Everyone knows Mario is cool as fuck. But who knows what he's thinking? Who knows why he crushes turtles? And why do we think about him as fondly as we think of the mystical (nonexistent?) Dr Pepper? Perchance.

I believe it was Kant who said "Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play." Mario exhibits experience by crushing turts all day, but he exhibits theory by stating "Lets-a go!" Keep it up, baby!

When Mario leaves his place of safety to stomp a turty, he knows that he may Die. And yet, for a man who can purchase lives with money, a life becomes a mere store of value. A tax that can be paid for, much as a rich man feels any law with a fine is a price. We think of Mario as a hero,but he is simply a one percenter of a more privileged variety. The lifekind. Perchance.

As a JRPG fan, who really loves old-school, retro-style games, it’s an absolute mystery why I didn’t play this one before. Well, now I finally finished it, and I have mixed feelings about this 100+ hour experience.

The pixel-art, “2.5D” graphics were nice, no issues there, and some environments, like the sandy and snowy ones, for instance, are quite beautiful, if you ask me (but the fact that everything was out of focus at the top and bottom of the screen almost drove me crazy…). Music was OK, too, and I truly enjoyed the voiced cutscenes – it’s a shame there were so few of them. The turn-based combat system was like a blast from the past, if you ever played something like this, you won’t have any issues getting used to it. And believe me, you should master it as early as possible, especially weaknesses, breaking points and boosting, as the battles are surprisingly hard.

It's a fun little gimmick that you can finish the game with as many characters as you wish, with only one or all eight, too, it’s completely up to you, as well as who you start your adventure with. However, the story is quite weak, in my opinion, and that was my biggest problem. All eight protagonists have their own storylines which run parallel with each other, never connecting (well, maybe a little at the very end, before the endgame boss). Imagine eight different anime shows, all with slightly different tones and genres, and the episodes in these shows are all mostly fillers, unfortunately, with hardly any twists or surprises… Sure, I understand this is what the game is all about, eight paths with eight heroes, but still, it’s quite difficult to believe that, while traveling together as a party, they hardly ever interact with each other and have almost zero influence on each other’s quests.

Still, if you’re into old-school, pixel-art JRPGs, you can’t go wrong with this one, it’s about as classic and nostalgia-heavy as it gets. It’s filled with optional and post-game content, lots of dungeons and enemies, collectibles, customisable jobs and skills… Like playing Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy VI all over again – minus a good story.

This game got me in a fucking chokehold, because oh my god this is the fifth log and I really hope it will be the last one.

Drakengard is, first and foremost, an experience. Every single aspect of it is a cog in the machine that works tirelessly to create the feeling of pure madness in a rapidly crumbling world, whether it is gameplay, narrative, music or art design. Judging those elements by themselves is pointless, if you analyse this game critically it easily falls apart and you lose a track of what it makes Drakengard truly special. Not to say that those elements are BAD, hell even gameplay is nowhere near "the worst game I played" or "intentionally bad" and is completely serviceable, they are just not really THAT interesting in vacuum, like e.g. Automata's story or Replicant's characters.

Drakengard is hardly enjoyable, not even in cathartic sense. I found it unengaging and straight up frustrating at times, but you know... It is fine that way. Yeah, gameplay is insanely repetitive and clunky, but it is fine that way. Music is pure cacophony to your ears, but it is fine that way. Characters might not develop past their horrible traits, but it is fine that way. Story might be just a constant steam of the unfortunate events with barely any satisfaction, but it is fine that way.

Because the moment you process it all and put everything together in your head is the moment the thought like "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT" strucks into your head and you finally realize how masterfully Drakengard portrays the whole sense of dread, terror, insanity and hopelessness in such a surreal horrifying story, is practically irreplaceable. Every single part of it works just right for its cause and it's absolutely fantastic.

This conclusion might not come immediately, it might take few days, a week, a month(or two, in my case), a year or who knows, maybe never.

But that's the thing that elevates Drakengard above other games, it is art in its rawest, crazy and pain-in-the-ass-to-engage-with form. An absolute must-play whether you will love it or hate it.

No spoilers, just vague statements about the story.

As three split into a pair of two, until the remaining one left, and the two split into a pair of ones, a season of White Album would come forth over and over again covering all their scattered emotions, before melting away as spring arrived and being shown to the whole world in all its impurity. This will be less of an analysis piece and more of the remaining thoughts and feelings that have stayed put in my mind since the three months when I finally finished the absolute behemoth that is White Album 2, for I still can’t go even a day without listening to a song from it.

Music, I would like to think, is the great connector between all people, more so than any other form of art. The majority of those that listen to it aren’t necessarily qualified to accurately identify what makes say, this chord progression good or why this particular harmony sounds pleasant to our ears, but regardless of that, they are still able to feel it. White Album 2 understands the essence of music, that past theoretical composition and choice of instrumentation, the most important aspect of it all is the feelings that music imbues inside of us, and what it represents in every aspect of our lives. We listen to music because it turns into a part of us, something that when we hear a melody that sounds nice in our mind, we become happy; something that when we hear, perhaps maybe we are reminded of a time long past, a memory now casted in an immortal light.

Love is something I find nearly impossible to fully write about in all of its confusion between sadness and happiness, and the logical inconsistencies that such a thing brings with it. However, there is one thing that I believe is fact, love isn’t merely a romantical feeling. It could be the love of friendship between life-long friends who have witnessed each other change over the years, or a paternal and maternal love parents have for their child, as there is nothing more they see in the child then the one they now are forced to love second most. These are both very ideal situations, but I think they are good enough examples for what I am trying to get across. White Album 2 is not a conflict of two separate loves for the same person, it is a conflict of three mutual loves they share between all of them. That is the reason why I believe this story to be so emotionally effective, where love battles love in a fight for what they deem will give their greatest happiness.

Originally, I was planning on doing more of a review directly addressing White Album 2 itself, but I don’t think that’s something I am capable of, at least right now. So instead, I wanted to let out this small fraction of feelings that I still hold within me from this work for the world to see. Love and humanity is such a challenging thing to genuinely represent, and were I to be ashamed of it(for some odd reason), I would probably struggle to tell others that the story I found the most of this in is from a 2011 Visual Novel. Fortunately, I am not that person. This story is so, so special, and I hope that were someone to read this, one who hasn’t read it or someone who doesn’t even know what a visual novel is and probably just saw the incredibly high rating, that this capsule of feelings were to touch you, perhaps even getting you just the slightest bit interested in it.

You know, I open Strive every once in several months, ask myself "why did I even do this" and close this game, until I eventually think of getting into it again and the cycle repeats.

It's not really bad. It is a good gateway into fighting game genre, which it was for me and countless people around the world. You'll have fun at first, but after a while the cracks will begin to show. And yes, no game is free from that, but Strive suffers from it more than others.

This game is shallow. Not simple, it's shallow. I actually love simple fighting games, 2019 Samsho is my favorite fighting game. But at some point Strive gets so basic it's painful.

First of all, WHERE ARE JUMP CANCEL ROUTES? Seriously, what kind of anime fighting game is that? I can only think of... 5 characters that retained cool air combos. I'm not a big fan of combos in fighting games(Samsho is my favorite, remember that), but come on, really?

Instead of providing clever simplification for wider audience, while maintaining high skill ceiling, Strive just dumbs down everything, whether it's combo game or character movesets, like turning Elphelt into a fucking rekka character. Some additions are actually nice and interesting like dash macro, but it happens rarely.

Massive issue of Strive is how easily you can run into plateau. There's not that much stuff to learn and it's... not really interesting to learn it after you pass the beginner stage.

And while lots of changes were sloppy, the game had a bright future, it was a massive success in a long while for Guilty Gear franchise! The thought of "beginner friendly" Guilty Gear was a blasphemy, yet it succeeded!

Except the game never became "simplier" nor "complex" in fun ways. Arcsys kept adding questionable mechanics like Wild Assault and Positive Bonus changes, that made already difficult defense game even worse for beginners, character balance consistently sucks, high damage gets "nerfed" at the expense of removing fun combo routes instead of simply you know just lowering numbers, etc etc.

Game is not easy. It's just not fun, or should I say its fun runs out way too fast?

Outside of that... Extremely underwhelming single player(that sadly is a standard in the genre nowadays), mediocre story(Xrds was SO MUCH better) and extremely hit or miss aesthetics and ost, but there's still so much cool stuff missing like VS character themes. Seriously, this is THE FIRST GUILTY GEAR WITHOUT "SOL VS KY" THEME" DAISUKE BE FOR FUCKING REAL

Guilty Gear Strive is a game of missed opportunities. It will still remain popular for a long time, but how many people will stick with it when Strive's time eventually runs out? Will it have small, but loyal community like +R or Xrd? Will someone remember it for its gameplay, instead of cool redesigns of vocal tracks? Will someone love this game for its worth, instead of for being their first fighting game?

I don't think so.