Edit: Just wrapped up my second play-through of this game, and fuck, do I love it even more than the first time. Remains my favorite ARPG of all time. Literally just throw a mini-map on here and a mute option for Jed and it's a perfect game.

It's still pretty surreal, sitting down to write this piece, to be able to say it, but Stranger of Paradise is easily the most ballsy and unique entry the Final Fantasy series has seen since the XIII trilogy, and stands pretty easily as my favorite entry of the post-VIII games. It's like the ambitious, earnest, and thrill-seeking Final Fantasy never left us. After decades of what I feel has been a progression of back-stepping, reductive, and trepidatious entries, Stranger of Paradise bursts in, guns blazing and Limp Bizkit blasting, and demands your attention, your frustration, and your heart.

Through the entire experience, I felt like I'd been transported back to the days in which these types of experiences were the norm for major third parties like Square - parts of me even imagine this must've been what lesser titles like Dirge of Cerberus wanted to be. There is no irony to Stranger of Paradise; what you see is what you get, and it stakes its claim as a new step for action-RPGs loudly and pulls it off in stride. The gameplay is just ridiculously fun - swapping between classes, casting magic and going in for strings of melee combos is a blast to pull off in succession. The boss fights are almost all hype as fuck, with awesome delineations between phases to keep things fresh. Modern takes on Final Fantasy I classic bosses that feel fresh and new, while bringing back memories of my first runs through the original title, created memorable moment after moment. Speaking of, the dungeons are pretty breathtaking - and the choice to model each area lightly after a landmark from another Final Fantasy (Mount Gulg after VIII's Fire Cavern, Crystal Mirage after III's Crystal Tower) made this longtime fan stoked to see every new outing spring to life. A mini-map would've been nice for some of these areas, but it never got all too bad; no traditional dungeon crawling here.

Looting was never too overwhelming, save the few times my inventory filled when I really could've used boss drops, but to see Jack and the crew in whatever obnoxiously loud new outfits I obtained next was a joy after another - especially considered like 70% of the outfits in this game constantly clip through themselves. Oh, I love the jank in this game. It was always a laugh WITH the game, not quite at it, and playing the title as a couch hang-out with close friends only accentuated this.

Not to parrot the exact same sentiment as many others have about the plot, but I have to hand it to Stranger of Paradise for taking it from "tacky, goofy but entertaining anime plot" to "honestly powerful final act" as quickly as it did, and I'm left with a genuinely positive impression over all. Stranger of Paradise is a title confident in what it's doing and honest to God believes in itself - and I do, too. This is my favorite Final Fantasy in a long, long time. Since the XIII games, for sure. And yes, it did it its way.

This game is incredibly, incredibly "fine," more fine than any other LAD game I've played. It doesn't have any of the highs that say, an entry that Y2 or Y6 has, but its mostly absent of any lows that those games have. The game's story was just very fine, and lacked some of the hype from previous games; I just had a hard time believing that there were actual stakes in any of the fights, if I'm being honest. Maybe its because we've seen Kiryu kick so much ass to this point, or that we knew that Kiryu has to make it through this one, or because its insanely easy to make Kiryu turbo overpowered if you just do the side content, even on hard mode. Of course, it doesn't make the game bad; I think the absurdity of the upgraded agent style is hilarious, and the side content, as always, is generally enjoyable, and the game's ending has some good scenes mixed in, I just find that the game wasn't enough about the ending and felt more like a game that should've been an infinite wealth expansion pack than a game. Despite all that I, the game is still good, maybe only cause of how sucked in I got into the side content as much as it retreads old stuff. The characters we meet are also decent, but Akame in particular stands out from the bunch and is the game's spotlight. Just be warned that if you're one of the people that just plows through the main story... you won't be here very long. I had like over 40 hours in this game, and barely any of it was spent on the main narrative. Also, on a personal note, the game failed to address my biggest problems with Y6 and its treatment of Haruka, but I guess that's on me for expecting that to be addressed.

Short version: Fine game, isn't gonna rock you off your socks, Y5 still should've been the last Kiryu game.

For every good thing about this game there's probably five just as bad. It's a game that shows immense early promise and then slowly grinds you down until you cant wait for it to be over. Incredible highs lead way into baffling lows. The combat initially shows depth and promise but lives up to none of it. The story is a complete mess that despite trying to break new ground for the franchise ends with literally the power of friendship defeating god.

It is an absolutely gorgeous game with stunning vistas that are completely devoid of any meaningful things to do. Eikon battles provide truly spectacular moments but in between forces menial busywork.

All in all a massive disappointment.

🥱I played this through in one painful sitting and it honestly felt like I was being fucked with the whole time.

The game is insultingly dull, the enemies are lacking for the series and the areas are both uninspired and needlessly huge or complex. Every mission has at least one part that either makes no sense or exists only to waste your time, often both. The combat felt exactly the same start to finish and every boss could be killed near instantly by activating Devil Trigger and holding square.

Seriously the reputation is deserved, just skip this entry it adds nothing to the franchise but a sour taste.

western game devs be like "okay time to make a quirky visual novel as a joke because... erm.... THAT'S not weird....????" and then make it actually compelling challenge

i don't know what to tell you man. the art's good because the idw team is behind it, of course it's good. writing is average modern sonic fare; "earnest" to a point but constantly self referential with 2010s "quirky" humor and already-dated meme references. music is inoffensive but unmemorable. id take this over the so quirky omg!!!! xD dating sim route that loser-ass companies like blizzard take (amazed they could release something involving consensual relationships) but this shtick is really really tired and the game just wasn't good enough to justify the joke. minigame sucked too.

How funny it is that despite all my efforts to beat it sooner, I would complete Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on Friday the 13th, as my 4th completion for 2023. With the date being considered unlucky here in the West, and the number 4 being considered unlucky in the East.. It’s almost poetic that even the finale wasn’t safe from my misfortune.

To those who may not know, the majority of this game was played at my mother’s house, where I lived for about half of December due to a fault at my own home that left me without central heating. Simultaneously making for a pretty bad situation, that resulted in me being almost forced to play a game that I’d been really wanting to, but struggling to put on when at home. On the contrary, as I played out the finale late last night, beating the final boss and bringing this epic journey to an end, I received an urgent call from my brother… For those of you that know why they consider the number 4 to be unlucky in Japan, well.. It was a long time coming, we’re all okay, but it made for a pretty significant weight to be added as I paused the closing cinematic 5 minutes before the end, only finishing it hours later.

As you can imagine, these things alone have solidified that Xenoblade Chronicles 2 will forever live in my memory as a game of great conflict, but through it all I honestly find this to be appropriate. The highs are immense, in some parts even towering over those of its predecessor, but the lows are so, so low, that at times I genuinely considered skipping to the third entry, and even gave the game a placeholder score of 3/5

For the first 40 or so hours, I noted down some of my thoughts in order to remember them for this review, but by the time I’d gotten properly into the game, I sort of did away with this and just enjoyed it instead. Therefore, the following will be a series of my notes as I wrote them, and where necessary they’ll be responded to with my current thoughts to see what’s changed. All I’ll say upfront is that I love this game, but I also really fucking hate it lol. (for fun, I’ll put my bullet points in [ ] indicators so you can see what exactly I wrote down lol)

Please enjoy the rambles of a madman fighting with his heart as he falls victim to yet another flawed JRPG 🙂

The first thing I’d like to talk about is the world, more specifically the map. The world designs are pretty great, they’re all grand and diverse like in the first game, maybe even more so to be honest, but my god do they not want you to traverse it. The [map is dogshit]. The player icon on the minimap uses the pointy end to indicate the way you're facing, but the main map always has the pointy end at the bottom, so everytime I check to see which way I need to go I think I'm facing south. It's also really bad at indicating paths to higher/lower levels, honestly just awful to navigate in general. You’re given nothing but a waypoint and a compass but if the way there requires going through a building to the West or an underground cave or even up over a tree, good luck finding that without looking it up online :) This is significantly worse in 2 or 3 areas with most of them being bad but not completely awful, but when I cross a bridge and the compass says “go straight” and there are stairs directly in front of me, I don’t expect to have to go around the stairs to an unmarked path.

The second thing is interesting because I’ve done such a 180 on it. In my notes I wrote down [combat is a step down from the first game] - At the time I didn't understand it very well and was just pushing the prompts when they lit up, even saying that it “feels like I'm player 2 or something, I can't strategize at all bc I don't even know why I'm winning”-- This is partly on me, but I can’t forgive the game for doing such an abysmal job with the tutorials. It’ll teach you how to do something once, and then you may not even be able to set up the execution again for hours, and there’s no way to check how exactly the combat works. The closest thing to a reminder is a control scheme which doesn’t explain how to use the combat effectively. However, after looking up a tutorial online on how to use blade combos and chain attacks, the combat in XC2, for me, now surpasses that of the first. There’s a lot to it, but once you get your head around it you really can win just about any fight by tweaking your team a little, making grinding much less necessary than previously. It’s great fun, it’s flashy, I love it.

Another complete 180 I pulled: [Characters are great, not quite XC1 level] – I can only assume that at this point in the game I was spending 90% of my time lost, and 10% of my time watching the party talk about something I’d forgotten we were doing. By the end of the game I can safely say that I fucking love the cast of XC2. I loved XC1’s group as well, but 2’s party all feel a bit more genuine and memorable to me. I have fond memories of almost every member for their own reasons and they all shine and grow in different ways. Comparatively, when I think of XC1, I remember Shulk, Reyn and Sharla fondly, but everyone else is a blur. I think this is largely due to the Heart-to-Heart scenes not being locked behind ridiculous requirements. A much needed change that makes 2 feel a lot more like a journey with friends than a journey with a couple friends and then people that tag along. (That’s a bit harsh/extreme but you get my point lol)

One thing that I have surprisingly little to say about, is the story. The characters and the world
‘Got’ me so much that even though I followed and enjoyed the story a lot I can’t really find anything to say about it. It’s a story of people and existence, tackles some really big questions about why different species exist, what purpose they serve, and most importantly it’s about perspective. What happens when an open question can have wildly conflicting answers? How could you ever know who is doing the right thing? If you are doing the right thing… This game has such a strong optimism through Rex that all people have the potential to be good, and even those who are doing wrong are simply misguided, and idk it’s not exactly a new concept but it’s executed so well that the entire game is brimming with hope, and that’s pretty amazing.
(For consistency, my note said [story good so far] lol)

I’ll try to wrap it up because I’ve hit the major beats by now, the rest of my notes were petty nitpicks or things that annoyed me to great length at that one time lol. To quickfire a few positives I’d like to say that the Blade system is really cool and I love how many rare blades have their own designs and even characters/side quests – it’s just a shame how unlucky I got with pulling them, at least 10 legendary cores gave me common blades and about 20 rare ones did the same :(
Furthermore, Nia’s voice is my favourite, maybe ever. (In contrast, Rex’s outfit is literally the ugliest thing I’ve ever laid eyes upon). The side quests are still not really worth doing imo, and the only one I made a point of doing was for a Poppi upgrade which I really wanted.. Man this quest nearly broke me. I had to go to 3 areas that I’d never been to before and bc the map is so ass I needed to follow videos for them all, and run past level 86 enemies that killed me instantly. All so I could run up to a glowing spot, press A to pick up a stick, fast travel back and do it again… What a boring fucking quest to do something so important. Sending mercs on a 30 minute mission and going to pick up dirt while I wait for them to get back. That quest took me like 2 hours and I fought 1 enemy during it, I was so pissed lol.
One final gripe, the characters and blades all talk soooo much during combat, and normally this doesn’t bother me at all (especially when Nia😌) but at some points a boss will speak to you about plot stuff during combat and you can’t fkn hear them over your party going “We can get them if we fight as one!” and shit lmao

Alright, I’m done. If you can’t tell by now, my relationship with this game has been hot and cold, but I can confidently say that I am truly grateful I stuck with it and in spite of it all will retain the good a lot stronger than the bad. Sure some of it is a huge slog, and it doesn’t explain anything very well, you will probably need youtube guides just to find where you’re going. But once you get there? Man. This game is fantastic.
It has a reputation of being horny and silly, and it definitely is at times, but there is so much more to it than that it’s almost a shame that it’s reputation almost encourages people to skip it. If you liked XC1, or even if you’ve played XC3 already, please give XC2 a chance.

This has run on far, far too long at this point but, well you knew what you were getting into lol.
Thanks for sticking it out this far guys, I hope you’re all having a great January. You’ll be glad to know my next JRPG completion won’t be for a good while, so only shorter reviews until then :p

Until next time :)

When I saw that Ragnarok was nominated for just about everything at the Game Awards I sorta rolled my eyes and thought "pfsh, of course it is". Now that I've completed it myself... Yeah, of course it is.

This game isn't perfect by any stretch, the combat gets a bit repetitive, there are too many optional bosses/trials/collectible whatnots, and while I've seen a lot of people praise it for being a duology instead of dragging out to a trilogy (which I agree with 100%), it still ironically drags its own runtime out with side content just a bit more than it needs to in my opinion. There's already so much game, I don't need you to ask me to travel all 9 realms looking for flowers/lizards/stags/whatever else at multiple stages throughout the game as an excuse to go back to areas I've spent 5 hours in already. I appreciate that I can access new areas within the realms now and that's great, but there's no need for an entire tab of "1 of 15" and "4 of 10" ...etc when the game is rich with fantastic content and incentive to explore without it.

That aside, the characters and the story are superb, absolutely top marks. People call this a movie game as a negative a lot, which I really don't understand because it's not a movie game in that it's lacking in game and instead just shows you the story.. It's a movie game because it feels like you're playing a movie, the direction, the tension, the whole thing is a journey that you're being taken on, yes, but that you're still in control of just as much as any other game. If the credits role and I feel like I've just finished watching The Lord of the Rings or some shit, how is that a bad thing??? I beat monsters to a pulp for 40 hours and felt fulfilled at the end, like what happened, mattered - damn what a terrible game ( -_・)?

God of War Ragnarok improves upon everything that it's predecessor does, and yeah it shares some of the same flaws but for what it's worth, I think it's blatantly unreasonable to expect them to have made a better sequel than this. Bravo, Santa Monica Studio.

I remember trying the free demo for Bayonetta way back in 2009 on my friend's Xbox 360 and, being dogshit at these types of combo-driven hack-n-slash games, struggled with the tutorial alone and left it at that... Fool ;-;

Playing this recently (and more importantly, playing this after DMCV) it definitely feels dated tbh. Which is about as much as I'd expected really, but makes it hard to score any higher because the longer I spent playing it, the more I wanted to get back to the not-playing. Not because it wasn't fun, by any stretch, I just preferred the everything else so much more.

Unfortunately for me, I'm still ass at hack-n-slash games, so I tried my hand at playing this on normal and I wasn't exactly struggling, it just felt like I went down too fast and everything else too slow, so I dropped it to easy in order to move things along a bit. Immediately after, I was having a much better time, feeling cool and less like my time was being wasted. But as I played on it was almost too far on the other end of the scale. My hand was being held so much that it felt like I only had to mash buttons and even bosses would fall in no time at all. To think there's an even easier setting as well!
Another issue I had was that because Easy automatically finishes combos for you, I kept trying to replicate what I was doing on Normal, only for the game to use a different attack pattern that I guess was more appropriate? Just felt like I had a bit less control, in a negative way as well as a positive one.
This is hardly the game's fault, but it's a shame I wasn't able to find a difficulty that was both challenging and fun, hopefully the sequels improve on that.

Aside from the combat, the levels themselves were just, so 2009... On-rails bike levels, an entire level where you're piloting a missile and shooting identical waves of enemies for near 5 minutes, god I really hope they ditch or tone those down as well lol. The set pieces were fantastic I will say, but so much of the game felt drawn out or prolongued and when the levels are only 5-15 mins each anyway they shouldn't really feel like they're dragging. The worst case of this was the final boss, which ends with a far-too-long sequence of just maneuvering something for what must have been 20-30 seconds of avoiding obstacles. The climax was so awesome why drag it out so long!? D':

With that said, Bayonetta is undeniably deserving of its status and following because the characters are just so goddamn lovable. Bayo herself carried the game with ease and the overall campy tone worked perfectly to keep me interested and wanting more from a plot that was honestly just.. I don't even know lol it wasn't exactly confusing but at the same time it felt like there were pieces of information missing that everyone knew but me. I'm gunna have to watch a smarter person explain all the shit I missed, but at the same time credit to the game for making me care regardless of what was going on.

In conclusion, Bayonetta is a PS3 game, and it's got all the rust and clunk to prove it. But nothing can take away from just how charismatic it is. I can confidently say that even though I barely followed the plot and I'm only giving it 4/5 stars, I am absolutely excited to play the 2nd one :)

Metal Gear Solid is one of my favourite franchises, if not my favourite, and what this game represents in that context is a kind of offensive that can’t be reached by just being a dogshit terrible video game. And make no mistake, with or without the context of the Metal Gear name this is a dogshit terrible video game.

The story is nonsensical, it’s structured in a way that makes it far more incomprehensible than it already is. All it has to do with Metal Gear is they occasionally dangle memorabilia in your face. The world is completely barren, the fog makes recognizable landmarks impossible to distinguish, so you never get that familiarity you get playing most other open world games for a certain amount of time. Your resources drain way too fast. It’s made right clear from the opening, which tries to do this fast paced chase scene, but it’s constantly put on hold by you having to wait for your stamina to recover so you can vault over shit. Resources are a pain in the ass to farm for and craft, and you’ll rarely have enough to keep your health and stamina limits above half constantly, so you’ll almost always have to bear this infuriating screen blur that appears when you’re low. The gameplay loop is incredibly restrictive, text lines will encourage stealth among other strategies, but the mechanics are so unreliable and half baked and the zombies kill you in two hits, so it pretty much constricts you to the safe option of putting down a fence and stabbing away. Think all the reviews shitting on this game are exaggerating B-roll footage? They’re sugar coating it, you can lay a fence down in a wide open field and the AI doesn’t even have the common sense to just go around, it’s fucking brainless. There do exist other enemy types that can shoot you or blow through it, these enemies are either cheap as fuck if you’re using melee weapons or piss easy if you have any guns on hand (another reason why the fence and spear is almost mandatory against the basic types is because you need to save your ammo for everything else). Like there’s a bomber type, which can one shot you if your health isn’t high enough so fighting it with a melee weapon has you awkwardly trying to kite it and chip away at it’s spongey health bar, but when you shoot it, it chain reacts and takes all the others out with it, and a type that lifts it’s arm to shield itself, but it spends a ludicrus amount of time frozen in that position, so you can just walk like two steps to the side for a piss easy headshot. Mind you, you can just leave a fence down to keep the regular types at bay while you take care of them. What’s more, the game keeps bombarding you with texts that patronize you with the kind of things that anyone who’s ever touched a video game would know anyway, shit like “When your life runs out, you die” or my favourite, “The Situation Report informs you of the situation,” not to mention Virgil who always yells at you to when your resources are getting low, which they always are. Even separating this game from the Metal Gear name, judging it on it’s own terms, this game is a boring, janky, tedious mess that struggles with providing even the bare minimum and it’s a joke compared to even the most basic of zombie survival games, and this is all before we even bring up the game’s fucking egregious cash shop.

Sad thing is, I don’t think the departure of Kojima necessarily had to mean doom for this franchise on it’s own. Look at Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, a major departure from the series that Kojima had little involvement in, and it’s hailed as a series high point. And it’s baffling to me that they didn’t use the foundation laid in place by The Phantom Pain. Giving such an open-ended world like that the RDR: Undead Nightmare treatment sounds like a fun idea, even in the oversaturated zombie market. Hell, the series as a whole is driven by these sorts of crazy ideas, by outlandish creativity. But that’s the thing, this game isn’t about creative ideas, it’s about cashing in on a recognizable property and popular trends, and about higher-ups wanting another stream of microtransaction revenue (fucking $13 for a save slot), all with zero regard for artistic integrity. It made clear where Konami’s priorities were, it felt like it was made out of spite for Kojima and everyone who loved his work. It was cathartic as hell to see the fandom, and even some of the game’s own devs, respond to that with a giant “fuck you” of their own, buried this game the fuck alive like it deserved. The low number of plays here on Backloggd is far more gratifying to me than the 1.4 average.

I hate this game more than any other piece of media. It’s fully deserving of all the backlash it’s received and then some. This is easily, easily, EASILY the most soulless, inept, cynical, creatively bankrupt piece of media I’ve ever suffered through. I’ll end this with a few words from this game’s own devs:
BASTARD YOTA
CUNNING YUJI
KJP FOREVER