The last time I wrote a review for this site was back in 2021, almost three years ago. I got burnt out from writing reviews, I just got tired of doing it from how mentally draining it was, not to mention there's a lot going on in my real life as is which has led to some serious low points in terms of my mental state.. But I decided to give it one more go because this is a game and a series that I finished a while ago and grew a newfound passion for.

Xenosaga Episode I is far from a flawless masterpiece, in fact there are things that other games do significantly better than it. In fact, Xenosaga as a series is incredibly flawed, but also at the same time is one of the most fascinating trilogies of games I've ever played. This is a franchise that is very overlooked when compared to Tetsuya Takahashi's other works (Xenogears and Xenoblade Chronicles). Xenosaga is considered the black sheep of Xeno, the middle child that is often forgotten about.

There are very few games in this genre that have captivated me like Xenosaga has. By the time I finished Episode III, I felt very sad that this series was never given the love and the attention that it deserves.

For all intents and purposes, Episode III is not only my favorite game in the trilogy, but it is one of the greatest games I’ve ever played, right up there with the likes of Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger, it is that good. Episode III is just Episode I but better.

The presentation is stellar, the combat is quicker and more snappy, the soundtrack is one of the greatest I've ever heard period, and being that it's the conclusion to a trilogy, it does not hold its punches when it comes to getting an emotional reaction out of the player.

It has one of the most emotionally powerful endings I've seen in any game. It is unbelievably sad yet hopeful at the same time, it made me cry my ass off almost the entire time, and rarely do I ever cry while playing games.

Episode II on the other hand, while it isn't flat out awful, it's one of the most disappointing sequels I've ever played. Compared to its predecessor and even Episode III, it is a disaster on almost every conceivable level.

It is a game that contains a handful of plot holes, retcons, bad pacing, bad voice acting, undeveloped characters, underwhelming plot twists, and crucial story details that are poorly explained or not explained at all and won't be until Episode III, such as the appearance of the Immigrant Fleet and Shion's past relationship with Febronia, two of the most important details regarding Xenosaga's lore.

There are a bunch of other issues such as the confliction of two different composers resulting in some music that sounds amazing and other tracks terrible which results in a ton of tonal whiplash, the deviation of Episode I’s anime aesthetic and having more realistic looking character models that look god awful, and the battle system is one of my least favorite battle systems I've played in any JRPG.

To summarize, it is insanely drawn out, unnecessarily annoying, stupidly difficult at times, tedious, unbalanced, not explained very well, grindy, and unforgiving towards new players.

But despite all of that, I was willing to finish the game so I could finally move onto Episode III. It wasn't all bad.

The music composed by Yuki Kajira is fantastic, the backstories between Jr., Albedo, Gaignun, and Sakura were very well done, the fight scenes look amazing for the time and were a nice way to show off the game's new graphical engine, and the ending scenes between Jr. and Albedo were genuinely heartbreaking and actually made me hopeful that Episode III would turn everything around. And it did. In spades.

Episode III made it all worth it in the end.

And that is why I wanted to write this review, especially for my best friend SwitSwat. He is currently playing through Episode I and his opinion so far is a bit mixed, his main complaints being the insanely long cutscenes, the lack of music in most dungeons giving the game a bit of a low budget feel, and the cast of characters haven't exactly clicked with him yet.

If you're someone who hasn't finished Episode I for one reason or another, or if you have been thinking about picking it up for the first time, I implore you to give it and this series in general a chance, and I'll do my best to explain why. My ultimate goal of this review is to convince you that this game is worth playing.

Originally this series was supposed to have six games, but because of Episode II and how much it flopped both commercially and with fans, the series had to be cut down to just three games. It is extremely unfortunate that this series is almost doomed to being only playable on the PS2.

Back in 2019 there was a pitch for a Xenosaga HD Collection but it was rejected by Namco Bandai because they said it would be “financially unfeasible”. And that honestly angers me, because you would think that with a company as huge as Namco it would be a pretty easy thing to do. So now Xenosaga is still to this day stuck on a 20 year old console. It's unfair.

Xenosaga walked so that Xenoblade could run, and what we have now is something special.

Episode I is daringly ambitious, with its universe, lore, characters, music, combat, even down to the development of it. I'll give a basic rundown of the plot without any spoilers and talk about the characters, then I'll talk about the game's mechanics among other things.

Plot Summary

Some time in the 21st century in Kenya, an archeological discovery was made that would forever shift the course of mankind. That discovery was the Zohar, a gigantic gold colored monolith that contained an infinite amount of energy. No one knows its true origin, but it seemed to have existed as long as the universe itself.

Fast forward 4000 years in the future and Earth has been abandoned, now known as Lost Jerusalem. Mankind has now colonized space, united under a newfounded government known as the Galaxy Federation, and this federation is bound together by the U.M.N., an interstellar network allowing for faster than light communication and travel.

Despite this insane technology, all is not well in the universe, as it is being overrun by an almost invincible alien species called the Gnosis. No one knows their exact size or origin, so eliminating them is not a simple task whatsoever, and they seem to not be bound by the laws of physics.

In response to this crisis, Vector Industries, the largest tech company in the universe, develops a combat android that is capable of standing up against the Gnosis, who they've named KOS-MOS.

KOS-MOS's designer is the game's protagonist: Shion Uzuki, a very young yet brilliant scientist who leads Vector's First R&D Division. Despite KOS-MOS's incredible combat potential, she still hasn't been fully completed yet, still undergoing simulation training with Shion. And this isn't the first time Shion has been developing KOS-MOS.

A horrible tragedy happened two years prior involving Shion when one day KOS-MOS suddenly goes haywire, which is why Shion has refused to actually finish development resulting in impatient frustration among her co-workers.

The Woglinde, the ship that Shion is boarded on, is suddenly attacked by the Gnosis and with ease starts slaughtering almost everyone, they simply do not stand a chance. KOS-MOS however suddenly activates on her own accord and basically becomes the only thing that can fight back against the Gnosis, as she has an ability called the Hilbert Effect. Essentially, it makes the Gnosis vulnerable to attack.

Shion and her subordinate Allen Ridgley are rescued by KOS-MOS and fend off the Gnosis while the two of them escape. By the end, the entire ship is destroyed by the Gnosis. Shion and Allen inside of their escape pod are again rescued by another ship passing by called the Elsa.

From there on Shion, Allen, KOS-MOS, and the crew of the Elsa are accompanied by even more characters who are all coincidentally going to the same planet: Second Miltia, all for their own reasons, but all come together under one unified goal: the elimination of the Gnosis, led by something known as the Zohar Project.

The first iteration of Militia (Old Miltia) was destroyed 14 years ago in a terrible war called the Miltian Conflict, and a lot of the events that happen in this series traces back to that conflict, as well as how it deeply affected every character, especially Shion. The details of the progenitors of that conflict are also revealed as you keep playing. It's the intrigue, the mystery, and how everyone was involved in one way or another that makes these games that much more interesting to play through.

What I have just written down is only just the bare basics of the plot and even then my explanations won't do it justice. There is a lot to unpack here. If you don't like games with shitloads of worldbuilding, then this might not be your type of game. However, I still say give it a chance because Xenosaga has some of the most incredible worldbuilding I’ve seen in a game, and its cast of characters are among some of the most intricately constructed I've seen in any work of fiction.

I can understand why people may be turned off by this first entry because of the ridiculously long cutscenes, sometimes going over the 10 minute mark. This game is the definition of a slow burn, but it's like that on purpose. It wants to take its time to introduce players to the world and flesh out its characters.

Typically, I loathe insanely long cutscenes in games, as it makes it seem like I am watching the game more than actually playing it, however I can excuse Xenosaga in this aspect because of just how well it fleshes out its lore and characters, and out of the 30 hours it took me to finish my first playthrough, only 7-8 of those hours were cutscenes. There is still plenty of game here. There are even sidequests if that is what you fancy, making this a 50+ hour game.

Many of the cutscenes are driven by said character interactions and dialogue. But what makes this work is that everything is explained naturally to the player, as every scene isn't just a giant text scroll, an awkward narration of what happens, or pointless exposition dumps. Characters will ask questions about something they (and the player) are unfamiliar with. I as a player get more immersed with this method of storytelling.

The game even has a glossary that explains all of the unique terminology that you hear, sometimes explaining in even greater detail than what's in the cutscenes. If you like reading about lore, then you'll definitely love this stuff. But this isn't to say Xenosaga is hard to understand. It's the context clues that makes me appreciate these games that much more.

All of this might seem overwhelming at first, but remember that this game was supposed to be part of a series of six games.

Characters

Sometimes there will just be scenes where nothing substantial happens but instead just have characters talking to each other, both heroes and villains. And you know what, that's okay, because not every scene has to drive the plot forward. The characters have time to breathe and just act like real people, to open up and talk about things other than just saving the world, and therefore you learn why each character is the way that they are.

A world this expansive and with characters this complex needs time and attention to be established properly. Even if your plot is generic, if you have strong characters, they can carry the story. Characterization is one of Xenosaga's biggest strengths just like with games like The Last of Us and Final Fantasy VI. It's not the overall plot that makes them the masterpieces that they are, it's the characters and the writing of each one.

Xenosaga is a series that dives into very dark and sensitive subject matter such as existentialism, nepotism, suicide, and even failure. These games can get really depressing, but there are also lighthearted and funny moments throughout. It has an almost perfect balance between the two.

Even the villains are given insane amounts of screen time and backstory, as there are quite a lot of them and they all belong to certain factions in the universe, which you also get to see the conflicts in between all of these groups of people despite them all sharing a common goal, even often being antagonistic towards each other, and there is no one who embodies this aspect better than Albedo.

Albedo is one of the most memorable villains in the history of RPGs, and I will die on that oath. The man is a total bombastic psychopath even rivaling the likes of Kefka from Final Fantasy VI.

What makes him work so well as a villain is not only the amazing performance done by Crispin Freeman, but this is a guy who literally recites fuckin’ Hamlet while standing in a room full of the corpses of Realians that he just killed, and then proceeds to rip off his own arm and head just for the sole purpose of instilling fear into MOMO, who MOMO has a connection to, and MOMO also plays a huge role in the events that happen later on. But he can do this without killing himself because he has the ability to regenerate his own limbs.

So he literally just does this for his own amusement. What the hell.

And because of Albedo being such a wild card, you never know what he's going to do next and how he's going to interact with the other characters regardless of their moral alignment.

The main characters in this series are all fascinating and are all likable in their own ways, I can't think of a character off the top of my head that I actually dislike. However Episode I doesn't develop them all enough, only until Episodes II and III will you come to fully appreciate just how complex they all are, each having very sad and complicated backstories, Shion being the most tragic out of all of them.

Shion.. is one of my all time favorite protagonists. She is a divisive character to put it mildly, different from most other female JRPG protagonists. She is not a superhero or a fantasy trope. She's just an ordinary person. But that is the reason why she works so well as a protagonist to me.

Despite being a world class scientist working for the largest multinational corporation in the universe, Shion is human. She is also the only human character out of everyone else, and so is bound by the shackles of human suffering. She is someone who has gone through several lifetimes worth of personal trauma and tragedies, and does not do a very good job at all keeping her mental health in check, and everyone around her knows it. Keeping my own mental health in check is something that I don't do a very good job with either.

At first she is very hard to understand as a character. She's very aloof, cold, psychologically distant, dismissive of the details of her past, doesn't have the best relationship with her brother Jin, and uses her work to avoid coming to terms to her profoundly tragic past, being that she is a survivor of the Miltian Conflict.

Shion by all intents and purposes, is a lost in the dark character, and is incredibly flawed and only gets worse as the series goes on.

By Episode III when she learns about who she truly is and what happened to her family and her home, and what caused it to happen, she becomes a completely broken individual who has been beaten down and abused to the point of no return by one of the most despicable human beings I've seen in a game in recent memory which I won't spoil.

Rarely does she ever talk about her feelings, and when she does, she often glosses over a lot of things. Whenever someone asks if there's something wrong with her, she responds like clockwork, saying “it's nothing”.

Ziggy on the other hand is the complete opposite of this, since the player is told immediately who he is and why he is in the position he is in and it is just horrible and very heartbreaking. But even he is more open than Shion ever is.

And compared to other games, Shion doesn't do a whole lot to progress the story and is more passive and reactive to everything that is going on around her. So when she actually does decide to make a more active choice, it's very off-putting. And she doesn't make a whole lot of substantial character growth throughout but there's a reason. It's because she refuses to, and the game itself makes note of this.

Shion resonates with me as a person. I actually do understand and relate to Shion in quite a few ways and maybe that is why I like her so much as a protagonist.

KOS-MOS is also one of my all time favorite characters. Right from the beginning she is a complete badass, annihilating the Gnosis with ease and knowing exactly what to do at all times. From the get go it seems like she could do anything, but being that she is a machine, a manufactured weapon, she is incapable of understanding human emotion.

She is the biggest source of guidance for the party and is the most knowledgeable of the group, but is probably the last person to have a discussion with about personal issues. She is definitely not a therapist.

Very early on, she kills another human in cold blood so that Shion and Allen could escape the Woglinde, and Shion is shocked and horrified as it is reminding her of a similar incident that happened two years ago.

When KOS-MOS gives Shion a detailed explanation as to why she did it because she believes it was the best course of action, Shion snaps at KOS-MOS and asks her how she could say such things and if she even has a conscience.

That right there is the biggest question about KOS-MOS. Can she actually feel human thoughts and feelings knowing that she is the most advanced android in the galaxy? Is she actually capable of change? Does she even have a heart?

She is a machine, just like Realians are machines but they show human emotions like anxiety, fear, and love, even though they don't really understand it. MOMO is also a Realian, but has the appearance and mentality of a child. She shares joy, fear, and grief along with the rest of the party.

Ziggy and Jr. are also not human but share the same thoughts. Jr. also has child-like aspects to him, and Ziggy literally gives off father figure vibes and is very protective of Jr. and MOMO.

chaos, while he isn't a machine, he is not human either, and there is a lot of mystery surrounding him as well, and just like KOS-MOS, has more to him than what he initially leads on. In fact he has a personal connection to KOS-MOS, but we won't get the details of that until Episode III.

So if all of these non-human, otherworldly characters show human thoughts and feelings, why can't KOS-MOS?

That is just something you have to play through these games to get all the answers to, and when you do, she becomes the most fascinating character in the entire trilogy.

She gets some absolutely incredible moments throughout this trilogy, even in Episode II where she plays a significantly smaller role in that game compared to others.

Later on in the game the party see visions of the future in which a terrible calamity will destroy the galaxy, and in that same vision they see KOS-MOS fighting back against said calamity.

So who is KOS-MOS really? Where did she actually come from? And why does it seem like there is much more to her than what she leads on?

I could go on and on about these characters but even all the side characters like Matthews, Hammer, and Tony are all just as memorable.

Matthews, captain of the Elsa, literally likes to call his crewmates morons and wears a goddamn trucker hat that says “Caution I Am a Boozer”. That shit is hilarious.

Commander Cherenkov, even though he is a side character, is just as tragic as any of the main party members. His story is unbelievably sad. But watching him come to terms with how his god awful life turned out for him and finding a place in the world that he can finally feel peaceful in when the world has rejected him so much is so touching that it makes me tear up.

And then there's Allen, the best side character in the entire series, but calling him a side character would be a bit of a disservice. I firmly believe he stands up with the rest of the party even though he never joins it.

To put it mildly, he is a joke character, but a really good one, usually just serving as someone you could laugh at. Second to Shion at Vector's R&D Division, he is the butt of the joke among all of his co-workers, all giving him shit for not being able to tell Shion how he feels about her. In fact it would seem that his most memorable trait is how unremarkable he is.

He can't fight, he can't talk to the girl he likes, and he can barely go a minute without making a fool of himself. Hell, later on in the game there is a beach scene, and the swimsuit he chooses to wear is one of the most ridiculous looking things I’ve ever seen.

But what Allen does have is more powerful than physical prowess and that's a good heart, and that's what matters. Allen is the heart of the party, and without him, none of the party's fighting would matter as much, and he only gets better as the series goes on. In Episode III he gets hands down the most badass scenes in the entire trilogy which again, I won't spoil.

The characters in these games are super strong, they are among some of my most favorite characters in gaming. But what also helps every scene hit that much harder is the game's fantastic presentation and soundtrack.

Presentation and Soundtrack

Xenosaga Episode I has by far one of my most favorite soundtracks in gaming, which is hilarious considering Episode III's is even better.

Although what may be a turn off for some people is that for some reason there is no boss battle music in this game. Instead there are only two battle themes that play throughout the entire game: the standard battle theme and the final boss theme. Even during boss fights, from the beginning to the end of the game, you only get the standard battle theme.

There is also a lack of dungeon music in most areas. But the reason I am fine with this is because not only is the battle theme one of the most addicting pieces of music for me personally, but the dungeon tracks that are in the game are bangers as well, and I actually was shocked that there actually was dungeon music and a final boss theme. I felt like they hit harder in that regard.

And the music that we are left with is also just awesome. The soundtrack for this game was composed by the actual London Philharmonic Orchestra, and it gives the game an epic, sci-fi anime movie appeal. Some of the best moments in the whole game hit harder because of the incredible music. Here is one of my most favorite tracks that perfectly demonstrates the grand epic fantasy sci-fi that is Xenosaga Episode I.

https://youtu.be/iHpvQlYswrA?si=bMctd3Fu6LqyNGDi

And even though the character models are very dated, they still look a lot better than other games at the time. This game came out in 2002, the same year GTA Vice City and Kingdom Hearts I were released.

Hell, Final Fantasy X, GTA III, and Silent Hill 2 all came out the year before, have you seen the character models in those games?

The character models not only have a very nice anime appeal to them, something that Episode II deviates from which I despise because of how everyone looks like plastic blowup dolls, but they also have realistic body movements and proportions, for the time of course. They also have pretty advanced facial expressions for the time. There is a lot more emotion to the characters when you're able to see their facial expressions. It also helps that the voice acting in this game is excellent. Leah Sargent as Shion and Bridget Hoffman as KOS-MOS are the perfect representations of each character, they are irreplaceable in my opinion, they would not be the same without their respective voice actors.

And the battles have some really beautiful particle effects and attack animations, something that the later games lack and something that I miss.

The character models are not perfect, but that's not where the game's presentation shines. It's in the fight scenes. This game has some of the most beautiful looking space battles that still look insane to this day. The CG used pushed the PS2 to its limits and I imagine that's where most of the budget has gone.

The cinematography is excellent, the animations are stellar, and the particle effects and just overall visual flair is complete and utter eye candy. Combined with the amazing music, it is something that is unlike anything else in gaming, and the funny thing is, they look even better in the later games.

Alright so, I have written quite a ton about the characters, the music, etc., and even then I am scratching the surface. It is insane just how much there is to talk about. As I said before, simply just typing it all won't do it justice enough.

So why don't I start talking about the gameplay, since it is a JRPG. Despite its amazing story and characters, a JRPG also needs good gameplay. Episode I has complex mechanics and battles, but I find it really enjoyable. I'll do my best to explain how the gameplay works.

Battles

Xenosaga Episode I doesn't have any random encounters. Instead it's like Chrono Cross where every enemy can be seen on the field and you touch them to initiate the battle. There's even a bit of stealth involved where if there's an enemy you don't want to fight you can just sneak past it, but once it spots you it starts chasing you for a period of time.

You are given a plasma gun and you use this gun to destroy objects lying around, usually containing useful items. There are things like explosive barrels where if you shoot it next to an enemy, it gets stunned, allowing you to either run past it without fighting, or if you do decide to fight you get an advantage in battle since the enemies now have negative status effects.

I'll explain the battles themselves.

Every character starts off the fight with 4 AP with a max of 6, which is how you do actions, think of it like the old Fallout games.

Each attack mapped to the Square and Triangle buttons cost 2 AP, using an item or a magic spell (Ethers) costs 4 AP, and Tech Attacks, more powerful than normal attacks, cost 6 AP.

To get 6 AP you have to Guard, which not only cuts damage given in half but it regenerates 4 AP. You can actually execute Tech Attacks without needing to Guard but I'll get into that.

The command “Move” lets you change the formation of a party member, and moving them to the back row will prevent enemies from attacking them but they can't attack either. This is good for the early game for a character like MOMO because in the beginning she doesn't have a whole lot of utility and is very squishy.

You can also command giant mechs called A.G.W.S. which have their own HP pool and certain attacks. These mechs can be upgraded with stronger weapons and armor at robot shops. Any character except KOS-MOS and Ziggy can pilot one of three A.G.W.S.

However the equipment for these is really expensive and I don't really find them that much more useful than using the characters normally. It also doesn't help that you can play through the whole game without using them even once, because unlike Episodes II and III and even Xenogears, there are no mech dungeons in this game.

Another thing that sucks about the A.G.W.S. is that you can only heal them with items outside of battle. There is something you can buy which will recover 10% HP when Guarding but that's pretty much it.

Also, if a party member dies while piloting an A.G.W.S., they become inactive for the rest of the fight and cannot be revived which is really ass and only gives me even less of a reason to use them.

Then there's the Boost Gauge. Boosting allows a party member to immediately get a turn regardless of the turn order, and timing this correctly can change the tide of battle and even save your life in some cases. Though it fills up depending on what attacks you do. Characters can stack up to three Boosts at once per battle.

However, enemies can also Boost. And they can even Boost after you just activated your own, which is known as Boost Canceling. The shit is, you are never able to Boost Cancel the enemy, and this is the most annoying part about the battles in this game.

I can have a Boost ready and then out of nowhere it gets canceled out and I can't do anything about it. This along with everything I explained about the A.G.W.S. are the biggest downsides to the combat, but it's not game breaking. Most of the time when I lose a fight it is my fault.

There's also the condition icon next to the turn order. Every turn the condition will change and this can be things such as more Criticals for both you and the enemy and extra experience points and ability points after winning a battle.

In order to get money most enemies will drop random loot and junk and then you have to sell it at a shop. In order to recover your party's HP and EP you have to go to a save point and use an item called a Bio Sphere which can be purchased from shops.

To escape from battle you have to either use an item called an Escape Pack or an Ether called Goodbye. Escape Packs are also purchased from a shop and are actually pretty inexpensive.

Tech Attacks

Here's where it gets complex and it's how attacks work. Every attack works differently with each character and with each enemy.

Every attack either does physical or ether damage, some are long and close range. When you have 6 AP you can push Circle to do a Tech Attack but only after you execute a certain two button combo. Stronger Tech Attacks are unlocked as the party levels up.

The game rewards experimentation, figuring out which attacks are effective against each enemy, but it is not advised to spam attacks all willy nilly. Every enemy has a weakness, even the bosses.

You can assign certain Tech Attacks to each of these button combos.

Square, Square
Square, Triangle
Triangle, Triangle
Triangle, Square

However, each slot either has “Near” or “Far” next to it. This means you can only assign “Near” or “Far” Tech Attacks in said slot.

This is what KOS-MOS's slots look like

Square, Square (Near)
Square, Triangle (Near)
Triangle, Triangle (Far)
Triangle, Square (Near)

So in order to use Tech Attacks such as R-BLADE, R-DRILL, and R-HAMMER, they can only be assigned to “Near” slots since all of those attacks are physical close range attacks.

R-CANNON and X-BUSTER are long range attacks and therefore can only be assigned to the Far slot.

However, all of Jr's slots in particular are Far since his primary weapon of choice are guns, and he doesn’t have any close range attacks, which means you can have whatever Tech Attacks you want each slot which makes him an insanely powerful character, one of the best in the game.

Some Tech Attacks can also either attack one enemy or all enemies at once such as MOMO’s Meteor Storm and Jr’s Storm Waltz.

I mentioned earlier that you can actually execute Tech Attacks without needing to spend a turn Guarding to generate the AP, and that's where Tech Points come in.

When you win battles you gain three different types of ability points alongside experience:

Tech Points
Ether Points
Skill Points

I'll talk about Tech Points first. Tech Points are used for upgrading Tech Attacks. There are three different types of upgrades: TECH, SPEED, and WAIT

TECH is for increasing the amount of damage the Tech Attack does.

WAIT means the higher the level, the less time it takes for a character to get another turn after using the Tech Attack.

But SPEED is where it gets really interesting. When you upgrade a Tech Attack's SPEED, you will be able to use it without having to generate 6 AP first. So instead of using up a turn Guarding, and then pushing Square, Square, and Circle to use the Tech Attack, instead you just push Square and Circle in the same turn.

This is very strong and basically crucial for the later portions of the game because you're gonna need to be spamming Tech attacks in order to get through the fights easier, especially the boss fights. They can get really tough.

When you upgrade the Tech Attack's SPEED you then assign it to one of two specific slots, called HI slots. The four other slots are called LW slots and are the ones that require the 6 AP to execute.

Later on in the game KOS-MOS will get her ultimate Tech Attack, the X-BUSTER. It's not only her strongest ether attack, but it's multi-target. It costs a ton of Tech Points to get it to HI SPEED, but it is so worth it. Being able to use it every turn is stupidly powerful, but being that it's her strongest attack, it takes a long time for KOS-MOS to get another turn after using it unless you spend points upgrading the WAIT level.

Another thing you can do with Tech Points is increase your party's stats. As you play through the game you can incrementally spend Tech Points to raise the characters' attributes. Doing this can give you another edge in battle, but I prioritize upgrading Tech Attacks first.

Ethers

Ethers are basically magic spells. Offensive, defensive, healing, etc. Ether Points are used to not only learn new more powerful Ethers via a Skill Tree, but you can also use Ether Points to give a spell to another character. This makes it possible for every character to learn every Ether in the game.

This is what makes Shion very strong in particular since she has an Ether called Medica All. It's the strongest healing magic in the game since it's stronger than other healing Ethers and it heals all party members at once.

However, because Medica All is only learned by Shion, only she can give the Ether to other characters. So she needs to have enough Ether Points to do this.

Another thing to keep in mind is that each character can only equip up to 12 Ethers at once.

Skills

Skills are passive buffs, such as Poison Resistance, Slow Resistance, Physical Defense increases, Search Eyes (displays enemy's HP), etc. To learn Skills you not only need Skill Points but you also have to extract the Skills from accessories. The Skills that can be extracted depend on the accessory, and accessories can be purchased from shops.

Think of it like Final Fantasy IX where abilities are learned from specific weapons and armor.

You are then able to equip up to three Skills at once. And that's basically it. It's very simple, definitely more straightforward than Tech Attacks.

One more thing to keep in mind is that every party member gains experience points and levels up even when they're not fighting in battle which is really nice, however anyone who doesn't fight doesn't gain Tech Points, Ether Points, or Skill Points.

Anything Else To Add?

This might be the longest visual novel type of review I have written thus far and it's been a very long time since I have done so because my mental health has been on a bit of a decline even to this day. Combined with my life taking a drastic change, I was just sick of writing reviews. Though perhaps with this one last hurrah for a game that I love very much it gets the recognition it deserves for anyone who has been on the fence about it.

Give this game a try, you may be surprised. I hate that emulation is the easiest way to play it. I hope that maybe one day things will change. These games deserve an HD Collection, for console and Steam, they should be given the attention that has been given to Xenoblade.

Although considering the ending of Xenoblade Chronicles III's DLC, there is still hope that not only will these games return some day for modern platforms, but we'll finally get Episode IV and beyond, and the saga will get its true conclusion once and for all, since Tetsuya Takahashi himself knows how much love diehard fans like myself have for these games and wish that he would give Xenosaga another go.

If you have a PC and you can run this game, I implore you to play it, or give it another try. You're in for a journey that hopefully won't be forgotten any time soon. If I could rate this game a 9.5/10 on this site I would.

If you actually made it all the way to this end of this, thank you. That means a lot. Stay safe and take care.

This is one of the most hilarious games I've played in quite a while. It was only $1 and it was damn worth it.

It really does show that indie developers and random nobodies are able to whip up something far more enjoyable and with little to no budget than a multi-billion dollar AAA corporation with hundreds of developers behind the studio.

I have played this game for a good 5-10 hours and I honestly can't get enough of it.

This is obviously a parody of Battlefield 2042 except that unlike Battlefield 2042, it's actually fun to play.

The best comparison I can make with this game is Phantom Forces from Roblox, just not as functional as that.

Unlike 2042, you can actually run this game. I play games with a low range graphics card, but despite this, I can still run the game relatively well.

It's actually well optimized which is pretty surprising to me regardless of the overly simplistic graphics.

This is a game that was made under the Unity engine, which might sound like a red alarm since engines like Unity and Unreal Engine 4 are quite infamous for many college intern bathroom projects with asset flips being sold on Steam when they should be free to play, but, this game feels like it was made by people who actually gives a shit about making a good game, or at the very least try.

Unlike Battlefield 2042, this game actually has

-No microtransactions

-ALL text chat

-Named teams like USA and Russia

-Functional gunplay mechanics

-No profanity filters

-A scoreboard with stats for every player in the lobby

-A region changer and fully working server browser

-Hell, you can even add your friends to an in-game friend list and join on them (though you have to make sure you have the same region selected as them)

The game also has voice chat, and again, this makes the experience even funnier.

You are also able to customize loadouts before you jump into a match as well. You get a total of 5 loadouts.

There are a total of 3 assault rifles
(M4A1, AK-47, FN SCAR)

One shotgun
(M3)

5 SMGs
(Vector, MX9, Uzi, P90, MP5)

3 sniper rifles
(M40A1, M107, SVD)

An RPG-7

And 4 Pistols
(Glock 17, M9, M1911, P250)


All of this adds up to a total of 17 weapons.

That's almost as many as BF2042 (the game has 22 weapons).

DICE… Seriously? Already it's a bad sign when a $1 indie game has just as many weapons as a AAA game that must have cost $100M or $200M to make.

So about the weapons, they all feel good to use. The recoil for some of the weapons are a bit high, but there is practically no bullet spread, and the hit detection, while it is wonky, is still functional.

The animations are quite well done. I especially like the reload animation for the M3 shotgun and the sound it makes when loading each shot into the chamber

Speaking of sounds, there are hitmarkers, but the sound effect is just the one ripped straight out of Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2.

You thought I wouldn't notice? I know the sound of an old Modern Warfare hitmarker when I hear one. Lmao

Also the loading screens in this game are just great. Some of them made me burst out laughing. They're just meant to make fun of EA and DICE which is always appreciated.

There's also a cheeky feature that is meant to take a jab at Battlefield 2042 where you can purposely lower the frame rate and play the game at 20 FPS. That's just fucking brilliant lmfao

And there's even a mode where you can freely get into a hovercraft and fly it around like a fuckin' airplane which is meant to take yet another jab at the absolute joke of a state that 2042 is in at the moment.

It very well encapsulates the thought process behind releasing a game in a broken unfinished state, charging players full price for it, and then you have to wait 6-12 months for the patches and DLC to roll in before the game is actually in a state that is worth playing.

I like to call this the OYL Effect, or One Year Later Effect. Just like with Cyberpunk 2077.

Although, lord knows how much longer until that piece of shit is worth playing a second time.

As much as I have praised this game, there are issues I have with the game. Some minor, some major. The game is in Beta and it's only been out for less than a week so hopefully with enough support then the game will be way better.

Let's start with the weapon customization

[ 𝘼𝙏𝙏𝘼𝘾𝙃𝙈𝙀𝙉𝙏𝙎 ]

You are able to customize your guns with attachments. There are 5 different sights to put on your guns. Sights like the Red Dot Sight, Holographic Sight, Coyote Reflex Sight, and the 2x Scope.

However, the only other attachment that you can put on your guns are suppressors. However, I don't see the point of a suppressor because the game doesn't actually have a system implemented into the mini-map or in the gunplay where suppressors would actually have a purpose to be used.

Typically in Battlefield games, when you put a suppressor on your gun, you are sacrificing a certain amount of bullet velocity, effective damage range, and even bullet spread for the sake of keeping yourself hidden on the mini-map while firing your weapon.

However with this game, putting a suppressor on your gun doesn't really affect it in any way, the only difference is that gunshots are slightly quieter, which I guess is a bonus.

But this game also has a mini-map, however you can't actually see enemy positions on it when they fire their weapons.

So what's the point in using a suppressor?

Hell, what's the point in even having a mini-map if you can't see enemies on it? I'll get into that more in the next segment but since the only other attachment that you can equip is a suppressor, it makes me hope that we get more in the future.

Barrel attachments, extended magazines, a foregrip to reduce recoil, hell, give us the ability to change the scope on the sniper rifles.

Yeah, you can't actually change the scopes on the snipers. I hope this also changes.

Also I should mention this now but good God the M3 shotgun needs to be nerfed. It's the only one in the game but it's stupidly overpowered. The one shot kill range is flat out ridiculous. It ain't a shotgun, it's a goddamn sniper rifle. And it's spammed a lot. It can be genuinely really annoying to play against, especially since many of the full auto guns have high recoil and the character models have awkward hit boxes.


[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙈𝙄𝙉𝙄-𝙈𝘼𝙋 ]

Mini-maps in some games are pretty important. In Battlefield games, it's a very critical and vital tool for big picture situational awareness and allows for more complex decision making in the game. It also allows players to learn the layout of every map. It just makes navigation easier.

It can genuinely increase the skill gap and strategy to the gameplay and make the difference between a skilled or noob player.

However like I said earlier, you can't see enemy positions on the mini-map, and this is a problem because

1. It makes using a suppressor almost pointless

2. You can just get shot from out of nowhere but not know where you took the fire from, especially since the TTK (Time to Kill) is very fast and the kill-cam is broken at the moment.

Half the time I get shot I'm just like "Who is shooting me?? Where is it coming from?"

You could also use the mini-map to learn the layout of each map however it's not even zoomed out enough so you can actually see where exactly you are. You can't zoom it out, you can't make it bigger, etc.

One last thing, there are three modes, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and Domination.

In Domination, you can see every capture point on the mini-map, however if you move too far away, the flag icons will disappear from the mini-map's field of view.

But you can still see the capture points on your screen anyway regardless of how far away you are. So then why would you look at the mini-map?? It's a waste of time and it could even get you killed.

All of this just makes the addition of a mini-map borderline pointless, especially since you can also see your teammate icons on screen as well regardless of distance.

[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝙎𝙋𝘼𝙒𝙉𝙎 ]

The spawns need definitive work, since as of right now, some of these spawns are flat out fuckin' appalling. Sometimes enemies spawn right in back of me, other times they spawn right in front of me so I end up killing them the moment they spawn, so at times it actually makes me feel bad, even though I shouldn't really take it seriously.

The one shopping mall map is just an absolute clusterfuck, same with City 2042. Everyone just spawns all over the goddamn place, either in front or in back of each other. Those maps needs to have a serious rework with the spawns, because everyone just spawns on top of each other a lot and it can get pretty annoying at times.

And the flashbangs, oh my Lord, the flashbangs. The flashbang spam is enough to give me fuckin' tinnitus. Every time people spawn they just chuck all of their flashes and sometimes all I hear is the sound of a flashbang explosion, you know, that horrible ear raping sound that'll make your asshole bleed.

I hear it a lot. Yes it did make me laugh my ass off for 10 minutes straight because everyone lost their shit about it, but it just shows that both the flashes and the spawns need a rework. The effective range of the flashbang is just too high.

Also, the sound of the flashbang is just too loud, it's actually gonna make me go deaf.

Again, hopefully there are improvements to this.

[ 𝙎𝙏𝘼𝙏𝙎 ]

There are no stat displays for any of the weapons, so this does make it difficult to know which guns are better than another (cause there are some differences between each weapon).

[ 𝙏𝙃𝙀 𝘽𝙐𝙂𝙎 ]

I haven't mentioned it up until now but damn this game is fucking buggy. I already talked about the awful spawns but in just my second match of playing, I fell through the map on City 2042 and died numerous times.

It got to a point where I was in a 1v1 with another player and I actually died many more times from falling through the map. He wouldn't stop falling through the map and dying either.

I mentioned earlier that the kill-cam is broken. When I get shot, the kill-cam actually pans in the opposite direction from where I got shot from. So I would get killed and the camera would just point at nothing.

There's also a bug where the text in the chat box when you're typing not only clips out of the box, but it even goes off screen if your message is too long.

I'm not sure if this is also a bug or not, but if you go into the loadouts, there are categories for melee, grenades, and player models, however when you click to change any of them, nothing appears.

This is either two things: a bug, or content that hasn't been released yet. Only time will tell.

I've also had a problem where sometimes when I sprint but then I stop, my character gets stuck in the sprinting animation and I can't aim down sights, unless I either shoot my weapon or I swap to my sidearm.

And then there is a bug where the game won't let me pick a team so I can actually spawn, but then I was able to fix this by just selecting to spectate teammates, and then the game will let me choose my team.

And lastly, choosing your loadout is jank as fuck. The only way to know what loadout you're gonna spawn with is to go into the loadout screen, click the loadout to customize it, then you back out of every menu until you get to the spawn button, then you can spawn with said specific loadout.

Why not have a loadout selection screen before you spawn?

[ 𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 ]

I actually wasn't expecting to go so in depth into a game that is literally worth a goddamn dollar on Steam, but underneath all the issues that I have with the game and the glitches and bad spawns, is a game that has potential.

It's actually way more fun than any other EA game that I have played in a long time. This game genuinely made me smile and laugh my ass off multiple times.

Though by listing all the criticisms that I or anyone else has with the game will help support it so that it becomes better than what it is at the moment. Again, the game is less than a week old and it's still in beta, so only time will tell if big changes are made to it.

The game already has quite a cult following and pretty much every Steam review I read says that even this shit is better than BF 2042. So you know you done fucked up somewhere when even indie games kick your ass in many ways.

This is actually a game where I want to gift it to all of my friends just so that we could all play it together. And you should do that as well. Cause the game is actually worth it. You'll surely get way more value.

7/10

2021, which is 20 entire years since this game has come out. Are you feeling old yet? Cause I sure do. I was only 5 years old when this game came out so I ended up missing out on it since I was much too young to play games like this at the time.

Silent Hill 3 is approaching that ripe ol' age as well. I plan on writing a review for that game too since I did get a physical PS2 copy as a Christmas gift a couple years ago. After beating it a couple times and finding every secret and all the content the game has to offer, I consider it one of the greatest survival horror games I have ever played.

I played Silent Hill 1 many years ago and I enjoyed that game a lot as well.

In 2011, Konami announced to the public's excitement that Silent Hill 2 and 3 would be returning in an HD Collection for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

However the first red flag was how the collection was missing Silent Hill 1 and 4 entirely, due to the fact that Tom Hullett, the guy in charge of the franchise at the time, said Silent Hill 1 wasn't included in the collection because it's a PS1 game, and that porting PS1 games to current generation hardware was "difficult."

But then he would go on and say that Silent Hill 4 wasn't included because of "how polarizing it was to the fanbase."

Right off the bat something was wrong here. Then screenshots were leaked of Silent Hill 2 HD on Twitter, around one month before the collection came out, in which Masahiro Ito, the level and monster designer of the first three Silent Hill games, responded in complete shock.

The game looked like total shit compared to the original. Then the game came out, and it all went downhill from there.

Silent Hill HD Collection is one of the most broken and disappointing releases in gaming history that not only completely disrespects both the legacy of Silent Hill 2 and 3, but also the people who worked their collective asses off creating them to make them the absolute best they can be.

I actually made an in-depth review about both Silent Hill 2 and 3 HD if you are interested. I will post a link. I go in-depth about all of the bugs, glitches, graphical errors, the awful tweaks done to the voice acting and script in Silent Hill 3, and then I go into how this collection came to be and who is responsible. It's actually become my most Hearted review on this site.

https://www.backloggd.com/u/Katiopeia/review/106209/

The reason why I am bringing all of this up is because we are in the year 2021, and the HD Collection is still the most accessible way to get your hands on Silent Hill 2 and 3, but to this day, the HD versions are buggy, broken, and unoptimized.

To this day Konami has completely abandoned the IP for many years in favor of their Silent Hill, Metal Gear, and Castlevania Pachinko machines, which are basically their Japanese slot machines. They're basically the fuckin' EA of Japan. Greed is more important than the well-being of your most beloved franchises it seems.

Many people call Silent Hill 2 the best game in the franchise, and I was desperate as shit to play it. At the time of making that HD Collection review it was literally impossible for me to get the game because I didn't have a PC, and if I wanted an original PS2 copy, I'd have to trade an arm and a leg for one.

I refused to play the HD Collection. I saw the screenshots, I read articles online, and I watched reviews and gameplay footage on YouTube but without spoiling myself from story details. I did not want my first experience to be through the HD Collection.

But, I eventually did save up money and I just decided to buy my own gaming PC this generation for reasons such as exclusives and emulation.

So after this inflated intro, after finally playing through Silent Hill 2 for the first time, when I watched those credits roll, I felt very emotional, the likes of which I hadn't felt in a long time from playing games.

I sat there at my desk in total silence, in complete amazement. I felt terrible inside that I missed out on a game like this all those years ago, and at the same time I felt a serious anger because of the fact that there are people out there who first experienced these games through the HD Collection, and to this day, Konami has never fixed this gap because of their greedy anti-consumer business practices that still persist to this very day.

I imagine the people who played HD Collection for the first time wondered what in the hell all the fuss was about all those years ago and just thought of people like me as like a bunch of idiots, and this is something that Masahiro Ito expressed on Twitter to his disappointment.

So with that being said, I will do the standard critique of the story, gameplay, presentation, etc. I won't spoil anything major if you haven't played it yet. Though I would like to talk about how insane the narrative structure to this game is.

[ 𝙎𝙏𝙊𝙍𝙔 (𝙈𝙞𝙣𝙤𝙧 𝙎𝙥𝙤𝙞𝙡𝙚𝙧𝙨) ]

Instead of Harry Mason from the first game, the protagonist of this game is James Sunderland, who arrives in Silent Hill after receiving a letter from his missing wife Mary that she is alive, waiting for him at their "special place."

Three years before this she passed away from a fatal disease, so James wonders how in the hell she could still be alive. He knows the journey is insane but goes through with it anyway, seeking answers.

At a first glance he doesn't really stand out as a very charismatic character, in fact he is very stilted, especially when compared to other video game protagonists at the time.

However, from the way that he awkwardly conversates with others, his mannerisms, his disregard for his own personal safety, even the way that he's dressed, are all signs of a damaged man that has lost pretty much everything he cared about, a person who never really came to terms with his grief and hasn't moved on.

But deep down there is a glimmer of hope, that Mary is still alive, and that alone is enough to keep James pushing on. So I as a player not only relate to James' inner struggle, but I get invested because I not only want to see the truth as well, but I want to see James succeed.

Because James is actually quite a likeable character. He is not your typical one note passive aggressive douchebag like you see with other video game characters, but his mental state does come into question.

Because at first it's difficult to tell whether or not everything that James is seeing is real; the horrifying monsters, the empty fog covered town, the characters that he meets who are just as confused and lost as he is, and memos found in the world containing very questionable descriptions.

The reason that I say this is because at one point in the game James meets a little girl named Laura, and she doesn't seem to physically see any of the monsters that he does.

And at another point he meets Maria who strikingly has the same face as Mary. The difference being that Maria has a different style of clothing, and her personality is not the same. Despite this, James actually sees his wife inside of Maria.

It's even made more apparent due to the fact that Maria shows indications that she knows more about James and Mary's relationship than what she should, and this makes her a very intriguing character.

And this brings James into question as to how sane he really is.

Which made me come to the conclusion that Silent Hill is the physical embodiment of a person's mental state. What the characters see in Silent Hill is representative of what they feel in their minds.

It's similar to the first game with Alessa, in which the Silent Hill that Mason travels through is the culmination of the everyday pain and trauma of a poor girl who has been used by an evil cult to create a god to take over the world.

Silent Hill 2 expands upon this, and I believe it's absolutely fuckin' brilliant.

Every character in this game is reflective of James in one way or another, but each of them have their own inner demons, thus they all see their own fucked up versions of Silent Hill. All of them are on their own journeys through Silent Hill. And this is what makes the characters more memorable and relatable.

This is exacerbated by the voice acting. It is very schlocky, hell it's a bit terrible in some areas. There are a lot, and I mean a lot of awkward line deliveries. This game's voice acting just reeks of a game that came out in the early 2000s or 1990s.

But, the voice acting is intentional, and that's the key word right there. Everyone speaks in a lost, terrified, or even confused manner, but that's the point.

Everyone in this game is either sad, lost, or broken in their own ways. Everyone has a depressing backstory behind them, they're just complete strangers to each other, and most of them don't even know why they're here in Silent Hill to begin with, unlike James.

This is what makes James stand out above the rest. He knows why he is in Silent Hill, it's just the question of why he sees what he does. He keeps the details about his relationship to himself. But he keeps going forward even though he knows that he could end his life.

And he does still have humanity inside of him, because you can see that he wants to help all of these hurt people.

So with all of this being said, it brings into question what the true nature of Silent Hill really is. And this is an ingenious philosophical concept from a narrative standpoint, because it makes the town itself feel like an actual character, exacerbated by the horrific atmosphere, like it has a self aware twisted consciousness, like it's alive.

And that's a scary thing to think about. Because like I said earlier, and this is what my beliefs are, is that whatever trauma or mental strain the characters have felt is what they see in Silent Hill.

When you think about it, when you take a step back and think about the when, the why, and the how, it becomes so much more grandiose than just a story about stopping an evil cult from summoning a world destroying god, or a story about finding your missing wife.

These are simple setups. But they go much farther than that, and that's what I love about these games. You play through this game and you ask yourself at least once "What in the hell is going on?"

And that's the magic question that pretty much describes this whole franchise. The intrigue, the mystery, the character development, the tragic backstories of these characters, it all comes together like that perfectly written novel by someone like Stephen King, John Saul, or Dean Koontz.

This is a story that was designed to be questioned, to be discussed, to provoke the player's mindset. It's a game meant to challenge you, and I haven't even talked about the gameplay yet. This is how you make a game's narrative interesting, stand out, and make it the center of discussion for a long time.

Because everything that I have stated so far are just my own personal opinions. This narrative is subjective among the players. You may have a completely different opinion from me about the characters and the town and the sequence of events.

You could write a book dissecting the human nature behind this game's themes, but there will always be someone who will say "yes, but what about this, this, and this?"

But that's why I like this story so much. This is why it's still talked about to this very day. It is masterfully put together.

I started off questioning the world, but as I played and I unraveled these mysteries, by the end, it was insanely satisfying, and it made me want even more context.

And the multiple endings only just add the cherry on the top of the sundae.

The story alone makes this game one of the best games ever made. This storytelling is what sets these games apart from the competition, Silent Hill 2 just stands above the rest, it just blows the Resident Evil games out of the water in that aspect.

[ 𝙂𝘼𝙈𝙀𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔 ]

The gameplay on the other hand, while the game plays fine, the mechanics do work for what they are, they are very clunky, but that is to be expected from a 2001 survival horror game.

This is a third person survival shooter with fixed camera angles, although the camera does move around with the player like in Code Veronica. The game has tank controls, however you are able to turn the camera around to face James' back by just holding down the L2 button, if you want to see what's in front of you.

Also with the push of either L1 or R1, you can strafe left and right. I don't really use this because it can be awkward using this because of the tank controls and claustrophobic areas. You can't strafe shoot in this game either.

But, pushing L1 and R1 at the same time makes you do an instant 180 degree turn like in Resident Evil. Now this was very useful. I'm very glad this mechanic is also in these games.

It works perfectly for a game like this. Pushing up makes you go forward no matter which direction you are facing. Pushing down makes you go backwards, pushing left or right makes you rotate left or right. Which means that every time the camera angle changes, you don't have to reorient your movement on the control pad or thumbstick.

There are games that have this issue where the camera changes perspective but there are no tank controls, meaning now you are pushing the direction the opposite way, and it can get disorienting. You have to reconfigure your movement with each camera change. But you don't have to worry about that in any of the old Resident Evil or Silent Hill games.

Since this is a Survival Horror game, the goal is about making it out alive rather than fighting everything head on, because ammo and healing items are limited. Once you run out of resources, you're screwed. This is where the survival part comes in.

This means that every enemy encounter means that your brain has to make quick decision making. Do you waste ammo and shoot the enemy down so that you don't have to worry about them anymore? Or do you risk taking damage and running past them so you can save your ammo? But if you take too much damage you need to use healing items which are also limited.

This is a central theme in Resident Evil. However unlike in RE, Silent Hill has a much bigger emphasis on melee combat. Melee is actually a viable strategy in this game if you want to save ammo. But you should be careful since using melee is more risky than using guns. Or you could just do what I do and just run past enemies.

Avoiding enemies actually isn't that difficult in this game though don't get too comfortable cause there will be times where you have to fight to avoid taking damage, especially in the hospital with those goddamn nurses.

Speaking of enemies, man, the enemy variety in this game is goddamn astounding. They not only look terrifying but the sounds that they make actually gave me some shivers.

The acid spitting enemies are the basic enemy type but that acid does hurt. Most of the time I run past them to save ammo

I hate those goddamn cockroaches since the sounds they make just make me seriously uncomfortable

The nurses can be threatening since some of them can wield guns, fucking guns

But the best enemy in the game is the Pyramid Head. He is basically the Nemesis of Silent Hill 2 though he doesn't appear as often. Still, he stalks and attacks you throughout the whole game in some parts. He wields a gigantic axe and it doesn't have a face besides his head being a weird pyramid shape.

This guy is fucking amazing. He not only looks threatening, but the fact that he is prevalent throughout the whole game just shows how much of a great force it is.

There are a handful of different melee weapons. You first start off with a wooden plank, then you can obtain a steel pipe, a great knife, and when you beat the game you can obtain a chainsaw and a can of infinite aerosol spray in a second playthrough.

Basically, the more damage the weapon does, the more awkward it is to use. It takes James a while to swing melee weapons, you have to wait for a slight wind up animation before he swings, but it's even worse than using heavier weaponry.

The damage for the melee weapons is categorized from weakest to strongest

Wooden Plank > Steel Pipe > Great Knife > Chainsaw

So about the weapons, you only get three of them: a pistol, a shotgun, and a hunting rifle.

They all feel great to use. The sound design of the weapons is just deliciously good. The pistol is good for weaker enemies and the shotgun as you would expect is a powerhouse at close range.

The hunting rifle also has high damage and can be used at longer ranges.

Also, I find the aerosol spray to be pointless because while it can immobilize enemies for a brief amount of time, it can damage James if you use it too much.

When you use the shotgun or the rifle, you have to wait for the animation of James pulling the loading mechanism before you can move around again. This creates a gameplay strategy where you have to time your shots and get into a good position so that you don't risk yourself taking damage while you're in the middle of loading your gun.

Because unlike in other games where you seem to play as a super soldier who is deadeye accurate and reloads a gun like if they had a Call of Duty Sleight of Hand perk, Silent Hill games aren't like that.

James is not a soldier, not a police officer, or even a gun nut. James is just a regular civilian who has never had any combat experience. He has never been in a situation where he has to use a firearm or a goddamn chainsaw to defend himself.

Yes, James can miss shots, he moves around sluggishly while using a firearm, he takes a while to reload a gun. But this is all intentional.

The movement and combat mechanics are awkward and clunky.. because it's supposed to be.

That just fits James' character more.

Not to mention, James is a bit frail. It can be easy to lose a good chunk of your health in a short time if you're not careful.

For example, those basic enemies that spit acid at you, I think it only takes 2 or 3 hits from that to go from Green to Red health.

Also, the flashlight is a central mechanic since the majority of the game is set in the dark.

Although there's pretty insane attention to detail where if you have the flashlight off, James will miss even more shots, however it will be harder for enemies to see you.

I don't see why you would play with the flashlight off other than for a challenge run, but I love that this detail is in the game.

Some of the areas that you will be exploring are tight hallways in which avoiding enemy attacks can be tricky. I like to read enemy patterns and I just run as much as I can. I only fight and use up ammo if I really, really have to.

In Silent Hill 1, 2, and 3, you get infinite inventory space. You are able to pick up as many healing items, bullets, and other key items as much as you want. You may think this may break the challenge of a survival horror game, but it doesn't because there is a perfect balance of item drops, so that it doesn't feel like you can just carry 1000 rounds of ammo and 50 healing items.

This also reduces the amount of backtracking you would have to do if you had limited inventory space, so this keeps the pace of the game going.

Although there is a setting in the options menu where you can multiply the amount of ammo you can obtain, why would you do that other than for power trips?

Yeah, power trips can be fun, but I like to actually be challenged when I play a survival horror game. I mean, it's in the name, survival.

When you don't have that setting on, ammo is rare. Healing items are a bit more plentiful, but since James can take a lot of damage even on Normal difficulty, you still have to use your items wisely and conserve what you can.

So now about the difficulty, there are actually two different types of difficulty: combat and puzzle difficulty.

Puzzle difficulty is one of the greatest things to ever have graced gaming. See, I like puzzles in some games, although there can be times where a specific puzzle can be such a ball breaker that I get forced to look up guides on the internet.

And I try to look up guides as least as I can. I can't stand difficult puzzles. It's actually why I have had a hard time getting into the old Tomb Raider games, the Uncharted games, Resident Evil 1, and even Silent Hill 1. The puzzles in SH1 are legendarily difficult, requiring you to know fuckin' Shakespeare and all that nonsense in order to solve them.

And that game didn't have puzzle difficulty. Silent Hill 2 introduces this. You can select Easy, Normal, or Hard puzzles, so you can make them as easy or as hard as you want, either because you hate difficult puzzles like I do, or you're a glutton for masochism.

This is an ingenious system. More games need to have this.

In fact the customization in general is just excellent. You can choose both combat and puzzle difficulty, you can tweak how much ammo you obtain, and with the flashlight mechanic, you can basically make the game as easy or as hard as you want.

If you play any of the later editions of Silent Hill 2 you can play the Maria side story. But it's recommended that you beat James' story first as the Maria scenario contains spoilers.

Maria's story is shorter than James' however it gives more context and backstory into her character and the events that follow James' journey, which means that like I said earlier, she is an important character, with depth and weight to her personality. The fact that she gets her own scenario just shows how much the developers wanted to flesh out this character.

Maria's arsenal only consists of a powerful snub nose revolver and a butcher knife. Also, she doesn't ever get a flashlight. You would think this would be a pain in the ass because of the game being 80-90% dark, but the game does a good job at making everything bright enough that you can actually see where you're going.

Although fighting enemies without a flashlight can either make the encounter more intense or more of a pain to deal with depending on how you look at it.

[ 𝙋𝙍𝙀𝙎𝙀𝙉𝙏𝘼𝙏𝙄𝙊𝙉 ]

This game reeks of an early 2000s game. Graphics wise, it has aged alright. The character models look good for 2001, though the lip syncing leaves much to be desired. And the voice acting as I mentioned earlier, it can range from pretty good to just plain terrible, but like I said, I think that was the point.

The FMV cutscenes however look really damn good, beautiful if I may say. All of the locations are just horrifying.

If I was to give a video game award for best horror atmosphere it would be these games. All the story elements that I talked about earlier really elevate the dread in these locations. Exploring some of these areas can be soul crushing because of the amazing sound design, horrific enemy design, and the darkness.

But the best part about this presentation has to be the soundtrack. Holy mother of shit, this game has one of the greatest soundtracks I have ever heard in a video game. The music evelates both the narrative and the gameplay so goddamn much.

The intro music, the cutscenes, the road to Silent Hill music, the Angela theme, the Maria theme, the bowling alley music, the hospital music, Silent Hill itself, the ending music, I love ALL of the tracks in this game.

This is Final Fantasy VI levels of goddamn brilliant in terms of music. This is one of the only times where I want to buy the official soundtrack for a game and put it up on a shelf as a collector's item, it's that good.

Akira Yamaoka, you're a damn genius composing this OST. The graphics, the voice acting, and the character models may have aged like milk stains, but this soundtrack never did.

[ 𝙃𝙊𝙒 𝙏𝙊 𝙋𝙇𝘼𝙔? ]

Like I have said a handful of times throughout this review, avoid the HD Collection like the Black Death, that is the absolute worst way to play the game.

The only way you can play this game is to either spend $65-150 on a physical PS2 copy, emulate it on PC with a PS2 emulator, or download the PC version online.

You can safely download the PC version from this link if you're interested.

https://www.myabandonware.com/game/silent-hill-2-restless-dreams-bgd

However, the PC port of Silent Hill 2 is really buggy and unoptimized similarly to the HD Collection. Some examples would be a stretched out aspect ratio, weak fog effects, crashing issues, the FMV cutscenes being broken, the music getting stuck in a quarter second loop, and the key bindings are BEYOND appalling.

And that is where the Enhanced Edition mod comes in. Over the past 3 years or so a team of coders have created fan mods for Silent Hill 2 that both fixes and enhances the game in order to make it the definitive way to play the game. And to this day it's still being updated.

Enhances such as HD textures and backgrounds, a maximum resolution of 1440p, a fixed frame rate, modern PC key binding support, Xbox controller support, etc. These people are basically doing what Konami don't.

If you want to install this mod then here is a link.

http://www.enhanced.townofsilenthill.com/SH2/install.htm

Installing the mod is simple enough. You just download and unzip each file and then drag them into your Silent Hill 2 main folder, replacing any files in the process. Each file is displayed in order so you can keep track.

But if need be, you can check out this comprehensive guide I found on YouTube. It gets straight to the point and doesn't waste time, it even highlights just how bad the original PC port of Silent Hill 2 is.

https://youtu.be/PF1D6_shKIQ

[ 𝙁𝙞𝙣𝙖𝙡 𝙏𝙝𝙤𝙪𝙜𝙝𝙩𝙨 ]

Playing this game felt like an epiphany, that gaming is just nothing like what it was back then, and it made me miss this generation of gaming. But, with the rise of indie developers, there have been games being released that attempt to replicate these old games.

Some of them good, some of them bad, but you know it's bad when the community has to step up and create something because AAA developer studios like Konami are unwilling to either because they know they're gonna fuck it up or they just don't care.

To this day the HD Collection still haunts the company, I still consider it the worst thing they have ever done, which is further elevated once you actually play these games and you realize why so many people fell in love with them back then.

Because this game should be experienced at least a couple times. This game is a masterpiece, it was far ahead of its time. If I enjoyed Silent Hill 3 so much I wasn't expecting any less from this game, but damn, this game blows Silent Hill 3 out of the water in some aspects.

Maybe, just maybe, we will get a Steam version of Silent Hill 2 and 3, since Silent Hill 4 was added to GOG. Or maybe just a better console port of these games.

But to be honest, I am not holding my breath, because I am not convinced in the slightest that Konami is capable of doing that. Think about when the HD Collection came out. It's been 10 years now and the HD Collection is still being paraded around on digital stores like a corpse, just begging to be buried in peace in a proper coffin, and then reincarnated as a newfounded being.

It's even worse when you consider that now we have emulation and fan mods for both Silent Hill 2 and 3 like Enhanced Edition, made by people who put in the legwork that Konami have neglected for so many years now, and for free might I add.

I give this game 10 Pyramid Heads out of 10.