I have like, at least 100k characters at minimum at the ready everytime to explain why I love this game; But I'll just explain it very succinctly here.

Treasure's games are designed with a 'Turing-completeness' to their greater design space. A term coined by John Carmack when describing Doom, it is essentially a game that presents infinite possibilities. The producer and creator of this game, Kafuichi went on record stating he wanted to make an action game that wasn't strictly memorizable. And even though the combat is very unbalanced, the boss AI generally being easy to throw loop, he really did succeed. Even though the game's relatively easy, any challenge the game throws at you posits some of the most emergent gameplay I've ever seen.

The attribute mechanic is very introspective and just, COOL. I love how the zero teleport analog in this game can launch enemies, at a perfect angle where they'll get subsequently juggled, and you can grab them out of mid air and pole vault off of them or use their bodies as bullet soaking shields. Everything Shyna can do in this game is additive to it's core conceit. The difficulty might be a bit lopsided to some, the last few bosses being very particular. It kind of reminds me of Cave Story, how the bloodstained sanctuary tests muscles the game didn't build, because nothing else is quite like it. I still love this game to death. It's easily the coolest game ever created.

Dragon's Dogma II is one of those games that I yearned for, I wished for it, and now that it is here, it is exactly what I wished for. Dragon's Dogma concerns you with the mundane as much as the extravagant, concerns about how much of your pack is taken up by herbs and equipment, your character's height and weight. it all matters as much as the fact that a dragon stole your heart and now you are the rightful sovereign of the country and must slay said dragon in an epic quest. it is the contrast between relaxing in an oxcart and then moments later it is attacked by a monster, wild and strange, that makes this game what it is

It doesn’t really need to be said that Prince was a living legend. The world renowned multi-instrumentalist maintained a career that spanned four decades, cut short only because of his untimely passing in 2016. There were sharp peaks and valleys in his popularity, like all great musicians, but he consistently managed to catapult himself back into the conversation due to his lightning quick adaptability. When The Revolution—the backing band that helped propel him into superstardom with Purple Rain—dissolved, he didn’t waste any time getting back into the studio by himself. He put together one of the best albums of his career, Sign "☮︎" the Times, while his personal and professional relationships were in a highly mercurial state. In fact, this period was so prolific that the label executives at Warner Bros. had to negotiate with Prince to cut down the length of the album; it ended up releasing “only” as a double LP instead of an absurd triple record affair.

Prince’s versatility wasn’t only limited to his musical talent. His headlong embrace of new technology was undoubtedly a major factor in his unprecedented ability to stave off irrelevancy. He was an early adopter of the Fairlight CMI, a synthesizer that few musicians could even afford in the mid 1980s. Prince’s vault where he hoarded his vast reserves of unreleased music had a DOS-based computer cataloging system on its frontend, affectionately called Mr. Vault Guy, that accounted for the contents of every tape, disc, and hard drive. He was also much earlier than most to the idea of internet distribution, stubbornly insisting on selling the Crystal Ball box set through his own website in 1998, to the detriment of sales.

Given his love for the bleeding edge of progress, it only makes sense that Prince would become interested in video games. In 1994, when Prince Interactive was released, it was yet another volatile period for the artist. To set the stage a little bit: his final album with Warner, Come, was set to release in two months. He purposely refused to promote the new project as a means of spiting the label, ending his contractual obligations by giving them as little profit as possible. He changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol the year before, forcing everyone to call him “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince.” The name of the game, technically, isn’t even Prince Interactive, but we have to call it something!

Cyan’s highly influential Myst released a year prior to Interactive, and the similarities are more than superficial. You find yourself in a fictionalized version of Prince’s home and recording studio Paisley Park, solving simple point-and-click puzzles. Broadly, the objective is to search the mansion and assemble the scattered pieces of the nameless musician’s eponymous symbol as if they’re fragments of the Triforce, though in practice this amounts to a flimsy excuse to poke around and uncover various Prince-related easter eggs. There are an abundance of music snippets, photos, and interviews with other musicians—in which they all heap praise on Prince—to be found. The game even kicks off with an exclusive song called “Interactive,” ostensibly a song about being a song in a video game. (He would pull a similar move years later with “Cybersingle,” a song about the fact that you could download it from the Internet.)

What ends up being most interesting about Interactive is not necessarily how it innovates, but how it’s indicative of its time. Functionally, it does little to stand out from contemporary adventure games like Myst, Beneath a Steel Sky, or Day of the Tentacle. (It’s not even unique as a piece of multimedia artist memorabilia; JUMP: The David Bowie Interactive CD-ROM released earlier the same year.) Historically, it acted as an important document for fans and scribes looking to document the inner workings of Prince’s operation; tours of Paisley Park weren’t permitted while he was alive, and despite all the fantastical embellishments of his Minnesota home, this was the only way to get a surprisingly accurate walkthrough of his studio. Thematically, it tells a story of Prince’s legacy as it stood in the mid ‘90s—full of references to his unassailable accomplishments, but also serving to build up hype for the second act of his career.

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

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

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

It's honestly staggering that Final Fantasy XII is as good as it is when you consider its famously troubled development. This is a game with one of the most brilliant RPG gameplay systems in all creation, a semi-automated battle system where the bulk of the consideration happens before the battle. The perfect midpoint of tactics and action RPGs, with one of the most addictive progression loops I've ever come across. All of this collides together and sings in beautiful concert when you consider the vast open fields and intricate dungeons that this team has designed for you. Forget Final Fantasies X, XIII and XV, THIS is what we call fucking vast. Gliding across frontiers, trudging in catacombs, I'm not sure I've ever felt more genuinely immersed in an RPG. Nocturne comes to mind but slips in dungeon design ever so slightly.

All of this! And then you consider Ivalice. How exactly did we forget to design towns and cities in this genre? It was clearly once there, this game is proof that a world can feel lived in and populated, but as budgets balloon and resolutions multiply, we continue to lose the soul of a Place in these games. Kamurocho in the Yakuza/Like A Dragon games, that's the last great JRPG town. This game has like at least 5 cities that feel huge and memorable. A modern marvel. I've spoken about Hiroyuki Ito but I haven't mentioned that this game was once helmed by Yasumi Matsuno. He created Ivalice after all, and I think even at the beginning of the game you can feel that exact same voice ring out in the story. After some internal reshuffling, Matsuno cited health problems and promptly left the Final Fantasy XII team. This is something I knew going in, I was bracing myself for the story dropoff, though hopefully not quite as cavernous as Vagrant Story's more vacant chapters.

Color me surprised then, when I found out that the story still comes away rock solid. It's maybe not quite as brilliant as Final Fantasy Tactics or as thought-provoking as Vagrant Story, but Final Fantasy XII does manage to retain that soul. People point to the characters being relative strangers as a weakness, I found it beautiful. That we could have 6 people bound by hasty circumstance, come together for the good of their homeland. People complain that there isn't a strong main character, I find that an utterly fascinating aspect of the story. It's clearly not what was intended, in early drafts it was clear that Basch was meant to be the protagonist of the game. But god, just how cool is it that we have three duos of characters to latch onto. Vaan and Penelo, the little fish in a big ocean. Gateways. Balthier and Fran, the cool, aloof, free sky pirates. Aspirations. Ashe and Basch, tragic victims learning to forgive. Heroes. This is well rounded! The game makes you care! It just doesn't throw 15 hours of cutscenes and constant dialogue at you to make it work. Final Fantasy XII trusts you to invest with your gameplay. Play the Roles. People, either jokingly or dismissively, say the game cribs everything from Star Wars. Sure yeah, Gabranth is Darth Vader. However, in every way that it is Star Wars it is also Lord of the Rings, Godzilla, AKIRA, and allegory to the occupation of Japan in the 1940s and 50s.

Final Fantasy XII. I love it. Completely and utterly. I'll be back.