kinda fun but simple, plain but in a endearing sort of way.

i couldn't for the life of me tell you what the story of this game is, but the pick up and play nature of doing missions is what gives me quite a good feel.
the controls also are quite simple, way simpler than i expected, for some reason i was scared this was some sort of Dos simulator with 300 buttons but ported, not its quite arcadey fun, if the first one is enjoyable as it is, i can't wait for the rest in the series.
also it works great when mapped properly to WASD

Holy based batman !
i came in barely expecting anything, but i found some pretty shiny gold, its short and sweet, its action packed, its a whole explosion of rule of cool, zero BS, zero gimmick, its short because its straight to the point, it won't deviate from gameplay and try to deliver what it promises right from the get go, it helps that its so fuckin cool.

also it should definelly be ported to steam, i forced 60 fps with 1080p and had a blast, this holds up surprisingly well.

for those wishing to try it on mouse and keyboard, here are my configs :
W,S : forth and back
A,D : turn left and right
Mouse 1 : shoot
mouse 2 : lock in (great to use when you gotta circle strafe a enemy)
E : grave sweep
Shift : run.

again i wish this was ported to steam, but emulating is still amazing in its own way

this series is all about asking simple questions
for the first one the dev asked : what if sonic 2D was cool, and then went on to answer that question.

then for the second game he dared ask : what if sonic 3D was not only cool but functional too, and then went on to make an amazing game that its so responsive and balls to the wall fun that i still cannot fathon it actually exists.

then the crazy dickhead went on and asked : what if spark 2 was epic ? and went on to make one of the best games i've played.

somehow its even more responsive than the second game, its a perfect sonic game, it doesn't restrain you, it doesn't scare itself and lock you into a straightfoward momentum or a pseudo game cutscene, or jank you into clunky deaths that were never your fault.
no, this is a concise, straightfoward and confident game that will deliver mechanics you can rely on, and challenges to put those mechanics to the test, and not once did they fail me, even at the absolute gauntlet that is the last level (that you gotta beat with limited lives, for once i like limited lives).
story wise it tries to hold itself but you can clearly see the bonkers going on in a larger scale, but this time its a bit more well developed, even if it still goes dragon sonic and the sevel jutsu balls revengeance, i love this game, if this game was a man, id let it go to bed with me.
as a bonus the dev even ported all levels from spark 2 into this one with all the perks of having a upgraded mechanic and movements, the delight of replaying these is unmatched

are there problems ? sure, not being able to remake the keyboard controls is silly, forcing some levels in order to prgress, lack of last power ups, a not so great last boss.

but i'm willing to look these as just rough parts of a diamond, this is it, the perfect sonic game. no, spark made its own identity, now sonic has to keep up if he wanna prove he has quality over spark

charming, bold and honest game that i am unfortunally not a fan of.

final fantasy 3 for the nes is one of my favorite games of the era, playing this game made me realize i was playing a final fantasy 3 without the excuse of being a nes game, because all the nes limitations are here but with the coat of paint that the ps1 allowed.
a dinky map mixed with all the other items that takes 30 seconds to load.
confusing and at times criptic progression structure that will make you accidentally stumble into the progress after the whole day looking for it through the whole map.
games from a generation before allowed items and magic to have descriptions, yet this one really is trying to cosplay as a nes game and simply not have it.
a random encounter that is not random, it will trigger every 20 steps and the spell that avoids random encounters lasts for 1 minute, MANA IS A LIMITED RESOURCE.
at some point you will hit level 50 by nothing but the silly random encounter and then nothing is a challenge anymore, just a nuisance, the last boss requires level 37 to beat with relative ease, so its not even challenging, just annoying.
so many unrelated missions and dungeons my lord, if you trim the fat, this game could be 11 hours long, yet they stretched a nes-like rpg into being 60 hours long.

power to people who likes this game, it genuinelly has a very cute charm to it, but its with games like this that i get convinced that backloggd score is given based on people that rate games based on how they remember the game is, not on recent playthroughs.
a friend of mine who love this game gave a quote that made me understand the situation quite well ''its one of those japanese games mean't to last 2 to 5 months'' i wouldn't agree with him if i haven't found out that this game helped sell guide magazines like crazy, which is a design i despise, making stuff obtuse and cryptic for the sake of selling guide or extending game lenght, its artificial.

i though i was alone and it only didn't click for me, but i recently checked a reviewer i follow (check @Ardwyw_mp3 he's cool) and apparently i'm being too nice to this game.

power to people who love it, but honestly i don't see myself opening it again, not to deny its charm tho, this game being 11 hours long would be a absolute blast

great game, but not better than the first.

lets start with what i came here for, that sweet sweet remedy weirdness, cranked up to 11 in this game, now in a culmination of all their past works, even ones they couldn't add somehow they did in a sneaky way, a very good conclusion to a series i became very fond of, just not as perfect as i hoped it to be, i have a few points to discuss regarding my statement.

combat : this is a downgrade in my opinion, people have a misconception that the first game's combat is dull and clunky when in actuallity its simple yet hard to master, you had full control when you could stun the enemies, you had perfect way of planning things ''7 bullets for big guys, 3 for smaller ones'' with enough skill you could stun a whooping 8 enemies at the same time and have 2 seconds to focus fire on the more dangerous ones while managing your distance and your dodging game, rapid fire 4 bullets on lesser ones that get close and scrape by with relative safety and few resources wasted, the light was a rechargeable meter that you used , if you played skillfully you'd only have to use the batteries if you fucked up and needed a panic button, otherwise managing your stun game was great.
here however its a different story, its a clunkier and less reliable resident evil 2 remake, its ok i like re 2 r combat, but i feel the first game already had a great blend of survival and its own identity, here the game doesn't even have faith in its own system, if you die in a section with only 1 battery left, the game on hard difficulty will still give you 2 extra batteries, as if its saying ''its ok we effed up the ballance, have a freebie'', the camera is less reliable because they too wanted some of that re 2 survival style, purposefully making the tps camera a little more clunky than the normal one, i've seen people do crazy things with it, its still possible, but i don't feel this is a upgrade, its another thing entirely, there's also a few nitpicks about the menus, they are a bit clunky with mouse, they are not as clicky as the game they are trying to emulate.

the bugs : oh dear, getting stuck in geometry being forced to restart (in a game you save manually in safe zones..) geometry clipping so hard it covers the place you need to walk, i've seen it make all walls invisible and spoil me where items are supposed to be, an enemy refused to die at some point, a normal grunt took a lot of bullets and decided that he was not having it, killed me, upon respawn he died to 3 bullets, 3 times the mind palace refused to let me leave, i had to restart.

saga : i like saga, we need more video game moms, they are being shadowed by video game dads, but this ain't it chief, they done my girl very very dirty, as if to sabotage her.
for starters, her upgrades are nowhere near as useful as alan, alan is getting upgrades like ''chance of free bullet'' while she gets stuff like ''10% extra damage if enemy is stunned'', this is for the shotgun mind you, a weapon that will always kill in 2 to 3 bullets, the 10% doesnt make a difference and there are many of these cases, her upgrades are just not as useful.
her dialogue, while alan is throwing some poetic stuff ala mr.wake as usual, saga is throwing little quips and stating the obvious, i get remedy likes to be inspired but last i checked this was inspired by twin peaks, not avengers.
i don't like that it seems she got the short stick of the writing crew, it enchances my theory that she got sabotaged, specially with the fact that they also forced her to make a racist quote outta nowhere.
i'd love a crazy grumpy cop mom high on caffeine angry this is her 10th case this week because the higher ups don't give her a break, instead i got a rather bland character that feels inconcise with the other ones, saga deserves better, much better than what she got (it came to my attention as of late that remedy hired SBI to write her, and i now see the problem, come on guys i believe remedy and sam are very much capable of writing a great black mother character) inclusive characters deserve better writing, they deserve a spot in gaming, but they deserve great writing behind them to accompany, no one without the other, am i saying i wish she was annoying or grumpy ? probably, it worked for alex casey, why wouldn't it work for her ? make her weird, make her angry, make her tired, make her happy ! but make her interesting.

the mind palace : very weird addition, one that you can ignore most of the game and it will only be mandatory on two sections of the game, i played twice and second playthrough i was curious how much i could bullshit my way without touching that room, turns out the entire game, while the writing room is mandatory and influences the levels, not only that but they also give free items if you explore them enough, SEE HOW I FEEL SAGA GOT SABOTAGED ??

overall its a strange feeling, i like this game, i feel its a satisfactory conclusion, i like the characters but i don't feel it is an evolution of the first game like many say, i'd go back to the first game many times and get better at the combat to the point i can do a not hit run, this one ? two times and i'm already out of the loop, woops sorry, spiral...

also a little question, why when alan tried to strong will himself out of the dark place with his strenght of mind, he got beat up, mentally and physically into submission until he's but a husk of a man, but someone else can love themselves out of the dark place just like that ? seems mildly unfair

did yall who say this was a masterpiece ever finished the game ?

my god this is a crazy polarizing game, for every great there are 2 terribles.

pro : night and day system based on time
con : a time based quest system without the ways of making you skip the waiting, some missions will make you wait almost 20 minutes because people are sleeping.

pro : an immersive style, your character needs to rest
con : if you get tired mid quest, get ready to stare a few minutes at the screen while musashi straight up takes a nap in front of you.

pro : npcs react to time and day.
con : same problem with the time, the town can be blowing up but they will take their sweet nap and give you the mission in the morning, the npcs will also lock you into their dialog without you being able to skip it, that means sitting through a 20 second dialog box every time you go buy some C-drink to heal.

pro : zelda style, exploration is the key
con : who said you need to know how to design a zelda game to make one ? just throw a bunch of missions on random places and let the player search the entirety of the map, even if some missions are time based, i'm sure that will sell our latest guide magazine (and apparently it did )

i could go on, combat being simple buttom mashing, you being able to take enemy powers to progress but having to sit through almost 40 seconds of a dialog box explaining to you how the power works regardless if you've seen that dialog box 100 times already.
the game has secrets, but not in the metroidvania sense that you get stronger, no no the secrets are for story progression, who makes these ??
the last boss is also a joke, know his patterns and you can cheese him by attacking before he can go to the next animation.

but, despite all that, what carried it for me was the extremelly charming cutscenes, voice acting, fun npcs and puns, lots of them, this game has some amazing personallity under this cryptic monster of a guide selling design.
this is a example of a game that i wish had a remake to iron out these mistakes and make a 10\10 experience, because the style is already there, but its not that it lacks foundation, its that the foundation is poor and might break any time, most of the reviews treat it as such a masterpiece yet a lot of them say things like ''best game ever, never beat it tho''

For a first entry this sure left a sour taste in my mouth, great presentation and very fun style, even better when you play the translation but good god if it isn't a mess of a game, weird hitbox (for both you and the enemies) sessions where you have to grind to progress (within a time limit mind you), at some point i ran out of time cuz i had to grind coin to progress and ended up having to re-do the entire level despite being 1 hit away from killing the boss.
may the blockbuster era of games die and be only remembered for its style and fun moments, because not everything was gold as everyone seems to say the last boss surprisingly is the easiest of all, you can just get in a corner and cheese him to death, so its both unfair and anticlimatically easy at the same time

i don't have much nostalgia for the first game, i played it rather recently, but played a hell of a lot of RD revolver when i was young, so its understandable i enjoy arthur more than i enjoy john, but i loved their interaction as the game went on but i wish there was more of them both.

abigail got downgraded to a worried cat that does nothing but complain and guilt trip john when in the first game she was a woman that could stand up for herself and understand the situation of their lives just enough, and thats my biggest gripe with this game, they ruined a fine character for the sake of extending the epilogue.
other than all that, its no hyperbole when i say this is the definitive best cowboy game that there is, lots of roleplay and atmosphere to be found in it even if the character movement got sluggisher than the first redemption game.
while i loved the journey, i found the ending lacking on something, i know there was not gonna be closure as this is set for the first game, but the epilogue leaves a rather sour taste on what was a very good journey through and through.

the missions got massivelly improved, no more 5 favors per character as it was in the first redemption, that one could grind my nerves sometimes

meh, there are more creative fishin horror games out there, and this one doesn't even focus on fishing, you catch 3 fishes then it becomes slenderman

it starts interesting but then it becomes ''oh no collect the 3 mcguffins or else slender-ish gonna get you ,oooooohh~'' which is so saturated not even the interesting aesthetic can save it from becoming rather meh, the story itself is really not that engaging

Spoiler :
bro goes fishing when people them him not to, ends in cursed swamp, says ''oh no i must collect 3 things to leave trademark'' and then leaves, all told through a black text.

it really is nothing more than okay

me after playing spark 1 : maaan this is the best sonic 2D i've ever played, there's no way this can get any better
me now : HOLY SHIIIIIIII

what if we get 3D sonic and tell the devs to actually trust the players ? no level that plays itself, no locking the character anywhere, no glitchy rails that kill you more than any boss in the game, just your character, your moveset and a biiiig physics based level where you can go absolutelly nuts.
i love games that if youre skilled enough you can tell the level design to F off. this game doesn't just have parrying, it IS parry, parry the enemy, parry the level hazard, parry the bottomless pit, parry the boss, parry death ! it honestly feels like the dev just sat down and kept scribbling ''what would be really cool to add ?'' and just went ahead and added it in the most competent way possible.

this is the evolution of 3D sonic, level design that trusts and never restricts, a cheesy story that hypes itself up while going full swing, you can't help but find it endearing.
this is what i was hoping sonic adventure 2 was going to be.

its not all sunshine tho, the menu config is very limited and the level select is a bit bland, but those nitpicks really do not make the experience worse in any way.