Bug Fables takes a lot of inspiration from the Paper Mario series, and then builds upon those foundations to create a fun and memorable game in its own right that easily rivals the very game it's taking inspiration from.

I love indie games. Nintendo might have abandoned and forgotten about everything that made the Paper Mario games worth playing, but the people who grew up playing them didn't.

Completed on Hard Mode; Vi really becomes a beast with the right medal setup, damn.

This would be a 8 but it gets extra 2 points for not being three houses
To edit in a actual review
Neat story with raw moments nothing rly offensive in it the real draw is the gameplay, played on maddening and a had a well, engaging time this is just the best series has ever balanced the hardest difficulty
the music is fire both original tracks and remixes, the supports are all mostly fun to read, the cast is likeable this is something that will grow on me as time goes as i replay it not because i need 325235 playthroughs to get a full picture but because i actually want to play this,
3rd edit: changed my mind this is the best game ever

(Quick little gameplay note here: I haaaaate hate HATED the puzzle sections. I couldn't beat them. They were so hard it drove me crazy. I died as soon as possible to each one in order to move on.)

It's difficult for me to engage with media about the creation of art sometimes. For the entirety of my relationship history, stretching back all the way to High School I have been the non-artist girlfriend to artist partners (my present-and-forever marriage being the sole exception; neither of us are artists).

In my experience, one can create art with being an artist, but it's a distinction I only really draw myself. Those who are like, capital A Artists--like our gal Kuni in this game--fit this mold of always missing the forest for the trees. They become entirely consumed. In writing parlance, they leave too much of themselves on the page.

Far be it from me to tell an artist how much or little of themselves to put into their work, but for those of us who are around and loving those artists, it can be torturous. I've been Kuma my entire life. I've watched loved ones work themselves to death and judge themselves to death and ruin relationships and push people away.

It's hard. I'm glad these two were able to work it out. I'm glad Kuni found her joy again.

Sable is the teenage discovery of finding one’s identity through an open journey towards the yet unknown world. The conclusion of this ritual will be to choose a mask to forge your identity in.

Most of the masks (all of them?) are related to a profession, and are obtained talking by with people somehow related to, mostly exercising, such occupation. However, Sable fails to capture every single spirit of any vocation. It’s obvious that it would abstract an aspect of each job to make a simple model of it, but it forgot to try to capture the soul for anyone to get an honest investment on what the occupation really is about. A merchant is reduced to having enough money to earn the mask, a cartographer also relies on money without even needing to tell north from south, a machinist mask is not earned through understanding and trying a hand with machinery but through doing favors to lazy people (which is most of the population of Sable). The climber isn’t that much focused on climbing (since it’s mechanically too shallow to be of interest on its own) but on completing mediocre platforming sections. The concept of what even a guardian is would be hard to understand only with what is seen in Sable, the only “active” one I encountered trusted all the weight of justice to a complete stranger and even let the just arrived finger to point who should be imprisoned, without a proper defense or a clear case constructed, a very far image of my idea of a guardian. This shallow understanding of building an identity by putting on a mask of an occupation that you barely truly understand, but earned through enough credentials, could be understood as a critique. It isn't. Sable still trusts in its ritual.

I avoided mentioning this before, but why even define yourself as a vocation? One thing is that your job or your hobby is going to take a part of your life, be it by necessity or by decision, but at what moment the ritual to define your identity is to cover your face, your unique truth, with a clonic mask? Why take a journey on your own through the desert if the final say was going to be a pick from the predefined menu? Is this the most spiritual idea of identity in a world where old habits are supposed to be buried under the sand?

Sable thinks that understanding a place in a way that it can shape your identity is to be a tourist who must do a few errands for the people who don't want to move their ass. That discovery is solving a few early test puzzle levels from the most mediocre Zelda. It's not concerned about the people who live there, in how they think, in how they face troubles in any way that isn't crying to the first stranger that comes through the door. The desert represents what the game thinks is valuable of any of those places and their people, absolute nothingness.

I decided to not wear a mask and to not complete a ritual that cannot define me. Can a mask shaped identity even be found and be true? Can identity be found or is it an ever looking process? My final decision was to get out of there, out of the desert, out of Sable, to search for the identity through the hard way, through the only way, rejecting every mask.

While a great throwback to the NES Era of video game, Final Fantasy simply fails to live up to its predecessor Stranger of Paradise, keeping in mind its shortcomings and lack of content this game should've been a DLC bonus for Stranger of Paradise rather than its own standalone title.

Final Fantasy is a total step down in everything, even the combat, and story which was greatly shocking to me as I found those aspects of the original to be phenomenal.
Gone are the complexities of the soul shield system, and in exchange, we have a watered-down job system with a tiring and exhausting turn-based combat system which is a complete insult to everything Stranger of Paradise was.

The story is a complete rehash of Stranger of Paradise with plot points removed, despite the fact this is a sequel which greatly upsets me as the story was one of the best aspects of the original game and a follow up had a lot of potential, yet the execs over at Square care not for artistic integrity but trying to make a quick buck cashing on a massively popular IP which makes it safe to assume that Stranger of Paradise was a lightning in a bottle that they will never be able to capture again.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions is a game that gets a lot of hate while actually being a ton of fun. The idol theme is not for everyone, and definitely wasn't for me either. With that being said, I still managed to enjoy it a lot.

The gameplay is its strongest point, and puts an interesting spin on the age old turn based system with its sessions. Although the writing is as you'd expect in a game like this (not amazing), Tokyo Mirage Sessions carries out many fun segments in the character stories.

If you are a fan of the Shin Megami Tensei games and don't mind the game not taking itself too seriously (and some fan service), this game is worth a shot.