This is, beyond a shadow of a doubt, one of the worst games I have ever played. The other half of the star is for the mere concept of it being fun, in execution there is not even a hope of enjoyment to be had with this game. The good reviews for this game are downright sickening. The people who made this are also sickening. This is foolishness, this is buffonery, this is downright robbery and trickery.

Where can I even start with it? It would be easier to talk about the parts of the game that actually work. The basis of the game: you run a rescue center. Theres dogs in it. People adopt the dogs. Not one part of this process functions as it should. Horrible control scheme. Jaw-droppingly stupid. Things that should just be A or X are abominable combinations that I cant even remember half the time. Imagine: decorating. Pick the thing you want then press A to purchase. WRONG. Select your purchase with the left stick, move cursor to place it, put it down with ZL. You didnt actually buy it. Press + to confirm that youre actually buying the thing you already put down. Wait 7 minutes because the ingame PC you're making this transaction on is insultingly slow. In fact, all the menus lag. The game lags. But the menus specifically make me feel like im wading through mud. Oh... tutorial? Did you read it? Sorry, because they are never showing it to you again. The tutorial is shockingly long while also not telling you what to do. And after it is done they leave you clueless. I was stuck for 3 hours trying to figure out how to access a menu.

Pacing issues. Overwhelming pacing issues. Dogs shitting themselves and tearing each other faces off and I cant give them the time of day because 8 new strays just came in for some fucking reason and each dog needs their special food and drink and accommodations. Someone walks into a dog shelter, unsure if they actually want a dog. They ask me to bring out and hand pick 5 dogs for them instead of the customer just walking around the shelter like an actual person. If they dont like all 5 dogs they will decide they were just cruising and leave. Im sure that exciting gameplay loop makes you wet and ready for more action so im so happy to say that that's all there is. If you have a dog with a disability just forget about them because, despite the fact that this is a shelter, customers have exceedingly high standards in direct contrast to the game's ride or die attitude on adopt, dont shop.

Does not function. Nothing about this game functions. Dogs shit in the walls and I cant see it. Dogs get stuck in the walls and get diseases and starve and dehydrate. Dogs have fights through the walls. The game believes certain dogs do not exist and I can no longer interact with them. Dogs get stuck in the play pen and the game will not let the dogs leave, ever. The game crashes and softlocks when you do complicated things such as opening a menu on the PC or taking a dog for a walk. The unstuck button itself fails to work. Unbearable. Inoperable.

Someone once said that we have it all wrong, that we should cry when one enters this world and rejoice when they leave it. Thats how I feel about these fucking dogs. Euthanized and they dont have to bear the weight of being trapped in this horrible game. The person who made this, never dare to even think about making another game again. Any good you put in this world will be a shadow of the torment you put me through. I hate you.


I want my 10 dollars back.

Despite being an artist myself for most of my life, I actually have never heard of or have ever seen Enzo Cucchi's art. This feels a little blasphemous as he seems kind of important. On the other hand, I got to experience this nice little homage to his work in isolation, so I suppose its not all that bad.

Cuccchi is a slow-paced and surreal walk through Enzo Cucchi's repertoire of art. Endlessly colorful, every pixel trying its damnedest to replicate the texture and implications of the original piece it's based on. Managing to intertwine several seemingly unrelated works to create an area that makes cohesive sense replicates the feeling of walking around an art exhibit, albeit a kind of stressful one.

Ive seen a lot of reviews on this game mention that, because the game is not linear, it was frustrating trying to find a path to the next area. I can sort of understand, but the game itself is so small you would have to really miss the mark to end up wandering around lost for that long. The unique experience of traversing different worlds of someone's art rather than a more gallery-like exhibit is what makes this game special.

It is a little bit too stressful, though. Looking for the eye collectables so I could unlock the actual images of Enzo's art kept me from fully being immersed in what I was seeing. And there were one too many mazes, the ideal number of mazes in any given video game being 0. And I used to think that a video game could never make me motion sick, but wow, Cuccchi put me in my place there. With the environments constantly shifting and there being no floor or ceiling to ground my eyes to, I did feel on the edge of having to turn the game off a few times. The point is to be dreamlike, and maybe its alright that some games make you have to close your eyes every 10 seconds to get through it, but the stress of having to look out for collectables + the weird motion made this a less enjoyable experience than it could of been for me.

Overall, Enzo Cucchi makes kind of scary and beautiful art and I feel as though the game did a great job showcasing that. Lots of ships and houses and melty faces. If you dont mind a little motion sickness, I would definitely recommend checking it out. Italian artists are still very threatening to me.

Stardew Valley is a charming and wonderful game. When it first came out, I played it so much that I started losing feeling in my head and I had to see a doctor. Stardew Valley is great for all the reasons you've probably heard of over the years, but this is not really a review for Stardew as much as it is a vehicle for the discussion of farming games.

I like to keep up with the latest ""cozy"" game releases because sometimes I'll find something that looks really interesting, but let me tell you, there are. so. many. farming games. There are so many farming games. And do you want to know how many farming games manage to at least do something vaugely different from Stardew? 0. Harvest Moon started it and Stardew basically perfected this specific atmosphere and formula, and now it seems like every developer is rushing headlong to depict that same exact kind of magic Stardew has without even managing slightly.

And I get so heated because, fucking what? It's a genre of game based on harvesting food and you can really only think of one exact scenerio and one exact way to go about doing it? People have been foraging and farming for an absurd amount of time, there are hundreds of ways and techniques to go about doing it that could be fun when projected into a video game. The art of forgaing specifically, nurturing and coursing nature into producing more food, seems like it would naturally go hand in hand with the themes farming games tend to go for, but all's lost in the realm we are trapped in where no matter the location (space, fantasy) we are forced to obtain property, till soil, and probably pay off some type of debt or at the very least participate in an economy thats strikingly similar to the one most of the planet has now despite existing in a fictional world where anything can take place.

There is a prehistoric farming sim called Roots of Pacha. I know enough about history to know that the concept alone makes 0 sense, and when people did start farming, it wasnt by clearing away large plots of land like we would now and laboriously carrying them to fruit. The first people that raised crops did it hand in hand with foragaing, in a type of cultivation called flood retreat farming in which one plants seeds along seasonally flooding beds of water, so that nature pretty much does all the hard work for them and nothing much has to get in the way of other activities. I personally hate this game for its wasted potential alone, because the concept has so many directions it could go in and it barely went in any of them except for the detail that there's not a money based economy present (i think?). This is just one example of how creatively lacking farming games seem to be, I know Roots of Pacha has you doing other things like hunting and all that but the outline in this game and all others pretty much follow in this order of doing the exact same shit you did in Stardew but with little (what if... it was prehistoric!) to no twist, and with no Concernedape flare.

Another trend I've noticed with these games is that, despite the full focus on community building, caring for nature, and usually overthrowing some type of rich guy villian, what you actually do in the game contradicts these themes entirely. Obviously, traditional farming involves a lot of deforestation. Thats a point that gets brought up a lot, quite reasonably, because it always is really weird when a magic spirit of nature comes down to thank you for restoring the natural balance when you just got back from tearing down two entire ecosystems for wood. But there's also just so little need for our own economy inserted in most of these games. We live in a town, seperated from all of society (occassionally on another planet) with 12 inhabitants and youre still making me pay rent? You would think these apparently very self sufficent people would have no need for money but I guess not. And the material focus gets in the way a lot with the other mechanics. For example, most of the relationship building that's popular in farming games takes the form of you constantly offering up some object to them with little or no actual imput from you. Give your girl 80 wild flowers and she will eventually fall in love with you.


I feel as though a lot of it is obviously borrowed from early Harvest Moon, which honestly felt a little too cyclical for me to enjoy it at all. Very hardcore traditional values in those early games, and especially when it comes to your bachlorettes in which the process of getting them seems eerily similar to obtaining a cow or something, to further min max your farm and make boohoo bucks. In this genre it's still that, but with a splat of paint on it that says "we ♡ community! we hate big business!".


Stardew Valley is a little bit exempt from this in my mind, because it's taking place in a world that seems to be basically our own. If Harvey charges me 2000 gil to be rescued from some scary caves, then at least that part makes sense. The community in Stardew is shown repeatedly to be an imperfect peoples anyhow, what from Pam's parental abuse and someone apparently throwing stones at a homeless person's tent. I'm pretty sure back when it came out farming games werent as popular, and for all of that the gameplay loop is near perfect and very fun to play. So we've been there, done that is basically what I'm saying. ConcernedApe made the best tradional farming game and now I am really interested in any other ideas or concepts from anyone, at all. If I wanted to play a farming game, there is no reason why I would spend many, many hours building a farm in a game that is likely less inspired and less polished than Stardew when none of them offer anything new to the table, in quality of writing, story, or anything else.

There are some exceptions, like Dinkum (which is barely a farming game but has way more spunk than all games in this genre do combined) but for the most part I'm just tired of every game trying to be Stardew but instead of ____ there's _____! The gameplay loop gets incredibly old when there is nothing else backing it up.


Again, this wasnt really a review for this game but I just wanted to get my opinions out there and maybe see what others think. Thanks for listening to my ramblings (-:

A very bittersweet game, genius in it's execution. Taking the place of a person with amnesia, you must learn an unknown language only based on context clues from your caretaker. There are few handouts, and how you come to understand the language and what you intrepret from it is fully up to you.

There are very few games in this world that click with me like this game did. The open trial and error of trying to desipher the few rooms you get to work with was so much fun, and so endearing. I kind of wish this imaginary language was real so that I might of learned something, because while I struggle learning languages traditionally I had an absolute blast here. The satisfaction of piecing together a sentence and fully understanding it all on your own is immense, and I wish there was more of it. Its a short game on its own, though youre encouraged to play through it multiple times as you learn new words and can comprehend more of what your caretaker is saying. Knowing more about this game is worse I'll say, because while it is useful to know about what rules and structures this game's grammar follows, it also kind of sucks the enjoyment out of figuring it out on your own.

You are only spoken to in three words per sentence, though nonetheless the game is very touching. There is something very simple and comforting about it, almost feeling childlike. The joy of being able to understand someone, even vaugely, is reflected in the other's relief at finally being understood. It is gratifying and sad, left me wanting to see more. For its limited amount of words, it still manages to build something up around you and leaves you in constant discovery. The only downside is that there are only 2 or so music tracks in the game, which play on loop constantly. Grating sound design aside, I very much enjoyed playing this fresh attempt at a puzzle game. I will be keeping an eye on this dev, for sure.

Today, there are little flowers blooming where there were none yesterday

Thats the kind of discovery that warms my heart, you know?


2010 and there is a little girl who wakes up on a Saturday at 5am in her grandma's house. She runs downstairs before the suns risen and before anyone has woken up, a novelty. Like she is the only one there, like it is her house. She makes cereal and watches tv, to the left and through the sliding glass door she can see the sun coming up. At grandma's house the sun always rises in oranges and pinks. The neighborhood is always quiet and always confined. Throwing away the plastic bowl, she walks out into the living room, turns on the tv, turns on the wii. Sets the setting to hdmi 2 and grabs her remote. And she plays this.

Impossibly beautiful and forever welcoming. City Folk and its open spaces, delightful music that defines an hour of your life. Your neighbors that seem to have an unlimited amount of things to say, sending you letters, asking after your other characters, pushing them into pitfalls regardless because it is funny every time. And to this child, it was very real, and deeply mysterious. You could spend hours doing nothing but I remember it all so well, feeling giddy after ordering 50 wheat fields and placing them in my house, walking and hiding in them. Dyeing my hair cyan in the hair salon, feeling rich if I managed to buy one thing at Gracies. Time hopping to winter so I could build an awful snowman. Making constellations with Celeste, in awe of all the colors and the way the stars shined.

At school, it is now recess. Today, I have brought a stuffed dog to school named Moo. It was my father's but he cared little for it, so it is now mine. Unlike my father, I will take care of Moo. I will not abandon him, or treat him like he is nothing. He comes with me everywhere and I hug him on the bus when I know he is scared, because I can feel what he feels and it is something other people can not grasp. I have many other stuffed animals at home, and they all take turns coming with me. There is a tree in the recess yard. All the kids jump on it and stab at it with pencils, and I remember that I felt like something was burning inside me. That tree was no ones friend and no one saw it, but I would and I did. I sat with that tree every day, talked to it and loved it. As an adult I can recognize now that the teachers were always looking at me because I never played with any of the other kids. This little girl cried a lot, she wanted to go home a lot. She had meltdowns and bit other kids. And children pick up on that, and I knew that they knew that there was something untouchable about me and that they should stay away. I never had any friends. But still, I was so loving. I loved everything and wanted to understand everything. I would be a friend to something like myself, like that tree, but still they could never talk back.

But, the villagers in City Folk could. They talked to me like they were real, like they knew me. I listened to them and loved every second. I fell in love with Rolf and bombarded him with letters asking him to marry me, I adored Friga and her mature attitude that I didnt quite understand yet but compelled me nonetheless. I played in Frobert's house a lot because the colors were so pretty, and he had a frog chair. I loved every detail of every little thing about them, and it was something only a child could experience. But it also hurt too, because once more as much as I loved them I knew that they could never sit with me and give me a hug, or push me on the swing or make me a bracelet, any of the many things I saw other girls my age doing. And I didnt know it at the time, but I never would feel that. I would never have any friends. For two decades, I would be alone. And into the years which should of been the best of my life, I would lose the ability to leave the house. I would lose a lot of things that I was otherwise proud of. And I begun to feel like something like me might never be understood or loved at all.

That child in me never really died, sometimes I still feel her sitting in a field behind the school, bawling her eyes out at an impossible lonliness that children really dont ever feel.

But a year ago, to this day, I sent someone a message. We had a lot in common, I thought, and I was so desperate for friends. I had just moved into my first apartment and I was so lonely and scared. I stayed up till 1am listening to my cat wailing and talking with them. I did not know that this person would turn out to be my best friend, my first friend. I was just excited to talk to them the next day. And the day after that. For hours, the whole day even. All the time, for a whole year, they spoke with me. They never once let me be alone like I was. And even though I've never had the chance to speak much, and I might be annoying at times, they have never once held that against me. I can be with them, talk with them about things I like, play games with them. And they listen to me, enjoys having me there. Wants me to be there. Impossible.

Later, I met two other people. They celebrated my birthday with me and I dont think I ever smiled as much as I did on that day. And it was the first time I ever had a party with friends, had someone to remember my birthday. And even though they arent with me physically, I was still so happy. I wont ever forget that. Two days ago, I spent the weekend watching one of them play Bratz all day and we were laughing and having fun. And I thought that a year ago, this would not be possible. A year ago I was much less of a person and more like a slave. But now I have people to talk to, people I respect, people that make my life worth living. And even though I still want to know what its like to be hugged, to have a friend physically there, im still so happy. And I can not believe someone in my position got so lucky as to meet these people.

To Nicole, I love you sooo much. You are such a bright and loving person. You are endlessly talented in so many things, so kind and so thoughtful, everyone should be taking notes. Thank you for all the happy memories you have given me over the past year, and for everything youve done to help me.

And to Hilda, thank you so much. Even though you say you wish you could do more for me and you wish that you were more, I sincerely do not care. Because every day I am excited to wake up and talk to you. You make me laugh every day, you are so funny and beautiful. I am so, so proud to call myself your friend and I am so happy to be liked by the both of you. You have changed my life considerably.

For my first year of being on my own, and the first year ive been on Backloggd, I can not be more pleased. I am still not all together free of the ocd that forced me here, and part of me still feels trapped and lonely. I want to experience the things other people my age take for granted. Ive never been kissed, I've never gone to the mall with my friends. Things like that, but for the first time in my life I can at least finally feel content. And I feel like no matter what happens, I will have always people to go back to, people who care. Thank you all, from the bottom of my heart.


So, it's good to appreciate the times where you've got nowhere to be and nothing to do

My apartment building that I live in is meant for very, very old people who live off government income checks. Now, I am a very young person who just so happens to live off social security, but that does not make me immune to the rigorous rules set by the building for these older folks. One of the biggest annoyances is that every major announcement is conveyed to us through papers put in your door handle instead of an email or some shit, even more annoying is that the announcement can range in seriousness from "stop throwing boxes down the garbage shoot" to "tomorrow there will be a room check". I dont know what it is about being old but apparently they dont deserve any autonomy or privacy as these room checks consist of two men storming your apartment, literally manhandling every appliance to make sure it works. They have to open the windows to make sure they open. They have to go in your closet to make sure the door isnt falling off. It is bureaucracy at its finest.

Now, anyone who knows me understands that I have severe contamination ocd. So does the building manager, Lisa, who feels very very badly for me and tries to help whenever she can. However, she has to manage 200+ apartments with only one assistant so she is very overworked. One of these room checks happened to me last Tuesday, where Lisa herself came and checked out my room respectfully. But she did not convey she would be helping me until that day, the announcement for said room check came the previous week with a mere 24 hour notice. Between the days of Wednesday to Friday, 9-4, your room could potentially be invaded so better keep it clean, bitch. So what is a girl to do while she waits for her worst fear to unfold for 7 hours a day? Play Minecraft with her bestie, duhh.

Last time I interacted with Minecraft was in late elementary school, where my biological father's girlfriend and my grandma purchased separate copies for me because no one was smart enough to write down my account password. I also only played it twice on a computer, but I did have the app version of it on my ipod that I would mess around in before school. I was very interested in all the new shit that must of been added over the years, more than I was kind of embarrassed to be playing this as an adult.

Its very fun. Obviously, theres a lot to do. I like a game that doesnt hold your hand too much and has lots of ☆secrets☆ to offer, and after being updated all these years there sure is an unprecedented amount of concepts in the game. I like building a lot, I enjoy the comforting feeling of going back home to your house you spent 50 hours making. All the ingame animals make me very happy and I wish I could interact with them in more ways, the music is also stellar. I definitely would not enjoy this game so much were I playing it by myself, but luckily Hildas got my back and is always there to help me when I fall into a pit or run off a mountain.

Unfortunately I of course have the switch version, which of course fucking sucks. Chunks load very slow. Connecting with Hilda is very slow. Its not updated to the extent of Java which is also a bummer. You cant have custom skins which is also incredibly lame. Its very tedious to menu with a controller, and the constant autosaves make us both lag out for minutes at a time. I also have some issues with the base game in general as well, number one issue being fall damage which I think is taken too easily. It simply feels better to be moving around the map at mach speed, so to be punished for falling 3 blocks or so feels rather like being hit on the hands with a ruler, just lemme have my fun smooving. Its tied to my second biggest issue, which is that you get hungry way too fast and your health only recovers when its all the way full. Its as obnoxious as it sounds to be stopping every 5 seconds to eat a carrot.


Otherwise, its Minecraft. Im kind of very impressed its still around and cemented as one of the biggest games out there. A lot of the micro transaction shit is clearly driven towards the younger Roblox demographic, which is really hard to look at every time I turn on the game, but aside from that its still the fun block game I remember from when I was younger. I'll always associate this with the 3 anxiety-ridden days I spent playing with Hobo, slapping her into pits and breaking all her shit. Riding horses into her house. Threatening to blow up her house. Killing her slowly with projectile eggs. Abject terrorism is in my nature.

"A Rebirth Of Tactical RPGs"

I can't confess to having played Ogre Battle, the series which Unicorn Overlord has been compared to the most, however I've played enough Fire Emblem to appreciate the goals it set out for. This phrase, which was all over the marketing, touts it as a "rebirth", which implies that it will lean the most on being a throwback. If anything however, it's the fusion of old and new here that makes Unicorn Overlord work so well.

If we never get a Genealogy of the Holy War remake, I can at least relish in the fact that we got another game where a blue hair prince on a horse is fighting battles on maps that are 1:1 to the world map. Vanillaware considered this game their biggest undertaking yet, and it shows in how impressive the scale of it is. Each battle is elevated both by the sense of immersion that fighting on chunks of the overworld brings, and it's also a satisfying 60 hours or so of seeing more and more territory reclaimed. It also extends even further than Genealogy by letting you actually spend time in the world you are fighting through. The town rebuilding may not be the most mechanically satisfying, but it is also integrated well enough into just normal exploration that its never a nuisance. Alongside the other overworld sidequests, it helps to add enough texture to the world to make reclaiming it feel rewarding.

Of course it takes plenty of elements to make a great strategy game, and the great mechanical base that Unicorn Overlord has makes it worthwhile in it's own right. The unit system is an excellent way of forcing frequent optimization, paying careful attention to which pieces to mix and match. On top of this, the sheer variety of classes that keeps being introduced until the end keeps this process going strong. For even more depth, the Tactics system is a fantastic turn on the automated battles that most SRPGs have. A FF12 gambit system-styled form of programming provides a lot of room to further fine tune every aspect of the combat. In a lot of ways, this works well with the enemy design to elevate the somewhat basic map design, however the maps are still probably the biggest flaw. There are some interesting wrenches thrown in here or there, like a fog of war chapter or ones with strict time limits, but it feels too afraid to commit fully. A common sentiment I have seen is that this game is too easy, which is true, but Vanillaware's goal being accessibility is fine enough. Yet I still wish they were more willing to make players feel uncomfortable, which I think Fire Emblem succeeds at while also being fairly accessible. It's never easy to demand more content, especially in a game like this, but I wish they went further with what they DO have.

Speaking of a common sentiment, the majority of criticism has focused on the games story. It's fair for people to call it "generic" but it's also somewhat misguided to me. While I also rolled my eyes at first seeing the Tolkien-esque setting and the deposed prince premise, I don't think this is entirely an issue. While many of the elements of the world are trope-y, the countless smaller stories within them give them a unique flavor, particularly for the individual characters. In taking influence from Fire Emblem, Vanillaware must have wisely noted how invested people are in the characters in these games. Thus the rapport system serves as a valuable way to add more story where needed while also never being intrusive on the core experience. I would say it even surpasses FE supports in a way with how much it lets you pick and choose with what you want to do, and the sheer scope of interactions you can have is impressive.

Yet simultaneously that scope is what leads into my actual issues with the story. It's impressive to have 5 distinct regions with their own cultures and histories, yet we don't get nearly enough insight as we should. Being generic isn't an issue, there's genuinely interesting ideas being hinted at in each region yet it's hard to really get invested in them. Even though the game is 60 hours, if you split that up into 5 it doesn't leave much room for each area to shine as much as it could. Part of that is because so much of it is core gameplay, yet I would trade maybe a couple filler missions for some more narrative depth. Simultaneously this would make up for the main story with Alain being not that great, but it makes it come off a little worse instead. It feels like he lacks agency a lot of the time and has to take a backseat to these situations which would be fine if they had gotten more depth. There are some choices in the game, but they feel like pretty obvious ones most of the time. I respect the width it guns for, but its easy to see why it ended up unsatisfying.

Of course it's worth putting all of this in perspective too. This game took just under a decade to develop and Vanillaware ran out of money. 13 Sentinels also had a long and arduous development concurrently, with most of the focus being on the story. This isn't to say that Unicorn Overlord is made better by knowing this, but it would be also unfair to say the ambitions were misplaced ultimately.

This game really do be making you feel like a medieval peasant, from it's combat, menus, music, allllll the way down to the potato looking graphics.

I find the whole combat learning curve to be pretty interesting both in it's believability with what the themes are going for. As Henry, you really shouldn't be able to slay 15 people in the first hour because it's not something that Henry is meant to be good at, rather it's something he and you, by extension, become better at the longer you put up with the mechanics. Once I was able to unlock nicer perks and fully grapple the idea of it, it became very fun to master the fighting by the end. It's absolutely not a mechanic that everyone would like though, and I don't blame anyone for dropping this game because of the combat. You can be a professional at it in this game and still die in a fight against 2 enemies who just dog-pile you. It's frustrating as all hell to learn, but it can be rewarding if you give it a chance.

For me, I was loving the whole medieval setting thing, probably a bit too much, but mainly because it was so different than the other games that I was used to. I found it all so goofy as Hell to be honest, I was weirdly immersed in being a random dude fighting for his life in a world where a sneeze could kill you. There are processes to just about everything. Henry is illiterate until you decide to put him through a reading class. Brewing potions is like a weird recipe based cooking mini-game. You can only save from sleeping in a bed you own or by drinking a potion, etc. It's very consistently detailed to make it feel like you're a medieval idiot and I found that to be the most interesting aspect of the game. Again though, it's not a gimmick that everyone would like and I also don't blame them. It's weird to describe this game to someone who's never played it before because my favorite parts are the ones that sound so boring on paper.

I really do wish that the story had a bit more oomph to it. It's.. fine? But, there's a reveal later down the line that sort of ruins the whole theme for me that I just gushed over above and it's kind of unfortunate. I wouldn't want to spoil it, but it's not a reveal that's done well and left a bit of a poor taste in my mouth for the rest of the main questline. That coupled up with the fact that some cutscenes are just a bunch of royal lords sitting around spewing massive historical infodumps for several minutes at a time will just put you to sleep at times. This game shines best when you're going through dialogue trees because you can sometimes change the outcomes through speech checks and optionally learn more about the context if you desired. There's some genuinely funny outcomes to some of the quests, both main and side, but as soon as the pre-rendered cutscenes start, just know that you're in for the world's longest AP European History lesson.

The ending is huge sequel bait and is ruined further by the DLC. If you have all the DLC for this game, your companion friend literally halts progress right at the end to make you go on one of the most trivial quests of all time. It's a fun quest and all but if you were thinking of maybe doing all the DLC after the epilogue, you can't. The game will force you to do this random side quest before showing you the world's shortest ending cutscene and allowing you to call it a day. My only guess for why they did this, is because the events of the DLC will be canon later?? But, it was still a weird as fuck choice.

On the subject of speech, it's done very interestingly here because it's affected by the clothes that you're wearing. If you're wearing nice, expensive looking clothes when you speak to someone, you're probably going to pass most of your speech checks. On the other hand, if you're wearing garish, bloody armor then you may not be able to. You could theoretically pass more intimidation checks instead though. It's a cool idea but there are some instances where it doesn't seem to work? Each dialogue has numbers that indicate whether you would win against that person or not in a speech check, but a lot of the times it doesn't seem to matter. You could have +4 points above someone and you will still fail apparently because the dialogue option is "so unbelievable" that not even that person believes you, even though you have super high Charisma. Why is it an option then LOL? You can use speech checks to get out of a lot of hard combat scenarios or get better quest rewards, but this will fuck you sometimes without warning.

On that note, this game is still incredibly buggy at times. Supposedly when it first came out, it had massive problems that have been mostly fixed today. Unfortunately, I did still run into some issues. For the most part, they just stuck to graphical bugs where textures load weirdly or some characters T-pose here and there, which.. sure broke my medieval peasant immersion sometimes. I did however run into problems where dialogue would freeze infinitely if I skipped over some choices too quickly, which was annoying because I'd have to reload. There were also some battle scenes where the friendly AI just wouldn't function properly sometimes and I'd die because of it.

All and all, I found a lot of fun with this game but I would only ever recommend it to the right person who I know would thoroughly enjoy it and it's mechanics. It's not the greatest story ever and can be drier than ancient wood at times, but I really dug the actual gameplay. It's very unfortunate though that after enjoying the hell out of this game, I found out later that the guy who made it is an outspoken member of a movement who thinks that I'm a sub-human who's out to destroy the gaming industry. It's a game that I already bought and played so I won't piss on it because of this, but you can use that information however you like.

It feels like someone wanted to make a game and failed, and then made a game about their experiences with playtesting it and turned it into a long gag.

I think I first watched markiplier play this back in 2013, so I saw no reason to play it for myself then. I was worried a lot of the jokes would miss the mark now after 10 years considering meta irony and surrealism is now basically the default sense of humour for zoomers on the internet. But shockingly, I managed to get a good laugh from a lot of the jokes still!

I could say something clever about how this game deconstructs the nature of choice in video games or something but I think all of that has been said to death at this point, so I'll just say the game is funy :)

you may clown on bidoof in middle school but ive never seen a platinum playthrough without at least a bibarel.

sinnoh has a lot for me to hate and a lot for me to love. too many goddamn HMs! genuinely some of the most beautiful music in the series! Team galactic has 0 swag, stacks no paper! but one of my favourite things about this game has so many comfy locations that are so, hangout-able. Floarama town is such a cute little place, I could see myself wanting to settle down there. Eterna forest's music made me feel like I was 8 playing this game for the first time again. anyways I like froslass, she's a cutie.

I don't think I've ever seen a choices matter game do a better job at user experience than in Goodbye Volcano High. Some options make you perform extra actions to choose them because Fang is anxious and it takes effort to be confident and put yourself out there, some options go away entirely if you're too indecisive, sometimes the options are shuffling around making them hard to pick because the MC is scatterbrained at the moment. I thought these creative decisions were really cool and want to see them implemented in other story/decision based games. On to the story - I found it extremely comforting and felt really satisfied with where I was at with my ending and I thought the story that they attempted to tell was super impactful. Goodbye Volcano High is a story about acceptance of the future, and that community matters the most in the face of dispair. Life is ever changing and where we are right now will never be where we are in the future, that's just how life functions. Whether your best friend moves, or you break up with your partner, or the world explodes, this story shows us that we should relish in the present no matter what comes after and never take that present for granted. So glad I decided to give this one a try considering it's not a typical gameplay heavy experience and encourage others to do the same despite any reservations they might have due to the presentation.