Buddhist philosophy intersecting Mesoamerican/African mythology (sort of shares a property with the Star Wars prequels in which some of these fictional cultures definitely feel racially undertoned but trying to place a finger on what specific race makes YOU the racist one. Current working theory is that the Zora are either Swedish or Korean.) in a game that's so good it doesn't make sense it exists. Escapes the humongous shadow OOT casts over the franchise by unashamedly bogarting every single asset that game had and becoming an unimpeachably weird, sombre but never maudlin, beautiful freak of a sequel. One sidequest of love and tragedy that spans 3 days and 3 nights ends a minute and a half before the moon crashes into the earth forces you to rewind the clock, and 10 seconds later, it's like it never happened at all. Memento mori - remember you will die. You loop through Samsara, you do it all again.

Link becomes the de facto sin-eater of Termina, coming and going without a trace. You can't be everywhere. You can't save everyone. You loop through Samsara, you do it all again.

Takes several pages out of the Silent Hill 3 playbook - it’s a story about a dual-identity teenage girl getting revenge on an unfair world (at the same time delving into a Keatsian bower realm of blood, shit and hair) with all the ambience to back it up…. for maybe the first 5 minutes? The enemy designs are really dumb, sorry. There’s a couple jumpscares that did get me (owed largely to some excellent sound design) but all tension evaporates like a fart in the wind when you see the first slug-thing enemy on the ground lol. Keeps narrative on a backfoot, all puzzles very intuitively designed, overall well-constructed and never overlong - by all measures, an excellent outing for the dev! Any RE/SH fan is gonna get a nice 10 hours out this one. Only complaint is there isn’t a nasty crow-man Mr. X chasing you throughout the game, but I guess if you want that, you can just play Fear & Hunger.

Once I saw this guy on a bridge about to jump. I said, "Don't do it!" He said, "Nobody loves me." I said, "Marx loves you. Do you believe in Marx?"

He said, "Yes." I said, "Are you a Socialist or an Anarchist?" He said, "A Socialist." I said, "Me too! Democratic Socialist or actual Communist?" He said, "Actual Communist." I said, "Me too! What school?" He said, "Marxism." I said, "Me too! Revolutionary Marxism or Reformist Marxism?" He said, "Revolutionary Marxism." I said, "Me too! Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism or Revolutionary Marxism-Trotskyism?"

He said, "Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism." I said, "Me too! Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism-Maoism, or Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism-Hoxhaism?" He said, "Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism-Maoism." I said, "Me too! Regular Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism-Maoism or Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought?" He said, "Revolutionary Marxism-Leninism-Maoism-Gonzalo Thought." I said, "Die liberal!" And I pushed him over.

This game is just the best designed RPG ever, isn't it? No levelling up, no intrinsic growth, even your EXP bar is repurposed into a burden to manage (hunger). Death is a natural consequence of knowledge acquisition, but saves are part of a grand web of interconnected mechanics so deeply integrated into every facet of gameplay that you're always on top if you're sharp enough, but it's never quite enough to feel safe or satisfied. Sort of takes hints from the Foddy school of thinking in that the challenge is always, to an extent, “real”, and progress is a sort of “you know it when you’ve made it” kind of thing - always under threat of going south after a couple bad turns, however. Everybody else using RPGMaker should give up honestly, there's no more up from here