𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘧𝘪𝘦 𝘢𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘢𝘴 𝘯𝘢 𝘧𝘰𝘳ç𝘢.

Vindo de quem nunca foi próximo da franquia Star Wars e sequer conseguiu passar do segundo filme, eu digo, é extremamente satisfatório ser um jedi.

Imagino que pra fãs de longa data, Jedi: Fallen Order seja um sonho de muitos anos sendo realizado.

De início, me vi muito cético. O combate não estava clicando, tendo em conta a baixa variedade de inimigos na ocasião e as poucas opções de ataques e habilidades.

Assim como o próprio protagonista, Cal, que ao meu ver soava muito seco, sem alma, tendo seu brilho todo tomado pela história contada ao redor dele e pelos personagens que se mostravam muito mais interessantes.

Pasmem, eu achava (e ainda acho) o BD-1 mais expressivo do que o Cal.

No entanto, meu ceticismo caiu por terra quanto mais avançava no jogo.

Star Wars: Jedi Fallen Order entrega uma aventura épica, em todos os sentidos.

A forma com a qual a mistura de elementos vistos em diversos outros jogos já conhecidos e consolidados é feita funciona muito bem, e a cada batalha contra inúmeros inimigos ao mesmo tempo, cada cenário deslumbrante explorado, cada luta contra chefes desafiadores, tudo agrega a um conjunto sólido e muito bem construído.

Muitos foram os momentos de legítima euforia em picos de clímax da história, e mal posso esperar para descobrir os próximos passos.

Soleil Studios is made of former Team Ninja member. You probably know Team Ninja for Ninja Gaiden and/or Dead or Alive. Their way to do games is the following one : go all in a CQC combat system, mix it up with great chara design, spicy mise en scène, not so good technique and hardecoreness at every level of the game. Honestly, even finishing one of these games is hard. They know it : I unlocked the "Hard japanese" difficulty mode when I finished Wanted Dead.

In my opinion, Team Ninja is misunderstood in the western world. Most people simply see DDDDD breasts and stop it there. But what's behind those breasts is a deep combat system, actually deeper than most combat systems.

You've understood that I like Team Ninja. That's why I follow Soleil's work with attention since its birth. I was offered Valkyrie Elysium by my sister and didn't take the time to play it (my lover finished it and she's fond of action RPGs so I guess it's quite good). Then, my lover offered me Wanted Dead. I didn't want to let it unplayed for long: that's a question of respect at this point.

So I played it. And oh pal what a game! A very controversial one at least. Why is that? Well, it's actually a very good game. But nowaday, people tend to, quite rightly, seriously dislike technical issues. This and difficulty spikes. And old school linear structure. Wanted Dead has all the three of them.

So why do I consider Wanted Dead a good game? Let's have a look at its 3Cs.
- Camera : Nothing special here. Camera is never an issue. The game uses genres standards to counter the camera's weaknesses: it zooms when you look at something and your character automatically choose a target when attacking with your sword, wether or not this target is out of frame.
- Character : A military police lieutenant expert in both gunfights and swordfights.
- Controls : A clever assignation, in which shooting gameplay relies on sticks + circle + triggers + RB and fighting gameplay relies on sticks + LB + cross + square + triangle. Really, the only thing wrong with controls is you pickup items with R3.

That's it. The game is BOTH a TPS and an Hack-n-slash. And none of these aspects are neglected. Now don't get me wrong : the shooting part isn't as good as Gears of War and the hack-n-slash part isn't as good as Bayonetta. But both parts are good, and more important : they're smartly articulated together. For instance : long range enemies are weak to katana whereas CQC enemies are weak to bullets. This leads to a constant high-risk-high-reward decision making, in which you have to choose between charging and exposing yourself to enemy fire or force retreating the best you can to create space between you and the short range enemies.

This high-risk-high-reward mentality of design is applicated to every aspect of the game. Upgrading your weapon is much more about personalizing your weapon. Each thing you buff in a hand leads to another thing nerfed in the other hand: increasing your clip size decreases your reload time. Healing yourself is also a high-risk-high-reward move, considering it slows you hard making you ultra vulnerable, and can be interrupted.

Ammo managment is also high-risk-high-reward based. Basically, you have... Very few clips for both your main weapon and your secondary one. This forces you to switch between your main weapon and the other one, because enemies drop weapons for one or the other, not for both. Considering you can change your secondary weapon for more funky weapons, like greandes launcher or shotguns, considering the higher damages a weapons deals, the less ammo it has, this lead to interessting gunfights, in which switching weapons is common and the order in which you switch weapon is essential.

A parry system similar to the souls' one is implemented. It works very well, provinding you either a low-risk-low-reward permanent protection in the detriment of your speed either a high-risk-high-reward timing parry system. Unfortunately, mastering this system, paired with the counter attack binded on triangle, is necessary (I mean it: NECESSARY) to finish the game. This would not have been an issue if this system was necessary as well to reach the final boss, which it isn't.

Wonderful transition to bosses, characters and narration. In ne word for each of them: unequal, nice and surprising. Bosses are overall interessting, with many patterns and a good variety in their move set and the one you have to assume to deal with them. Some of them even have very clever design, like the rain one, vanishing into invisibility, which lead to a stressful deadly hide and seek game, or Tom Cruise, or should I say Tom CruiseS because there are two of them, which double the patterns you have to watch for and leads to interessting decision making about whom to down first. Unfortunately, there are the second boss and the last one, whom are very harsh difficulty spike, forcing you to learn things you didn't had to learn before (like perfect parrying), and relying and what can be seen as unfair design: insta-kill moves and arenas flooded with henchmen.

Characters rely on objections. Herzog is both popular and upopular, is both an ass and a nice dude. Doc does surgery while being drunk. Cortez is silent, which makes you over attentive to his moves and animation. Gunsmith is -you get it- a gunsmith, but also a former idol fan of cats. Captain lectures you and your team, but eventually asks for a kiss at the end of the meeting to forgive you (the meeting was about how many people you killed and how much it cost). Bad guys are really cool : I talked earlier of the invisible girl and Tom ruise, but Richter and the club owner are wonderful too. Eventually, Hannah, the main character, is a brutal yet soft abandonned mother, very empathic, whilst being a true killing machine, hurt by wars that aren't her's.

All these people are brilliantly mise-en-scène in a Kojima's way. There a huge attention to futile details, like how gelly is their gelly (spoiler: anti-gravity tiers). The switch between art style is wonderful and well-thought: outside the club is realistic, inside it's anime. Shoutout to this level by the way, which is by far the best one featuring the best enemies and level design.

The world and story told are a post-80 pro capitalist society that killed public services and destroyed many lives in its insatiable appetice for profit. Pretty much our world, just a little bit more fascist. Private armies tend to destroy police to conquier this last market. Girls with no family and a kid have no futur: there are no social services to help them. They'll, as shown in a cutscene, marry a douch that'll eventually come home drunk and kill them. Not gonna lie, it can be harsh. This is very nicely constrasted to the colorful sound and visual design, which is based on the 80s culture, quite happy-go-lucky and egocentric.

Wanted Dead isn't a perfect game in any way. But, as the other Team Ninja (in this case, their child Soleil) games, it focuses on things it considers important and delivers a 20/20 game on these things. If you want a well told anticaptilistic game, based on mixed combat system, featuring great sword AND gun fights, Wanted Dead is for you. If you want a game that runs perfectly on a PS4, that has no difficulty spikes nor linear level design, this isn't for you.

This is clearly one of those 7/10 games in many different ways... I don't even know where to start. I'd rather focus on the positive aspects which seem to be more overlooked in reviews.

- The voice acting is done by VA of different nationalities, which gives a certain flavour to it. I don't know if it's just the different accents/cadence of people not speaking their native language or just that they are doing their best but it has those ending-1990s/begining-2000s kind of cheesy voice acting which contributes to its "7/10 out of the past times" identity.

- At the beginning the combat may seem to be a little bit janky, and some parts of it indeed are with the genre-characteristic wonky camera, attacks coming out of it sometimes and stuff, but it's really satisfying in general. The finishers felt fine to pull off and the bosses are a mixed bag, although not many, half of them are cool. Fun and direct combat that is fun to play, what else did you want from this?

- The OST is quite good to be honest. I was disappointed in the club stage where they played a remix of "Maniac" by Michael Sembello to not be used on the actual level... damn, I really wanted to kill mobs while listening to it.

- The story has some interesting points here and there and others are just all over the place. You know, 7/10 vibes. The dialogue has some funny bits and there're plenty of references to pop culture that some younger audiences may not get but they are kinda corny so I'm all in for it anyways. The ending and the story end way too soon, like something was missing there, but fuck it, if we get another game down the line then fine, if not, you can accept it as is and roll with it.

- It has in-between levels minigames! They're not all great but again, add up to give the traits of a 7/10 game. The bullet hell side-scroller mecha minigame rules though.

- Also, it's got an explorable hub, which is always a plus in an action game for me.

- Chainsaw.

Just play for the vibes and the action and you won't get dissapointed.

One of the main points of contention Xenogears' critics will bring up is the game being released in a state of not being entirely finished. Disc 2 being made up of mostly narration and Evangelion eps 25-26-esqe dreamlike cutscenes is a common point of contention when addressing this game's strengths and shortcomings. Just as every artistic medium is defined by its limitations, video games are no different. Even still, Xenogears is a special case. One of the main questions the game poses is what it means to be complete. Although this is mainly to be applied the main character Fei and his arc of finding his purpose by forming meaningful human connections, given the game's own status as a not fully realized vision makes the message all the more profound.

If there's one question that Xenogears has made me ask more than anything else, it's about the point when a piece of art becomes complete. How complete do you need to be to feel like a "whole"? A defining aspect of Gears is its stance on this topic: we aren't defined by our own journeys so much as how we affect the lives of each other.

Many may see disc 2 as unsatisfying, but the way I see it it's the brightest shining aspect of what makes Xenogears as good as it is. This game tells a front to back story, and I haven't even addressed the fact that I think this might be the best individual story I've ever experienced in a single video game! Not to mention the amazing character arcs of Fei and Elly. People throw around the term "this speaks to me on multiple levels" a lot but this is especially true to me with Xenogears.

As the game says, it's okay to not feel whole. Eventually as time marches on, we affect the lives of others and find meaning in the various human connections we form in our lives. And that gives us meaning just as much as any aspect of ourselves. Just as people are defined by the bonds we make, the people we meet, and the love we share, I think Xenogears has a somewhat similar journey.

A big reason I was interested in this game as I've been is because of how much I've heard it inspired modern JRPGs. With them being my favorite genre of game, combined with my fascination with works of fiction that inspired other pieces I so dearly enjoy made Xenogears a must play for me eventually. I'm so happy I did. Seeing this game's legacy retroactively makes me think this is the "complete" form of Xenogears: leaving such a legacy on the entire genre in the 24 years since its release.

Video games are a unique artform. The relationship between creator and consumer is an especially gray line here with many of the highest names in the industry describing themselves gamers just as much as game creators. Games, being as big of an art form as they are, cannot be created by one person (maybe in some instances but definitely not something like Xenogears for the purposes of this thought). Creators constantly build off one another, using aspects of someone else's creation for their own works, thus creating a living legacy for the original piece. Given how much inspiration others have found in the storytelling, character writing, and worldbuilding of Gears, I think it's safe to say it has about as impactful of a living, active legacy as just about any game in the genre.

Xenogears defines what it means to be a video game. Despite the fact that it's not a fully realized vision, you cannot argue the impact its had on everyone who's come into contact with it. Knowing this, is there really anything that truly needs to be changed about it? Although it's admittedly imperfect, flawed, whatever you want to call it, the lasting impressions it leaves on everyone give the game as much of a purpose as if it was truly finished.

So is Xenogears "whole"? I think so at least.

ALERTA DE JOGASSO. E eu não sou particularmente chegado nos RPGs de turno, mas aqui é feito de uma maneira tão simples de entender, mas ainda assim dinâmica, que deixa pouquíssima coisa a desejar. O único ponto baixo que eu consigo pensar nesse jogo tem a ver com o combate. O fato de você não poder posicionar os bonecos e tanto os seus personagens quanto os inimigos se movem aleatoriamente faz com que as possibilidades para ataques em área e utilização do cenário de maneira inteligente seja bastante limitada. Mas mesmo assim, em comparação com todo o restante lindo que é esse jogo, isso não me incomodou em quase nada. A melhor história principal da franquia, DE LONGE. Com tanto conteúdo adicional pra fazer que eu passei horas fora da missão principal. Uma trilha sonora foda pra caralho com várias músicas bem únicas e boas. Um elenco fortíssimo de personagens, facilmente o melhor da franquia também, pra mim não tem um personagem chato ou jogado. Papo reto, eu podia dar 5 estrelas só pelo diálogo final do Ichiban (do final mesmo, antes de rolar os créditos).