Pitch black comedy done right. For a game with so many jokes, the majority of them land - a fucking miracle if you ask me. The credits say that it was 'directed' by the guy who made Saiyaman Saga Was Sick, which explains why the dialogue turns between stupid and smart on a dime. Nicole is a perfect misanthrope, so when the plot turns to dealing crack or abusive relationships it's unsurprising but still hilarious. This is further boosted by the voice acting, which is superb across the board. Elsie Lovelock turns in an all-star performance as Nicole, and really brings that dirtbag to life. Honestly, give it a shot, it's quality crassness in a short package.

I don't expect my thoughts on this game are widely shared, but this is a special game to me and I want to at least put them into writing somewhere, for myself.

It makes me sad with some of the hate this game receives. "Where's the sprites" or "lol PS2 graphics". To me, the graphics capture the spirit of the original art and the vibe of Suikoden games. The work done on animating body language and facial expressions is wonderful. It has a lot of expressive depth and is just utterly charming. I honestly think it holds up even compared to recent games that use motion capture. I still think about this animation work constantly and I wish I could tell the people who worked on it how important and recognized their work is, even 20 years later. Simple moments like Lucia hugging Hugo, the Saint Loa Knights kids, or any of the Duck Clan animations are still completely amazing to me. I do think some of the animations in the game can be stiff and stilted, but a love and craft went into 3 that you can tell was missing from Suikoden 4. The vibrancy of colors and art style had such an impact on me that it feels like one of those things I have been trying to find again, to find another game to recapture some of the feelings of playing Suikoden 3 for the first time. Suikoden 3 feels like a rich, lively world.

The story of Suikoden 3 does not and could never stand up against the story of 2. Suikoden 2 is a masterpiece, it will stand the test of time. So I think people do Suikoden as a series a disservice for having those same lofty expectations of any other game in the series. Suikoden 3 uses its story to solve one of the biggest issues from 1 and 2. To recruit 108 characters but only have one main party feels frustrating. So Suikoden 3's Trinity system having three parties and using a Rashomon story telling style is a welcomed addition and what 3 does the best. It's fun and over the top but also emotional and serious. It does the story beats well.

The world building of Suikoden as a whole is why I think people love these games. There's weight to the story in one game that could tie into another. I think the Murayama trilogy of games are all must plays to really see this magic work. It fell apart when he left and 4 and 5 only loosely tie into the whole. Seeing characters age and have lives you do not see in between games really gives a weight to this being a living world and you are only seeing it through the lens of specific regional conflicts. I think within that truly lies the tragedy of these games. There's so many great characters and concepts and building to something even bigger that was abandoned after the 3rd game. We'll never know the names of all of the True Runes, we'll never get a game that really explores Harmonia, we'll never see minor characters we love return in a sequel. We'll never know the true size of this world and in a lot of ways, RPG story telling is worse off for it. Imagine a world where a Suikoden XVI just released instead of a Final Fantasy.

Is this game perfect? No. Though, it does seem troubling to me that when people discuss a theoretical remake that none of them understand this game. And if you don't understand a game, then you risk destroying what made it special. In the last two or three years, I've had remaster after remaster just be mind boggling with what they 'fix'. I see people say the art of Suikoden 3 sucks or the battle system is terrible and they would throw it all away.

The battle system is unique, it is difficult to adjust to coming from games that let you assign commands to all 6 characters. Instead you assign commands to 3 pairs of characters and that makes you think about team combinations and I think this works well with matching someone who is always attacking with a spell caster, or one of the few beast riding combinations. Just because something is different than what you want, does not mean it is bad. It would have been nice to see what another revamp of this system could have been. They tried something new and it's neat in a way that's just not a standard battle system.

To me, Suikoden 3 is special. It holds a special place in my heart. If FF7 was the game that really introduced me to RPGs as a genre, Suikoden 3 introduced me to the full potential of what RPGs could be. It has character and it has heart and as I grow older and I understand more of the behind the scenes of how my favorite games were made, it is heartbreaking too. I think Eiyuden Chronicles in a lot of ways feels like the team wants to take all of the lessons from Suikoden 3 and remake them, make something new from it all, free from the ills of working under Konami.

Thank you for indulging me if you made it this far, I don't typically write reviews this long, more quick hits of what I feel after finishing a game, but this one is different. I don't think I can ever fully encapsulate all of my thoughts or emotions on this game, but hopefully I got most of them out here. Not many games are this special to me in the same way as Suikoden 3. A game like this is why I play games, why I play RPGs. From the first day that I rented it and it blew my mind to playing it every year through college and the few years after, it feels like a comfort. It feels like home. I don't expect that most people will understand it, but in the very least, I could finally say this all for myself.

In one route you bully a girl so hard she relapses into being bulimic again, in another route you enter an abusive lesbian relationship as the abuser, and in another route you whore yourself out on MySpace because you don’t want to work retail. On one hand ‘understanding’ Nicole is a blaring self-report on all levels but on the other hand no other VN protagonist has ever embodied the teenage girl mindset quite like her. It’s truly incredible to witness. You will hear line deliveries that make you question what the hell the rest of the industry is even doing. Possibly essential reading

the protagonist immediately outs herself as a sociopath, but she's by far the most righteous out of the entire cast. this is also one of the few pieces of media i can think of that accurately displays how fucked in the head white supremacists are... among other things

if that makes your head tilt in a positive way, check it out. i don't even have to hesitate giving this a 10. i laughed way too hard at the godlike voicework (some of the best va of any game/vn/whatever) to care about its shitty use of the renpy engine

i think this game's themes are amazing. the deep dive into internet culture and how the need for popularity can break someone has always been something i've been interested in and wary of, and NSO explores this very well. the only gripe i have with this game is the tedious grinding to get to any of the good bits. it makes the game feel less like it has a story and more like a "streamer raising simulator" – which, technically, it is, but NSO definitely shines more in its story-related parts than the former. i do, however, think this is a good representation of how the internet can essentially kill a person if they're not self-aware

once i realized this was a game based on an rp group, things made a lot more sense!

the pixel art is gorgeous and the whole project is incredibly endearing. all routes feel more like first steps in a friendship/relationship/potential murder but that's understandable given that there r more than 25 target characters and that said characters are all a bunch of people's ocs from a pre-existing universe as opposed to characters designed for a player character to come in and wow! there are also a lot of explicitly french characters which isn't that important but i thought it was funny

had lots of fun. i love u titus, dinae, arbor, luca (with warmth and affection) and bugbear (with regret and fear)

first of all. i'm of the firm belief that you need to play OG echoes so you can truly appreciate this demake. i will spoil OG echoes in this review. i'll keep hush hush about some of the major story changes though

a good place to start would be some of the issues i had with OG echoes! here's how sacred echoes addresses them
- lack of supports: sacred echoes has supports coming out of its ass from a variety of writers :)! in a full playthrough i only got like a handful. luckily you can keep grinding for them in postgame, which is good because there are a few that are cross-army and can only even be accessed postgame. some characters have paired endings if you get them to max support, even! and not just the basic ones like clive/mathilda and mae/boey. even many supports from the original game were given more depth, like leon and valbar's!
- questionable misogynistic writing choices: unfortunately you still have a lot of women to rescue on alm's route. but celica's gets quite a few overhauls to preserve her agency, and conrad is still integrated in a fun way without stepping on her toes as much as he did in OG. the changes for act 4/5 in particular made my jaw drop.
alm's story has quite a few changes too! mostly with berkut, fernand and rinea. berkut and fernand's arcs are done a little more slowly and rinea is given a bit more of a role and a fun friendship with fernand :) i like it. good stuff
- map design: i actually. um. i actually don't have as much to say because i made the mistake of deciding "oh i played echoes already! let me try on hard this time". IT WAS A BAD IDEA. I WAS FIGHTING FOR MY FUCKING LIFE EVEN IF I WAS STILL ON CASUAL DUDE. but the maps give you a lot more to work with. even celica's hell is less hellish. for example in the desert maps they have some excuse as to why mages don't have their speed impeded by the sand and i was overjoyed
visitable villages are another big change. an incentive not to turtle for too long lest they be destroyed. some of them give you items some just offer flavor text but there's one village in alm's act 4 on one of the last maps that has this beautiful woman with a black veil over her face and you need to visit her with alm. Please. you get lore ported straight from the drama cds and an item too
- character integration: I FORGOT TO EVEN MENTION THIS IN OG ECHOES BUT the optional recruits actually have shit to say about the story instead of there just being a few characters with plot armor. i'm not sure how the reverse works though with plot-armor characters dying in the middle bc i was on casual

speaking of the drama CDs, the dev team incorporate extra lore and character backstories from a variety of sources! valentia accordion, drama CDs, even stuff from gaiden and its own adaptations that didn’t return in echoes. you can tell this was done with so much love and care because even the backstory changes make a good level of sense.
i'm using leon as an example because his support chain with valbar goes into his lost love (their relationship is altered here. it hurts so muchies) while his support chain with sonya puts forward a reason or two for leon to become a merchant in his ending. it's good. speaking of leon he's already pretty good gay rep in the OG but even minor additions like for example a joke about how he likes bears (THE GAY KIND) made me giggle like a little girl. i needed to mention this because i love him.

ok. continue. here are some stuff echoes did right that sacred echoes also does right
- the art is amazing. they look so good in the GBA style it's crazy!!! the CGs are ported well enough but there are a couple of upscales or originals because main dev is quite the skilled artist. the new characters (acantha and hyas) look SOOOOO GOOD DUDE. even minor NPCs have banger designs like this hot bald pirate lady from act 2 and whoever worked on those i wish you have the best lives ever. also the combat looks awesome because it's GBA of course it does.
- the music is also ported into the GBA style very masterfully. not every track makes it and i'm a little bitter about some of them (praise this despair... T_T) but that shit takes so much effort to transcribe that i can't be mad about it.
there are a couple of originals, namely act 3 gives alm and celica original battle tracks, and admittedly they're not as good as the ones they got from echoes and gaiden but they're alright.
the arrangement of the sacrifice and the saint is one of my favorites bc i didn't like that song very much before but i do now. main dev's music tastes really show in this but i don't mind i think it's great.
- SUPPORT FOR MULTIPLE LANGUAGES BABY!!!!! sacred echoes has translations in both chinese (up to act 5) and spanish (currently up to act 3), including all the original supports, with more to come in future patches ^_^

overall it's a wonderful experience. honestly the voice acting in OG echoes is the big plus it has over sacred echoes and that's not really sacred echoes' problem! it makes up for it with much better writing that doesn't need a good performance to sound believable. go play this game. don't make the same mistake i made. if you're sad about the lack of turnwheel get your own from home if you know what i mean. and when you are done with this review or even this game i suggest these next steps
- go follow the sacred echoes tumblr blog. you get dev updates for the next patch, character analysis, even soundtrack analysis for the Free Price of Free
- go sub to the unofficial sacred echoes support channel! or at least watch some of the supports they have posted. if you don't have the energy to obtain all of them (god knows i sure don't) this is a very good place to look.

After one session of a couple hours a good while ago, my verdict is that this is not my game competitively but still is really damn fun casually. This game is insanely strict with a lot of things (mainly roman cancels) making the skill floor higher than I care to push myself toward, but god damn if it isn't fun to play anyway. Something about just playing with friends really brings out the best of this game for me and it'll be a game I return to for some games with some buds tons in the future :)

If I had to describe this game with one word, it would be "messy." That's not to say this is a poor game, but it just has some strong ideas that I wish were executed better. The main thing that would help would be to fix the pacing of everything: the story, the combat, the field exploration, etc. All of these feel like a slog at points, despite each of them having a pretty good basis.

Story
The story has some interesting moments, but a lot of the time it seems like something big happens but then it just moves on without having the impact it should. While the story in this game wasn't the best for me, it did have some strong world building and setup for future games.

Combat
I initially really loved the combat, as they were a lot of factors to consider when making each move. Sadly it grew stale as the game went on, as it fell into the trap of often just repeating the same moves to defeat most enemies. This was only worsened by the time each fight took. Near the end of the game, many enemies were damage sponges, and nearly every move has a slow and repetitive animation, making fights drag on for longer than they should.

Field Exploration
The field exploration here is nothing to write home about, but I did appreciate that it was a bit more interactive than many other JRPG's from around this time. I just wish the movement speed was increased a little bit and there was more environment variety instead of mostly gray/white sci-fi areas.

Music
Last thing I'll mention is the music, or the lack thereof. It should be punishable to get Yasunori Mitsuda for the soundtrack, only for there to be very few songs total. Most of the time in the field is spent with no music playing whatsoever, and all fights aside from the final boss have the same battle music (which isn't a bad song, it just gets repetitive). This means about two thirds of the game is spent with either the same song playing, or just no music at all. The new tracks heard near the end of the game were all pretty great when they did play, however.

Overall
This is a game with many flaws but some strong premises. It may not be the greatest on its own, but I believe it sets a good foundation for its two sequels, whenever I get to those.