148 reviews liked by garie


Don't really know what to think of this quite frankly.
Visuals are real cute and nice.
Game as a whole feels kind of... edgy? And it's not an unrealistic portrayal of internet-addicted mentally ill teenage girls, not at all. It's shockingly realistic in that sense, even the comments on KAngel's streams and Twitter are.

But I think the game goes by so quickly and the endings are - with only one exception - so brief that the impact to me is dulled. I don't think this is inherently a bad game, I can see why people enjoy it? But personally it felt like a lot of work to get all (most of) those endings (I gave up for the ones that needed 1m followers) that don't amount to.... anything.

this game is so bad idk where to start
weird slow pacing
mysteries that feel so unsatisfying
character arcs having the worst conclusions
amame doi is this games saving grace

It takes a little while to get the ball rolling with this game because it gets stuck on a focus of introducing it's cast members in it's first half while being a bit too mysterious for it's own good IMO - but man, when it picks up it picks UP. It's got an absolutely amazing story filled with some surprisingly fantastic fanservice for anyone who's played any previous Ys games.

Taking as long as it did sure was worth it though, because the cast is great and the combat's fantastic, the worldbuilding is surprisingly enticing and the movement options that slowly open up as you add more members to your party feel SO good.
I have also joined the ranks of the Adol understanders now. Sure, the whole "silent MC because he's retelling the story without painting it with his own perspective" thing is admittedly interesting but still does exactly that; not really make him stand out as a character.
Until this game, that is! Oh man, its plans for him intrigue you as soon as the intro, and I'm proud to announce they didn't fumble that one bit. He's so good.
So yeah, despite the meat of the story taking it's sweet time - it's just a fantastic game on all fronts honestly! It more than makes up for that despite my doubts about halfway through. I had a great time with it.

Never thought a game would make me yell "YOOO IT'S THE FUCKIN BAT FROM YS 1" in the middle of a boss battle but here we are!
What a ridiculously charming experience it was.

This review contains spoilers

As seems to be the trend with Life is Strange games, this had compelling characters, an engaging plot, and a bomb-ass soundtrack that all built up to a less-than-satisfying climax.
With all the build-up to this secret Typhon is hiding, I have to admit, I was expecting way bigger than "so it turns out this one guy didn't actually save all those miners years ago." The only thing that saved that reveal from being a total fucking letdown was the personal connection to Alex- that her dad was one of the miners who died. Despite that, I really enjoyed the character development in this game. Unlike the first Life is Strange, which seemed to focus more on Chloe as a possible love interest while Warren is effectively sidelined, both love interests felt like realistic, fleshed-out characters, and both of them genuinely felt like good choices for Alex. Sure, Ryan could've used a little more development, but maybe I just missed all the scenes that give him more depth by not romancing him. That seems like a backwards way of doing things, but whatever. One thing I'm not happy with the way Ryan is characterized, though, is that he won't believe Alex when she reveals Jed's secret. It's understandable that he'd be shocked to hear someone accuse his dad of that, but what I don't like about the game's handling of this is the fact that, in the very end, if you check your phone, you'll see that Ryan texted Alex an apology, and Alex didn't respond. Seems kinda fucked up to give the player the option to forgive Jed for trying to kill her, but not Ryan for taking a few days to come around to the fact that his father is a murderer. For all its faults, though, overall, I really liked this game.

It was cozy, if nothing else.

The pacing was weird and each chapter could be summarized in a single sentence. A lot of stuff was optional, which would have been fine if the main story had more meat. For a mystery there are only really 3 steps to uncovering the truth.

What stood out was how Alex's empathy superpower is so underbaked. She can only sense four emotions, and the game never puts her in a position where she needed to have literal superpowers instead of regular human empathy. One scene really stood out to me where Steph looks at a bottle labelled "Foosball Champion" and becomes visibly upset. Alex uses her superpower to investigate, then asks Steph for a match of foosball to cheer her up. Steph asks "How'd you know I liked foosball?" What do you mean "How'd you know I liked foosball?" That kind of thing happens every single time. Maybe I'm just gifted in emotional intelligence and empathy, but it never felt like superpowers were at all necessary and were only added because that's the Life is Strange gimmick.

I had fun, I'm glad I played it, and it was a nice change of pace. But it didn't leave a strong impression and I probably won't think about it a week from now. It's just... okay.

Easily the second-best RPG of 2023.

I don't think it's really worth doing a deep dive into my opinions on BG3 because even though I didn't play it until December, I can kind of already feel it not really making much of a lasting impression on me. Like, it's good. I think it actually says a lot that BG3 is one of the very few big choice-driven/immersive simmy WRPGs I've been able to enjoy at all, which is why I'm not making this review a weird, intense rant about the genre as a whole.

But like... I dunno. That's just kind of all. It's Good. A well-above-average execution of a pretty old set of ideas about game structure and progression that I've always thought were radically overhyped. I guess it's kind of like Breath of the Wild in that respect, where a game comes across as revolutionary mostly just because it combines the basic appeal of its genre with, like, actual decent game des--oh I'm doing my WRPG rant AND my open world rant, I'm terribly sorry. Anyway.

Yeah, I had a lot of fun with BG3. Got messier in the third act, as everyone says. The combat can hit great highs, the game does make it feel really rewarding sometimes to solve a problem in an unorthodox way, and there's some decent character writing elevated by phenomenal performances. The plot is... certainly the events of the work devised and presented by writers as an interrelated sequence. (I couldn't, like, tear it apart as something fundamentally broken in construction, but the more they revealed about what was actually happening the more I kind of checked out in terms of personal investment.)

I'm almost inclined to call a shot that a few Larian games from now, a lot of people are going to turn on them and form oddly angry opinions about how overrated they've always been, with BG3 as a major sticking point. I'm not wishing for that or anything, I just feel like it's usually the fate of AAA games that become huge, huge critical darlings for high art value despite... kind of clearly being more of a really solid popcorn movie affair. That's kind of where I'm at with Baldur's Gate 3: it's the best MCU movie.

play Octopath Traveler 2

Firefly is awesome

They cooked I never want to go back to the fucking Luofu ever again

The plot is good again???????????????????

They don't waste your time with super long exposition and kinda thrust you into a beautiful new environment that continues to raise interesting questions. As well as the fun new things they are trying with puzzles and enemies and navigation overall. It feels like a breath of fresh air and new ideas. It's awesome.

As soon as I started the main quest my hatred for the previous arc grew exponentially. Goddamn I never wanna see those stupid fucking yaoi boys ever again.

This review contains spoilers

Every person in the game secretly being a pedophile/racist/rapist started to get old after the first 8-ish endings

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