not the promised masterpiece due to some very annoying flaws, but god damn if it isn't a fine game.

wish it was shorter, the game could do without making you do around 50 favours for a single npc before they finally decide to be useful.
the game mostly consists of a awesome story buried in an absurd amount of favor quest,
john : come on do that thing you promised
guy : sure sure.... uhhh could you do me one last thing for me ?
john : god damn sure, but if you ask again i'll kill you
he'll ask again 5 more times and john does not in fact, kill him, this would be fine if it wasn't the entirety of the game, this game is about 17 hours in lenght, and i say it could be 7.
i left satisfied and pleased, but still expected more from the internet's claimed greatest game of all time

mixed feelings left and right.
at times i was loving the experience, at times i was dreading the massive jank this game is, getting stuck on geometry mid run, buttons fighting each other to decide which input to commit to, enviromental hazard not working as intended, it was almost as if the game was trying to balance itself by having a super fun rule of cool style of story and the most bland and broken gameplay, it gets a little better with shadow stages but you play so little of the two main characters, i overall enjoy SA1 much more, it had its fair share of jank but i could at least trust the systems to work, man if this is sonic all the way to next gen i dunno if i wanna continue the series, i asked a friend of mine who has much more experience with sonic (one of his fave stuff) and he quoted ''you havent experienced sonic until you ve died to shitty rails a dozen times'' power to whoever likes this game or liked back in the day but good grief, at least in SA1 the character while fast had some ground for proper controlling, SA2 perpetually left me stuck in a janky fight for proper control as even turning might break the physics and bring the running to a halt, lost count the amount of times i died to sommersault and light dash fighting each other to see who will register the input and kill me.

it stopped being fun at the hero sections, whose idea was it to triple the size of knuckles and tails levels anyway ?
i've seen the troubled development hell this game went through and its honestly a miracle this game and even sega stood after the storm like that, it makes me respect the story, but it doesn't make this game any less icky to play, story is cool tho, hopefully i can get to later entries and never open this again.

i'm tired, really, being a KH fan comes with so much baggage, you gotta put up with awful cross platform little games that are somehow canon, gacha games, a movie that explains nothing to nothing, addition to games that only exist because i think the creators wanted to make something else before deciding to make a kh game, not birth by sleep, that's my second favorite, i shouldn't need to put up with all that cargo just to enjoy the central theme and characters of this, but as it turns out most of it is indeed mandatory to understand and this is tiring.
there is only KH 3 left, kingdom hearts 2 is one of my favorite games ever, if KH 3 doesn't get to its standarts, i give up on the franchise, KH 4 can take 20 years to come or never for all i care, but on a higher note :
shout outs to this project for allowing me to experience this, because otherwise i would have never heard or enjoyed it at all.

find me the guy who decided to put important lore in a gacha game, i wanna have a deep talk about huge keys getting shoved into holes at high velocity with him

7\10 but i wish it was a 10

a bealtiful well crafted story about diversity and the bealty of being a stubborn kind, the true strenght of humanity is our differences and our abbility to cooperate with each other and create bonds, and in that premise, TeC excells, however, it gets sabotaged by its own desire to be a video game, and thus falls into the traps of having the little quirks and annoyances of a mid title.

many people don't know but using the inventory map (press i, the game doesn't tell you that, i know) you can find exactly how to progress to the next tower, otherwise it becomes a frustrating game of guessing, while many games with multiple characters have the decency of making non controled characters take care of themselves, in this game you will find yourself babysitting most of your family because if left to their devices, they will drown without getting out of the water, be attacked by creatures, turn on traps that remove the items you deposit on their inventory, it ends up making this bealtiful tale be accompany by the world's longest bodyguarding quest in gaming, it seems to be a trend with ace team to make bealtiful games brough down by their own need to be mid to average games, to your next title, focus on being fun pleace

not the 10\10 the internet promises, but the best 8\10 you'll ever play.

there are problems with this title, bandai rushing production making some areas of the game straight up be incomplete (a fan will come up and say that its to symbolise the hollowing of the world), back when this game was made, some devs said they wanted to implement more of the internet forum based discoveries upon their works, what you get from this is cryptic quests that i have no idea how some people found out really, and i found that quite jarring specially when it doesn't even make sense (i shouldn't have to deposit 1 humanity at a time in order to hit 30 on that specific quest, and who exactly found out that was necessary to do it ? if you know you know), and to top it all off this game has one of the most dogshit toxic sides of a fandom, they sent death threats to a IGN writer for a dated guide, go out of their way to guarante that everyone has the exact same experience as them by reporting respec mods, going into nexus pages and harassing modders.

if youre a new player, please, you paid 60+ dollars for this game, play it any way you want, if you want it authentic go for it but if you want help, if you want to be handheld by a guide, dude thats totally ok, don't let others come to you and say ''if i suffered through this, so should you'', the best part of this game isn't even the first playthrough, because once you finish the game and go into NG+ you realize how much of a amazing sandbox it truly is, then youre set free to do as you please with the knowledge you gathered and all the equipment, you truly become the ''lord of the dark'' of this world.
veterans, please don't act like this game is a religion, its a product mean't to be enjoyed in any way they want.

that all said, if you decide to get into this, be prepared to learn a lot and adapt but really it isn't that hard, most of the challenge comes from not knowing what or how to do things, with the proper knowledge and equipment you can breeze through most enemies, i've seen some people who played with a guide beat artorias first try ''but it takes away from the experience, it takes the discovery away'' different strokes for different folks.

you paid for the product, you enjoy it anyway you want, its yours.
(my final note represents the game as a whole, the point about the toxic fandom does not interfere with my review, but its worth bringing up for, as a game with online features, newcomers will have to deal with the community and they should be aware of it)

what i like :

- its probably the 20th time i finish this game, and every time i come back knowing a new glitch to beat it faster

- i love the story and how the whole facility feels interconected.

- this game is JANK, you can very early make a glitch that gives you so much life you become nearly immortal, the barney one, if you know you know.

- i love how charming the old models and textures are.

- every sound effect is iconic.

What i don't like :

- no matter how many times i play this, i still very much dislike the bullet spongy enemies.

- the troll parts of the game can go suck a dick, regardless if i know exactly where they are.

- on a Rail.

time and time again i've tried finishing this game, the oh so promised perfect game, there was always a point in which i would stop, when i finished it for the first time, i though it was pretty good but with a few areas in which i had no good things to say, but upon repeated playthroughs, this game grows more and more on you until the point you can't help but feel fascinated with its universe, its style.

everything is sticked out together, its scify in name only as due to alien tech giving barely any help to their own soldiers settle properly their colony, so the enemies are stuck with using really back tech and reuse old apartments, its a mix of high tech and scrapping to survive at the same time.
its one of if not the best sequel.

with all that said, the criticism is valid, there are some really shitty areas and chapters that almost halt the enjoyment of the game.

overall i'm thankful for the combine universe this game brough within, and its quite believable due to circunstances in universe

bealtiful.

i haven't played the original, most people told me this was definitive version so i jumped the gun, wow i didn't expect this to be such a fun ride.
the weapons feel fun to shoot and customize even if limited, the worldbuilding grips you like a gorilla and chokeholds you through the entire playthrough, they simply don't let go, they do everything in their power to give you the feeling of a poor soviet in the middle of an apocalipse. i bough the damn book after this.
the only thing that keeps it as a 9 instead of a 10 is the librarians and the fact they didn't give me more of hunter, but hey i loved miller just as much. the soundtrack barely creeps in but when it does it gives such a vibe.
this also is a great example of bad ending good ending done right, its the right balance of good deeds to let you experience it without making you do stuff that would make the game boring like ''colect 50 hidden mcguffins'' or ''never kill a single person the entire playthrough'' keep in mind i haven't done a single stealth section, but all the good deeds i could do, i did, and i got the good endind, i only re-did the bad ending out of curiosity afterwards.
overall i super recommend, because MAN, its been a while since a game left me this satisfied.
i walked away from it feeling refreshed, not burned out

a very fun game with a forgettable story

let me get the bad out of the way, i had experience with tomb raider prior to this game, i just decided to start with this one because tank controls give me headache, back when this game launched a storm of internet weirdos flooded it with mysoginistic comments saying this is some sort of sjw game to portrail men and incompetent, it was a shitstorm, thankfully now that i played i can safely say that no, then men in this game aren't portrayed as evil monsters, every character is just really really dumb. events often unfold because lara or the rest of the cast really can't sit still without doing something silly to bring the next shooting section, events often happen because lara sees something happening and while characters tell her not to, her excuse is ''i just can't ok ?'' ok ok thats kind of lazy guys come on, she can't because you guys need her to go to the next exposition point, not because she is making rational decisions, and the same can be said for everyone else, all the other cast is severely unlikeable except for the cool mentor that you will see his canon event coming from a mile away, and the big guy that has a native design, i like these guys a lot, the rest is by god forgettable and at times insultingly annoying.
the cast also constantly makes dumb decisions, at some point lara got worried about glasses guy and the strong lady made sure to tell lara that ''he can take care of himself'' only for lara to find out that he in fact.. cannot take care of himself, in his words ''lara i'm sorry for dragging you out into this mess, i though i could be the star of my own god damn action movie'' now was that to make lara seem smarter or make the strong lady feel dumb because its obvious glasses bro has brain damage. for real the entire time this cast feels like a horror thriller cast in a action movie, but one of those you know director did as a money laundry scheme. back then this caused people to accuse the writers of forcing a strong woman into empowering the guys, come on thats mysoginy, this ain't forced representation, this is just characters being poorly written, i wanted to like everyone and root for their well being but the game constantly bombards you with their dumb decision and downright mean behavior towards lara. one scene that really struck this onto me, with the fact that i was just dealing with dumb character script was the scene
SPOILER :
the glasses guy death.
strong lady doesn't even mourn losses, she goes straight to nagging, for example right after the character death, she throws out a jab ''seems like everyone near you has a poor survival rate'' to which lara replies ''better keep your distance then'', keep in mind that she says that immediatelly after lara announced he died, there was no time for shock, she just went for the jab, to which the big native just replied ''LETS JUST EAT OK ??''.

awful cast aside, how's the gameplay ? Great !
there are only 4 weapons but all of them are incredibly varied in their use, the gameplay crew knew what they were doing and they did good, the fights feel fast and enjoyable, the climbing is fun and easy to get into, the levels are very open and sometimes have multiple ways to go through.
lara herself starts as just another survivor struggling with everything, its almost comical how much of a punching bag she is in this game, constantly getting thrown, cut, squashed, shot, fallen down, pierced and even impaled at times, through the entire time she barely gets any rest and it slowly loses its shock and becomes kind of funny thinking what the game will force lara into, by the end of the game she has so many scars one guy looks at her and gets scared.

overall this is a very fun game with a poor cast of characters and a forgettable story, but with very fun moments of sheer bloody disaster.
many people point out that cutscene lara and game lara have a very strong dissonance due to how much people she kills in game and how frail she acts in cutscene, i wish this game was just lara and maybe one single crew member, no one else as she does all this struggling by herself, it would solve the problem of the bad characters dumbing down the game.

what i liked :
+the artstyle is downright amazing, even the little characters are expressive and the cutscenes have some charm to them
+the characters are fun, there is a pseudo arnold that does a primal roar everytime he beats a level, he even does a tiger drop at the enemies. its great, i can see capcom didn't let go of their wrestling passion.

Overall this is a very enjoyable game but with some very quirks not regarding the game itself, this is a clear case of lack of preservation, mame emulation is hard so you rely on pre built emulators like fbneo who does a serviceable job, this was supposed to be on the newest capcom arcade collection but unfortunally it didn't made it, shame as i would love to pay real money to own this, i have all the collections, having it on one of those collections would mean saving myself the hassle of finding a mame rom that will actually work because ON GOD i tried absolutelly everything.
play it any way you can but beware that playing it is more of a challenge than the game itself

i do not care what anyone says, Hideki Kamiya made the first game and thats it, the first step towards greatness sure, but to this day he still gets credit to the franchise when this game was the one that kickstarted how people see the dmc series.
all thanks to Hideaki Itsuno, who decided that his legacy was not going to be the rushed DMC 2, he took into his own hands to craft such a masterful experience such as this. when you lose in this game, its your own fault, aside from one single instance, the game gives you all the tools to OWN every enemy in this game as stylish as the time allowed.
Itsuno shaped the true vergil, shaped the proper gameplay that the series would carry foward and for all that i say that the devil may cry series are Hideaki Itsuno legacy, not Kamiya.
the first game is both clunky and unfair at times. its not as hard as dmc 3 but dmc 3 never feels cheap like the first game simply because of the design of every tool at your disposal, be it trickster or royal guard. you can go the entire game without being touched.
is it perfect ? the fight with fake sparda where the game forces your tools out of you prevents it from being so, but this is still one of the best action games i've ever played, leagues ahead of the first game.
Thank you Hideaki Itsuno. i'm probably blocked on twitter by kamiya

i jinxed myself hard before playing this.

i never been a fan of visual novels, the ones i ever played where suspicious at best, being interested in the sudaverse i decided to start from the very beggining (not moonlight, can't read japanese !). this is possible one of the worst introductions to visual novels. i am no impatient person i enjoy reading, i have a book case which i keep some pretty big classics, not big in scope or notoriety but lenght, i'm talking 700 pages or something, thats not to fill ego, its just to explain background.
when recomending silver case, the fans don't seem to take into account that this isn't exactly meant to be taken as a 1 to 1 visual novel, its episodic in a way, its mean't to be played like a tv series, one episode a day or two if you have the mindset to it. going in guns blazing expecting a full on novel through and through ruined the experience for me, i almost dropped it.
take one thing into account, this game is long, one could finish in 16 hours of lenght, i ended up finishing in 38, in trying to finish it fast because i wasn't having a good time with the controls or the slow paced story, so i would leave the game open and try to take breaks , sometimes in the middle of the chapter simply because i was fed up, then i decided to take a different approach, get to it like a episodic series, watch one or two a day, read it carefully, get a snack or a drink and enjoy the 40 minute or something chapter, that's when it finally clicked for me, i started to appreciate it more, the game is separated into two chunks, transmitter and placebo, transmitter is the main event while placebo is some sort of spin off to one of the characters, sort of like the riku parts of kingdom hearts where you control him in case youre familiar with kingdom hearts.
at first i couldn't take placeboo, it felt like filling sausage, again simply because of my bad approach to the game, but as i took my time i appreciated placebo, it has sort of a comfy vibe to it, tokio, the main character of the placebo episodes ended up becoming my second favorite, this guy is just fun to watch through even if placebo is much less focused on being crazy like the main campaign, i ended up looking more foward to seeing the reactions through the perspective of tokio regarding the events of the main campaign, having done this, the game was over before i even knew it, and oh boy what a ride.
come into this game knowing what youre getting into, this is not a direct visual novel, it helps if youre familiar with twin peaks style.

will i ever replay this ? probably no, but i'm glad i finished it, its definelly one of these stories that don't give you everything, it gives you enough and lets you wander, i can't wait to try flower sun and rainbow