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''

Japanese rayman is epic !

i bloody loved my time with astal, it was bealtiful, it was whimsical, simplistic story yet fairy tale-like, felt like an adventure through and through even if it got a big unfair at the end there, but i can forgive that because i emulate and also because you can suplex every enemy in the game, even the last boss, you can MGS raiden suplex the last boss punch !!
there is something about these fantastic worlds that get to me on a emotional level, i loved astal too much, the music is worth ripping out and listening to itself alone

its not without flaws however, movement feels a little floaty, there are about 5 frames of input delay in every emulator you try, but from hardware recording it seems the same on physical as well, and the game also uses limited continues, now i am fine with a life count but a limited continue that sends you straight to the main menu is just an excuse to pad short games. still i can't complain because its not that hard of a game (the game actually tries to make a narrative of how OP astal actually is, i definelly recomend for people who love bealtiful artsy games with a fairy tale style, it might sound childish but its adorable for me.

on another note : what in tarnation is this american box art ? they turned my cute smol boy into a beetle chimpanzee ? why do old american box arts used to butch japanese artstyles so harshly ?

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

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

brilliance ruined by incompetence

at first i saw the scores and reviews and though to myself ''it can't be that bad come on'' because i was looking very foward to this game, turns out it is that bad and some more.

this game is a bealtiful and well crafted puzzle alen adventure with grotesque visuals that legit can pull you into this very atmospheric world, ABSOLUTELLY ruined later by shitty combat, don't get me wrong i am very familiar with survival horror but it legit (this is not my discovery, plenty of people point it out) shows that combat was an last minute implementation otherwise you finish the game in under 2 hours, the ass combat is there to add 1 more hour.
there is no other way to explain other than the enemies were designed to annoy you till you die, they will buggy block your path despite being made for you to get past them, turn on the aimbot and hit you, if you die you gotta deal with the awful checkpoint system that sometimes sends you 30 minutes back from where you died, making you re-do a lot of puzzles you already completed, but lets say you run past all enemies and avoid dying to cheap enemy blockage, then you finish the game in under 1 hour and a half, look i would be absolutelly fine if this game was a short but sweet experience, but its painful now, even more that there is bealty in its world, not even the ending bothers me and that one irked a lot of people.

charming little decent story but the gameplay is Ass

unfortunally i did tried to like it, but deadlock was my first R&C game, and the only one at that, coming back to floaty slippy and cameraless ratched was such a downgrade it almost nearly made me drop the game, let me elaborate, he feels much heavier than later entries while also floatier, spyro came before yet had a much nicer feel to it, you cant lock directions meaning you have to turn fatass ratched towards your enemy manually to shoot, and god forbid if you have to dodge anything, the racing segments are some of the worst racing segments i've seen.
but i do speak from experience when i say that the later entry is miles above, in terms of story it kinda goes nowhere , ratchet feels likea looney tunes character at first then he become angry boey halfway through the game, but its fun to see how much of a jerk he is in the first game.

while deadlock i replayed like 5 times, this one i'll never touch again, the only fun part of it is the cheeky cutscenes that kinda go nowhere at the end of the game, and thats for charm alone.

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

average barebones beat em up that serves more of a history lesson than a actually fun time to have.

seriously no one would bat an eye to you if you said you didn't liked it due to how simple and not very fair this tends to be, nor on the arcade and MUCH LESS on the genesis with the bullshit last boss and limited continues, i've said before how much i despite limiting continues, its the blandest and easiest way to stretch gameplay to americans due to renting, they can't give the game back early if they never finish it right ? ohh boy..

i do like the art tho, and on a higher note this game is really pretty on a Powkiddy v90 screen

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

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

a game with the highest highs and the weirdest lows

i'd rate it lower for the little annoyances this game has
like caricatured NPCs that are there as a way for kojima to talk shit about people he doesn't like.
the massive downright absurd, humongous padding to make this 20 hour game a 50 hour game.
the ending mission, if you know you know.
those NPCs who made me cross rivers and mountains for them only for them to be uneducated jerks who tell me to F off, sam is surprisingly calm because i would have told these pricks to F off themselves and let them to their devices, what point in need someone to do stuff for you only to treat them like shit ??

but,through the weird lows, comes the massive highs.
an amazing reactive gameplay where you have plenty of choices of how to tackle challenges.
an ever expanding arsenal of tools to help you complete your journey.
a very fun (and probably very expensive) cast of characters.

it was gonna be a 7 for the little gimmicky annoyances this game provides sometimes, but no game that manages to get me this emotional gets a 7 in my book, in fact, its one of my favorites from that year, the konami nerd did it again

a bealtiful goth dress that's filled with annoying plastic spikes that poke and scratch you everytime you wear it.

thats how i'd sum up this game, its bealtiful, clever, gritty and witty at the same time.
the voice acting is amazing and the art direction is the star of the show here.
HOWEVER
in order to enjoy it you must go through a slog of a clunky combat that is vert selective of when you are dealing damage to a enemy and when your weapons are ineffective because youre slighly under them, or next to them, or above them. actually i don't know the criteria, sometimes you just don't do damage at all but oh they will give you damage don't worry about that.
trollish levels that i think mcgee borrowed from the time he was a doom level designer, and he can go eat a onion for all i care with that shit, be mindful of silly traps and shoving a room full of enemies to pad gameplay.
whose idea was it to make underwater sections with mandatory combat in a game where hitting the enemy requires god to be on your side and some sprinkle of luck ???
don't forget to save, seriously don't.
to sum it up this is a bealtiful game that requires you to feel PAIN in order to play, even getting this game is some jank, you gotta order a disc from someone else, buy the madness return and edit the config files to make it playable through the exe of madness return, oh but you also need to download the files as well. do i hate it for all it has done ? no, its charm and style makes up for it, but beware of this mistress stupid personallity