Whoa, you start the game and it immediately kicks off. No intro cutscene, no dialogue, no nothin'.

This isn't a complaint, it's just surprising. I expected that out of Sonic 4, not the next mainline 3D game in the series.

Anyway uhh, it's good! The Daytime formula from Unleashed is back with no Werehog in sight. Instead, we now have aliens. (And a lot of 2D Sections. Like, wow)
Stages are really fast paced, you basically jump from planet to planet without missing a beat. This does mean the game is over before you know it; I started it after ending my shift at work today, and I'm already done with the (really cool) final boss. I could get more mileage out of the game by going for 100%, but... I didn't like the color powers all that much. More specifically, I don't like how temporary and situational they are. Instead of upgrades to Sonic's arsenal like Adventure/Unleashed, you find Wisps inside capsules around the stage like power-ups, and it's up to you to figure out how to use them best before they're spent. They're cute, but I don't know, I really wished they were permanent. Or maybe they could've made it so that each world had a specific color power, so you spent that world mastering it? Hmm. Still, it speaks volumes that Colors was still a good time even if I didn't love its main gimmick.

The story is even more laid back than Unleashed's, but man, the dialogue is REALLY hit and miss. There are some great moments here, "NO COPYRIGHT LAW IN THE WORLD IS GONNA STOP ME" and everything from Eggman, especially the P.A. announcements, but there were also some real eye-rollers. The joke with Tails mistranslating the Wisps' language got old super fast.

Soundtrack is A+ across the board, as expected. Shoutouts to Sweet Mountain Act 1 and ESPECIALLY Planet Wisp Act 1. And it looks really good for the Wii, too. Not as good as Unleashed IMO, but it has some really cool setpieces and camera angles.

Very pleased with this one! Maybe one day I'll come back for 100% anyway.

My favorite modern Sonic game, bar none. It just hits all the right notes for me, especially now that I've gone through some of the hedgehog's less than stellar showings.

The art direction, my god, I LOVE how this game looks. There's so much variety to the locales you visit, thanks to its "World Adventure" setup. From the serene coastal waves of Apotos to the cozy snow covered huts of Holoska, every location is a treat to the eyes. And the townspeople! Their designs no longer clash with Sonic & co.'s models! All of them have this Pixar-esque quality to them, with plenty of distinct proportions. I'd rather not have non-Eggman humans in this series at all, but if they have to be in there, this is how you do it. This is the first time a Sonic game in 3D gave us this much visual cohesion, and it's so satisfying.
Not to mention how fresh it all feels; no Green Hills or Chemical Plants, all of the areas here are fully original and it makes for one of the most unique set of stages in the series.

Elevating that uniqueness is Unleashed's soundtrack. While it's kind of redundant to harp on too much over the music in Sonic games, this one deserves ALL possible praise. It's the best soundtrack in the series, one of my favorites of all time, if not my actual number one. Right on the first stage, you're hit with Windmill Isle, a theme that blends energetic beats with relaxing violin strings. The Night variation is no slouch either, perfectly selling that feeling of skulking around at night while everyone else is hiding from monsters roaming the streets.
Town themes, stage themes, the temples! God, I love the Gaia Temples. They could've just created basic ass palette swaps for each of them based on the Emerald's colors, but no! They went above and beyond and added tons of personality based on each country's features. It's a simple thing but I yearn for details like that.

The story is back to a more laid back tone, and I couldn't be happier about it. I mean, the world is shattered and an ancient demon of destruction is slowly rising to end it all, but the way it's presented is much more whimsical than the "Let's show a recording of Eggman's grandfather about to be fucking executed talking about how he's lost faith in mankind lmao" approach of SA2. It also helps that it's not tied to any previous games, and most of the main cast is new, except for Tails/Amy. It's a simple, yet entertaining enough plot that serves as an excuse to have Sonic traveling the world with a friend. Although, I will say, I kind of wish we could spend more time with Sonic's "core" friends. Yes, Tails is implied to be tagging along for the whole journey since he's the one flying us back and forth between continents, but he doesn't show up a whole lot during cutscenes; it's mostly a Sonic & Chip show.

The gameplay is aces, there's a reason why this style became the blueprint for future Sonic games for quite a while. None of that on rails bullshit from Secret Rings and Black Knight, Sonic now has one mission objective: break the sound barrier, and Unleashed perfectly conveys that energy with flying colors. In all honesty, it feels more like a driving game than a """"proper"""" Sonic game, but as someone who enjoys those kind of games, I find it very exhilarating and a perfect fit for the character.
But of course, the Daytime stages are only one half of the adventure. The other half consists of beat 'em up sections with the Werehog, where you take things slow and proceed to stomp the shit out of monsters. And honestly? I really like the Werehog! I think it's a simple yet satisfying setup, and a perfect way to introduce younger players to action games. It also lets you appreciate the environment a lot more, I even started a thread of some of my favorite areas over at my bsky profile.
Exploration is very rewarding. There's ton of hidden items off the beaten path, and there's many instances where the game rewards you for thinking "Ok, what if I try making this jump/going this way?"

To be fair, I can understand why some would frown at the Werehog. After Heroes, the quality of Sonic's console titles took a steep nosedive, with time and budget spent on distractions like the Riders games, half-hearted gimmick selling ventures like the storybook games, or... the entirety of 06. Fans were desperate for Sonic to hit a home run again, and Unleashed's box art and premise probably gave them the wrong idea, as if it was going to be another flaccid timewaster like Secret Rings. I imagine that if the Werehog was replaced by Knuckles or something, people wouldn't have judged it so harshly from the get go.

Oh, it's worth mentioning that this all goes for the Wii/PS2 version of the game. I never played the HD version, so I hope that I can enjoy it as much as this one once I get to it, although I already know that the medals are handled in a far worse fashion there.

This game feels like Sonic Team finally committed to breathing new life into the series, with actual heart and soul this time around. It's not ridden with glitches, actual consideration was put into the art direction so that everything looks like it fits in its world, the story doesn't try to punch above its weight while leaving a minefield of plot inconsistencies behind and it set a new foundation for future games. It won't work for everyone, but it sure as hell worked for me.

This is the last Sonic game I played back when I was little. After this, someone introduced me to Persona 4 and I went "Heh. Sonic is for BABIES, I'm a grown up now. fuck sonic", and wouldn't play another game in the series until this marathon. I do know some things about future games, but I never played them myself, including the HD version of Unleashed. I'm excited to finally check them out!

I feel for you, Sonic the Hedgehog.

Through the hours I've spent with you in this incarnation, I saw an ambition unlike any other. A burning passion, very reminiscent of the fire that burned in your chest back in Adventure 1. That will to inspire, to impress; to usher in a new generation of video games with style and attitude. It's only a shame that in your haste to do so--a haste you should be all too familiar with--you stumbled, as you did many times before. Sadly, this time, you failed to get back up on your feet, and the end result is the worst fall in your career.

A lack of creative consistency. A lack of familiarity with new, cutting-edge hardware. A lack of time.

Sonic 06 is the culmination of every bad decision this series has made in its three dimensional life up to this point. "Sonic had a rough transition to 3D"? No, my dear friend. Sonic had a rough growth in 3D, and this game stands as the apex of those growing pains.

Bad camera, poor collision detection, stiff movement(which is EGREGIOUS considering the INTENTIONAL freedom previous 3D games gave in you in terms of movement. More on that later.), large hub worlds with fuck all to do in them, braindead combat sections that take way too long to get through considering the rain puddle-esque depth that said combat features, and an overabundance of those "just let the game do its thing. touch anything and you're dead" moments, except oops! This time you should've moved. Back to the checkpoint you go.

It's hard to believe they managed to get so many things wrong here. Adventure 1, 2 and Heroes were fun games to play. Yes, they all feature at least one of the issues I've brought up previously, but not in this magnitude. They were all games that managed to succeed in spite of their failures; again, a stumble rather than a fall.

Now, as weird as it may sound, I wasn't bored while playing this. Oh no, there were plenty of laughs to be had, but much like Shadow the Hedgehog, I wasn't laughing with the game.

The sheer amount of bullshit you can pull off in this game is staggering. Entering certain areas of a stage with a character that was never meant to visit them, completely skipping puzzles and sections by clipping through walls or flying so high with boxes or other collision glitches that you can just fall on top of the goal ring. Oh, and let's not forget the gem power-ups you can acquire as Sonic which apparently weren't coded correctly, meaning you can use them indefinitely, meaning you can just infinite jump your way through his campaign once you unlock it.

All of these things were VERY funny, but more than that, they're baffling. How does this pass? How is any of this approved? Sure, we're talking about SEGA, aka Mr."As long as a bug doesn't impede progression, don't submit it", but how could they market this game with any confidence when it's filled to the brim with so many amateur mistakes? There are piles of shovelware out there that feature competent programming this game wishes it could replicate. It's embarrassing that a character with this much history and presence in the video game industry gets a stain this gigantic in his resume.

And the only thing I've covered so far is the gameplay, I haven't even started going over the presentation. But for now, let's have some praise. After all, that half star is there for a reason: Music.

All (legit)Sonic games have good music, that's a given. It's the "Free Space" in any video game Bingo card, but Sonic 06 honestly surprised me with the quality of its soundtrack.
I knew of the vocal tracks, I was a Sonic fan in the late 00s after all, but they're the weakest part of this OST IMO TBQH. Wave Ocean, Dusty Desert, Soleanna Castle Town, Tropical Jungle, Aquatic Base, fucking FLAME CORE! Seriously, the guitar at 2:38 actually made me put my controller down and just. vibe with Knuckles until the song looped. Beautifully crafted from top to bottom, with only a couple of bad spots. It feels as if the sound team was trying their best to make up for the overwhelming lack of faith permeating in the rest of the staff. "Sure, this is the third time you have to light up these orbs to open a door and the combat isn't any better, but maybe if you can relax to the rhythm of a gentle math rock-esque guitar, you'll feel better about it?" Oh, like you wouldn't believe, Tomoya Ohtani. I'm only sorry that your hard work couldn't save the rest of this trainwreck.

POST PUBLISH EDIT: How could I forget to mention End of the World? I love it when games have themes that get more dynamic as you progress, and this is one of the best I've heard yet. I may have checked out of the story from the halfway point onward, but this brought my attention back, if only for a moment.

Shadow the Hedgehog is a 2005 platform game developed by Sega Studios USA (the former United States division of Sonic Team) and published by Sega as part of the Sonic the Hedgehog series. In my review of it, I mentioned how it served as the breaking point for my hatred towards this setting in Sonic games. You know what I'm talking about, the serious, shonen anime energy fucking festering around the veins of this series since Adventure 1. Not only did this setting fail to provide any stories worth following considering it's too far up its own ass to care about consistent writing, it also managed to completely shit all over the visual identity Sonic games relished on for years up until the start of the 3D era. I do think Shadow 05 is the worst looking game of said era, but Sonic 06 is the runner up. It's only when Heroes came around that we got to see this series back to its visual roots.

POST PUBLISH EDIT #2: That's not to say I'm against the series going for a more serious vibe--these games always did have more of an edge compared to other "mascot games"--but if they want to go in that direction, it has to be done right. So far, all Sonic games featuring stories with this tone failed to impress me and end up coming off as half-hearted.

The realistic textures and human models simply Do Not Work with Sonic & Co.'s inflatable toy adjacent models. Any screenshot where one of the main characters is standing next to a normal ass person looks like a Skyrim nexusmods preview image. They don't mesh at all.

Horrendous pop-in, next to no environmental animations(seriously, Sonic just phases through the water surface when you fall in the ocean. Not even a basic ass splash_particle.png, nothing.), characters and enemies just pop out of existence at certain points, some cutscenes have no BGM, like Omega shooting the fuck out of Mephiles in dead silence, while other cutscenes have no sound effects, like Iblis falling flat on his ass in, again, dead silence. One of the newspapers has "SOREANA" written on it, and it's not even an easily missed background detail. Sonic proudly spreads the newspaper open in front of the camera for all to see the typo. They really just didn't give a shit.

I won't even get into the story, considering how little it's worth; literally, since the ending undoes everything. All I'll say is: Amy would NEVER watch someone else kiss Sonic and let them keep their head after.

At the very least, there is one redeeming factor to Sonic 06, besides its soundtrack. It serves as the series' definitive rock bottom; it does not get any worse than this. We'll have other instances of mediocrity, of failure and misdirection, to be sure, but never again will this series go through another embarrassment in this scale. But, you know... It really goes to show how much people love this blue fucker. Any lesser franchise wouldn't survive a car crash like this.

I feel for you, Sonic the Hedgehog. You'll get your chance to shine again in the future, you'll laugh and play and inspire again, for there will always be those who stand by you no matter what. I consider myself one of those people. For now, just rest.

Did Naka or Iizuka lose a bet or something? Did someone point a gun at them(hah), forcing them to convince everyone else at SEGA that this was a good idea? What happened here?

This game helped me in realizing just how much I fucking despise this setting for Sonic. The plastic-y models for Sonic & co. return from Heroes, but now we have the dumbass humans back in the story, which leads to some ridiculous whiplash every time cutscenes with Shadow and the President/GUN Commander play back to back, shit's almost as bad as the Pirates of the Caribbean world in KH2.
Some stages look nice, like Digital Circuit, but most of them are so drab and boring when compared to Heroes. I mean, I get why, they were trying to make this one gritty and all that other bullshit, but it just falls flat in its face.

It's almost adorable how much it fails at being cool, actually. They go SO FAR(but not far enough, more on that later) in trying to ramp up the edge that it loops around and turns into some lame ass shlock instead. Shadow, you don't need a fucking glock to be cool. You were already cool in Adventure 2. That first shot in the opening FMV where he cocks a gun is as imposing as a Disney World costume character holding a super soaker.

Not that using the guns is bad by itself, mind you. In fact, actually playing Shadow the Hedgehog wasn't the worst thing in the world. The controls are not as tight as Sonic Heroes; I guess they noticed Shadow had those Air Shoes and thought "Hey, he should like. float a bit, right?", meaning you slip and slide a lot easier now. But the homing attack works just fine, the spindash is back(even though you can't use it while running), and the guns' lock on works well enough. Mission structure is a bit repetitious though, even for someone who loved Mission mode/Trials in SA1 and Team Chaotix in Heroes. Sure, Chaotix had you looking for 60 candles in Mystic Mansion, but that's like 10 stages into the game. Shadow the Hedgehog asks that you kill 45 Aliens in the very first mission, and looking for them with slippery controls like these isn't as fun.

Speaking of missions: Branching paths. What kind of herb were they partaking of when they cooked this shit up.
Like, the idea of having hero/neutral/dark routes isn't bad, but what's the with overabundance of paths? Three hundred and twenty fucking six different paths are available for the ultimate gamer to make Shadow the perfectly balanced life form. Oh yeah, I love taking the hero path all the way to the end, only to heel-turn at the very last second just to screw Sonic over like some bipolar fuckhead. Why not just have 3 routes to follow determined by what objective you complete in Westopolis?
Kill all Aliens = You're on the hero route where you help Sonic and friends defeat the Black Arms. Head straight for the goal = Neutral route where you don't really give a shit about either faction and end up using the emeralds to find the truth by yourself. Kill all cops = You side with Black Doom to help him take over the world in exchange for your memories(kind of a disproportionate trade if you ask me). That's all they had to do.
Instead, you can choose to/accidentally complete a mission from a different alignment, but because you're so far in a specific route, the next cutscene will act as if you're still a good/bad guy.

I finished 3 runs for my playthrough: Full hero, full neutral, and full dark, meaning there were some stages and story bits I missed, but I looked them up.

This story fucking blows. You're telling me the Commander watched Maria getting a bullet through her back thanks to a GUN soldier, an event which traumatized him, only to join them years later? And apparently he hates Shadow too. If that's the case, why the fuck does the military go after Sonic in Adventure 2? If this mike pence looking piece of shit really had his asshole in a knot because of Shadow and was also a part of GUN, you'd think he'd let everyone else in the organization know. Also Gerald actually had good intentions and we should honor his legacy, I guess?
Not only that, but this is the same Shadow from Heroes(and by extension SA2 since he's the original), right? If so, he already made a bond with the rest of the cast back when fighting Metal Overlord. Why does he think that Black Doom is his only alternative to finding answers about his past when Sonic and the rest of the gang, including Rouge who spent enough time with Shadow and snooped around Eggman's PC/Shadow's containment room in Heroes, are right there? Sure, they don't have all the answers to his past, but what makes him think Black Doom does? Wasn't the moon fucking blown in half when Eggman pissed on it back in SA2? This IS the same continuity, right? "Blah blah, it's a game for kids and things are just supposed to look cool", well if you're gonna give me 326 possible routes and ask that I complete 10 endings to play the actual final stage, AT LEAST pretend to give a shit.

I already disliked the story in Adventure 2. I think it tries to do too much for a series that really has no excuse to fall into plot holes or inconsistencies given how simple Sonic is in concept. The story there was dogshit, this is even worse somehow.

A half-hearted, cowardly attempt at turning this series into something it isn't, and more than that, something it never wanted to be. Why can't I see Sonic's brain fucking oozing out from his bazooka-blasted hedgehole after I kill him? One of the endings implies Shadow kills himself. Why won't they show me the body? Where's the pool of blood next to Maria's cold ass corpse in that flashback? (Granted, all of these things would make this game even worse to me lmao)
The answer? They didn't actually want to take any of this seriously. They didn't want to commit. It's still Sonic, like you've always known, but now we have gunshot SFXs in the menus, the saturation is turned down on most stages(which hilariously clashes with the McDonalds ass character models for the main cast), and Shadow says damn here and there. This game has all the cool-factor of a kid grabbing a gun from his father's closet and waving it around to show how crazy and messed up he is, but he can't pull the trigger. It's not even loaded. It's not even a real gun. Fuck this game.

POST PUBLISH EDIT: Back in my Adventure 1 review, I mentioned that despite its many flaws, that game still managed to win me over thanks to it wearing its heart on its sleeve. Shadow the Hedgehog is the complete opposite of that, as I alluded to previously by calling the game "cowardly"; it feels like this game doesn't want to be here. It doesn't want to do what it's doing, but someone else is pulling the strings so it dances to the tune anyway. It's not honest or confident in itself the same way Adventure 1 was.

Not only that, but it feels like a lot of the people who do fuck with the presentation here kind of enjoy it "ironically"? Like "Haha look at how weird this shit is" or "well, it really is stupid, but try to enjoy the stupid!"(Nothing wrong with that, mind you)
Speaking for myself, I don't really like laughing at something, I'd much rather laugh with it, which is why RE4 is one of my favorite games ever. THAT game knows how bullshit bonkers everything is and it shows that off like a badge of honor. But because this game lacks any self awareness, and also seems embarrassed of itself at points, it really feels like the only approach you can take with it is the former: laughing at it.

(It has some great music though, I can't take that away from it. Shoutout to the GUN Fortress theme, which I had on loop when writing this. If the game went for this kind of energy instead of trying to be more like "All of Me", maybe it would've been better.)

Holy shit, I don't even know what to say. I wasn't expecting this.

The original Granblue Fantasy always had my attention thanks to its visuals. Tried playing it at one point and, as it usually happens between me and Gachas, I fell off pretty quickly. But it stuck with me because man, that art is pretty.

I remember when Relink was announced; my first thought was "Whoa, now I can actually have fun with it. Sick! Can't wait!" Yeeeeeeeears went by and the game wouldn't come out. Tried the fighting game too, had fun with it(why did they make Charlotta a charge character orz), but it also failed to hook me.

2024 rolls around. Extremely burned out with FFXIV(FF as a whole tbh, given that 16 and 7R did very little to entice me), unimpressed by Monster Hunter Wilds' announcement, disinterested in Yakuza Gaiden/Yakuza 8 and twiddling my thumbs until anything Etrian related gets announced, the past few months have been kind of rough for me in terms of engaging with games. It's that shitty kind of mood where you feel like you're done with all the things you used to be SUPER into, you know?
Tekken 8's release helped a lot with that since I'm always down for some good ass Tekken, but there's only so many ranked matches I can take until I start to look elsewhere.

And look elsewhere I did: To the bottom-right corner of my monitor, when Steam notified me that a friend started playing Granblue Relink. "Huh. That came out? I completely forgot."
I checked out the store and found that the game was cheaper than I thought. With fuckall to do, I picked it up.
42 hours passed by in a flash. what happened. what the fuck happened.

Cygames happened, baby. This is some premium shit right here.
Everything clicked. Quite literally a love at first sight type beat. Every location, every character model, every VFX, every track, every UI element, every detail in how characters move and how attacks connect, every setpiece during the main story, the pacing of quests, the Materia-- sorry, Talisman--, sorry, Sigil system...

It all just worked for me. Kicking back on the sofa and grinding the same quest until I got S++ on everything despite being pretty underleveled/undergeared at the time, exploring each new area in the main story to find crabs and chests and always being rewarded when checking things off the beaten path or atop a hard to reach spot, the warm colors, the flair, the increasingly intense battle themes during optional fights that had me at the edge of my seat...

It was made for me. Solely and exclusively for me. It takes my favorite things from games like Monster Hunter and Final Fantasy, seasons it with a lot of original goodness, and serves it all on a golden platter with my name on it.

You'll probably notice I failed to mention the story at all. It's simple, pretty predictable, but it doesn't overstay its welcome; it's on screen just enough to flavor the world and its characters, and then lets you do your thing until it's time for more. I was more of a fan of isolated character interactions; I think the banter between the crew is very fun and cozy.

The only negative thing for me was the game's main antagonist. Very generic and extremely bland, every scene with her was kind of hilarious(for the wrong reasons) since I literally managed to guess what she was about to say 80% of the time. In a more story driven game, this would be a huge problem, but I knew this was a "style-over-substance" type story from the moment I started playing; just the way I like it.

I don't have much else to say, except that I'll be looking forward to any updates to Relink, as well as any news from future games in this style from Cygames. This was a VERY nice surprise.

Persona is a series that I don't revisit a whole lot. 4 was my first, then 3, then years later I picked up 5 when it first came out. Finished all of them, even Platinum'd 5 despite not enjoying the story and characters all that much because as it turns out, the dungeon crawling and battle mechanics in these games are super fun. But that's not all you're doing for the whole game, is it?

Tl;dr, I hate the calendar system. There's nothing wrong with it objectively, it works, but in recent years I became increasingly aggressive towards missables in games, and Persona games from 3 onwards are treasure troves of missable shit.
You gotta plan out(a.k.a. open a guide and follow it to the letter) your actions so you can cram as many social links and stat increasing activities as you can in between dungeon crawling. This means that if you fuck up, or forget to do a certain thing on a certain day, your whole schedule(again, your GameFaqs tab on a separate window) is thrown out of whack. Not a problem in the Yakuza games, not a problem in Etrian Odyssey, not a problem in Monster Hunter, but definitely a problem here. In those games, you can just go back to do shit you left behind or happened to miss if you want to go for 100% completion. Sometimes you may have to wait until postgame to do that, and there may be one exception here and there, but in Persona nearly everything relating to Social Links and stat building is missable if you're not careful enough.

And that's only because you have a time limit to do things. Again, I get why, it's well integrated into the story and makes sense considering the whole "you're in high school, make the most out of the time you have" approach, but it's a design choice I personally grew to loathe as the years went on.

I also hate having to interact with certain characters just because I want to increase their Social Links for compendium purposes. I couldn't care less about Marie, she already had me staring blankly at the screen with indifference from my first interaction with her, but guess what? She's a new Social Link option, meaning she has an exclusive Persona locked behind her Maxed SL Rank, meaning I have no choice but to interact with a character I don't give a shit about just because I wanna see that percentage go up.

And then there's Teddie.

It's not a bad game, I just don't fuck with it anymore. For whatever reason I still enjoy playing Persona 3 even though it suffers from basically all trappings I just mentioned, but 4 and 5 very much have me wishing I was playing something else when I'm not in combat. (Or, thanks to Teddie, even during combat. For the love of god shut up)

Ok, let's start with the positives.

As others have said, this is Tekken 7 but better. Combat feels great, with every hit carrying a ton of impact. I don't know how the super high level players feel about the new mechanic(Heat), but as a midcore player, I found it pretty damn fun to use. I wouldn't mind if Rage Arts were replaced entirely by it; it's a snappy mechanic that doesn't interrupt the flow of matches and is fairly easy to pick up.

It obviously looks a whole lot better than its predecessor. Stages, characters and effects all look really good. The story mode cutscenes are GORGEOUS, Yakushima being one of my favorite areas because of them. Character customization also got an upgrade: Custom attires no longer look like they're all made of satin, though customization options are a little barebones right now, but considering the leap in graphical fidelity, I guess that's to be expected. I'm pretty sure more items will be added in the future, so let's keep an eye out for that.

Tekken 7's OST had REALLY high highs, but some agonizing lows(Helicorp - Night being the worst offender there). Here, the soundtrack is pretty good across the board, even though none of the tracks really jumped out at me like Infinite Azure did.
But hey, even if the soundtrack sucked ass, Tekken 8 brings back the Jukebox feature! And this time, PC players can use it too! Rejoice, it's time to play Yodeling in Meadow Hill on EVERY stage!

Guess what else is great? Rollback right from the get go, AND cross-play! This is how you do it. I heard some players experienced crashing when trying to play online, but I hopped on a few online matches and had no issues playing.

I like the new characters, chuunibyou queen Reina being my favorite, but Azucena probably managed to break the record for fastest instance of flanderization ever recorded. (I don't think she has a single non-coffee related line? Like, I get it, it's a cute character trait, but come on.)

Didn't play a ton of Arcade Quest yet, but avatar customization was super cute. Chibi not-Kazuya had me laughing a lot lmao

Character episode endings are still around and just as entertaining. Really makes up for the actual story.

Speaking of which...

As I mentioned earlier, the cutscenes look incredible. It's crazy to think we got to the point where pre-rendered cutscenes look better than the actual CG movie that came out years ago. But that's as far as my praise for the story mode goes.

This is a worthless story. Irredeemable, much like its protagonist.

It genuinely feels like whoever was in charge of writing for Tekken 8 had a MASSIVE crush on Jin. Like, stalker levels of obsession. I swear, 90% of the time, you're looking at characters saying shit like "Jin, you're the hope of mankind." "You're the only one who can save the world." "Everyone knows that your will is strong.". The other 10%, you're watching Jin go "I can't save anyone!" "I won't reject my past... I need to atone."

This entire story revolves around Jin's quest for redemption. A.K.A, a continuation of the writers realizing how they MASSIVELY fucked up his characterization in Tekken 6, and wanting to fix it.
The messages they're trying to communicate with this narrative aren't bad. There are times in life we fuck up, but we can't chain ourselves to those mistakes; we need to move forward, and create something better from it. Our blood or turbulent family relations isn't what makes us who we are, we can become whatever we want in spite of the cards we were given. And of course, the usual shonen trope of "You're not alone, as long as you have people you can count on you'll be ok".

The problem is, these messages are being transmitted from the perspective of the guy who LITERALLY, ACTUALLY STARTED WORLD WAR III IN THIS UNIVERSE. LIKE, NOT A JOKE.
"Oh but he did it to purge the Devil Gene from the world and defeat Azazel before it could awaken." I won't even get into how dumb that whole setup is. Leaving that for an eventual T6 review because holy shit.

Regardless of his reasons, all out war is too high of a price to pay. From T6 onwards, we get to see the destruction wrought by his decision, the people who suffered by virtue of it. Shit, Miguel's ENTIRE motivation for living is avenging his sister's death after Jin's planes bombed the church she was getting married in.

There is no redemption for Jin. He ruined the lives of hundreds of thousands of people, and faced 0 consequences for it. If only it ended there.

Tekken 8 decides that, not only should JIn face no consequences for his actions, he should also be elevated by his peers at every possible moment. Jin is the star of hope for mankind! Jin is the only one who can put an end to Kazuya's reign of tyranny! He's not like his father, his oopsie poopsie-- COUNTLESS LIVES SACRIFICED FOR A PLAN PURELY BASED ON SPECULATION THAT DIDN'T EVEN WORK IN THE END-- isn't what defines him.
No, Jin is an angel. A symbol of hope. Fully realized when Jin literally gets an angel form in the final chapter of the story.

No interesting character interactions between the rest of the cast, no other arcs or conflicts to resolve, nothing. This story campaign serves only to provide the player with a fantasy where they get to stroke Jin's hot topic branded [REDACTED] for 2 hours, nothing else. Aggressively incompetent and tone deaf, a baffling waste of resources that could be spent elsewhere in the game. After evolving into this embarrassing amalgamation of conflicting ideas, and now that some characters have been reduced to nothing more than caricatures of themselves(Paul and Law STILL arguing about splitting the prize money in the middle of an actual war), this series desperately needs a reboot, more than ever. Which won't happen, considering that last cutscene.

Gameplay peak of the series, absolute embarrassment in terms of story and characterization. A shame, since I considered pre-T6 Tekken to be my favorite fighting game series in terms of story.

With all that said, the story hardly matters. I'll be playing this game for hundreds of hours, and it certainly won't be because of this piss poor excuse of a narrative. You should, too. hop on tekken

EDIT: Forgot to mention, dedicated Kazuya Mishima tits button on the title screen. 10/10

EDIT 2: KAZUYA'S SNEAKER COLLECTION IS FULLY FEATURED IN HIS CHARACTER EPISODE ENDING. ACTUALLY MADE ME UPDATE THE RATING TO 10/10

Holy shit, this is good. Tons of different modes, even better soundtrack(BLADE CHORD fucks tremendously), and every single character is super fun to play. 3D cutscenes in Story Mode were a little boring to watch though, considering characters don't move their faces at all, very stilted in that sense.

It also sucks that I had no one else to play this with. Obviously not the game's fault that none of my friends are into Musou, but I can only imagine how fun it'd be to play it with someone.

When I come back to Basara after this revisit, it'll either be this or 3/Utage.

This one's been on my backlog since birth lmao

Let me just start by saying that I absolutely adore the way this game looks. The cute, play-doh-esque character models contrasting with the semi-realistic environment textures is a timeless look, like an adorable low poly diorama you could replicate in real life.

The PS1 was my first console, and Back to Nature just happened to be one of the games my brother had lying around for it. Picked it up when I was like, 7 years old, messed around for a bit, had a chicken die because I didn't know I needed to feed it myself, and then put it back down. It's a game I would continuously revisit through the years, getting farther each time, but never finishing it. Not because it's bad, mind you! I just didn't have what it takes to appreciate a farming/life sim like this before, I think. Close to 20 years later, and the deed is finally done. I had a lot of fun with it! Maybe a bit too much in fact, to the point where there was nothing left to do for the entirety of the game's third year.

Back to Nature has you taking over your late grandpa's farm, with the town's mayor warning you that if you don't take good care of the farm and neglect your neighborly duties, you'll be kicked out in three years. Off you go then! Milk that cow! Pick up those eggs! Chop that tree! Give that sheep a dope fade! Drown Elli in flowers and get married in a year! Sell 200 fish and become the 𝐹𝐼𝑆𝐻𝐸𝑅 𝐾𝐼𝑁𝐺! Faint after brushing your horse! Beg the harvest sprites to help you with the cattle because oh god there's so many of them help,

There's tons of things to keep you busy! But maybe I was a bit too efficient in my approach?
By the end of Year 2, I had all Power Berries, all fishing prints, all recipes done(except for the Harvest Sprite one, which I got shortly on the next Spring), maxed out my coop and barn slots, just had my baby, max affection with nearly all my animals, shipped every item, and viewed almost all random events.

But there isn't any way to speed up the three year evaluation period. Sure, you can go straight to bed after waking up, but your animals will most certainly die/lose affection for you before you're halfway through the year-- hell, halfway through the season even. So for an entire year, there was... Nothing to do. Sure, I had a few animals under 10 hearts, but that's it. I even had over 100k burning a hole in my pocket with nothing to spend it on. There weren't even a lot of random events left to see; just like, two or three, and one of them was locked until year 4.

This ultimately made going through that last year a big slog. Yeah, I could come up with arbitrary goals like "Ship 999 of every crop" or something, but that doesn't really change anything, does it? Just makes a number go up in your status screen, and it doesn't even affect your completion %. If there were more things to do, something that I assume the GBA remake took care of, then BTN would be an easy 5* for me. As it stands though, things slow down a bit too drastically before the evaluation, completely overcooking the anticipation for the credits/ending sequence.

Still loved it though. Maybe on a revisit I'll just play until the wedding and consider that my personal ending.

Add this one to the pile of DS games with outstanding soundtracks, good lord. Just like Actraiser, that's what drew my attention to Professor Layton a long time ago: its music.

Professor Layton's theme, The Looming Tower, Veil of the Night, Ferris Wheel Park, The Village Awakens, the ending theme... Curious Village has one of the most unique OSTs out there, easily.

That said, I wouldn't actually finish it for real until recently, despite knowing about the series for like, 10 years by now. I sampled the first game at one point and did enjoy it, but didn't push through more than the first couple of hours for whatever reason. Revisiting the Ace Attorney series brought my attention back to it though. "Oh yeah, there's that crossover game, right? I better check out the PL games before going into that, then."

Playing this during breaks in my routine in the past week was really fun! Curious Village is a pretty good mobile/portable game, best experienced in short bursts over time. That is, until the story finally hooks you.

One of Professor Layton's defining traits(aside from its masterful soundtrack, I will not shut up about it) is that it features a story on top of its puzzles. You're not just completing a series of challenges on a list like Picross or something, you're also supposed to piece together the truth behind a mystery taking place in the village. I read somewhere that originally, Level-5 didn't plan on taking this approach at all and were instead going to release a puzzle collection a-la Brain Age, but I'm SO glad they went this route because the story is actually pretty interesting!
I don't know if it was thanks to me playing the game on short bursts or initially paying more attention to the puzzles than the story, but I did not see that twist coming at all. Eventually I put the hints together and immediately went "Holy shit, what?????" and HAD to get to the end in one night. Cut to me at 4am, drifting to sleep to one of the most beautiful ending themes I've ever heard.

The aura that hangs over the game once you realize what's going on is so bittersweet, and it's SO effective. A short and simple story that knew exactly how to aim for my heart strings, helped in no small part by its beautiful, often melancholic soundtrack.

That said, this setup does raise some issues. Once the story caught my attention and had me wanting to see the end, the puzzles felt more like bothersome roadblocks than interesting brainteasers. Thankfully I had already completed most puzzles in the game by that point and the last ones blocking your way to the final room mostly didn't give me trouble, but when they did pose a challenge, I just ended up looking up the answers online instead of racking my brain for an answer like I had done with every other puzzle until then. I'm curious to see how they'll address this balance in future games, if at all.

Oh, right-- the puzzles! I spent all this time talking about other shit, but at the end of the day this is a puzzle game after all. They're good!
130+ short problems that'll have you scratching the side of your head with a stylus for a good, long while. Loved the sliding block and Queen puzzles, and the wordplay ones were my favorites. Picking out little details on what exactly was being asked of me for a solution had me thinking back to testimonies in the Ace Attorney series.

Now, they don't all hit the mark. The "who's lying?" puzzles were a bit samey, and there's a couple of them with pretty bullshit solutions. (The chocolate keyboard one comes to mind)

All in all, I really wish I had played these games earlier. Curious Village is such a good starting point, I'm gonna dive in the next games right after writing this. Considering how much I enjoyed the story here, I can hardly wait to see what lies ahead.

Man, the DS really is goated, isn't it? Ace Attorney, Professor Layton, Etrian Odyssey, Trauma Center; so many great gems on this little guy.

And here we have one of the greatest trilogies you could ask for.

I'll just get it out there: I'm not a reading guy. I think I've read like, 2 books in my entire life at most. Sure, I love JRPGs but often times I'm interested in their combat systems just as much if not more than their stories. That's just monkey brain for you; if I go too long without bonking something over the head, my mind starts to trail off.

With that in mind, a series like Ace Attorney would naturally be a gigantic miss for my tastes, as would any other visual novel. But there's SOMETHING about the secret sauce here, something about how everything comes together that makes it my favorite little text adventure/VN series, and probably the only one I'll ever give a shit about. And thank God I decided to make THIS the one to go for!

In my Justice for All review, I mentioned that Franziska von Karma is responsible for helping me have a wife and a job irl. Won't repeat myself too much here, you can check that review out if you're curious. But can you imagine if I decided to ignore Ace Attorney because of my unga bunga brain bias? I'd be living in the streets AND single!

It wasn't all smooth sailing though. The third game was a gigantic hurdle to go through. Cases 3-2 and 3-3 were consistently putting me to sleep, making me drop the game and forget about the series for a year. Then I'd pick it back up, play through 1 and 2 while thinking "man I LOVE these games. Why didn't I play through the rest of them yet?", finally arriving at 3 and having a BLAST with the first case, until it was time for the brick walls of 3-2 and 3-3 to show up again. Back to shelving the series.

But not this year. AA Trilogy went on sale. "Oh it's on now."
Played all three games back to back, and I'm SO happy I decided to press on after 3-3. Trials and Tribulations, shitty cases aside, is SUCH a good game and I'm a damn fool for not sticking with it earlier. Although... The next HD trilogy will be releasing in a couple of months, so maybe I picked the best time to fully dedicate myself to the series. To play all 6 mainline games in full HD glory... What a day and age we live in.

The port is pretty damn good too. Wide-screen, every asset(with the exception of some stuff in 1-5 specifically) was beautifully remastered, QoL additions and even achievements leading me to find little interactions and Easter eggs I never noticed before.

A decisive trilogy... A decisive port... What else could possibly be required?

Ah, err... Nothing, of course. That should be fine.

Good lord, this is weird.
In my original ActRaiser review, I mentioned that its simulation aspect was really charming, and that I'd be skipping ActRaiser 2 in favor of Renaissance since I read the latter brought back the sim stuff.

... I guess I need to pay more attention to what I read, because this game went WAAAAAAAY too far with it. On top of the town building and helping your followers, you now have tower defense segments. And all of them are stretched super far.

One of the things I enjoyed about the original SNES game was its pacing. You do a little bit of sidescrolling, a little bit of town building, then back to sidescrolling, and neither aspect felt dragged out or overstayed its welcome. I actually don't mind the tower defense segments of Renaissance; I grew up with those kinds of games, so I can appreciate it. What I don't appreciate is how there are multiple segments in the same land. If it was one big demon invasion per land, that would've been fine; kind of a way of testing how well you helped your followers before the showdown. But that's not how it's structured here.

Also I don't appreciate the writing. Another cool thing about OG ActRaiser to me is how... Honest it is. You're God, you have an obedient angel to do your bidding, and your followers constantly display their faith on you. No witty commentary, no jokes. Very straightforward, and it made that game's ending feel very effective as a result.

Here, the angel is a smug bastard who eats your offerings and says shit like "I mean, you could strike your faithful children's houses with lightning, but we know you wouldn't do that right? LAUGH TRACK", and while the followers mostly remain the same(from what I've played anyway), you now have "Heroes" that you can recruit for the tower defense segments who are not very enthusiastic about your godhood.

Finally, while this isn't a negative to me: This game looks fucking rough dude. I actually laughed out loud when the first stage loaded and I could count the pixels around everything except the HUD. I kinda loved it actually???? In a twisted way, I guess. (Props for the Alucardesque afterimages, too)

I'm kinda disappointed honestly. I didn't grow up with ActRaiser, but after finishing it just hours before trying Renaissance, this felt far less enjoyable than the original. And by what I've read from other users' reviews, the game just gets more and more bloated and repetitive later on.

Careful what you wish for, I guess.

Who knew smashing together sidescrolling action and town building could work so well?

ActRaiser is SUPER fun. I always had this game in the back of my mind thanks to the theme of Fillmore, one of my favorite Yuzo Koshiro compositions. After playing through every Castlevania game, I was still hungry for more sidescrollers, and that's when it resurfaced in my sea of interests.
(Speaking of Castlevania: God's damage sfx sounds oddly similar to Simon's lmao)

You play as God, alternating between cutting through demons in sidescrolling stages, then listening to the pleas from the people you've just saved in a simulation mode. Helping them with their problems and defending them from overworld demons increases your health and MP for an easier time with the sidescrolling portion of the game, not to mention new spells.

Full transparency, I was initially skeptical about this setup. "Won't the whole simulation thing take a big shit in the game's pacing? You'll be all fired up from killing demons, then you have to stop to help some farmers grow wheat?"
But the simulation mode isn't very complicated at all. You don't need to carefully manage a ton of different resources, the requests from your followers are easy to accomplish, and while you wait for them to build houses/farms and move around, you get to defend them from overworld enemies that want to kidnap them/destroy their buildings/destroy YOU(seriously, fuck that giant skull), so you don't just sit there staring at the screen.

It looks good for an early SNES title, showcasing some of that hot scaling and rotation, and the music needs no comment from me; it's Yuzo Koshiro goddammit, of course it's perfect. It's only a shame that Fillmore, the theme that drew my attention to ActRaiser in the first place, only plays ONCE in the entire game. Shaving off half a star from the rating for that crime alone.

The other half is from the controls. It's not a difficult game, but sometimes you'll be missing jumps or running into enemies because you can't control yourself in mid air all that well. Flying enemies were a constant source of frustration.

All in all, I really enjoyed my time here. Sadly, I hear that the sequel removed the simulation mode and is 100% sidescrolling action, which I do love, but I became enamored with taking care of these little 4 pixel long scrimblos. Maybe I'll check ActRaiser 2 out some other time, but for now, I'm jumping over to Renaissance.