects that can be interacted with in the overworld will sparkle, which leaves a lot less trial and error to the hands of the player. in terms of the narrative that the wanderer presents, it's a pretty simple "man with no name" style cowboy movie translated into a jrpg on that front. there's a few minor twists near the that retrospectively make sundown a character that's so much more than how he's portrayed. in the end, after facing the specter of revenge and leader of the crazy bunch, o'dio, the sundown kid rides off into the sunset of the american frontier.
despite its simplicity, the wanderer is a story about revenge and it's opposite and equally human emotion, forgiveness. a phantasm of the past who won't forgive and wants revenge on the world that wronged him, and a broken man who won't forgive and wants revenge on himself who wronged the people who should've been there to protect. you'll find that live a live's chapters tend to focus on two mirrored aspects of humanity for its main conflicts, even when it isn't the most immediately obvious, and it's something i very deeply enjoy.
honestly, i would recommend wild west as the starting chapter for most people. there isn't really much better of a way to get someone acclimated to your battle system than 1 on 1 combat, even better if you're shooting revolvers at each other. the main gimmick of the chapter is also one that's really easy to come to terms with for just about anyone and it won't leave too many people frustrated.
- Present Day, The Strongest
"When the dust settles—when you're old and weak—that strength of spirit's all you'll have!"
the strongest is probably one of the most fun parts of any game i've ever played, and i'm half convinced they did this part just because of yoko shimomura's work on street fighter 2. with this being said, it's very deliberately based on fighting games as well as boxing movies in general. you play as masaru takahara, a man who aspires to be the strongest in the world. along the way, you fight martial artists from around the world, ala street fighter, acquire their abilities in combat like a blue mage (or mega man), and select them through a megaman esque character select screen. it's all really good fun and each fight is a puzzle to figure out how to lure out their best moves to make yourself the best you can be.
after you best the champions of each respective style, odie o'bright makes his entrance. odie o'bright is a twisted man who kills those who could oppose him in his path to power. after a confrontation where masaru calls upon the strength of the masters he owes his current strength to, odie o'bright is defeated, yet warns masaru of his life that will be filled with endless battles of those who pursue the peak of strength just as he had. the chapter comes to a close with an unknown challenger declaring his intentions to masaru, and the chapter closes.
the themes of the strongest deal with strength, and those who use it to better themselves and those who misuse it for the sake of power. odie o'bright is the antithesis to everything masaru is, a man who takes as he pleases and kills those who could pose a threat to him, while masaru would learn what he could and appreciates the challenges that come from sitting at the top. i think you could also read it as the difference between excitement from a challenge and the fear that opposes it and what that drives other people to, if only because of how open ended the strongest is. it's incredibly simple, but it's so good and it's probably the one i go back to and play the most.
- Imperial China, The Successor
" ... I...I think I understand... I've been judged. Mocked by men. I thought about doing the same. Hurting them. Hurting others. But I couldn't. I know that pain. Others shouldn't."
the successor is incredibly interesing and i think there's good reason why it's the one people talk about the most when it comes to discussion of this game. it starts as a pretty typical kung fu movie, where the old martial arts master wants to pass on his knowledge to a disciple. you can choose to train the three potential disciples anyway you please, and whoever you invest in the most is the one who succeeds the earthen heart shifu.
any futher praises for this chapter i don't think i can express without a spoiler warning, so…
mild spoiler warning, but the two you didn't invest into, who could seem entirely random to someone who invested in them as equally as possible, are killed by ou di wan lee's indomitable fist dojo. it's a shocking moment where player agency is completely taken away from you and these two characters are just gone forever.
the earthen heart shifu and the remaining disciple respond to this transgression by attacking the indomitable fist dojo in what is quite frankly one of the most boring segments of gameplay in the game. i love the combat in live a live but the enemies here felt way too spongey, especially when i was using a disciple i invested into exclusively. even when you get to the room with the boss, you have to go through more of a gauntlet of enemies and it just stops being fun to me. regardless the narrative is strong enough to carry the mid stretch of gameplay, with your remaining disciple defeating ou di wan lee with the earthen heart style's strongest technique, heavenly peaks descent, and succesfully succeeding your master. the story ends with the remaining disciple praying at the graves of her comrades, hoping that they're someone they can all be proud of.
the successor handles themes of legacy, how we will be remembered, how we want to be remembered, and the perspective of those with someone's legacy thrusted upon them. this is also the only chapter where you can have a female protagonist, which makes some people really mad for some reason. seems like more of a fundamental misunderstanding of live a live's roots in film/anime etc. but it really isn't a big deal. the successor's story is ultimately a very by the numbers one, but the twist in the middle and the confrontation at the end honestly make it all worth it. it's also really nice that the fat character who likes to eat is still treated seriously, i feel like a lot of media even now struggles with letting fat characters be treated like humans.
- Near Future, The Outsider
"Yeah, people can suck. We can be selfish - look out only for ourselves. But if you focus only on the bad - judge them at their worst, well... You've already made up your mind, haven't you?"
the outsider is without a doubt my favorite part of the game which seems to be a controversial statement in the fandom from what i can tell. it's based very heavily on mecha anime, with a sing along intro in the super famicom version, and a full on intro sang by hironobu kageyama in the remake. it's fucking great. akira and lawless/matsu are incredibly compelling characters with a great dynamic ("isn't it obvious? i'm a local business man!" is the best introduction to a character ever) and the way the story progresses around them is nice. the supporting cast is also really great, with the antagonists and dr. tobei being some of the most interesting characters in the game. there's also the mind reading/telekenesis mechanic that makes akira unique, letting him peep into people's thoughts which is used to progress at points.
the main antagonist of the outsider, odeo, is an ancient god who is resurrected and fueled by the hatred of liquified humans and, of course, you have to use the steel titan (of Go! Go! Steel Titan! fame) to battle him. it's all really good silly fun with just enough emotion in it to be incredibly enjoyable.
the way the story progresses is also fun. it's almost like a yakuza/like a dragon conspiracy plot, where you unravel the story as you go on before a climactic, melodramatic confrontation at the end as a culmination of the themes of the story and against an antithesis to the main protagonist. as a fan of those games it's a really compelling bite sized narrative of that style and i love it to death, and as an overall narrative it's one of the most compelling out of the initial selection.
the outsider deals with anger and how that can manifest as a force for good or a force for evil. a lot of akira's fighting is based on his anger as a hot tempered teenager, whereas odeo is fueled by the hatred of humans. it has some of the best scenes in the game too, with the intro to megalomania in this chapter being my absolute favorite. i think people tend to not like akira's weaker moveset without understanding the puzzle-like natures that battles outside of the steel titan are supposed to embody, but i'm not too sure.
- Prehistory, The First
"A-A-AIEEEEE!"
i think the first thing to address with prehistory is its localization. in pogo's chapter, all dialog is conveyed with cartoonish speech bubbles and grunts. at the end of his chapter, he yells which is implied to be the first words uttered by a human. anyone with context clues or any knowledge of japanese can probably figure out that "ai" is supposed to be "love" but this is changed in the localization. i personally don't think it's a big deal? he says this after what is implied to be having sex so it isn't too far of a stretch. in the final chapter, if you picked pogo, the final antagonist directly comments on pogo's yell by basically affirming that he is saying "love" which is a bit of a slow burn, but honestly anyone complaining about this already has the context to understand what he's saying in the first place without it being so blatantly on the nose for everyone else.
anyway!
the first presents itself with a very simple narrative with one of the more interesting gameplay gimmicks. to get into random encounters, you need to "hunt" for the animals/creatures by sniffing them out and moving yourself towards the direction of the clouds created by your sniffing. it's used pretty interestingly and there is a super boss you can track down in this way but i haven't personally gone out of my way to find him.
the main theme of this chapter is pretty blatantly love between other humans and that love being misguided, there isn't really any other way to spin it honestly. pogo and his friend gori mainly go through this chapter for the sake of love, with gori getting a weird harem of bonzi buddies for some reason, and pogo trying to save beru, a girl he fell in love with. the antagonists, on the other hand, are a different native tribe who are planning to sacrifice beru to ODO (or odo if you're the remake i guess), the last living dinosaur who they worship as a god as a means of appeasing it, and at the end the tribes make peace with each otehr and that love between humans is able to spread in a way that isn't misguided.
the first is probably the chapter i have the least to say about substance wise. it takes place in prehistory and is mostly inspired by stories like that, along with slapstick comedy. it works fine enough, it just doesn't leave much of an impact. regardless i do think it is necessary for the game and i obviously wouldn't cut it (nor would i any other part).
- Distant Future, The Mechanical Heart
"Have we grown so tired of ourselves…?"
in the mechanical heart you play as cube, a robot constructed on the cogito ergo sum, a freight ship carrying the behemoth, a fucked up space monster, to be used as a weapon by humans. the chapter is very heavily inspired by claustrophobic and tense sci-fi films, namely 2001: a space odyssey and aliens, and it presents itself as an rpg with no (mandatory) combat until the very end. effectively pioneering "walking-sim" type exploration rpgs like yume nikki, most of the gameplay of the mechanical heart is exploring the ship and interacting with the people on it. it's a really nice change of pace, especially from the more combat heavy chapters and i'd definitely recommend playing it after one of those, or before one of them if you're near the end of the game.
while onboard the cogito ergo sum, you experience first hand the turbulent and vitriolic relationshiops the crew have with each other, which leads to shit eventually hitting the fan due to the rogue AI, OD-10, deciding that this crew needs to be exterminated to preserve order on the ship due to their instability. the behemoth is let loose, and now live a live is suddenly a horror game and a bit of a murder mystery/mystery in general. there's a lot of very well utilized tension and drama and the way the crew reacts to the stress of the situation is great.
the themes of the mechanical heart are plain and simply humanity, and where it stems from. cube shines through as the most human and loving of the entire crew, who are constantly at each others' throats. cube even shows colonel darthe, a man who hates him initially, nothing but love and kindness in spite of his disdain. the equally mechanical AI, OD-10, however, was created by humans for the sake of efficiency and not much else, leaving it to inevitably disregard humanity when it seemed to get in the way of its objective.
beating the chapter technically resolves in a mission failure, with the behemoth being killed and most of the crew dead, but do orders and missions really matter when humanity is at stake?
- Twilight of Edo Era Japan, The Infiltrator
"We who wield the power of life and death... Wield not the power to shape the world and its people as we see fit. And though there is great risk, there is great reward to be found in trust and mercy."
the infiltrator is a very interestng chapter based on bakumatsu films. it involves oboromaru, a ninja of the enma clan, who is tasked with rescuing a political prisoner. the gameplay involves sneaking through a labyrinthian castle, and presents a gimmick that might be familiar if you know anything about video games from 2015 onward. you are presented with the choice to either kill indiscriminately, or to spare as many as you can while carrying out your mission and stopping ode iou from through japan into chaos. the gimmick itself is interesting and is very obviously proto-undertale-esque but its execution isn't the best. on your first playthrough you should really just be going through neutrally, avoiding what you can and killing what you can't, because killing or sparing everything is an exercise in patience if you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of this castle and how to navigate it. it's a very fun chapter regardless but i think there is something to be said about how much more enjoyable it is by ignoring the gimmick it plays with.
the infiltrator's themes are very clear cut as well, presenting the choice between mercy and cruelty. it's obvious that thematically oboromaru wouldn't slaughter the entire castle and ode iou's cruelty is supposed to juxtapose oboromaru's mercy, but it is a choice you have. you even get rewarded for not killing anyone as opposed to killing everyone which nets you nothing outside of loot you got throughout the chapter. another theme of this chapter is the nature of loyalty to a "nation" and what that even entails, if it even means anything. this one is one of the more vague themes of live a live but i feel like it ties in a lot more to the chapter thematically that the others and is even directly commented on in the ending. either way the chapter is pretty solid in presenting its theme and narrative, even if the player choice involved can get in the way of the inetntions of the writers.
at this point, i'm really hoping you've noticed a connection between the names of the antagonists in these parts and were able to let your brain tie everything together, because embarrassingly enough, i didn't until near the end of the game.
spoilers ahead for some of the best parts of the game, PLEASE do not read further and skip to "Dominion of Love, My Relationship with Live A Live" if you haven't played the game.
- Middle Ages, The Lord of Dark
"You will repay my loyalty in death!"
gameplay wise, the lord of dark is a take on final fantasy and dragon quest plots, with the kingdom's new champion and his allies launching a siege on the lord of dark to rescue the princess of the kingdom. this, however, is merely a curtain for the true story that lay underneath.
oersted's chapter, the lord of dark, is a culmination of the themes presented in the previous chapters. initially, oersted is a man who is loyal to his country, who forgives the world and those who wrong him, who grapples with the legacy thrust upon him, who aspires towards strength, who revels in love, who is kind at heart, and most of all, a man who is deeply human at his core. all of the themes presented in the game via the protagonists or their resolutions are integral parts of oersted's character. however, these character traits are tested. his country casts him aside. the world abandonned him in spite of his forgivenesss. the legacy he had been thrusted into had culminated in nothing. the strength he aspired towards couldn't save anyone. the love he had was betrayed. his kindness had been wittled away at. after all of that, what use is there for humanity? what would it mean to just… cast that aside?
this chapter absolutely floored me. the introduction was fun as someone who loves dragon quest and has dabbled in a bit of final fantasy. live a live is obviously no stranger to subversion, but this instance of it was so incredibly well executed. one of the most crushing moments of the game is when oersted's best friend assassinates the king of lucrece to frame oersted, and you have to watch oersted's entire life crumble before him. the people who had once adored him as their champion fear him as a kingslayer, his allies have all died for his sake aside from his former best friend, who had thrown this fate onto him. all he has left is his humanity and love, and after confronting streibough, a man who he saw as his best friend, he loses that too. streibough had convinced princess alethea, the one who oersted loved, that he was the true hero, and told her of oersted's "lies," and after oersted cuts down his closest friend, the woman he loves takes her own life right in front of him.
at this point, oersted can't take it. the world he fought for and loved couldn't be forgiven anymore. if they wanted him to be their dark lord, then that's who he would be. after losing everything, oersted becomes consumed with hatred and fully becomes odio, the lord of dark. he slaughters the kingdom of lucrece, and lays waste to the land. the people who once loved him, who had betrayed him, were given their comeuppance, and in his wake, this world had become…
- Dominion of Hate, The Final Chapter
"O foolish child.
For love's facade he fights… To elder's will life bound… In shadow guides his kin… From hero's fame he flees… On power's throne he sits… In anger finds his strength… Whose heart bleeds more than flesh…
Whose faith in men endures despite their sins.
O child, now come and see… Their true design."
dominion of hate picks up where oersted, and by extension your initial party member of choice, left off. whoever you choose is spirited away to the dominion of hate, to come face to face with the lord of dark who has tormented each characters' time period. if you choose oersted, however, you play as the lord of dark himself, and take control of his incarnations in a boss rush where you battle against the protagonists of their respective time periods. if they start to overcome you, you can unleash armageddon and get to hear one of the best songs in the game. defeating the heroes as oersted, you walk alone through the empty world whose inhabitants had been fell by your blade, before solemnly realizing that it had all been for nothing.
i wouldn't recommend this as your first ending of the game, it's very much in line with the white ending of shin megami tensei iv, where instead of doing anything to combat the cycle you simply end everything in a moment of weakness.
if you continue with your protagonist of choice, you'll find yourself in the kingdom of lucrece, decimated and wiped of its original population to be turned into the dominion of hate, a form of revenge oersted had enacted upon the world that wronged him. the gameplay in this chapter is very similar to the middle ages, with random encounters and a focus on combat and dungeon crawling. you'll come across the other protagonists and build up your party, doing dungeons and fighting your way through the dominion of hate so you can stand toe to toe with odio.
after reaching odio, it is not just a battle of strength. it isn't even just a square enix-style battle with a twisted man who became god, it is a battle of ideals. oersted, the man who lost everything because of a cold, and uncaring world, who wants to spread his hatred as far as possible, is matched against this group of people who have no reason to even know each other. and this ragtag group responds to oersted's embrace of the cold, uncaring hatred and cruelty of the universe, this same nature that can be found inside humans, with the equally human love and compassion they have experienced and learned to embody throughout their individual journeys.
after defeating odio, the protagonists give their reasons for love and humanity to oersted. they try their hardest to convince him. they spare his life (or you can kill him for the bad ending), when he hadn't given that mercy for others. but he's too far gone, and if you gathered all of the party members in the dominion of hate, you come face to face with the purest incarnation of odio and his hatred. a new track composed for the remake for this true ending, gigalomania, accents this fight. near the end, it seems like your party of 4 can't handle this alone, and when restrained your other friends you've made in this empty, loveless world come to your aid, and when the final blows are dealt… oersted frees himself from odio's grasp. he delivers a final strike to the hatred and evil he had become, that same hatred that invaded the lives of all of these people who chose to forgive him and help him despite that. it's incredibly dorky when it plays out, but despite that it's one of my favorite moments in any game ever. more dialog commences, and before the game ends, you're presented with arguably the most famous line from this game.
"In every heart the seed of dark abides. The makings of a lord when watered well... With hate. Sweet hate. She springs eternal. Sings... All-tempting draught. We'll drink of her again."
and with that, live a live is over. watching the credits for live a live is one of the first times the credits for anything brought me to tears, and i still feele motional whenever i listen to that stellar credits theme, "live for live."
- Dominion of Love, My Relationship with Live A Live
"Farewell. May you find the peace that eluded you in this world in the next."
after finishing live a live, i couldn't sop thinking about it. i've never loved every single aspect of a game before in my life, but here was this quirky snes jrpg that had only recently been sent to the west. for the past few months, live a live and my enjoyment of it have shaped how i interact with media in general, and it'd be an understatement to say i was a bit obsessed. not a day goes by where i don't think of at least one moment in this game, followed by tears, or a warm smile, or chills. i've never been this way with anything before in my life, and i think that means live a live is truly going to be one of the most special pieces of media to me in my entire life. there's also so many little things i didn't mention in this review, like the running gag of watanabe and his father, the little character arcs the side characters all go through, the incredible voice acting in terms of the japanese dub (i am not a fan at all of the english work for live a live, im sad to say) or the beautifully stunning music done once again by the ever talented yoko shimomura, that contribute so much to making this game what it is.
with that being said, how would someone go across recapturing that magic?
as it stands now, there aren't any games that capture what makes live a live special. there are plenty of games that were worked on by the team, namely chrono trigger, and it went on to directly inspire octopath traveler, but it just isn't the same, you know? there's something so inherently special about what live a live is to the point where it's so hard to capture what exactly made it special.
at its core, live a live is a game about humanity, love, and companionship and what happens when those concepts are distorted or you divorce yourself from them, and it's presented through 8 vignettes encapsulating different styles of rpgs as well as different styles of movies, anime, and games. but when you put all of that together in the way that live a live was given to us as, it ends up being so much more than all of that. a simple game about the indomitable human spirit prevailing in the face of the cruel, uncaring nature of the universe and those forsaken by it presented through short form storytelling seems like such an easy idea to replicate, but there never has been and likely never will be a game like live a live. i urge anyone who managed to sit through this, and honestly anyone who didn't, to play live a live. the remake is the ideal way to play the game having streamlined most of the confusing elements of the original as well as having a much nicer presentation. the remake of live a live thankfully doesn't stray far from the original style, sticking with the art style of the in-battle sprites to make the overworld designs higher resolution than the single tile sprites used in the original. it's a great, one of a kind experience that i promise you won't regret.
and remember: no matter what you did, no matter who you are, there will always be a chance for you to Live over Again.
"Whatever happens... We'll survive. That's what we do."
- Introduction
it's been a few months since i've played live a live which is currently (and i'd imagine for quite a while) my favorite game of all time. despite this, my initial review, despite an edit i did to it last month, is not one i'm too happy with so i thought i'd remedy that. this review might just end up be me talking about what live a live means to me, but i think maybe thats okay. this is going to probably be the longest review i have written, and most likely the longest i will write unless we somehow get a sequel to live a live in the future. i also plan on trying to format this a bit differently, starting with my history with the game before transitioning into my experiences with each part of the game in the order i played them and what each part meant to me. i understand that this one is going to be pretty long and won't be for everyone, so don't worry too much if it's too much to read.
mild spoiler warning for the middle ages and dominion of hate chapters, but otherwise i will be keeping this review as spoiler free as possible, with only a few minor spoilers sprinkled in.
as with most of my writing, this is going to be very self indulgent and written for myself. regardless, i hope you enjoy! it's almost 6000 words so please feel free to read by section instead of all at once! i also don't claim to be much of a writer, so apologies if this is hard to read
- My History with Live A Live
my history with live a live is probably like a lot of other peoples' experiences: it was this weird japanese only game that we had only heard of because of toby fox, and perhaps we figured out more about it because of octopath traveler, a game which takes a lot from live a live but ultimately fails to live up to it. but there was something utterly tantalizing inside of octopath, a lingering echo from roots that were clearly there, even if most of the western audience didn't realize it at the time. it was an odd feeling having played octopath traveler around the time it released. most of my play time went towards a replay i attempted after finishing live a live, but when even when i initially played it i felt like there was something more, something just like this that it had to have been taking from, something that it seemed most people around me and mainstream gaming media didn't notice. so many people were in love with this game that felt like it was a hollow shell of something i had never even played before, a shell of something i didn't realize it was a shell of. this prompted me to look a bit more into octopath traveler, and by extension, learn a bit more about live a live. it was all very minimal, i mostly just learned that the scenarios were all different time periods rather than different characters in the same world and that was about the size of it. i think i maybe watched a bit of gameplay from sundown and masaru's chapters but that was about it, but more on that later. it was incredibly interesting from the outset, but the only option to play it was a fan translation that to this day i'm still not the biggest fan of the work done by the group who made it. oh well i thought. i could just play it eventually just to say i had played this game my friends had never heard of, and it seemed neat regardless of that. for the most part, that was the space live a live had occupied in my brain.
- February 9th, 2022. A Classic Comes Alive
on the 9th of february, my girlfriend and i had woken up to watch the nintendo direct, which had come to be something of a tradition for the two of us at this point. upon hearing "a classic comes alive" i joked to her that we were finally getting a remake of genealogy of the holy war, which had been buzzing around in leaks for some time. however, for some reason i can hardly explain, upon seeing masaru's training room in this beautiful hd-2d art style, i jumped up and yelled. i had only possibly seen this room a single time, a time that i struggle to even recall, and it evoked a reaction out of me that would make anyone assume this was a game that was deeply special to me, but at the time it wasn't. live a live was this niche rpg that people only ever mentioned in relation to toby fox's megalovania, or occassionally in the same conversation as one discusses octopath traveler.
honestly this wasn't even that good of a nintendo direct to me. there were some neat things announced, some interesting ports and remakes, and two sequels with "3" in the title that i had absolutely 0 reason to be excited over at the time, even though one of them i had enjoyed the series quite a bit at that point. but for some reason i felt deeply excited, even if the way that excitement manifested was weird and didn't make any sense to me. in terms of rpgs, my mind was mostly occupied with the dragon quest III hd-2d remake, a beautiful remake of one of my favorite games of all time. we still haven't gotten that game, but part of my mind assumed we were getting that first. after all, it had been announced first, right? months passed, and uncharacteristically of me, i did absolutely 0 research into any of the prerelease talk or news of a game i was excited for. i think part of me was bitter when i had realized that this game was impeding the "imminent" release of the dq3 remake, but i have a hard time remembering. regardless, the game's hype cycle chugged along for the next 5 months, and i had honestly forgotten about it until my girlfriend asked if it had released yet.
thank god she reminded me.
- The Wild West, The Wanderer
"I've come to miss the warmth of good company. And a home to hang your hat…"
i managed to start playing live a live only a few days after it released and it was immediately a great time. i started with sundown's "wild west" chapter, and as someone who is a complete and total sucker for the wild west and jrpgs, i was having a great time. the focus on time management was a very interesting direction, even if the time limit was pretty lenient like most other games that present a hard time limit. i will however attribute this to the fact that in the remake, objects that can be interacted with in the overworld will sparkle, which leaves a lot less trial and error to the hands of the player. in terms of the narrative that the wanderer presents, it's a pretty simple "man with no name" style cowboy movie translated into a jrpg on that front. there's a few minor twists near the that retrospectively make sundown a character that's so much more than how he's portrayed. in the end, after facing the specter of revenge and leader of the crazy bunch, o'dio, the sundown kid rides off into the sunset of the american frontier.
despite its simplicity, the wanderer is a story about revenge and it's opposite and equally human emotion, forgiveness. a phantasm of the past who won't forgive and wants revenge on the world that wronged him, and a broken man who won't forgive and wants revenge on himself who wronged the people who should've been there to protect. you'll find that live a live's chapters tend to focus on two mirrored aspects of humanity for its main conflicts, even when it isn't the most immediately obvious, and it's something i very deeply enjoy.
honestly, i would recommend wild west as the starting chapter for most people. there isn't really much better of a way to get someone acclimated to your battle system than 1 on 1 combat, even better if you're shooting revolvers at each other. the main gimmick of the chapter is also one that's really easy to come to terms with for just about anyone and it won't leave too many people frustrated.
- Present Day, The Strongest
"When the dust settles—when you're old and weak—that strength of spirit's all you'll have!"
the strongest is probably one of the most fun parts of any game i've ever played, and i'm half convinced they did this part just because of yoko shimomura's work on street fighter 2. with this being said, it's very deliberately based on fighting games as well as boxing movies in general. you play as masaru takahara, a man who aspires to be the strongest in the world. along the way, you fight martial artists from around the world, ala street fighter, acquire their abilities in combat like a blue mage (or mega man), and select them through a megaman esque character select screen. it's all really good fun and each fight is a puzzle to figure out how to lure out their best moves to make yourself the best you can be.
after you best the champions of each respective style, odie o'bright makes his entrance. odie o'bright is a twisted man who kills those who could oppose him in his path to power. after a confrontation where masaru calls upon the strength of the masters he owes his current strength to, odie o'bright is defeated, yet warns masaru of his life that will be filled with endless battles of those who pursue the peak of strength just as he had. the chapter comes to a close with an unknown challenger declaring his intentions to masaru, and the chapter closes.
the themes of the strongest deal with strength, and those who use it to better themselves and those who misuse it for the sake of power. odie o'bright is the antithesis to everything masaru is, a man who takes as he pleases and kills those who could pose a threat to him, while masaru would learn what he could and appreciates the challenges that come from sitting at the top. i think you could also read it as the difference between excitement from a challenge and the fear that opposes it and what that drives other people to, if only because of how open ended the strongest is. it's incredibly simple, but it's so good and it's probably the one i go back to and play the most.
- Imperial China, The Successor
" ... I...I think I understand... I've been judged. Mocked by men. I thought about doing the same. Hurting them. Hurting others. But I couldn't. I know that pain. Others shouldn't."
the successor is incredibly interesing and i think there's good reason why it's the one people talk about the most when it comes to discussion of this game. it starts as a pretty typical kung fu movie, where the old martial arts master wants to pass on his knowledge to a disciple. you can choose to train the three potential disciples anyway you please, and whoever you invest in the most is the one who succeeds the earthen heart shifu.
any futher praises for this chapter i don't think i can express without a spoiler warning, so…
mild spoiler warning, but the two you didn't invest into, who could seem entirely random to someone who invested in them as equally as possible, are killed by ou di wan lee's indomitable fist dojo. it's a shocking moment where player agency is completely taken away from you and these two characters are just gone forever.
the earthen heart shifu and the remaining disciple respond to this transgression by attacking the indomitable fist dojo in what is quite frankly one of the most boring segments of gameplay in the game. i love the combat in live a live but the enemies here felt way too spongey, especially when i was using a disciple i invested into exclusively. even when you get to the room with the boss, you have to go through more of a gauntlet of enemies and it just stops being fun to me. regardless the narrative is strong enough to carry the mid stretch of gameplay, with your remaining disciple defeating ou di wan lee with the earthen heart style's strongest technique, heavenly peaks descent, and succesfully succeeding your master. the story ends with the remaining disciple praying at the graves of her comrades, hoping that they're someone they can all be proud of.
the successor handles themes of legacy, how we will be remembered, how we want to be remembered, and the perspective of those with someone's legacy thrusted upon them. this is also the only chapter where you can have a female protagonist, which makes some people really mad for some reason. seems like more of a fundamental misunderstanding of live a live's roots in film/anime etc. but it really isn't a big deal. the successor's story is ultimately a very by the numbers one, but the twist in the middle and the confrontation at the end honestly make it all worth it. it's also really nice that the fat character who likes to eat is still treated seriously, i feel like a lot of media even now struggles with letting fat characters be treated like humans.
- Near Future, The Outsider
"Yeah, people can suck. We can be selfish - look out only for ourselves. But if you focus only on the bad - judge them at their worst, well... You've already made up your mind, haven't you?"
the outsider is without a doubt my favorite part of the game which seems to be a controversial statement in the fandom from what i can tell. it's based very heavily on mecha anime, with a sing along intro in the super famicom version, and a full on intro sang by hironobu kageyama in the remake. it's fucking great. akira and lawless/matsu are incredibly compelling characters with a great dynamic ("isn't it obvious? i'm a local business man!" is the best introduction to a character ever) and the way the story progresses around them is nice. the supporting cast is also really great, with the antagonists and dr. tobei being some of the most interesting characters in the game. there's also the mind reading/telekenesis mechanic that makes akira unique, letting him peep into people's thoughts which is used to progress at points.
the main antagonist of the outsider, odeo, is an ancient god who is resurrected and fueled by the hatred of liquified humans and, of course, you have to use the steel titan (of Go! Go! Steel Titan! fame) to battle him. it's all really good silly fun with just enough emotion in it to be incredibly enjoyable.
the way the story progresses is also fun. it's almost like a yakuza/like a dragon conspiracy plot, where you unravel the story as you go on before a climactic, melodramatic confrontation at the end as a culmination of the themes of the story and against an antithesis to the main protagonist. as a fan of those games it's a really compelling bite sized narrative of that style and i love it to death, and as an overall narrative it's one of the most compelling out of the initial selection.
the outsider deals with anger and how that can manifest as a force for good or a force for evil. a lot of akira's fighting is based on his anger as a hot tempered teenager, whereas odeo is fueled by the hatred of humans. it has some of the best scenes in the game too, with the intro to megalomania in this chapter being my absolute favorite. i think people tend to not like akira's weaker moveset without understanding the puzzle-like natures that battles outside of the steel titan are supposed to embody, but i'm not too sure.
- Prehistory, The First
"A-A-AIEEEEE!"
i think the first thing to address with prehistory is its localization. in pogo's chapter, all dialog is conveyed with cartoonish speech bubbles and grunts. at the end of his chapter, he yells which is implied to be the first words uttered by a human. anyone with context clues or any knowledge of japanese can probably figure out that "ai" is supposed to be "love" but this is changed in the localization. i personally don't think it's a big deal? he says this after what is implied to be having sex so it isn't too far of a stretch. in the final chapter, if you picked pogo, the final antagonist directly comments on pogo's yell by basically affirming that he is saying "love" which is a bit of a slow burn, but honestly anyone complaining about this already has the context to understand what he's saying in the first place without it being so blatantly on the nose for everyone else.
anyway!
the first presents itself with a very simple narrative with one of the more interesting gameplay gimmicks. to get into random encounters, you need to "hunt" for the animals/creatures by sniffing them out and moving yourself towards the direction of the clouds created by your sniffing. it's used pretty interestingly and there is a super boss you can track down in this way but i haven't personally gone out of my way to find him.
the main theme of this chapter is pretty blatantly love between other humans and that love being misguided, there isn't really any other way to spin it honestly. pogo and his friend gori mainly go through this chapter for the sake of love, with gori getting a weird harem of bonzi buddies for some reason, and pogo trying to save beru, a girl he fell in love with. the antagonists, on the other hand, are a different native tribe who are planning to sacrifice beru to ODO (or odo if you're the remake i guess), the last living dinosaur who they worship as a god as a means of appeasing it, and at the end the tribes make peace with each otehr and that love between humans is able to spread in a way that isn't misguided.
the first is probably the chapter i have the least to say about substance wise. it takes place in prehistory and is mostly inspired by stories like that, along with slapstick comedy. it works fine enough, it just doesn't leave much of an impact. regardless i do think it is necessary for the game and i obviously wouldn't cut it (nor would i any other part).
- Distant Future, The Mechanical Heart
"Have we grown so tired of ourselves…?"
in the mechanical heart you play as cube, a robot constructed on the cogito ergo sum, a freight ship carrying the behemoth, a fucked up space monster, to be used as a weapon by humans. the chapter is very heavily inspired by claustrophobic and tense sci-fi films, namely 2001: a space odyssey and aliens, and it presents itself as an rpg with no (mandatory) combat until the very end. effectively pioneering "walking-sim" type exploration rpgs like yume nikki, most of the gameplay of the mechanical heart is exploring the ship and interacting with the people on it. it's a really nice change of pace, especially from the more combat heavy chapters and i'd definitely recommend playing it after one of those, or before one of them if you're near the end of the game.
while onboard the cogito ergo sum, you experience first hand the turbulent and vitriolic relationshiops the crew have with each other, which leads to shit eventually hitting the fan due to the rogue AI, OD-10, deciding that this crew needs to be exterminated to preserve order on the ship due to their instability. the behemoth is let loose, and now live a live is suddenly a horror game and a bit of a murder mystery/mystery in general. there's a lot of very well utilized tension and drama and the way the crew reacts to the stress of the situation is great.
the themes of the mechanical heart are plain and simply humanity, and where it stems from. cube shines through as the most human and loving of the entire crew, who are constantly at each others' throats. cube even shows colonel darthe, a man who hates him initially, nothing but love and kindness in spite of his disdain. the equally mechanical AI, OD-10, however, was created by humans for the sake of efficiency and not much else, leaving it to inevitably disregard humanity when it seemed to get in the way of its objective.
beating the chapter technically resolves in a mission failure, with the behemoth being killed and most of the crew dead, but do orders and missions really matter when humanity is at stake?
- Twilight of Edo Era Japan, The Infiltrator
"We who wield the power of life and death... Wield not the power to shape the world and its people as we see fit. And though there is great risk, there is great reward to be found in trust and mercy."
the infiltrator is a very interestng chapter based on bakumatsu films. it involves oboromaru, a ninja of the enma clan, who is tasked with rescuing a political prisoner. the gameplay involves sneaking through a labyrinthian castle, and presents a gimmick that might be familiar if you know anything about video games from 2015 onward. you are presented with the choice to either kill indiscriminately, or to spare as many as you can while carrying out your mission and stopping ode iou from through japan into chaos. the gimmick itself is interesting and is very obviously proto-undertale-esque but its execution isn't the best. on your first playthrough you should really just be going through neutrally, avoiding what you can and killing what you can't, because killing or sparing everything is an exercise in patience if you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of this castle and how to navigate it. it's a very fun chapter regardless but i think there is something to be said about how much more enjoyable it is by ignoring the gimmick it plays with.
the infiltrator's themes are very clear cut as well, presenting the choice between mercy and cruelty. it's obvious that thematically oboromaru wouldn't slaughter the entire castle and ode iou's cruelty is supposed to juxtapose oboromaru's mercy, but it is a choice you have. you even get rewarded for not killing anyone as opposed to killing everyone which nets you nothing outside of loot you got throughout the chapter. another theme of this chapter is the nature of loyalty to a "nation" and what that even entails, if it even means anything. this one is one of the more vague themes of live a live but i feel like it ties in a lot more to the chapter thematically that the others and is even directly commented on in the ending. either way the chapter is pretty solid in presenting its theme and narrative, even if the player choice involved can get in the way of the inetntions of the writers.
at this point, i'm really hoping you've noticed a connection between the names of the antagonists in these parts and were able to let your brain tie everything together, because embarrassingly enough, i didn't until near the end of the game.
spoilers ahead for some of the best parts of the game, PLEASE do not read further and skip to "Dominion of Love, My Relationship with Live A Live" if you haven't played the game.
- Middle Ages, The Lord of Dark
"You will repay my loyalty in death!"
gameplay wise, the lord of dark is a take on final fantasy and dragon quest plots, with the kingdom's new champion and his allies launching a siege on the lord of dark to rescue the princess of the kingdom. this, however, is merely a curtain for the true story that lay underneath.
oersted's chapter, the lord of dark, is a culmination of the themes presented in the previous chapters. initially, oersted is a man who is loyal to his country, who forgives the world and those who wrong him, who grapples with the legacy thrust upon him, who aspires towards strength, who revels in love, who is kind at heart, and most of all, a man who is deeply human at his core. all of the themes presented in the game via the protagonists or their resolutions are integral parts of oersted's character. however, these character traits are tested. his country casts him aside. the world abandonned him in spite of his forgivenesss. the legacy he had been thrusted into had culminated in nothing. the strength he aspired towards couldn't save anyone. the love he had was betrayed. his kindness had been wittled away at. after all of that, what use is there for humanity? what would it mean to just… cast that aside?
this chapter absolutely floored me. the introduction was fun as someone who loves dragon quest and has dabbled in a bit of final fantasy. live a live is obviously no stranger to subversion, but this instance of it was so incredibly well executed. one of the most crushing moments of the game is when oersted's best friend assassinates the king of lucrece to frame oersted, and you have to watch oersted's entire life crumble before him. the people who had once adored him as their champion fear him as a kingslayer, his allies have all died for his sake aside from his former best friend, who had thrown this fate onto him. all he has left is his humanity and love, and after confronting streibough, a man who he saw as his best friend, he loses that too. streibough had convinced princess alethea, the one who oersted loved, that he was the true hero, and told her of oersted's "lies," and after oersted cuts down his closest friend, the woman he loves takes her own life right in front of him.
at this point, oersted can't take it. the world he fought for and loved couldn't be forgiven anymore. if they wanted him to be their dark lord, then that's who he would be. after losing everything, oersted becomes consumed with hatred and fully becomes odio, the lord of dark. he slaughters the kingdom of lucrece, and lays waste to the land. the people who once loved him, who had betrayed him, were given their comeuppance, and in his wake, this world had become…
- Dominion of Hate, The Final Chapter
"O foolish child.
For love's facade he fights… To elder's will life bound… In shadow guides his kin… From hero's fame he flees… On power's throne he sits… In anger finds his strength… Whose heart bleeds more than flesh…
Whose faith in men endures despite their sins.
O child, now come and see… Their true design."
dominion of hate picks up where oersted, and by extension your initial party member of choice, left off. whoever you choose is spirited away to the dominion of hate, to come face to face with the lord of dark who has tormented each characters' time period. if you choose oersted, however, you play as the lord of dark himself, and take control of his incarnations in a boss rush where you battle against the protagonists of their respective time periods. if they start to overcome you, you can unleash armageddon and get to hear one of the best songs in the game. defeating the heroes as oersted, you walk alone through the empty world whose inhabitants had been fell by your blade, before solemnly realizing that it had all been for nothing.
i wouldn't recommend this as your first ending of the game, it's very much in line with the white ending of shin megami tensei iv, where instead of doing anything to combat the cycle you simply end everything in a moment of weakness.
if you continue with your protagonist of choice, you'll find yourself in the kingdom of lucrece, decimated and wiped of its original population to be turned into the dominion of hate, a form of revenge oersted had enacted upon the world that wronged him. the gameplay in this chapter is very similar to the middle ages, with random encounters and a focus on combat and dungeon crawling. you'll come across the other protagonists and build up your party, doing dungeons and fighting your way through the dominion of hate so you can stand toe to toe with odio.
after reaching odio, it is not just a battle of strength. it isn't even just a square enix-style battle with a twisted man who became god, it is a battle of ideals. oersted, the man who lost everything because of a cold, and uncaring world, who wants to spread his hatred as far as possible, is matched against this group of people who have no reason to even know each other. and this ragtag group responds to oersted's embrace of the cold, uncaring hatred and cruelty of the universe, this same nature that can be found inside humans, with the equally human love and compassion they have experienced and learned to embody throughout their individual journeys.
after defeating odio, the protagonists give their reasons for love and humanity to oersted. they try their hardest to convince him. they spare his life (or you can kill him for the bad ending), when he hadn't given that mercy for others. but he's too far gone, and if you gathered all of the party members in the dominion of hate, you come face to face with the purest incarnation of odio and his hatred. a new track composed for the remake for this true ending, gigalomania, accents this fight. near the end, it seems like your party of 4 can't handle this alone, and when restrained your other friends you've made in this empty, loveless world come to your aid, and when the final blows are dealt… oersted frees himself from odio's grasp. he delivers a final strike to the hatred and evil he had become, that same hatred that invaded the lives of all of these people who chose to forgive him and help him despite that. it's incredibly dorky when it plays out, but despite that it's one of my favorite moments in any game ever. more dialog commences, and before the game ends, you're presented with arguably the most famous line from this game.
"In every heart the seed of dark abides. The makings of a lord when watered well... With hate. Sweet hate. She springs eternal. Sings... All-tempting draught. We'll drink of her again."
and with that, live a live is over. watching the credits for live a live is one of the first times the credits for anything brought me to tears, and i still feele motional whenever i listen to that stellar credits theme, "live for live."
- Dominion of Love, My Relationship with Live A Live
"Farewell. May you find the peace that eluded you in this world in the next."
after finishing live a live, i couldn't sop thinking about it. i've never loved every single aspect of a game before in my life, but here was this quirky snes jrpg that had only recently been sent to the west. for the past few months, live a live and my enjoyment of it have shaped how i interact with media in general, and it'd be an understatement to say i was a bit obsessed. not a day goes by where i don't think of at least one moment in this game, followed by tears, or a warm smile, or chills. i've never been this way with anything before in my life, and i think that means live a live is truly going to be one of the most special pieces of media to me in my entire life. there's also so many little things i didn't mention in this review, like the running gag of watanabe and his father, the little character arcs the side characters all go through, the incredible voice acting in terms of the japanese dub (i am not a fan at all of the english work for live a live, im sad to say) or the beautifully stunning music done once again by the ever talented yoko shimomura, that contribute so much to making this game what it is.
with that being said, how would someone go across recapturing that magic?
as it stands now, there aren't any games that capture what makes live a live special. there are plenty of games that were worked on by the team, namely chrono trigger, and it went on to directly inspire octopath traveler, but it just isn't the same, you know? there's something so inherently special about what live a live is to the point where it's so hard to capture what exactly made it special.
at its core, live a live is a game about humanity, love, and companionship and what happens when those concepts are distorted or you divorce yourself from them, and it's presented through 8 vignettes encapsulating different styles of rpgs as well as different styles of movies, anime, and games. but when you put all of that together in the way that live a live was given to us as, it ends up being so much more than all of that. a simple game about the indomitable human spirit prevailing in the face of the cruel, uncaring nature of the universe and those forsaken by it presented through short form storytelling seems like such an easy idea to replicate, but there never has been and likely never will be a game like live a live. i urge anyone who managed to sit through this, and honestly anyone who didn't, to play live a live. the remake is the ideal way to play the game having streamlined most of the confusing elements of the original as well as having a much nicer presentation. the remake of live a live thankfully doesn't stray far from the original style, sticking with the art style of the in-battle sprites to make the overworld designs higher resolution than the single tile sprites used in the original. it's a great, one of a kind experience that i promise you won't regret.
and remember: no matter what you did, no matter who you are, there will always be a chance for you to Live over Again.
"Whatever happens... We'll survive. That's what we do."
Hollow Knight
2017
this game being so boring to me every time i've tried to play it made me think i just didn't like metroidvanias with how much hype there was around it. turns out after playing more metroidvanias i just really don't like hollow knight. minus half a star for keeping me away from one of my current favorite genres for as long as it did. on my hands and knees begging team cherry to make silksong fun
Octopath Traveler
2018
octopath traveler is like if all of the asinine, bullshit, uninformed, absolute headass opinions videogamedunkey has had about what makes a jrpg bad were real and made into a game
Katamari Damacy
2004
i think sincerely labeling people as contrarians is silly, but i also genuinely can't think of any other reason why someone wouldn't love these games