so yes, this was visually a big jump from the first game but that doesn't make up for the less than stellar gameplay that wasn't improved on in any significant fashion. the set pieces are something of a spectacle in and of themselves but upon a replay their impact is diminished and the scales are tilted way too far towards combat versus exploration for my liking.

not sure what my disconnect is honestly. see so much talk about this being a masterclass in pacing or something and i feel like i played something else? with the combat overload that i complained about in the first game spreading across most of the game this go around (though it goes off the rails even further in the last eight chapters or so to make it worse) it just universally felt like a slog. the repetition of the cold open with a few trims and the attempts at diversifying what you're up to with the brainless puzzles being a flop didn't help, i guess.

my biggest takeaway with this revisit is that i just cannot stand Nathan Drake. he was annoying in the original in a somewhat harmless way but that's before you had multiple games of him. i think The Lost Legacy might come out on top when i get through this series if only because he's gone.

Listen, I think SCP as a concept work very well in an interactive medium. By their nature of being phenomena with complicated containment procedures, their rule-oriented concepts serve well as goals and tasks for players to perform. Even in the case of Secret Files, just being a desk jockey inside a Foundation office collating SCP files can be used as a way to add a lil bit of interactivity to assembling and reading the articles we all know and love (and could serve as an easy and organic way to produce and perform some of the more complicated and innovative articles some people are writing these days).

But Secret Files also represents everything I absolutely hate with modern SCP. I dont give a fuck about the toaster SCP, I super dont care about the various scientists abusing the thanos girl SCP, and I absolutely resent the game for making me do a flute rhythm game sequence for the biggest loser of an SCP Ive ever seen. If youre the author of any of these SCP, I mean no offense, truly - my issue is that these are horrible to use as the basis for a video game. For a game that didnt venture far outside of being a walking sim at all, the last thing this game needed to be padded with in its short (but admirable) runtime were SCP with almost no gameplay potential. And listen: I love the “There Is No Antimemetics Division” saga as much as the next person but (1) we cant just reference that one SCP story in perpetuity until the end of time and (2) we dont need to do it in a pandering way 5 seconds before the credits roll. If you wanna do Lets Talk About Fifty-Five, then actually do it.

What is it that I look for in a video game? What is it that I look for in any form of media? The determining factors that can make or break the entire experience for me? When I interact with a medium like this, be it game, movie, or otherwise, I'm looking for a world. A world that I can look into and appreciate, examine, feel every aspect. A world that knows how to pull you in, using every tool it has available. VA-11 Hall-A, and its cyberpunk dystopia they call Glitch City, is precisely what I'm looking for.

This is not a world you are meant to appreciate, though. This is, as stated earlier, a dystopia, run down by the corporations and awful governing bodies that tower over it and its citizens, criminalistic and morally bankrupt at every turn, where dreams struggle to make it out alive or die trying. Yet, despite it all, there's a place of respite. A bar tucked away from the public eye, and a glance into a story that doesn't belong to you, but to a cold, tired woman on the verge of losing it all, whether she knows the full extent of it or not.

Amidst the cyberpunk bartender action, you will meet new faces, a large majority of which are already well acquainted with the game's protagonist, Jill Stingray. Immediately, you'll notice that, in a sense, there is no beginning to this story. There's no need to formally introduce everyone, as this is just another day on the job for Jill, mixing drinks and changing lives as she does for the regulars of Valhalla. Through these customers, you'll soon recognize the depravity of Glitch City. Customers of all shapes and sizes, all different motives and purposes will stumble into the bar each and every day, yet life proceeds as normal for the citizens of the city, and through listening to their story and talking to them, over time, you get used to them. Everyone you talk to has a story, no matter how minor, and those stories can change everything you know and believe. Valhalla gives these characters a place to be vulnerable and speak their mind, giving the player a glance into even more stories, the awful pasts that bring one to where they are now.

But a story isn’t what makes a world. Not alone, at least. A world isn’t complete without its environment and atmosphere, and VA-11 Hall-A nails this aspect stunningly. Michael “Garoad” Kelly’s work on this game’s soundtrack is a damn masterpiece for every scenario, complemented by the jukebox system that integrates the music into the world of the bar seamlessly. To speak a little more personally, this is easily my favorite soundtrack to come out of any video game. Just launching the game and listening to its title screen is enough to get me emotional, knowing full well what’s to come. Making it past that, things only get better with tracks like Safe Haven playing outside of the bar, and the wide list of songs to select during your work, with such beautiful standouts like Synthestitch, Snowfall, and the classic Every Day Is Night, not to mention the way it all meshes perfectly with the PC-98 aesthetic of VA-11 Hall-A’s entire interface. Everything just feels so natural, as it should. The songs that play each day are handpicked by you, the player, at the start of every shift, making it that much easier to immerse yourself in this short glimpse into Jill’s life.

It all comes together to make the perfect world I look for in an experience. The perfect, imperfect world. It is this imperfect world that I fell into so quickly all those years ago. Only starting out as me stumbling across some screenshots a friend of mine posted way back, a silly conversation between Jill and Alma. I laughed, and grew curious, not only by the humor of the moment, but by everything that was presented to me. I still remember that first playthrough. Watching as characters I would grow attached to would disappear for days upon weeks, I would let out an audible gasp upon seeing them again, just to indulge in their casual musings yet again. The sharp twists and turns of this story would break out, and the entire mood would shift dramatically. Characters would grow weary, concerned, Jill herself would lose the cool demeanor her customers had gotten so accustomed to, and the music would become much more somber. All of it, from the brutal reality the protagonist had suddenly been thrust into, to the despondent music I had selected to play by my own hand, it all just felt… natural. Despite the physically unnatural circumstances of the city and its residents, every story I had read felt natural, but I never felt like I was a part of it. Because I wasn’t. It was all just a crucial chapter of Jill’s own story, not the beginning, nor the end. Life went on, for everyone involved, and I found myself holding its precious moments close to me, through multiple replays and reminiscences of the world I had fallen in love with.

And it is in this world, where I can find myself at my most vulnerable. VA-11 Hall-A brings out the emotion in me that few other games can so easily, just as the bar itself does so regularly with its clientele. From day one, I have, and forever will hold this experience closest to my heart, and I will surely do the same with whatever story is to be told in the future with its sequel.

This is my favorite game of all time. The perfect blend of every element I look for in a video game, in a show, in any form of art. This warm and comforting feeling, even in the face of such a brutal environment as this. This is what I would happily call a perfect game. The perfect game.

Cheers to eight years of cyberpunk bartender action.

People say "Separate the art from the artist" but oftentimes, the artist and their sick and twisted perversions are so intertwined with their work that it doesn't even matter, and this is the prime example of that, and even if it weren't, the artist is still bad enough as is without his shit hypothetically not being in the game
Besides all that, this game is just horrible; a shoddily coded, barely optimized mess that doesn't even have its main bulk of the game coded in nor any original character models; and it's been 10 fucking years since the game started development!

hi-fi rush couldn’t have been more up my alley unless it included a dozen more nine inch nails tracks. even then, i didn’t love the result nearly as much as it's promise... not even close. in trying to articulate why, i found two thousand vitriolic words staring back at me and felt like a frickin jerk. what was i doing? it’s a hesitance obviously coloured to some extent by the death of another of mikami’s babies. like gatecrashing your coworker’s funeral only to pin down their family and talk trash about how they dressed like shit, how their lunch always smelled like garbage, how they couldn’t even compose a decent email. read the room, idiot. but more importantly: focus. does it matter? what about proportionality?

this isn’t to say we’re obliged to be complementary in the face of loss, nor that it makes sense to invest significant energy and emotion into (specifically) a studio closure or (broadly) the injustice of corporate machinations entirely beyond our remit. to write mean words about a videogame carries even less of a moral implication than refusing to love the fake dead coworker you invented in your mind, so you may as well just eviscerate it. whatever. but again, does it matter? the words in my face felt about as pointless as flushing a studio for the crime of making a successful product. so let’s start over.

this shit’s a eulogy now. we’re talking virtues over vices... mostly.

character action games have near-zero market penetration, and their relative dearth makes this game's existence a small miracle. i saw a ton of commentary to this effect when it released, and... yeah, they're completely right. a year and change on, it's interesting to see the pendulum finally begin to swing back in the genre's favour, but it’s still a long road ‘til we’re out of soulsville. sure, time will give us the occasional big hitter—a new kamiya joint or another dmc—but such games will mostly remain a hard sell for a bit longer, at least until a few more come along and ingratiate players to their whims. and this is kind of exactly what tango did, right?

mid-planning, someone grabbed a permanent marker and jotted APPROACHABILITY in big-as-fuck kanji across two entire whiteboards. the principle so clearly runs through all design choices, seen in its combat affordances, in its approach to tutorialising, in the eight million ways it communicates its rhythm. taking newcomers to combo/grade-based action games, most of whom would be treated to a free download, and requesting they simultaneously hold a beat could’ve easily bred alienation. add to that, much as i'd rather not peek into the black box, microsoft itself. the degree to which it inserts itself into its studios’ decision-making process is a mystery, but i'm sure tango were as aware as any that they exist(ed) to pump those gamepass numbers. these factors no doubt increase the appeal of casting a wide net, and it clearly paid off (for anyone not in the employ of tango gameworks).

combat feels largely great, even if more so in theory than execution. there are choices which utterly confound me and do kinda undercut the whole premise—attacks always hit on the beat, even if you don’t, allowing you to ignore the rhythm aspect on all but the hardest difficulty—but they stand out very clearly as concessions made toward more streamlined and intuitive combat. i may not love it but fair enough, i get it. staying locked to that beat while you smack up some chumps feels sick regardless. it’s responsive, flashy, and can facilitate a nice flow state when it lasts long enough. mostly everything you’d ask for. i wish the combat:interstitial ratio was pushed closer to the former, but once it hits a nice stride in its back third, god damn. those last few levels rocked. conceptually, the rhythm-action hybrid concept is fantastic and if not for its compromises, could’ve been some of the best shit ever.

rhythm tower—the unlockable pure combat mode—is fun as hell. a chance to stretch out and wail on dude-coded robots to my heart’s content. chasing high marks feels great once you’re given the legroom. i initially bristled at tango’s relegating of meatier experiences to postgame activities and subsequent playthroughs but let’s be real, first playthrough as de facto tutorial is nothing new, and i never assumed this would be ninja gaiden in technicolor. we expect a low grade we can improve upon later, not five hundred deaths. to that end, hi-fi rush is a breezy straight line of a main game that hides its challenge within the optional outskirts. much as i might appreciate a different balance here, i think its difficulty being more firmly partitioned within the self-improvement meta challenge makes sense re: aims and audience.

ok… feeling the itch to complain now. remember, idiot: virtues over vices. so let’s just reframe this a bit.

hi-fi rush’s efforts to embed rhythm at its core feel like a perfectly natural fit given character action games’ pre-existing dedication to rhythm and flow. i hope this concept isn’t memory holed, that someone eventually runs with and builds upon it. if that somehow occurs, i hope any successors place a greater emphasis on those rhythm-centric aspects, that they require a stricter level of adherence, just enough to do it justice. i hope for experimentation through a greater diversity of tempos and time signatures. i hope level design and traversal-to-combat ratios are carefully considered for MAXIMUM FUN and MINIMUM FILLER. i hope movement casts aside any notion of rigidity in favour of something that befits its platforming. and i really hope [actually being a jerk now] any hypothetical scripts do not indulge in the very worst tendencies of self-conscious camera-facing millennial screenwriting. i could keep going, but really, for any of my issues there still remains a conceptual goldmine. someone just needs to extract that good shit from the veins.

i truly love that this game exists, that it was allowed to be made in our stupidly risk-averse climate. i love how much care was taken in crafting this, even where i disliked the craft itself. i hope those who hold it close to their hearts are loud about it, so that it might help to finally spur more diversity in action games, maybe even a full-blown renaissance. hopefully, games like this will gradually shift the vernacular to a point where ‘souls game’ is no longer the only lens through which the game-liking public views action games; the people yearn for a greater breadth of experience, they just haven’t realised it yet. i especially hope those ex-tango devs are not completely dissuaded from this unfortunately dogshit industry, that they find new avenues to create cool things. i hope they’re chuffed—in spite of everything else—with how many loved hi-fi rush, with how impressive their very first game of this sort turned out.

fantastic for thee, just not for me, but dang... still one of the biggest a’s for effort i’ve seen in a while.

What a mess this mod was, and not even for the mod itself, but damn near everything surrounding it. Enough people have gone over its history, and at this point it's been so long that I'm not sure who wants to hear it anymore.

The songs are good and the charts are fun when they're finished. It's a really good homage to a lot of old and new (at the time) Sonic horror media, even going so far as to include some characters and concepts from the official works that just sorta happened into that horror niche. I still remember being ecstatic to see Fleetway of all characters get his own song after I had nearly completely forgotten about him.

The time is long past, and I know most of the devs have moved on to other things (the not shitty ones, at least), but it's still just an awful time to look back on. Maybe Legacy will be good, but obviously I'm not gonna hold my breath.

I'm gone after this review. Don't expect to hear from me tomorrow. Or the day after. Cya guys!

Do not act like I've not just seen Mario power slide into bed. Wish I could do that. Powerful statement for flat bitches. Anyways! Paper Mario is silly like that. They don't make them like that anymore... that's actually a [TRUE...] statement! Both the good... and the good. And the bad. Paper Mario 64 on da nintendo 64 ysee, well it's a product of its time. The backtracking all the way to China. Dog shit enjoyers being well fed with the fetching pilgrimage of Chapter 6. Very silly encounter system designed to make walking around a chore (Yeah screw that noise I am ran over and so I ran away) and btw the graphics are really ugly, trying to mask the console its on with an art direction actually made matters worse lol but with a touch of filter it is ok. The retro scene's strongest defenders are about to have my head for this. Mods! Kill this guy with love and lasers (the mods are the Star Spirits)

(°_°) <--- reddit nation after I actually kill this guy with hammers. Behind the deceptively simple combat system lies a simple combat system where you're not encouraged to use half your items and skills but jump man does do a mean jump doe. feel like mario rn! The window of activation for jumps is inconsistent on certain enemies. The one for defense is just designed as a gotcha moment I swear. A middle ground of "guh??" energy. What if I told you the power of friendship was the game's ace in the hole? It's like Kiryu changing fighting styles but it's Mario being a manwhore and changing partners on the fly. The balance is not quite there, but being able to feast on so many playstyles drives one cuckoo! Ah, to slap a hoe 6 times. To be a goomba and be granted the catharsis to finally jump on your opps. To be a tactical nuke for the low cost of 7 flowers (FP saver badge included) (what a bargain!).

NPCs will just say about anything. Some of them may have ADHD but I shouldn't be the one to diagnose. Regardless, compared to the oft too silent mainline Mario, it does be a mint breath of fresh air. No more Mr. Wahoo Guy. You will gaslight girlboss gatekeep the King of Koopas. I'm not a big fan of his himbo schtick here tbh but holy shit they gave the Mario gooners so much! It truly hits during the epilogue; lowkey a love letter to fans of niche Mario creaturas or somethin but they are super creative with unique designs of familiar enemies. Making it even weirder that recent entries got rid of it, wat da deuce! ! What beef does this little guy in an egg have with me ong he's been chasing me since the jurassic era 😭 Mario is world-famous but doesn't have no bodyguards?? Wait... I do! Mods! Kill this guy with love and lasers.

They gonna have Mario go in every nook and cranny of the world buuuuh everyone's so mean 2 me 💔 my gyatt is overworked and im tired of pretending it's not. Aside from coming across cultures and actually trying to preserve them to what they were (unlike british museums), exploring is also cool finding badges and stuff pretty cool! The level up is quirky as a fiddle but I didn't have to sink a lot into badges because... I'm gay... and badges are gay too, chances are you won't find enough badges to really splurge into the economy. It's not booming. Give me some FPs though you can never explode Bombette enough. Mr. President a second Bombette has hit the towers. Btw maybe we can agree the local spots are a delight to the eyes, but I've had to open a guide in Yoshi's Island chinese counterfeit because the camera angle made it hard to see I could take a path forward. I had to back and forth and a snoring baby Yoshi was snoring directly into my skull. Never cook again Intsys

I like Pokemon XD. I don’t think I like it as much as I should, though. While there are a lot of significant improvements upon Colosseum across the board, I think there are some noticeable weaknesses that should have been addressed. It also doesn’t feel as distinct of an experience despite feeling more polished and well-rounded in most regards. At this point, I’ve played about 45+ hours or so and ultimately, I feel like I’ve met the same burnout that I experienced a year and a half ago. As such, consider this write-up a sort of companion piece to my earlier review for Colosseum. I’ve explained most of the core concepts for this spin-off series there, so I’ll be using this space to cover the major similarities and differences between the two games.

Pokemon XD takes place five years after the events of Colosseum. The desert region of Orre is slowly recovering from the prior scourge of Team Cipher, though recent suspicious rumblings have put the region on edge after the kidnapping of the SS Libra and sighted appearances of more Shadow Pokemon. Wes, the ex-Snagem 17-year old spiky haired protagonist from Colosseum with a badass hover motorbike, is nowhere to be found. Instead, you play as a kid named Michael who has a scooter. It’s a bit of a shame that the edginess is toned down in XD, but perhaps that speaks to how peace has really dulled the wariness of Orre; you’re the region’s last hope to restore balance to this troubled land and succeed against the vestiges of Cipher who have “fallen back upon their criminal ways.”

In general, catching Shadow Pokemon has been significantly streamlined. Shadow Rush, the one move that opposing Shadow Pokemon loved to spam in Colosseum, no longer deals recoil damage, so they won’t be ending their lives in despair once you whittle down their HP. In addition, it’s now possible to catch Shadow Pokemon at any point in the battle, whereas previously in Colosseum you had to eliminate all other non-Shadow Pokemon in the fight before you could throw a Poke Ball. To account for this, Shadow Pokemon are now much tougher to fight; they’re capable of using other Shadow attacks such as Shadow Sky (which creates a damaging weather effect that hits all non-Shadow Pokemon) and Shadow Hold (which prevents you from switching out your current Pokemon) to catch you off-guard. In addition, multiple Shadow Pokemon are capable of showing up in a single fight, which is both a good and bad thing for reasons that will become clear soon.

It’s also possible to catch wild Pokemon in XD, though I have mixed feelings on its execution here. According to the game’s lore, wild Pokemon have begun to reemerge in Orre thanks to the relative peace of the past five years and general humanitarian efforts. To catch them, you can leave PokeSnacks at any of the three PokeStops and wait for your Spot Monitor to notify you that a Wild Pokemon has shown up, making your way to the PokeStop before they eat all the snacks and run away. Alas, I find this rather intrusive; the Spot Monitor notifications are completely random over real-time and will often alert you while you’re in the middle of a dungeon exploring or while you’re on Mt Battle grinding. In a game with no instant fast travel while in the middle of locations, it is extremely obnoxious to put down what you’re doing at that very moment and walk out of the area to bag the Pokemon before it flees. You’ll likely have to do this over and over, because you can only catch one Pokemon per notification and some of the rarer catches such as Trapinch only show up 15% of the time. Still, I’ve willingly put up with this in the early game given that some of the best Pokemon (such as Zubat -> Crobat) have to be obtained this way, and it’s possible to trade with Duking of Pyrite Town for some particularly rare finds such as Larvitar and Meditite.

Grinding has also been substantially reduced in XD in comparison to Colosseum. For one, it is far easier to purify Shadow Pokemon because you can stick multiple Shadow mons in the Purify Chamber (setting up type-trumping loops with non-Shadow Pokemon) and have their gauges automatically diminish over time while you do something else. Even if you choose to manually lower the gauge in battle, fighting with Shadow Pokemon is far easier given the expanded Shadow Move toolkit and that Hyper Mode has been replaced with Reverse Mode, which doesn’t randomly take your turn away or cause any effects of disobedience. Finally, there isn’t as pressing of a need to level grind in XD for most of the game, since the level scaling between areas is far more reasonable (instead of the 3-5 level gaps of Colosseum), nor is there as pressing of a need to cash/BP grind since Genius Sonority has added more Pokemon Centers/heal machines nearby to refresh your team and there’s an alternate method to earn BP aside from grinding on Mt Battle.

This is where we get to the side content of Pokemon XD, which I would say is the game’s strongest suit. For example, Battle Bingo at Realgam Tower, the alternate method of earning BP, is a particularly interesting minigame. In this mode, you have to clear lines of four in a bingo card by flipping adjacent tiles using Entry Points (EP) of caught Pokemon. You start with one set Pokemon, and can clear tiles by defeating opposing Pokemon on that tile or catching them with Master Balls. Since each Pokemon has access to just one move, it becomes an exercise of picking fights with favorable type advantages/matchups, though dual type Pokemon and Pokemon capable of using non-STAB attacks can complicate the strategizing further. The downside to this mode is that you might get occasionally fucked over by the RNG from crits/status/missed attacks even with the type advantage, and there isn’t much appeal to replaying cards since the cards become randomized after the first clear, making Battle Bingo feel more like a crapshoot. Still, it’s a welcome change of pace from the standard double battles of the main game and is certainly a lot more fun than going through Mount Battle constantly.

The other notable sidemode in Pokemon XD is the Battle Sim. The Battle Sims at the Pokemon HQ Lab are great at teaching the player the basics of Pokemon battling and doubles (such as utilizing moves which target multiple Pokemon and teaching tactics that abuse status conditions), but it’s the Battle CD sims at Realgam Tower that really take the cake. By collecting Battle CDs all over Orre, Michael can engage in what is essentially the puzzle mode of Pokemon XD in set scenarios. For example, one Battle CD teaches how to avoid telegraphed set-up attacks such as SolarBeam and Sky Attack by timing Dig and Dive. Another one teaches you the effects of Snatch and Encore to exploit opposing Pokemon using set-up moves before they sweep you with their own attacks. Admittingly, some of these Battle CDs involve a significant degree of luck (looking at you, Metronome CD), but I really appreciate how these simulations force the player to think outside of the box and teach players about the nuances of Pokemon battling that they likely wouldn’t be familiar with even from competitive modes.

I’ve mostly been complimentary of XD up to this point. I’m very pleased with the improved pacing (outside of the PokeSpot notifications), the environments have more features to explore outside of otherwise empty trainer-ridden corridors (though I admit box puzzles aren’t a significant step up) and I definitely enjoy the additional minigames that really test my knowledge of the mechanics with exotic fights. Unfortunately, as much as I’ve praised everything outside of the battling, that points to the biggest issue in itself; I don’t actually remember much of the main game’s many battles.

faea highlights this issue by pointing out the differences between Colosseum’s Dakim and XD’s Gorigan, though I’d like to expand upon this further. Firstly, most boss fights in XD now revolve around utilizing tons of Shadow Pokemon rather than distinctly difficult doubles mechanics (i.e. setting up weather sweepers, spamming Earthquake with one mon while protecting with the other, etc). While Shadow Pokemon are still tougher to fight in XD than in Colosseum, they’re still not as interesting to fight as unique doubles tactics given that much of the admin fights centralize around me weakening and catching the Shadow Pokemon instead. Secondly though, this also comes with the caveat that I would need an incentive to catch all these different Pokemon as pointed out by faea, and this is where Pokemon XD’s expanded roster backfires.

You see, many of Colosseum’s fights are made significantly harder because your original roster is composed of just Espeon and Umbreon, two Pokemon with relatively poor type coverage. Additionally, Colosseum’s early catches are mostly “shitmons” such as Furret and Dunsparce with middling stats, forcing you to really understand and abuse their limited toolkits (i.e. Skiploom’s Sleep Powder to status enemies and Cotton Spore to slow down foes) to succeed against all odds. Take this with a grain of salt because I’m one of those individuals that enjoys sweeping randoms on Showdown with Delibird, but there’s a real satisfaction to maximizing every potential use of overlooked Pokemon and bodying opponents with Qwilfish and Stantler. Granted, you’re not likely to defeat final teams with Flygon and Starmie using such Pokemon, but it at least provided an incentive to catch stronger Shadow Pokemon such as Piloswine and Heracross so that your team could scale accordingly to the tougher boss fights.

This is not the case with XD, which can overwhelm you with choice from its much larger and generally stronger roster (i.e. Shroomish/Breloom, Baltoy/Claydol, Houndour/Houndoom, etc). I’ve already alluded that most of the best Pokemon can be obtained relatively early in the game from PokeStops. Additionally, having Eevee as a starter as opposed to Umbreon and Espeon immediately gives you a lot more leeway to adapt your team when there’s a trainer in Gateon Port that will give you any evolution item you want for it within the first hour of the game. The result is that XD is a game that doesn’t really force the player to experiment as much, given the lack of difficult and unique doubles boss fights during the main story and the expansive and immediate selection of strong Pokemon in the first half of the game. The only real incentive I had to catch more Shadow Pokemon once my team was fully developed was that the back-up strat was even more tedious. Missing any Shadow Pokemon means that you have to wait for Miror B to randomly show up at a PokeSpot (same exact mechanic as the Spot Radar), and then interrupt whatever you’re doing to hunt him down and catch up to two missing Shadow Pokemon at a time until you have to repeat the process anew. As such, I’m forced to conclude a lot of the game's fights bleed into one another for me. Sadly, XD feels like a game more fixated upon catching rather than battling.

I wouldn’t say that XD is a bad Pokemon game, far from it in fact. Genius Sonority had the tough task of balancing Colosseum’s demanding battles with the casual Pokemon experience of catching em all while targeting player complaints of bloat from the original. In that sense, I’d say they mostly succeeded given XD’s larger and more colorful roster, and I can certainly appreciate that rarer Hoenn Pokemon such as Surskit and Delcatty are far easier to obtain in XD as a concession. It’s a much more accessible and expansive spin-off for most of the fanbase, but unfortunately, I felt that the aspect I enjoyed the most from Colosseum was somewhat lacking for most of XD’s runtime. By the time I got to the tougher Orre Colosseum and Mt Battle doubles fights that reminded me of what the series was capable of (using Teeter Dance to confuse everyone but the enemy’s own Pokemon with Own Tempo, for instance), I was once again confronted with that same massive level gap typical of Colosseum that would have forced me to spend more hours grinding up my team to even stand a chance at matching that firepower. How poetic that even after layers of polish and streamlining, it looks like Pokemon can’t escape its greatest weaknesses at the end of the day.

Despite the consensus on this "game", I honestly think its beautiful in its simplicity. I put "game" in quotation marks because this isn't meant to be a game, more a playable artistic expression of grief, loss, lonliness, acceptance and moving on; things I'm more than familiar with experiencing, and its all packed into an extremely beautiful yet short walking simulator.
The journey this old lady takes may be a literal straight line, but its got such an atmosphere of sadness to it, as you can see from the preview card its black and white, which makes everything feel so dreary and dead feeling, which further emphasises the gravestones looming over this woman, as if they're waiting for her, and in some cases, they may do, as she has the chance to die on the bench by the church, which can be percieved as a metaphor for her moving on. This game also makes you feel so much like this old lady since she can't run in any way, and you are forced to use tank controls, which makes perfect sense considering her age and the fact she uses a walking stick/cane and she hobbles along to get to that bench by the church which makes you take in the sights and sounds even more. The sound design is also simple but effective, slowly changing from the sound of traffic and barking dogs to the tranquility of birdsong, as if she's reading herself to pass and let herself fly away like a bird, juxtaposing the death-like feeling of the rest of the graveyard, and giving me personally some inner peace too. I adore how sight and hearing get used so perfectly to convey the tone and emotion you're meant to be feeling taking this journey, and having control taken away heightens it all and culminates in a really beautiful bit of art.

While these aspects of this playable art are fantastic in a simple, one off way, there are still downsides to this experience, like how this entire experience is only a 3 minute jaunt, assuming she dies when you reach the end, yet it still costs $5 to play the full "death" version, which is super steep for such a short game, but playing the trial version (where she doesn't have any chance of dying) isn't as impactful, knowing that the theming isn't going to be as powerful. Also there's a song that plays the lady's life after you take a seat which undercuts the emotion and feels unnecessary. This game doesn't overstay its welcome however; it being short isn't necessarily a bad thing, I just feel like the developers could've had a compilation of short artistic experiences like this together in one "game" to create a fuller experience. It also would've been nice if you could walk around more of the graveyard than just a straight line and looked/interacted with gravestones, but it did what it needed to so I won't complain any further.
This is one of those games that people should experience at least once in their lives, purely for the sombre experience.

Quick disclaimer: I was a backer for this game and participated in several backer exclusive betas and demos. I knew from the first time I saw the game that it would have sauce though and hot damn I was right, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't quite expect the game to go THIS hard.

Nine Sols pops off immediately with some of the most satisfying combat I've experienced since Sekiro and this only gets better throughout the game as the incredible bosses somehow just keep getting better and better.

The setting is insanely detailed and the Taiwanese/Tao influence is a fresh new idea you don't see a lot in modern gaming. Honestly I'm not typically a huge fan of 2d metroidvanias but this game shone through in every way and backtracking for bonus items and secrets managed to still feel fun even in the late game.

What surprised me most was how high level the story is. The game starts out feeling like a typical revenge deal, but gets extremely deep and emotional with some of the sickest twists I've seen in gaming. Not to mention some of the most interesting and developed characters I've experienced in media. On top of this, the music is God tier.

Red Candle absolutely delivered. Please play this game! I'm almost 99% sure it's my game of the year at this point.