elxdandy
2003
The gameplay is slick and the minor gameplay additions from the first game are all really great. Unfortunately the single player modes are very repetitive, and I found the AI to be really poor. On defense they will mostly just stand in front of you waiting to get styled on, or you can simply run around them.
One issue I have with the Pokemon games is that they have an extremely slow pace, so this game was very refreshing with how quickly you get into the game and how soon you have access to the advanced game systems. The monster breeding is very deep and addicting and makes catching monsters really compelling. Even though the game is short there is an extensive and challenging end game that utilizes random dungeons and worlds. My only issue with the game is that the monster catching economy is very frustrating. You don't get any money from winning random battles, but there are also aren't many training battles in the main game to get you money. You're dependent on what the games gives you out in the wild (which I found very stingy) or selling treasures that you find in the dungeon. I found myself out of money pretty often and not able to afford the bait necessary to catch monsters. This can make catching a specific monster for a specific skill very frustrating. I know that this game has been remade (I haven't played it), so there may be some quality of life adjustments in those versions that fix this issue. A big recommendation for anyone who loves monster trainer games.
If you walk into this game expecting a modern roguelite you will be disappointed with how frustrating it can be. Unlike modern games there's no sense of failing forward. Whereas on most modern games a bunk run will at least net you a few resources towards some passive bonuses on your next run, for Shiren a bunk run just means 30 mins to an 1 hour down the toilet before you're right back at the beginning with absolutely nothing. The game requires keen knowledge on its numerous systems, a little bit of creative thinking, and of course the almighty blessing of RNGesus. This will be more frustrating than fun for a lot of people, but for certain sickos this game will just be endlessly addicting. This game is a great gateway from roguelite to roguelike as it has a lot of great modern quality of life features. The music and storyline are non-existent, but if the gameplay loop resonates with you, you will fall in love.
This review contains spoilers
Man where to start on this one. Like many people I considered this game a masterpiece back when I first played it and generally stuck to that opinion through my many playthroughs. This is the first time I've played it in about 5 years.
Let's start with the obvious. This game has aged, but that mostly has to do with the insane strides stealth games have made since its release. Really one thing I've come to realize about MGS 1/2 is that they were never really stealth games, but just Zelda-ish adventure games that emphasized stealth. You can definitely see this in the original two MSX games which were top down adventure games, and Solid 1 and 2 are very closely related to them. As an adventure game though, I still found it quite enjoyable. I think its okay to let this idea go that the first four games(1,2, and Solid 1 and 2) were stealth games. This playthrough I wasn't feeling precious about my final ranking so I was able to play recklessly with the game giving me enough wiggle room for it not to be too frustrating. I found playing stealthy could be very tedious and boring.
The most disappointing thing to me gameplay wise was definitely the boss fights which is huge considering these titles are most known for their boss fights. I feel like there were definitely fights that were designed primarily to be a cinematic showcase for graphics at the time (the Ray Fights, the Harrier fight, the standoff against Fortune), and these hold up the least well because they run too long for being very simple. The Vamp fight suffered from being too simple and taking way too long. My favorite bosses were the Fatman fight where it required you to juggle dodging attacks and defusing bombs and the final fight against Solidus which had an excellent balance between being cinematic and having fun gameplay. A big step down from Solid.
Then there's the story of course! What I still like about this game is it maintained some balance between Kojima's yawn inducing monologuing and his batshit conspiracy weaving. I still found the plot about The Patriots and their ploy to control all information captivating and fun. It leads to a lot of great, "You fool! That was OUR plan ALL ALONG!" moments which I always love. Sandwiched between that is hack metaphysical discussions. What I was also surprised by was how much I liked Raiden's story. The most disappointing thing about is that he really takes a backseat to the melodrama when there were plenty of opportunities to explore the really interesting themes of the game through his own struggle. Instead Kojima does what Kojima does and monologues every point he's trying to make to death. There's also the absolutely dreadful Otacon incest plot. I feel like this doesn't serve any purpose in this game's narrative or in the narrative of the series as a whole except to assassinate a beloved character and take up unnecessary game time.
I walked away from this game with a mixed bag. I will always love it just because I love the world and the characters, but there's plenty of flaws in its gameplay and narrative that are worth criticizing. I still personally prefer this one to 3 just because the gameplay to cutscene ratio is still in favor of gameplay on this one. If you love this series odds are you already replay these games every so often. If you're going through them for the first time and didn't feel grabbed by Solid, I don't think Solid 2 will change your mind.
Let's start with the obvious. This game has aged, but that mostly has to do with the insane strides stealth games have made since its release. Really one thing I've come to realize about MGS 1/2 is that they were never really stealth games, but just Zelda-ish adventure games that emphasized stealth. You can definitely see this in the original two MSX games which were top down adventure games, and Solid 1 and 2 are very closely related to them. As an adventure game though, I still found it quite enjoyable. I think its okay to let this idea go that the first four games(1,2, and Solid 1 and 2) were stealth games. This playthrough I wasn't feeling precious about my final ranking so I was able to play recklessly with the game giving me enough wiggle room for it not to be too frustrating. I found playing stealthy could be very tedious and boring.
The most disappointing thing to me gameplay wise was definitely the boss fights which is huge considering these titles are most known for their boss fights. I feel like there were definitely fights that were designed primarily to be a cinematic showcase for graphics at the time (the Ray Fights, the Harrier fight, the standoff against Fortune), and these hold up the least well because they run too long for being very simple. The Vamp fight suffered from being too simple and taking way too long. My favorite bosses were the Fatman fight where it required you to juggle dodging attacks and defusing bombs and the final fight against Solidus which had an excellent balance between being cinematic and having fun gameplay. A big step down from Solid.
Then there's the story of course! What I still like about this game is it maintained some balance between Kojima's yawn inducing monologuing and his batshit conspiracy weaving. I still found the plot about The Patriots and their ploy to control all information captivating and fun. It leads to a lot of great, "You fool! That was OUR plan ALL ALONG!" moments which I always love. Sandwiched between that is hack metaphysical discussions. What I was also surprised by was how much I liked Raiden's story. The most disappointing thing about is that he really takes a backseat to the melodrama when there were plenty of opportunities to explore the really interesting themes of the game through his own struggle. Instead Kojima does what Kojima does and monologues every point he's trying to make to death. There's also the absolutely dreadful Otacon incest plot. I feel like this doesn't serve any purpose in this game's narrative or in the narrative of the series as a whole except to assassinate a beloved character and take up unnecessary game time.
I walked away from this game with a mixed bag. I will always love it just because I love the world and the characters, but there's plenty of flaws in its gameplay and narrative that are worth criticizing. I still personally prefer this one to 3 just because the gameplay to cutscene ratio is still in favor of gameplay on this one. If you love this series odds are you already replay these games every so often. If you're going through them for the first time and didn't feel grabbed by Solid, I don't think Solid 2 will change your mind.
Combines a little bit of Hotline Miami with a little bit of Batman style combat. The fighting is nice and the game does a good job of introducing more challenging combat situations along with an expanding skillset. Even though the game is fairly short I still thought it ran a bit long for what it was. The music and storyline weren't notable enough to keep me really interested in it and I found myself skipping through dialog just to get to the fighting again.
Despite the extremely unpleasant and unlikable characters, I was willing to give this game some grace due to its cool setting and the base line competence of the game play for these Super Massive games. However, the plot truly sucks. The twist at the end is as bad as everyone has told you and it really does ruin the entirety of the experience.
2022
I've never been a huge fan of visual novels so I really liked how the RPG elements were implemented into this to add some more gameplay flavor to it. I felt that the writing was competent, but it never quite resonated with me. I did enjoy its chill pace, and I feel like this would be a great game for introducing someone to RPGs.
Terrible combat. Awful controls. Horrible camera.
And yet 10 minutes in you will never notice. Silent Hill 2 remains a pinnacle of survival horror games, the greatest Silent Hill game, and possibly the crowning achievement of the golden age of survival horror. The game still manages to be incredibly immersive with its environments and disturbing ambient music. The plot still resonates long after its emotional twist has become part of the gaming unconscious.
And yet 10 minutes in you will never notice. Silent Hill 2 remains a pinnacle of survival horror games, the greatest Silent Hill game, and possibly the crowning achievement of the golden age of survival horror. The game still manages to be incredibly immersive with its environments and disturbing ambient music. The plot still resonates long after its emotional twist has become part of the gaming unconscious.
2021
Has a really interesting world and systems in place, but is an extremely frustrating game to play. I'm not talking about the quest and land placement systems which I actually like, but the action RPG gameplay itself which is too slow and too simple. On top of that the navigation of dungeons can be extremely frustrating as you're wandering through identical hallways with no map having to fight the same enemies over and over again that you usually can't skip. It's a shame because the game looks and sounds incredible. This is peak 90s Square. I do have a slight beef with how the remaster looks. The backgrounds have this AI-upscaled, smoothed look to them, but they didn't do anything with the sprites which look great in the original but look like a garbled mess against the HD backgrounds. Would have been better just to have the game playing at the original resolution and unfortunately there's not an option to enable that.
Fun for a night or two for playing with friends as it won't take long to go through all the courses, but I wish it had more customization options. For example it would be great if you could set the power ups to only be the randomizer or could do something to mess more with the physics and gravity.
One of the things that really makes or breaks an action RPG for me is speed. It's what made Diablo and its various clones so successful. Phantasy Star Online has a significantly slower pace and it can be really to its detriment. The graphics and music are nice and unique, something that you don't see hardly any of in the sphere of Diablo like dungeon crawlers. If you're playing on consoles its fun to play in splitscreen. This is a "you had to be there" kind of game. I never got a chance to play this online back in the day and played a little of the PC version on a private server, but I can tell that it must have been mindblowing. There's a lot of early Monster Hunter DNA in here too. Worth checking out as a historical artifact if you've got no nostalgia attached to it.
2016
An awful game with absolutely baffling design. For an example of how this game works, you may have two enemies in front of you. Both are the same enemy, but each will have a different set of elemental weaknesses. Some may be giant. Those that are giant may have "giant" status or "elite" status, both will have a completely different set of elemental weakness. Multiply that by 10 or 20 as you will constantly be fighting enemies, each with different elemental weaknesses so that you're constantly switching weapons to be able to inflict damage. You'll also be constantly managing the upgrades on your 4 weapons as well as you will pick.up.so.much.shit in this game. The UI is TERRIBLE and it is extremely time consuming to move around the different weapon components, and a huge pain in the ass if you want to trade out one weapon for another just to see if you like it. Barely fun with friends, and that's only because the game graciously lets you adjust the difficulty scale. If you're playing with 4 people and set the difficulty to the easiest setting, you can finish the game in one merciful hour. It's a shame because when the game is on the easiest setting where you can ignore all the shlooter RPG aspects of it, it can be quite fun and frantic.
2021
A trashy, silly alternative to Phasmophobia that's definitely more frustrating than fun at times, but I can't rate a game that features a giant Undertaker -esque demon cowboy ghost blasting you and your friends with a gun less than 4 stars.
It's hard not to be too critical on this game since it was such a long time before we got it after Until Dawn. As a successor it feels like a failure as the branching paths, character relationships, and plot are far inferior to Until Dawn. However it does still fill that adventure-horror movie niche. Still worth a playthrough since it is so short, but is mostly invalidated by the existence of The Quarry. Play if you've played Until Dawn and The Quarry and still want more.
I had anticipated Mercenaries not holding up like many open world games that were its contemporaries, however I was pleasantly surprised at how excellent it was. Mercenaries may seem limited in its scope compared to modern open world games, but the restraints of the technology created a really tight and fun open world playground. The game never tried to punish you for outsmarting it, and it was always satisfying to use a helicopter to glide right over a gauntlet of machine gun nests, or to drop an APC right in the middle of a firefight when making a frantic escape out of a stronghold. The faction system was implemented well and even if you had to swing a faction from hostile to friend it never felt like a chore. In general, the game economy was excellently implemented. There's so many other cool ideas in this game that were held back to technological limitations. It's a shame that this franchise is dead and that there hasn't been a proper re-imagining.