are you using your time to properly think and talk with art? are you listening? or do you plug your ears anytime it tries to talk with you, to challenge you and make you rethink what you're engaging with?

i don't think i have any common ground with most people who like videogames, actually. but i don't think this is just videogames anymore, this is endemic in all of the arts. people stopped being listeners, started being consumers. no long a plot twist will make your heart skip a beat, now it's the author "betraying" your trust. no longer can complicated concept be presented before your public, now you're "fumbling", "overdesigning" or whatever new word people will invent to use as analytical shortcuts. like, really, you spent 90h with this game and all you could get back from it was that it has "Ubisoft-like" design because it has towers? i don't care if you gave the game 4 or 5 stars or if that was a compliment, is it that hard to think more about it? am i setting the bar too high? probably.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is not a product, it's an art piece which you converse with (that's honestly 99.9% of games too btw). hefty admission price for sure, but it does not need to cater to you at any moment. it needs to be heard, seen, felt, I think running around the grasslands felt incredible and vibrant, i love how every map changes its whole design based on the chocobos, i love how sidequests have their own little songs to them with battle music included, i love how every character gets explored a whole ton more because now they have the time to do so, I love how Tifa can be herself instead of Cloud's past, I liked every change, I think this game is probably one of the most courageous games ever made and that will ever be made and people won't appreciate it enough, but that's fine because I will.

the more i think about it, the more i think about its last hours, the more i think how they handled -that moment- the more I like it. I like this and Remake for entirely different reasons, but Rebirth made me feel things I don't think i was even aware I could feel playing a game and I don't mean crying i cry for everything and i cried super hard at several moments in this game, it's something else, which i would only dare to explain if I had spoilered this text but i don't want to do so.

like i said i think i finally realized my lack of common ground is what makes it really hard to talk about videogames outside of my circle, people who only wear "videogames are art!!" as a mantle for feeling validated, but not really treating them much differently than the hamburger they'll buy for lunch. i don't mind if you didn't like the game but i only ask for something of substance, an interesting read, at the very least a personal perspective, not internet gaming buzzwords i can see in like 60 other reviews. i just want to think and challenge myself and i feel like i'm always going into a hivemind. but i guess that's fine i get to cherish good things when i see them at least.

i just need to remind myself of this

I genuinely have no words. This game has become my favourite video game of all time, with the exception of a single visual novel. It set a new standard that I think I'll have to readjust quite a few of my ratings now. It's honestly difficult to even begin describing how I feel about this game, but I'll try.

Reverie is both a love letter and epilogue to the first three arcs of Trails, as well as the prologue to what comes next.

From the homely Liberl, to Crossbell's history of oppression and melting pot of a culture, to Erebonia's oppressive yet fascinating existence. From Estelle and Joshua's journey, to Lloyd's unyielding determination, to Rean's saga. All of that was already settled in Cold Steel IV, but unlike the bombastic, massive battles where everyone (well, almost — sorry, Kevin) from every possible side joined to end the conflict once and for all, Reverie decides to focus on a smaller amount of characters and make them go through incredible character development. That's not to say the stakes are low, though — this is still a JRPG. And so, the game, before the finale is split into three routes (actually just POV chapters but whatever), between which you can usually switch at will.

Lloyd's route, despite being the weakest of the three, is something that his character definitely benefits from. We have seen the SSS fight tooth and nail for Crossbell so many times that they, and other people, have forced expectations onto them. The land of Crossbell has been under constant threat of dictatorship and occupation by multiple parties. They just don't want to leave them alone. In spite of that, though, our guy Lloyd, who would face down the sun falling from the sky onto him and would still get back up, is still Lloyd, and it's hard not to love him for it.

Rean's route is a fitting after-story for the completion of his arc in CS4. While that arc may have ended, having doubts after everything is said and done is natural. It feels very organic and fitting as a character study.

C is a newcomer protagonist, and compared to the other two in this game, is more morally questionable. As someone with a dark past, he bonds with other misfits with complicated backgrounds. It's honestly really difficult to talk about this any further without spoilers, so I won't. But I'll just say that he's incredible.

Making a shorter Trails game split into three routes does wonders for this story's pacing, while at the same time having a wealth of side content. This is probably the best paced Trails game since Azure, and possible ever.

Falcom is at its peak with the technical (or at least until Daybreak/Kuro, wow that game is phenomenal), visual and sound aspects here. This is a very stylised game, with probably my favourite Trails soundtrack, which is saying a lot. Every route gets their own battle themes in a fitting style, such as having the spiritual sequel to Zero's Get Over the Barrier! and Azure's Seize the Truth! in Lloyd's route and Crossbell, as well as C's route's tracks, which blew me away. Not to mention the wonderful OP track. The gameplay is pretty much the same as CS4, but no complaints at that front either, especially since I enjoyed the fights in this one more. Trails was already my favourite JRPG turn-based combat of all time, and this just further cemented it.

While playing this series I was wondering what about it works so well for me. Before starting Trails, I was wondering if a 500+ hour series can even be worth it. Seemed like a series that would not be amazing enough to justify such a lengthy commitment over shorter, yet acclaimed JRPGs.

Trails, when it wants to be, is a masterclass on what you can achieve with characters and world building in a JRPG. Well, of course the several hundred hour long series would have good world building, but it is impressive nonetheless, especially if you're a completionist. I'm not one myself, but it would be a perfect fit if I was. The amount of dialogue NPCs have after any given story event is crazy. And then there's the in-story lore and world. The regions in every game feel completely different, and if you go back to a previous region in a future game, it feels like coming home. Different musical styles, viewpoints, vibes, etc. It's not like Falcom made a carbon copy of Tolkien's world or something — to me, Zemuria is one of a kind. This variety extends to the characters, too. The protagonists of the games so far (Estelle, Kevin, Lloyd, Rean, C) couldn't be more different. Despite being a series with plenty of tropes, it has enough diversity to feel fresh every time. That includes thematically. It's impossible for me not to look forward to what they'll show me next, especially with this behemoth of a buildup. Trails is just special to me. This review I'm writing is longer than my usual ones, but it feels like I can always say more.

It's also impressive but kind of funny how this game doubles as damage control for people's issues with CS4. If you liked CS4, there's little doubt you'll like this a lot. And if you hated CS4, you will probably enjoys this a lot more. This game is as much Cold Steel 5 as it is Crossbell 3, and as someone who's greatly enjoyed both sagas, I couldn't be happier. I will probably do some side content in this game for some time, or maybe I'll take a break. Or maybe I'll just boot up Kuro 1 (Daybreak 1) ASAP. Who knows.

This game marks the end of one thing, but the beginning of another. Liberlian Bracers, Kevin, the SSS, Class VII, it's been a pleasure to witness your journeys. This is goodbye for now, but I'm sure I'll see you again... Someday, somewhere.

So, today marks the date of my completion of the adventure main campaign (haven’t started new game+), and I wanted to write a review for it, but it struck me that most people usually look up reviews of this game to ask, “does it work to lose weight / make me fit” and the answer I’m gonna give to you is a resounding “it can (with proper dieting and routine)”
Which is always frustrating to hear as every exercise tool is always given this answer, I get it too, you just wanna be able to determine if you can get fit with this game but if you’ve ever been interested in losing weight you know that exercise is only about 25% of the deal, I’m not a nutritionist not even a huge fitness person so I’m not gonna tell you if its gonna work to lose weight or gain muscle, but what I am going to tell you, is ring fit adventure a good exercise tool? In my amateurs opinion, yes!
But as I’ve been introspecting in between my exercise sessions, I wanna write a little bit more so in this review ill go over some pros, cons and talking about the story of adventure mode and my personal story with the game, cw for eating disorder talk on the rest of this review.

Pros
- Obviously, it’s a good way to get exercise at home as a newbie, I didn’t know most of these exercises and frankly didn’t know how to do how to properly do 90% of any of them before playing the game.
- The game is really nice to you, I really mean it, I said this in an old review here, but the game constantly encourages you, and never shames you for lowering the difficulty or taking breaks in your routine.
- I may just be a huge daydreamy nerd when I’m saying this, but this game makes me feel like I’m inside an rpg, as dumb as this sounds, the visuals and the sound design made me feel like I was actually a hero struggling trough a cool fantasy adventure, the physical struggle that I felt doing the exercises didn’t make me feel like usual when I used to exercise, you know, bored, in pain, waiting for it to end so I could go to have some real fun, but instead it immersed me and made me feel like I was running around the world and actually beating monsters, it kept my mind out of the exercise and the goal of weight loss and instead made me feel that my goal instead of losing x weight was to go and defeat dragaux, not to say I didn’t feel the exercise physically I obviously did but when I did reps of some exercise I didn’t feel like giving up or just plain bored, I just felt like I was a good ole rpg hero and I was just casting a move that was strenuous, daydreaming is a good way to get me to do things, so the game tricked me into doing more and more time and putting more difficulty level as I went ahead
- The best thing about this game, I think , is that its not at all focused on weight, unlike Nintendo’s past fitness endeavor, this game only uses your weight ONCE, to calibrate your fitness level, it never brings it up again nor does it inflate your mii character and play a comic trumpet sound effect while telling you you’re fat unlike…other Wii balance board based game of Nintendo’s roster….which is really good for someone like me whose weight is something that can be pretty triggering as I’ve dealt with eating disorders in the past and the urgency to lose weight really triggers it, if I had a Wii fit and I had to weigh myself EVERY DAY and see my bmi charting I would have basically died.
- A small little pro that doesn’t really matter if you’re just in it for the training stuff it doesn’t really “matter” but GOD I LOVE the sound design of this game, not only the instructions given by ring, the sound effects can make you tell if you’re doing an exercise well or not, and not to mention THE MUSIC while you’re in battle, the tempo changes while you’re doing more faster or slower exercises, and did you guys know that since some of the exercises are synced to the bpm of the background music, and the boss music is slower than the regular battle music, making you feel the exercises more, and so making the boss battles way harder physically, that’s really fucking neat!
- This is gonna be a hot take but…. I LOVE RING!! I know that he says weird stuff sometimes, but he is encouraging and nice and my only personal trainer ill ever have because ring would never be a dudebro pt he’s very nice….
cons
- Since this is all solitary, and the switch peripherals aren’t perfect, there’s ways to fuck up the exercise you’re doing and it still counts it, good posture is key in exercise and if you unknowingly have bad form, you can not only not do as much as work as intended, but fuck up your back, sometimes both, so make sure to follow tipp as best as you can! Once I was doing mountain climbers and fell down and the game counted it as me doing perfect reps, lol.
- If your switch joycons are fucky (whose aren’t?) you’re gonna get interrupted a bit while working out, there’s countless times I’ve been interrupted by my left joycons batteries being super fucked up.

Lastly I wanna talk about the story a little bit since no one is really doing it, and ik talking about the story of a fitness game sound silly but it frustrates me that people just say that its an excuse for the exercise, which in technicality it is, but it so much more than that. Spoilers
The dark influence is a running thing in the game, the four masters and dragaux himself are affected by it, making them cartoonish villain versions of themselves, the dark influence is a metaphor for toxic fitness culture, no shit, but as simple as it is it really did hit hard for me.
Small trauma dump, So, I first started playing this game in 2020, I was 15 and I had always been overweight, and the game offered me some sort of way to move, I was having fun! I reached about world 16 until burnout hit me, hard, I don’t exactly remember why, probably some sort of depressive episode, and it only got worse when my father started doing remarks of me not keeping my routine, in the end I left it for about 3 full years, as now presential school had me extremely busy and I didn’t care much for my appearance at the time
That’s until we had to perform a dance in front of the school for our senior year and I started getting outright bullied for being fat, plus I had my graduation suit hand tailored and although I know that’s a great privilege, the pressure of the bullying made being measured all the time to make me even more self-conscious, so I quit the dance, and started going on a calorie deficit , I only ate up until 500 calories a day and most days even less, if I felt like I exceeded it, I forced myself to vomit, that small period was maybe the worst period in my life, in the end It all ended with my meds getting upped and I stopped myself from engaging in ed content, I went to my first college semester and everyone was way cooler about it, we weren’t teens anymore after all, I took walks from the subway station to my campus as my exercise and didn’t go up nor down ever that year, undisturbed I kept going up until this 2024 where as I organized my living room for Christmas decorations I noticed the ringcon collecting dust on one of my shelves, and new year new me, January first 20204 I picked the game back up, recalibrated and was surprised at how hard the game was now that my skill level was way up from the recalibration and I had a ton of fun, but the thing that really made me happy was seeing the characters realize their strengths and be freed from the dark influence
Long things short, the four masters are rid of the dark influence and realize that the toxic fitness culture that was ingrained into them made them over excerpt their bodies to make up for their problems, Allegra was jealous of her mentor, Armando just wanted a girlfriend, Abdonis felt alone and abandoned, and guru andma felt self-conscious of her age, and as I saw them accept their flaws and why the dark influence took over them, I saw myself in them, I was self-conscious of my weight and took weight loss to an extreme, feeling like I had to be skinny to not hate my body anymore, and now as I was taking normal steps to exercise and are in the process of booking a nutritionist that works with mentally ill people such as myself I saw myself in them as they understood their real strengths, and at the end, beating not dragaux, but his toxic mentality, and seeing he’s actually just a big softie who wanted to open up a gym but he was too afraid to be seen as too weak so he took training to a cartoonish extreme made me very emotional , and I know I get emotional over very small things but I’m not above being happy for a fictional cast of characters from a fitness game and seeing myself in them
Ring fit adventure isn’t just a silly exercise tool, it’s a simple yet great story on why we should avoid toxic fitness culture and that staying fit should be a tool to stay healthy and have fun, not to fit a standard, that’s important too.

(btw! if you read all this, thank you! im gonna reply to myself with my ending stats and gonna update it when i finish ng+ and ng++ if i remember!)