kumashock
An absolute all-timer dungeon crawler with a super impressive map & fun combat. It's held back by some really dreary visuals, and the removal of towns (and no all-heal) makes the rest-fight loop get tiring, but the insane combat difficulty and quality of cartography keeps this entertaining anyway. Was my first Wizardry and it set the bar very high. Would come highly recommended if it weren't for the absurdly racist bit in the middle, so uh, watch out for that first (it's slightly less bad on snes).
2024
Went into a cave that seemed to go on forever, in the pitch black feeling my way around. While trying not to aggro saurians I went in a room that opened up in a suspicious way, so I stuck to the edge wall to go around just in case. My pawn, however, didn't get the memo: at some point a saurian had caught sight of someone in my party so they were in full attack mode, running straight into the middle of the room. about 5 seconds later I see a huge blue light silhouetting a goats head and a massive health bar appears. I have never run out of a room so fast.
This review contains spoilers
the entire dyne sequence is a perfect microcosm of every single problem with the reboot versions. barrett cant have his character moment because the games more interested in a) making every single character a Righteous Epic Hero Guy (so dyne spends the entire time after the fight shooting about 100 shinra soldiers), and b) so terrified you'll get bored because something hasnt happened in the last 5 minutes that immediately after dyne dies the game makes you do a pointless sweeper fight and an on-rails shooting section. dynes arc is like one of the most important subplots in all of ff7 to barretts character arc and they rush through it as fast as possible, mostly because they already removed all the point of any of his motivations in the first game (bc It Was Shinra's Fault The Explosion Was Like That, god forbid characters have moral ambiguity) so why bother.
i think yoshinori kitase should not be in charge of this franchise
i think yoshinori kitase should not be in charge of this franchise
1997
Still working my way through this one but to say that waiting over a decade, obsessing over every one of Tanaka's drawings in Cannabis Works for it, trying to imagine what the hell this game could possibly be, only for it to still exceed expectation is more than enough for me. A game made exactly for me 30 years in advance.
Disregarding the clunky dialogue, the aimless exploration of any of its themes and lack of really anything to say about any of them or even the fact that Konami will only let this franchise be Silent Hill 2 forever now: the climax of this game is that a woman is talked down from the roof by the prospect of shopping. Come the fuck on.
First of this series that I've played. The dungeon maps are a little straightforwardly underwhelming and it ends abruptly but overall I enjoyed this quite a bit. Some of the appeal here is in how stupidly overpowered you get and the fact that enemies don't respawn means you get a nice sense of progress cleaning out maps as you go. The number bloat in this game is absolutely comical (positive).
blatantly unfinished and still blows most other games out of the water. in its current state its at like 60% power, imagine if it was at 100%
2008
cant think of a more concise way to summarise this games writing philosophy and themes (without mentioning the absurd levels of homophobia) than the fact that its most recurring phrase is a shopping mall commercial jingle and it's said exclusively by a six year old
2023
does absolutely nothing to distinguish itself from the original except for adding a silly knife parry mechanic and turning all the memorable, interesting encounters in the first game into call of duty levels. I dont know how they copy-pasted so many maps from the first game and somehow have bad level design so frequently? inventory management is basically gone, the changes to the shop suck, the enemy movement from the first game (something rarely replicated but adds a ton of personality) is straight up gone and instead everyone is a bullet sponge like in the re2 remake. man, whatever.
1983
People give ultima 2 a hard time but honestly the absurd amount of really tedious grinding you do in this game (that largely involves standing around waiting) makes ultima 2 and its "bully one guy in a starter town for 45 minutes" grind seem so much more tolerable
1993
all other rpgs wish they were this good
Modestly ambitious and insanely cool puzzle-ish game where you have to poke in and out of the timeline to influence alien races to progress civilization. Reminds me in many ways of Captain Blood, a game with a pretty familiar loop to this which also has a pretty similarly bonkers UI.
Plate balancing simulator. I find this game exceedingly difficult and theres a lot of obtuse information (why is power exported in MWh but measured in MW on actual lines? how do i calculate farm-to-field ratios exactly if fields are only presented in hectares with no other info?) but its slow-paced and satisfying enough when everything works that I like just booting this up and running my little country into debt five years in over and over.
2005
Has not aged a nanosecond. The fact Shinji Mikami directed this in the middle of an already insane industry career is proof we did not deserve him.
This review contains spoilers
the entire plot of this game revolves around heat being so horny for serph that he almost ends all existence as we know it and then if you were horny back for him enough in both games then he joins you to kick gods ass on the sun. best game ever