Kill the crime. For the life. Save the life.

Welcome to the Ultimate City where no crime is accepted and rules are the gods!... 25TH WARD.

The city that born from the ashes of 24th and now here to be perfected where 24th couldn't with creating it's own gods, it's own rules, it's own factions and it's own Kamui.

And this time we have not just two but three stories to tell it's theme to us, to the player. Matchmaker, Placebo and Correctness.

And In my opinion game does a worse job when it's comes to giving us it's theme on our face then it's predecessor the silver case.

Or maybe it's not about it's "themes"? Maybe that's why it's filled with setpiece moments? Or not? I don't know anymore. Btw I like the game, but I connected to it less than silver case and wanted to give it's reason with it at first.

Now let's go and look at in much more detail

Correctness. Equals the "question" part from the original silver case. There are 5 main cases just like the original(also+3 cases) and every one of them.... No... This time it's not about serial killing, at least most of them not. They are variety of things. One is about a girl that killed weirdly on a aparment complex, one is about a mystery behind a man's suicide, one is about searching a dangerous man etc. And this part's stories have my favorite and most disliked parts in the whole game. Case 3's incredibly surprising and fun hitman fights part and the goddamn digital man case as a whole.

I am not gonna go into detail but I can say this, all the cases I dislike goes full on scifi fantasy or not just that, it goes pure fantasy. While silver case had a small part of them with "silver eyes", this game pushes it's fantasy elements to the limit for the purpose of confusing the player but in my opinion this ends up making the cases feel less rewarding as a whole.

And now, when it comes to matchmaker, I can safely say that it's my favorite one then the other 2 and also applies game's theme better then all of them. It's actually more of what I expected from this game. A special cop group's slowly growing relationship (unfortunately correctness only focused just 2 people from a whole group) while the main cop tries to delve his "past" and eventually have to come to a choice when it comes to "dealing with his own past". Also it's movie like action setpieces are cream on the cake as well.

Lastly the placebo and the one that I like less and less. It's about the journalist from silver case but without what made him "interesting". There is a reason for why he acts different but that doesn't mean I enjoy with it. Actually maybe he isn't the main character? Maybe it's the ai characters he meets throughout in his journey? I mean game gives a lot of time to their story so... I don't know actually. But I can say this. You can multiply the "fantasy" element I talked about at the top here ten fold.

That's all I am gonna say about it when it comes to this story.

So yeah when it comes to story, it's a messy one in my opinion to say the least. I mean silver case wasn't perfect either but unlike silver case, it's harder to see what we gain when we look at the cases one by one.

And when it comes to puzzles and exploration...

It's three steps forward two steps back.

Exploration is simplified with the removal of looking up or down or left or right. You can only "command" the character with saying go north, west, east, south and he goes until arriving to next intersection. This is a both good thing and a bad thing. Now there is no interactables hiding in plain sight that requires you to look up down left right every damn place. But also when you press a wrong button, you need to watch your damn character to walk alllllllll the way to another intersection point.

Also puzzles are mixed bag again unfortunately. Fortunately there is no press a button on the other side of the room puzzles but this time it's full of password puzzles.... While they are harmless at first, you just want a skip button when you came across the 100th one.

There is also more choice puzzles as well and I actually quite like them, especially correctness case 3 made amazing use of them. So actually a big plus in this part.

Oh also there are labyrinth puzzles this time and they... Sorry to say this but SUCKS ASSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. Especially case 2, oh case 2.... I wanted to strangle Suda when I saw I needed to do it twice.... HUHHH!???

Oh also interact bazillion things thingy comes back at the finale with that apartment complex, that piece of shit apartment complex. That's all I am gonna say about it. I just opened a guide for it so I would not lose my mind when playing that part.

So that's what I meant with three steps forward two steps back. More variety but also more tedium as well.

So what did I left... Oh yeah music rocks hard. Remixes felt good, new songs felt good I can't say anything bad about that part.

So yeah that's 25th ward. While I look like extremely harsh into it I quite enjoyed it, but also I didn't enjoy some parts of it so yeah... It's a game where I am stuck in between but you know what I am still gonna recommend it just for it's vibes of it. Silver case was good but this is somehow a step up of it in everyway and really fills you with it's mysterious upbeat energy.

Lastly some small things I realized when playing, one is this game have an intro and I assume it wasn't in the original? It was nice. Also it was funny seeing Suda again with ghosts. Btw I respect to anyone that got 100 ending. I wasn't patient myself tho. Also I didn't realize I needed to move that white block guy to select other campaigns. I almost finished the game without playing others if I hadn't look up a guide I legit wouldn't realize it can "move".

"Yoko Taro milks his loyal customer base edition"

"You wouldn't touch or even get near it if it didn't had the "nier" in the title".

Played until the "sun and moon" last chapter and my review gonna be according to that.

Let's start with the obvious question. Why did I start a gacha game and even had expectations for it? It's because yoko taro considers this game the third nier game from what I understand. He tweets about it and even add elements from this game to nier automata anime. So I had thought maybe there is important things going on in it? Also people was saying it's best time to go in because of the rewards they give before servers gets closed. So I jumped in and 15 hours torture started.

"Main story? What the hell is that? Here is 80 different no connected mini stories. Have fun".

In a franchise that is known for it's emotions and unrelenting drama, yoko taro choose to make a game that is just about "random mini sad story collections". And wastes a lot of the promising concepts just to fill the gacha content quota with making them less then 20 minutes that makes you unable to connect in any emotional form whatsoever.

Now I am gonna say there is small hopeful lights here and there, for example if you look at act 1's story seperately from ministories and just look at it as a "poor girl Fio's sad adventure" you can actually feel it's nier emotions at it's core.

It's too bad that you have to seperate %75 of the game to see that core tho.

And that's the problem. You can throw %75 of the main story to garbage and nothing would change. No... Actually maybe main story would be even better without all those unnecessary cut ins with forgettable mini stories.

But that's not all. This game have the worst gameplay in the entire yokoverse. Even worse than drakengard 1 with it's awful camera. Yeah imagine that.

Why? Because drakengard 1 had a point to give at least. This game has not. You can delete all the combat moments of the game and you would lose NOTHING. Yes. That means you can convert all of the game into a visual novel and nothing would have been lost. It's just a auto battler after all. And an uninspired and a timewasting one.

"But you didn't finish the game!" Yes I didn't. Maybe it actually gets important? Or not. I don't even care anymore. I am not even sad for it's servers closing. This game loves to waste your time with all those mini forgettable stories and GRIND moments. Because it's just an another "gacha game" not an another proper "the game".

"What do you mean with grind? Didn't you say game rewards a lot right now?" Yes. And you can level up everyone from the moment you started to 60. But after that? Ohhh it wants you to waste your time with getting bazillions of materials to unlock it's second and third rate for unlocking next level rate requirements. So essentially you are locked into playing daily missions and one by one level up every goddamn weapon from the SLOWEST goddamn menu ever that makes you think if it's designed to make you go CRAZY with every single upgrade have UNSKIPPABLE ANIMATIONS.

Then why should I care after all if itself dedicated to waste my time? I don't think I would lose "anything" with watching a summary video before next nier comes out. Because in it's core I am essentially playing a visual novel with forced grinding. A really badly paced, no... a nonexistent paced one.

And lastly if the next nier or whatever is even slightly similar to this game yoko taro is just no more to me.

Just watch the summary of it on youtube and done with it rather than wasting your precious time with it. So you can experience the worthwhile ones without all the timewasting.

Edit: I found a big playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGa4JvuGzOs&list=PLsZ-WzLIqahy4Vmlt7sHh01HyLWeXbS0G

Kill the past, Or embrace it. Choice yours and yours alone.

This game is about people that couldn't move on their pasts and their solutions to "dealing with it". So, we, the players, see these events from own eyes and make our own judgment. For the question, the ideology of the "Past". You, the player that seen everything. What do you do with your past? Embrace it? Or kill it? Or move on from it?

Choice is yours and yours for truly. Game is here for one thing and that is giving you multiple perspectives for this ideology and every case is here to support that fact.

I wish gameplay itself was cool as it's concept tho. Since trying out the ps1 armored core games, I didn't thought I would felt this feeling of "just looking of the cover brings me pure FEAR of playing" again.

Because movement sucks ASSSS. Puzzles sucks ASSSS. Mail reading sucks ASSSSS. Sorry, I went a bit rude at there, but really... I have a lot of problems for this game's mechanics and maybe I have even more things to count.

Yes I know the existence of holding skip makes everything go faster but even with that, exploration so damn annoying with tank controls with the inclusion of hard to see interaction symbols also with the combination of finicky interaction mechanics, playing this game feels like a chore to me.

You know, just for this reason I thought about leaving this game couple of times. Especially near the end where every mission just wants you to go around and rub your face to every goddamn wall to find and read trillion amounts of documents or finding millions of interactables to progress.

Excellent character writing stopped me from doing so... Sumio and Kusabi's daily friendly fights... Morishima's anger about his poor life conditions... Hachisuka and Morikawa's unending discussions and How red goes "..." And then goes "....." Really fun dialogues to experience dare I say. Also murder filled detective cases and journalist cases are cream on the cake too with how these two different segments support each other with the "question" part and the "answer" part of it.

But in my opinion, reading a pure visual novel format of it sounds to me more fun experience than playing itself ever again unfortunately.

I assume it doesn't get better than here when it comes to n64's pure action games

As a person that tried to get into the starfox and find myself not engaged with it's energy then shelving it 15 minute later, this game did what I expected from starfox singlehandedly.

Nonstop action, relentless explosions, new enemies stages levels challenges in every 5 seconds back to back to make the game pacing Godddaaaamnnnnn awesome and of course it does have a fun gameplay to back it up with shooting enemies and parrying with a sword.

Oh also it does have a story too that is probably got inspired from eva. But I think compared to eva, it's only purpose is just to give you shocking imagery and nothing more. It's not a negative for me tho, I wasn't expecting a groundbreaking story mod for an arcadey game to begin with so I can even say this part can be a plus

My only problem with it, is an outside factor that is the piece of shit wii u's input delay for n64 games that makes aiming 2 times harder.

Other than that this game is fire and it's short runtime (2 hours) is enough to make your life more positive for a while.

The dark edgy "Spiderman 3" sequel of Twilight Syndrome franchise is what I would describe this game with.

This is purely written by Suda from what I read and yeah it's evident that it's a different product entirely from what come before.

Forget the old cute cliche taste of let's go on a ghost hunting adventureee!! And put the new feeling of murders, serial killings, psychos and suicides. While the old series touched a bit of these subjects they never went that deep and often hold it with in the respectable boundaries, but this game does not give a f.

Incest? Here. Yandere psychos? Here. Child suicides and deaths? Here. Rape? Here. Body horror? Here. Garbage adults that use children? Here. Deaths? Here and More.

To the point I think just only 3-4 people just leave this game alive.

What I am getting at is I think Suda used every no no no subject ever and filled in this game. Does this make it a good game? Certainly a shocking one and probably scarier than any what come before. The uneasiness it gives is on entirely an another level than any other syndrome game. But it does this with taking away the unique style from what came before and that's a damn shame.

Story is on the other hand about two sides and Also with bunch of other filler cases.

One is about some student named Ryo that lost his sister a short while ago to a suicide?(game doesn't make it clear) and also gets bullied everyday, one day sees Mika and realizes her similarity to his own sister and stalks her throughout in the journey.

Other is rumor addicted Mika and her search to save herself from a powerful evil ghost that tries to torment and haunt her.

Story structure looks fine enough at first glance but when you play the game, you realize that only first and last couple of the chapters tries to progress the story and middle parts are just about Mika's variety of troubles or cases a bit like the older games.

Is this a bad thing? Not exactly. I would say filler cases feels full of content and dark stories to interact with and long ones(half of the chapter count to be exact) is full of thoughtful and philosophical ideas in it. Be it about the struggles of kids or be it bad teachers that torment students from behind the scenes and more. Also easily the best part of this game.

It looks like I am happy with the game right? Not exactly actually.

I said filler parts are the best parts right? Because When it comes to overarching narrative, game drops the ball at the last chapter so hard that not even the any bad case from old games can get that level. I really really don't know what happened at there but finale chapter feels really rushed and poorly written to the point makes you wonder all the build up was worthless?

Was it all for the edginess sake to the point it feels like Suda's revenge for getting forced onto this franchise or just a state of rushing the game out? I don't know but unfortunately that case really really soured my enjoyment on this game. Funny enough it's a really short case too! So that makes me wonder if it really rushed? I don't know and probably never will.

Also my other reason of not liking that much is like I said, it butchers the style from what came before in my opinion.

For example new sprites for characters suck and less detailed from what came before. Also old game's characters Yukari and Chisato looks unrecognizable. Also 3d scenes didn't aged good and I wish they use 2d cgs like the old games. Lastly compared to what came before, environment looks uninspired and lifeless even, probably because again it uses 3d objects more rather than 2d.

So yeah, it's a polarizing game for me. I enjoyed the shock, surprise and the uneasiness it gave me with nonstop forbidden subjects. Also enjoyed the filler cases that delves into a lot of different variety of dark subjects. But also it's ending disappointed me so I really didn't left this game happy also it's style wasn't to my tastes too.

Still it's just a beginning and I heard this case will connect to silver case somehow... So see you later at there hopefully. And let's hope that it does have a less rushed narrative progression then this one.

(I played while syncing up my gameplay with the translations. First half with izzeybee's text translation, second half with paradise hotel 51's video translation)

Finished today.... I think I should stay away from mainline titles from now on. Because surely their badly paced jrpg nature is not for me.

Gameplay wise it's a huge improvement. Now you have combo attacks, you can move, you can use environmental objects and there is grapple required enemies now. So they solved almost every problem of mine from 7.

For example If you stay in the right position and attack from right point you can send enemy with knockback attack(the ones with arrow pointing where the enemy gonna fly back) at places and if you can knock them to other partners you initiate a combo move and it's mad fun(when the physics doesn't screw up that is). I can even go as far as to say when it works it's the best jrpg gameplay I had played currently. You can get so creative with knocking that it's INSANE.

For example knock an enemy like a bowling ball to other enemies or bounce them like a ball between party members or punch them to walls again and again to stun them to hell. Gameplay choices are almost endless.

Also substories comes back and this time they are not just spam dialogue buttons anymore, some of them include minigames or a bit more interactive now! That's an awesome upgrade. Not just that, fan service inside of them is simply insane and impossible to make you dissappointed.

Also we have new major minigames that is dondoko island and sujimon fights. I haven't played dondoko because I don't care that much about town simulation games but played sujimon hell of a lot and I recommend you because it makes good amount of money when you arrive to it's last point(also you will hecking need lots of money in this game). So, It was fun.

And that's where my praise ends.

I don't want to talk about story nor the boring villains nor the awful... AWFUL PACING. But I will with talk about it briefly as possible. First things first is I can say story itself actually made me miss 7's Arakawa storyline. Because I couldn't care about Kasuga's mom storyline and so all the emotional baggage went to garbage. That means the whole main campaign.

There is nice suprises I am gonna give you that, for example that Yamai dark clothed guy from the trailers was pretty interesting, or new party members really had interesting stories about them. But spending with side characters isn't the main point right?

What is the main emotional core of this story? It's mom I guess... I mean it's suppossed to be I assume? But then why the heck she have just 15-25 minutes in the whole 70 hour GODDAMN MAIN STORY AND I AM EXPECTED TO EMOTIONALLY CONNECT TO HER? I don't know.

Maybe it's Kiryu's story huh?... No. Kiryu is only here to help Kasuga to finish his adventure and support him from the sides with making his own search. He doesn't have emotional connection to anything going on and he is like, I don't care I am deathly cancer anyway, so... I WILL FINISH THIS FOR KASUGA and act pissed of like always. He makes damn good fanservice moments there is no lie for that. Especially last chapters gonna give you a lot with familiar faces. But funny enough, fanservice is still mostly in substories and their time just 5 minutes or close to that, so try to engage as much as you can with the old characters you love in that 5 minutes because it's just that. A substory. Nothing more.

Kiryu have only one objective and that is just helping Kasuga. So he just does that. (Also both of their finale bosses sucks ass and they straight go to my own most boring top 10 yakuza villains list, they are that boring. Maybe they could even rival with y4 villains when it comes to cliche B movie forgettable types who knows)

Also remember I said gameplay is fun? Yeah they mess this as well. With grind of course. What I mean is just like 7, finale part suddenly boosts enemy levels up to ROOF. AND OF COURSE I AM PISSED OFF.

Surely, it looks like like A dragon soft reboot titles isn't for me nor their pacing with spending 3 times longer on side characters and stuff rather than the main story. But it looks like new type of fans having a lot of fun. I see 5/5 everywhere. What can I say, have fun. I am not here to take that. But maybe it's best for me to stop here for like a dragon other than maybe spin off titles.

Anyway that's all I will say. Bon voyage or whatever.

Only good persona game for me. Just the soundtrack. The only best part for me in persona. (I guess there is a story too but idc about persona's writing)

It's a rythym game where you need to perfect your timing, but nicely added dancing animations and fun remixed songs adds to the enjoyment as well

Except the de de de mouse remix of shadow world. It's so bad that I lost the ability to hear. It's so bad that I just removed an 2 stars for it... It's so bad that... you know what, hear it yourself. Here it is https://youtu.be/FSv-IYM7otQ?feature=shared

But rest of the remixes are nice. So yeah, it's a nice enough game to play couple of musics, get energized and then continue your life.

I can't talk about rest of the games in the collection tho, because I haven't tried their remixes that much(p3 and p5)

If you ask me if I liked this game, Yes! I did. I had a enough fun with it. It's certainly a polished product with lots of content to enjoy for spiderman fans. But also it tries too hard to be likeable for everyone and in the end becomes an another spiderman game rather than "The" Spider man game. At least for me.

For example let's start with the gameplay. It does have it's web shooting, traversal abilities, combat abilities etc. They also feel nice enough to carry the game with their undeniable polished animations. But they also feel samey from products that came before it. There is nothing new in it other than more refinement and polish.

Feels like every idea in it, I played somewhere else already. That's not a bad thing if your priority is to become likeable for everyone. But also means it's not unique enough to pinpoint why this game is special then others other than it's high budget polished animations and refined gameplay.

For example let's look at the traversal, it uses a little bit momentum based web traversal system with heavily assisted webs that removes the error from the casual user, but also feels like spiderman 2's more casual friendly traversal system.

Or the combo system, it uses sliding auto lock on that slides you into the enemies when attacking, also uses the the dodge signal to use against incoming danger, it also have some combos at the ground and at the air combos. Also the gadgets of course. If this isn't your first super hero game you can see that sliding lock on and dodge signal comes from Batman Arkham games, gadgets on the other hand comes from their own Ratched and Clank games. Yes, combat is certainly fun but still that samey feeling doesn't disappear.

We can even look to open world and see... ubisoft like garbage objectives actually... Wait maybe I should take this game into my "Ubisoft Open Worlds" list? Eh...

Anyway my point is can be seen right?

We can look at story too. It's certainly a fun campaign with it's ups and downs and of course the emotional moments. I won't go in too much detail but it's about how Peter and Dr. Octa Octavius's relationships grow and break. It's certainly a fun story that feels impactful. But also somewhere in my mind feels like I had already seen this before... A Dr Octopus that is on the line between kind and evil... A Spider-man that have difficulties at balancing his relationships... Again it reminds me a lot of spiderman 2's movie story...

Yes it's much more varied with more characters, events and emotional up and downs but still it makes me feel like I am just experiencing the spiderman 2's expanded story script, or something like a director's cut version of it. Even It's suppossed suprises felt already seen to me.

This feeling permeates the entire game for me unfortunately. It's a fun time there is no doubt about that but also it doesn't have the rock energy of the first ps1 game of spiderman nor it does have the unique world of arkham games for me. So it's somewhere in between, it certainly isn't mediocre with it's high polish but it's not something spectacular either. It does it's job, gives you fun then disappears it.

So yeah, this is Marvel's Spiderman. Parts of it you already experienced, but if you want to see it on higher budget again, here it is. Have fun as long as you want like you always did. But I wonder if it's enough to make players want for the second time? For a second game?

First impressions are not great. I think writer himself thinks they needed to up the first game and for that choose bullshit logic for difficulty purposes and also somehow thought this was appropriate for this game. I am gonna give you a hint: "Camera Angle" From case 3. This case's logic frustrated me so much that it managed to make me shelve the game. I can go as far as to say that "case" is probably in my top 10 worst detective cases ever list in all of the entertainment media I had experienced

And with this game, we can see how Kojima: The man never shuts up born...

Joking aside, this game is a beast in itself. Unlike the previous game snatcher, in this one Kojima put world details to the MAX. What I mean is in this one, we have lore conversations in almost every goddamn single clickable pixel a game console can support and I am not kidding about that.

Also this is gonna be the deciding factor in your enjoyment for playing this game. Let me ask you this: Do you like mgs's radio conversations? If yes, then you are gonna have a hell of a good time.

But if you don't, then I would say try Snatcher, because it's pacing is lightning fast unlike this one.

So if we return back to the game, was it good? For me yeah. But unlike Snatcher, I like it for the opposite reasons.

What I mean is, this game is slow, conversation heavy and less on action. This sometimes makes the game slower than a turtle unfortunately, but also unlike snatcher, this slow pacing is the reason that made me connect to the characters more.

It's still a quite predictable story like snatcher (until it isn't), but hearing characters argue between themselves and open themselves more was extremely fun to watch for me. I even go as far as clicking every single thing in the environment just to hear more of them and I somehow find myself invested in this cliche buddy cop characters and when the epilogue came, I realized I was actually get a bit emotional for them. I would say it was enjoyable as much as metal gear 2, the characters that much enjoyable for me.

But will this be that much enjoyable for any of you too? I don't know about that, because this game just like snatcher, have a lot of pervy conversations and it's extremely nonsensical romance could make a lot of eyebrows rise. But for me, sometimes it's best to not think about it too much just like back to the future 2's plot. But if this sounds not good to you maybe it's best to be stay away from it.

For me I liked it, only thing was a bit of a letdown was it's soundtrack and atmosphere wasn't as energetic as the snatcher one. But other than that, both of them almost match with their positives and negatives. Both of them fun, a bit cliche...

But full of heart.

Sometimes I think myself as an insane person when I can't see the reason of the praise for a new hot release and this game is one of them.

Don't get me wrong I had fun of this game, especially the beginning hours, but like every ubisoft style open world title of this generation, it padds it's content too much to the point game itself becomes too thin.

Gameplay is.. (Played on Hard)

Pretty challenging at first. Enemies loves to guard or attack, you realize best way to deal with them is with parrying or if it's a red attack, then it's dodging and countering. Just spamming attack is never a good option and I liked that a lot.

Then new enemies get introduced that are harder to get an opening for, so only way to deal damage to them effectively is with stances/movesets you get throughout in the story, I enjoyed that too. Not just that you also get pretty fun gadgets to use throughout in your game as well and most of them is just in the first quarter of this game! (Remember this)

Side activites is kinda.... and just 5-6 types there is, so it's meh but it wasn't repeated a lot in the first quarter so I didn't get bored at all.

Side missions are mostly the same thing that is about some npc wants help and wants you to save their captured loved one, you go there then kill the enemies then you find their loved one dead, they thank you then start crying then that's the end of it. They copy this format toooo many times throughout in the game to count, but hey! At least they are not that many in the first quarter of the game!

Then there are important marked side missions too! They look story rich at first with telling a tale about important weapon masters, but when you do one of them, you kinda did most of them... with how it repeats the same story of a master teacher's loved one turned to the bads and you need to help them in this journey to save them from this regret. Also they didn't even put full cutscenes on them. At least theere are ones that is nothing to do with weapon masters and just about dueling and they were kinda fun. But don't worry about it's repetition for now because you don't see much in the first quarter of the game.

Yeah I was actually having fun in a game that uses an ubisoft style gameplay that is about clearing enemy camps, doing the samey 6-7 side activities trillion times and doing samey side missions, imagine my suprise! I was really having fun!
(Because content repeat was actually on the reasonable state at first)

But then the first part ended and the second part started.

It was fine. They added a 2-3 new types of side activites onto it, I liked especially the duels ones... and also they add 2-3 harder types of enemies. That was nice as well... But unfortunately a bit of repetitiveness started. Yet still it was in the level of 4/5 at least.

Then the finale the 3rd part started and this time it didn't even add much to the game and reuse a lot of activities and enemies. (Only thing it added was a white winter theme to everything I guess...) AND THIS TIME.... I WANTED TO SEPPUKU MYSELF.

Story is a mixed bag too...

It starts with an attack... Mongols are coming to our land... We get our blade and we attack them head on with honor! But... Their attacks are too strong and dirty so they manage to beat us and our army down. When we almost die, a thief helps us to heal and teach us how to be stealthy(that isn't fun to play), even tho we don't like dirty fights, we accept to do this for saving our uncle because this is the only way. Then story stops.

You clean lots of enemy camps, then finally manage to save our uncle, but leader Khan escapes. You follow him, then he escapes again and again...

Until game reminds itself that, other than a shitty villain there is actually an ideology of honor here somewhere at there, so it reintroduces that at the end of the game. Finally game starts to go somewhere at the damn end! And the game ends shortly after...

Unfortunately I felt nowhere near satisfied tho. Because not just that there were also other a lot of problems too. Game uses cheaply made rpg looking far away conversation camera is one that infiruates me, or attacking npcs results with them screaming then suddenly sitting down like nothing happened is another one that takes me out of the atmosphere.

Saying this unfortunately pretty heartbreaking for me because it looks good! it plays good! But unfortunately that's not enough. Like I said at the top of the review, it spreads itself too thin and make everything feel repeated to the mindboggling degree...

But you know what? They could make it work it they wanted. It's messy pacing, it's unnecessary amount of repeat content, it's inconsistent presentation with npcs etc. They could make it all work with just one thing.

With not making it a ubisoft style unnecessarily giant open world game.

Not sure if I can finish this tbh.

If I describe my feelings, this game feels like a artsy and experimental game that tries it's hardest to keep you engaged with it's strange and interesting combat system and mysterious world. Like most of the japanese small budget AA ps2 game to be exact.

It looks beautiful and atmosphere is simply amazing to the point I can say it's just mesmerizing, there is nothing quite like it. Just look at the screenshots, all of them have the quality of a arthouse painting!

Unfortunately it's also quite restrictive with being too linear other than hyrule style hub world and only interaction with the world you have is talking and doing combat.

But that's not the big problem. The big problem is how it structured and it's combat.

This game's combat is about assigning summons to face buttons then using them against to enemies. When I saw this I expected something similar to zelda like puzzles with how every summon have it's own attack and element. Unfortunately that's not the case, you can just spam buttons to get past most of the encounters(at least this is the case for the first half I had played) other than some specific enemy(bosses and mini bosses) types so it's not puzzle combat. If we look at from the action side, summon attacks moveset is hecking limited and also clunky and slow so it's also not a good action combat either. So what is it actually then? It's a button masher, that's what it is.

This wouldn't be a big problem at first glance right? After all as long as mission and world variety entertains you it should be enough right? Normally Yes, But that's where the second problem comes in. This game requires you to play 2 characters that feel similar to each other, to go to the same levels again with slight differences to beat it. Literally. Same. Levels. Again.

I know this game is a budget title but for what damn reason you would choose to mess your pacing with forced replay in your already small budget game I really don't get it.

Unfortunately this repetition managed to beat me tho as of now. Even tho my one side wants me to continue exploring to see how crazy, extraordinary and abstract the world gonna get with progressing (because like I said it's art is almost god level), my other side just gets nausea with the thought of forced replay of every level with a second character. I wish they didn't do that.

-First trailer comes out:
+Oh shit. It looks something like shadow of the colossus puzzle bosses (⁠・⁠o⁠・⁠)

-Reviews comes out.
+They say it's a open world ubisoft style game.

-My expectations get shattered.
+But friend convinces me it's gonna be great, so I buy it.

-Turns out It's a grab plant/climb tower/craft garbage kinda ubisoft game first, boss game second.

+Dam#it.

A heartfelt adventure with the budget of five water bottles.

So this game is about the journey of finding what really happened to our dad.

While I enjoyed the adventure, story wise game felt like a lore dump rather than full on personal story for me? What I mean is majority of the story is about Edward family's past rather than the main character Ashley.

I mean dad story comes back but it's just at the end of it and ends so fast with just only a small connection to the overall plot, also villain's story feels really abruptly ended as well. So that makes me wonder if it was rushed?

Now I maybe look like not enjoyed the story but like I said I enjoyed the adventure especially because of our companion D the Ghost. Their back and forward argues was entertaining enough to make the adventure more enjoyable for me.

But still in my opinion last chapter felt like rushed to me. So because of that story is kinda meh for me. In my opinion game must had at least one more chapter to flesh out the story more.

Gameplay wise puzzles were interesting but also quite hard to figure for the not so good reasons.

One reason is game does not explain how to combine two images at once in our ds machine well. Because of this I needed to check guides for one puzzle later in the game.

Another one reason is game expects you to keep up with every clue location you find. What I mean is sometimes game wants you to do backtracking. I would be fine with it but game never reminds you which objects you need to find again so it was kind of a hassle without a guide.

But rest of the puzzles were nice enough to make me engaged. There were password puzzles, matching puzzles, tool using puzzles etc. So it was enough in my opinion. Like I said my only problems are the ones game couldn't describe itself that well (I hope they didn't do this to lengthen this 5 hour game unnaturally...)

So yeah that was trace memory... Or another code(depending on your region). It was a nice adventure with a abrupt ending and some confusing puzzles. Do I recommend it? If you find it cheap why not. But it doesn't have nowhere near amount of content hotel dusk does (because it's really that small of a game) so keep it in your mind.

I want to say a lot of things about this game. So much so that if I start writing it would take hours, So much so that it would take days, So much so that it would take months...

But I am gonna stop here for now. Only thing I can say as of now is all of the pacing issues, all of the garbage comedy moments, all of the unnecessary time wasting was worth it just for the ending. To the point it made my score jump from 3 stars to 5 stars singlehandedly. It's that good or just felt "right" to me and impacted down to my core. This man knows no bounds, his pen is his blade and his mind is his weapon and as I pray, I desire to see unlimited masterpieces from him.