Not the first time—and at this rate, probably not the last time—I have been Charlie Brown football’d by a cannibalism-themed yaoibait RPG Maker game. What it presents is two twinks handcuffed together as they navigate through a decimated medicated facility, haunted by the cannibalism-inducing “Zeno” virus. The expectations seem quite obvious from there, but the end result was… certainly not worth the length of time I subconsciously hyped myself up for it while it stewed in my backlog.

The most appreciative that can be said about Zeno is that it was a fairly cozy experience from start to end, ironic considering the vibes and subject matter. Inherently, the whole RPG Maker template is a type of comfort food to me, a structure that helps set up a kinda similar set of vibes that just hits right with me. This game certainly doesn’t fuck that part up, with the creepy atmosphere of the medical facility, great character portraits, and other fun garnishing like the menu screen updating over time. What’s more, it’s puzzles are actually on the better side compared to its peers. There’s nothing particularly special here, but it strikes a good balance between making its interactions intuitive but still interesting enough to make you think a bit. The entire playable span of the game is a pretty decent time.

Obviously though, being the type of game it is, most of the runtime is entrenched in its dialogue and cutscenes, where things really start to break down. For being a game so inherently centered around the eponymous virus, with how its contracted and treated and reactivated in the body, everything around it is treated with an unfortunate amount of nebulousness. The first warning sign was a file saying that it’s called Zeno because it’s a “foreign entity”, which… yeah? That’s what a virus is? Is that the best you could come up with???

A lot of the game stews itself in discussion of trauma and mental illness in relation to the virus, with it being spread as an induced trauma and being “cured” by either cannibalizing another infected person or having the initial trauma erased from one’s memories. I’m certainly not well informed on either topic, but it certainly feels like the game isn’t either with how loosely it treats everything. The story keeps waffling back and forth about the effectiveness of erasing memories and the lasting impact of the trauma, but oh maybe erasing more memories lets you permanently get rid of Zeno? Even by the end of the game, I didn’t feel like I really understood the mechanics of the virus, which might have partially been intentional, but made it really hard to care about the twists throughout the story regarding it.

Not helping any of the above it’s the game’s really dire translation. If not for the presence of very intentional slang in the dialogue, I’d very easily believe it was all machine translated with its constant stilted grammar. Several points in the story were made far harder to parse, particularly when the two main characters realize their identities were swapped for [reasons], when the use of pronouns and perspective are often very fucky. There was never a dire enough point where the text was straight-up incomprehensible, but it certainly made reading less than pleasurable.

The game wraps itself up, reveals the mystery of the relationship between the two characters, and they escape to live together under government surveillance. It’s a cute enough ending, if a bit on the unsatisfying side, with most things kinda-sorta wrapped up. Then you gain access to the real final third of the game, where one the two main characters is entirely shunted to the side for an extended therapy session between the main two’s stalker throughout the game and his little sister who was willingly cannibalized by one of the main characters. While it’s certainly setup throughout the first parts of the game, it’s a jarring shift in focus that renders the complicated relationship built up between the main two largely irrelevant.

It was really something else to suddenly be dropped with the line “I wish brother would eat me while I’m still me” (they’re not blood related, but she calls the guy who eats her that anyways for. some reason) and experiencing the rest of the game with that as the status quo. It certainly keeps up the rest of the game’s usage of cannibalism as a metaphor for love, just with a young girl’s one-sided crush on a guy who’s way older than her. And, perhaps I’m reading too far into the game, but it felt like it’s treated with more legitimacy than the metal illness-driven love one of the protagonists has for the other. Which is weird! I really don’t understand why the game took such a hard turn to this angle!

It’s not even about the game subverting the expectations I came in about it. Whatever, I’m willing to accept when my initial interpretation of a game was wrong and roll with it. The game can very much not be gay while still being a good time. But the whole relation with the little sister felt rather trite and repetitive, an uninteresting finale to a game where I just do not understand the thought process behind led to it being what it is.

It was hard to articulate my exact feelings on the first game. I came out of it liking it well enough, largely from the game's amazing vibes, but its flaws remain glaring, accentuating themselves the farther out from the ending I've gotten. Beyond the whole Chihiro Issue™️, most of it stems from the cast... kind of sucking. It's so damning when you get to the end of a gauntlet of cool reveals and world building, with a strong thematic ending of the Hope's Peak doors opening into an unknown future... And then Hina and Hiro are still talking about eating donuts and reading fortunes: a harsh undercutting of the game really hitting its mark to go back to wallowing in a really shallow stupidity.

It's important to discuss the character issues of the first game, because that's where 2 understands the issues lie too. A lot of basic stuff about the first game is relative unchanged in regard to gameplay and aesthetics (honestly that's where I have a few small issues with 2, with the clusterfuck that is its take on the letter shooting minigame and generally not caring for the faux-retro aesthetics until they bring it home with the ending twist). But still, underneath all of that is an exceptionally strong base that could be build off of a lot more smartly. As such, Danganronpa 2 decides to make the bold decision to, gasp, be a smartly written game this time around!

Its funnier, has more interesting mysteries, better pacIng, and plays off its "dumb" moments a lot better, but most importantly, it knows so perfectly what it wants to be. If the focus of the first game was primarily on the atmosphere of the overtaken Hope's Peak, this game focuses so much more on its characters. The cast is the heart and soul of this game, given so much opportunity to grow and interact and just be human in a way the first game never was. Little stuff like the completely optional remembrance concert Hiyoko sets up in Mahiru's memory add so much and really build up a sense of these characters legitimately caring for each other. This shift in focus permeates through the entire rest of the game, improving basically everything that the first game faltered at.

Most of the murders end up being focused around personal issues versus the fairly shallow motivations of the first game, leaving me so much more emotionally invested in them. The second trial feels like the first time in the series where an emotional moment really lands, and it just kickstarts Fuyuhiko's arc into becoming one of the best characters in the entire game. By the time that case is over, every single character remaining was one I cared about to some extent, making each death feel more gutting than the last. The part where you need to choose the killer becomes so much more impactful when it's bearing the load of "fuck, I don't want any of them to have done it". The game obviously realizes how strong these bonds have become too, with how its final two motivations for murder are basically taken out of the character's hands. When combined with how much more every character is an active part of the trials, filled with moments where they're all actively working together to draw a conclusion, it all just works so well.

My love runs most deeply for the main trio though. It's hard to describe why I love Nagito so much, that freak who made me feel ill (positive) with every other line of dialogue. For being such a chaotic character, it's so interesting to unravel the logic behind him, even after he's died. And Chiaki, who besides just being literally me, managed to make me teary-eyed twice. The one-two punch of Nagito's trap and Chiaki's melancholic confession was such an incredible roller coaster, one of the best ones I've had in a videogame (facing head on with the best Ace Attorney ending cases).

Then there's Hajime Hinata, the protagonist I wasn't sure I was feeling at first impression, but god damn was I wrong. Already he's leaps and bounds above Makoto by virtue of being more of a sentient being than the mouthpiece that works through Kyoko's vagueries. His perpetual skepticism makes a good foil to the rest of the cast. He's just a pretty good character the whole way through, but things really hit home with him during the ending, finding out about his past as Izuru and being pincered between the impossible choice of sacrifice forced upon him.

It clicked with me a few days ago that a lot of the stories that have really clicked with me over the past few months in a way that's really special—Final Fantasy VII, Nier Automata—have been stories about characters where I desperately want to see them take control of themselves and live in the world they deserve, which I think is something more nuanced than just "I like stories with good characters" (wow? really???) even if it is hard to articulate. This game is no different. Hajime choosing to make the impossible choice on his own terms, forging out into the endless sea, having the incredible hope that they'll be able to save themselves from the ultimate despair through their bonds even after they've been erased. Writing it out like this makes it sound kinda like goofy anime bullshit (probably because it is) but damn, it works! I nearly cried! I want to see all these characters I've grown to love find the happiness they so desperately deserve, of their own will!

In the days since I beat it, the game's really kept weighing on my mind day in and day out, a warm yet melancholic nostalgia for an event just passed, but one you know you'll never get to repeat quite the same way again. Like I miss the characters already. It's probably the strongest I've felt this feeling with a game since beating Omori. It's an experience I want to cherish, and characters I want to cherish, forever. Honestly, it's almost scary to think about the idea of V3 being an even better game than this according to some of my friends, but I'll trust the vision for when I get there.

At our core, every human is a patchwork of ideas imprinted upon us by others, both consciously and subconsciously. We then continue the cycle of imprinting on those around us, again, both consciously and subconsciously. There’s a reason all art is political, even if not all art desires to engage politically.

It feels impossible, no matter how trite it may feel, to discuss Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass without consistent reference to the inspirations it wears on its sleeve (a strong enough invitation for comparison). Something of a classic Final Fantasy-structured globetrotting adventure with a reinterpretation of Yume Nikki’s transformation system. And, most pressingly of course, a closer set of vibes to what makes the Mother trilogy so beloved than any other game I’ve played. Standing on the shoulders of giants, Jimmy manages, with only a few missteps, to coalesce into an immensely charming RPG with an impressive amount of depth to it.

It’s quickly apparent getting situated in Jimmy’s home atop the clouds it’s some kinda of dream world, beset by the growing rot of the titular Pulsating Mass (an obvious stand-in for… something). This vast world, so rich in variety, is the star of the show. A constant stream of interesting new locales and dungeons reflecting upon Jimmy’s young psyche manages to capture the oh-so-pristine feeling of being a real globe-trotting adventure. It really hits in the endgame cleanup, having the Final Fantasy airship moment and realizing how far I’ve come since the starting island, and how much there still was to experience. Even when I dug well into the game, there was still a solid half-dozen side dungeons with their own unique aesthetics, lore, and gameplay mechanics I never even touched.

Combat alone is chocked to the brim with a stupid number of elements that are so fun to really dig into. Jimmy alone has like 10 separate forms he can switch between in battle, each with completely different niches. As you level them up you unlock pieces of each form to spec base form JImmy into any sort of fearsome fighter. The rest of the team have more predefined niches, but plenty of weapons, equipment, skill manuals, accessories, and collectable furniture that gives a ton of flexibility in the team dynamics. Towards the end, the game does some I LOVE when games do: giving you gimmicky equipment that fundamentally changes how characters work. In the final areas, my healer was rocking with the strongest basic attack in the entire party after an entire game of her being the weakest by a large margin.

The enemies, not to be outmatched, are full of their own little gimmicks, particularly interacting with Goon Jimmy’s grifting. Got an alarm robot in the way? Just steal its voice box and let it flounder in silence. Didn’t steal it and let the alarm summon a Deathbot 3000? Just steal the Deathbot 3000’s voicebox and—oh—that doesn’t prevent it from death-ing you. Of particular interest, basically every boss fight has an interesting gimmick attached to it as well. It’s an interesting contrast to Final Fantasy VII, which (like VI) opens with a boss who’s counterattack serves as a good tutorial to the ATB system, before forgetting boss gimmicks can be a thing until the superbosses. It’s really impressive how well realized Jimmy’s combat ends up being, easily the best combat of any RPG Maker game I’ve played (granted, Omori is probably the only game that remotely competes).

Unfortunately, the game decides to take on particular element from the Mother series that… well… read my Mother 3 review: the combat gets to be a SLOG. While it has the nice QoL feature of being able to ignore some encounters when you hit some arbitrary requirement (I assume level??), each individual encounter is difficult enough and enough of a resource drain to become exhausting, and often leaving you unprepared for boss fights with massive HP pools at the end of a long dungeon.

Almost every boss became a loop of attempting it, realizing I did not have the resources to survive the war of attrition against the boss, then switching to easy mode to get through it. The reason it took so long for me to beat the game was the constant ramming my head against a wall before putting it down for a few weeks, several times over. Until halfway through the game when I decided to just keep easy mode on full time. despite the game pinning normal mode as “the intended experience”, easy mode was so much more enjoyable. It saved the experience for me really, turning it into a really chill adventure overall.

This adventure is constantly intertwined with the adventures of a whole bunch of other characters. While the concept of “reoccuring side characters” is of course not remotely unique, I think its notable how many the game has. Halfway through the game the game stops everything to do what could be called an “every character in the game so far tournament arc” and it’s a delight. It (perhaps counterintuitively) really builds up the sense of adventure and strong vibes.

To reuse the phrasing that certainly made people silently wish death upon me on the Mario Discord, Jimmy and the Pulsating Mass is the “quirky Earthbound inspired indie game” that most exactly captures the vibes that made the progenitor trilogy so appealing. I struggle to pick out the exact elements that make them match so hard beyond a lot of very earnest humor interspersed with some really engrossing descriptions (albeit far more R-rated than anything you’d find in Mother). Still, it ended up making for a very similar feeling experience to the one I had playing Mother 3 last year—and not one that felt derivative in the slightest.

The art style does not carry the vibes as well as the writing, with sprites often looking fairly crude in a way that feels amateurish. It gets a tad unbearable in the game’s gorier moments. Sometimes, the game pulls out a pretty impressive looking part that makes me think the spritework is meant to reflect the crudeness and edginess of a child like Jimmy’s thoughts. But then I see the kinda abhorrent spritework for the visual novel section of the game and I lose benefit of the doubt. At least the soundtrack absolutely slaps.

Ironically, the weakest characters end up being the main cast: Jimmy’s family. They’re not bad characters, but just end up feeling kind of thin and “along for the ride” when spending so much of the game with them. And when the story is so focused on Jimmy’s family, it ended up not really emotionally landing for me, especially compared to how I’ve seen it hit some others. It took until near the end, when Jimmy is given brief flashes on consciousness to realize the Pulsating Mass I suspected to be some sort of metaphor (Earthbound-inspired indie RPG about depression REAL???) was literally a Pulsating Mass. It’s a cancerous tumor. Jimmy is in a coma. Then the rest of the game ends up playing out just about how you’d expect it to. While there’s some texture provided, particularly during the glimpses back into reality, to keep it from feel too trite, I can’t help from feeling somewhat dissatisfied.

Jimmy’s adventure is moreso about the journey than the destination, though, and I think the game even makes the case for that. While not some must play game that will stick with me forever, there’s so much heart that it’s hard not to really like it in spite of the issues. It’s a game of impressive craft, especially considering it was a solo development.

For the final, secret form Jimmy can unlock, he imagines himself as the phoenix. “He feels alive. Energized. Jimmy thinks that if he put his mind to it, he could fly right out of bed. He could fly and fly. He could burn bright forever, like a brand new sun.”

It’s a game that knows how to be beautiful.

The Compilation of Final Fantasy VII project was always meant to end with the remake of it’s cornerstone. A bold proposition, considering Square’s attempts to remake the game on both PS2 and PS3 were both halted by a simple fact: a game with the scope and detail of Final Fantasy VII cannot be faithfully envisioned in modern fidelity without an unholy amount of resources being poured into it. Not that Square is a stranger to damn near tanking the company off of massive Final Fantasy projects. It could not have been easy making the decision to develop the remake into multiple parts. People generally do not like when they experience an incomplete story, when its arcs and themes are left unresolved until the next part. While most multi-part adaptions try to manage this by having the next part be relatively shortly after, videogames are pincered by the ever-bloating length of development times. By its conclusion, the FF7 remake trilogy will be the product of a near 15-year development cycle.

The original Final Fantasy VII is a beautifully-told epic about identity and motivation, which remains as powerful in 2024 as it did back in 1997. However, since these themes are largely explored in the back half of the game, what does that make a restoration of what is essentially the game’s extended opening? Could they have played it all straight, making the perhaps easy decision to bank on nostalgia now and let those themes flourish nearly a decade later? Realistically, they could’ve gotten away with it. Instead they took an insightful re-examination of what Midgar is, to construct a brand new exploration of themes out of its scaffolding. What is left in the end, the Final Fantasy VII Remake, is perhaps the most respectful understanding of the original masterpiece we could have got: a contemplation of what it means to free ourselves from the shackles of our capitalist overlords.

From the drop, the remake takes a hold of its legacy firmly with its lavish remake of the opening. Despite beating the original game only the day prior, the sweeping shot of Midgar as the game's logo flashes onto the screen and the iconic theme swells still managed to enrapture me with emotion. Even now, it makes me a little tingly thinking about it. The entire game looks and sounds absolutely beautiful, with some of the best production values of any game I’ve ever played. Then, right into the bombing mission, and before long, you're thrust head-first into the combat. Let the battles begin.

The game makes a stark contrast to Square's previous attempt at a party-based ARPG mainline Final Fantasy. Landing blows on enemies feels satisfying and, wow, you actually have options on how to fight enemies! The recontextualization of the ATB system into a pause menu with an ever-expanding rolodex of actions to utilize how you see fit captures the feeling of the original’s combat while just being incredibly satisfying in its own right. And that’s just within each individual character, with the entire team synergizing together so well no matter the composition. It’s so easy to get into the zone of switching between characters firing off their ATB charges, focusing on the targets they’re best suited for, then switching over to the next.

The combat’s glory is never made as clear as in the boss fight. Each one has been amped up into an absolutely ridiculous display, ratcheting things up further with every phase passing in one big feast, audiovisual and gameplay alike. I greatly admire the restraint it must have took to hold off on their lavish rendition of ‘Fight On!’ until the Airbuster fight a good 10-15 hours in. These setpieces do reveal a few weird tuning decisions, particularly in regards to the stagger meter. It felt almost designed such that you pull off the stagger, get ready to wail on the boss, and then… the next phase is triggered almost immediately. It’s a minute thing, but there was a slight tinge of dissatisfaction each time, especially when it takes away your chance to pull off your Limit Breaks on the staggered foe. Limit Breaks are essentially impossible to use outside of bosses for some inexplicable reason, which sucks when they were such a fun (and consistently present!) element of the original’s combat.

When outside of combat, you’re sure doing a lot of… slowly walking down corridors. It quickly becomes apparent that FF7R’s biggest weakness is the box it put itself in from the jump, constraining itself to just being Midgar. While it’s the only reasonable span of the game it could be before going all the way to where Rebirth is ending off—and at that point like 70% of the game has been made—but oh my god is it samey. Chapter after chapter of sliding through tight spaces in tunnels, rubble, factories (a LOT of factories), laboratories, and other samey one-screen areas from the OG stretched into chapter-spanning excursions with a level of hallway syndrome rivaling The Thousand Year Door. Sure, it helps plays into the overall oppression of Midgar as an environment, but it quickly gets rather tiring to traverse. This is especially pronounced in the few chapters where the game pauses and asks you to do a handful of fetch quests that send you back down the same hallways as before (often several times). It’s hard to shake the feeling that most areas in the game could be shaved off a little and end up with a much tighter game that’s only 25 hours long instead of 35, one that ends up something closer to perfection.

In a saving grace, however, the many slow corridors are filled by the game’s surprisingly great script that make traversing them not just tolerable but even pretty enjoyable. While the original’s writing was pretty good, it languished in a horribly rushed translation and an unfortunate racist-feeling handling of Barrett. Here, here’s absolutely the star of the show, playing well against the expanded role of Shinra’s oppressiveness in the story. Plus, it’s just great to see him be Marlene’s dad. The entire cast (barring Tifa, whom I’m sure will get her dues plenty in Rebirth and especially the third game) has been fleshed out incredibly, getting way more opportunities to play off each other in fun ways. Traveling across the rooftops of Sector 5 with Aerith, having her tease Cloud as the beautiful music plays in the background was a really memorable moment in its understatedness. Even the sidequests, while by themselves fairly dull, have nice tidbits that flesh out the space of Midgar and end up coalescing into the final sidequest in such a well-designed way you just gotta respect it.

I already knew of the game’s plot divergences from years of being adjacent to soooooooooo much of the game’s discourse, but I didn’t know quite how, aside from the final boss. I will admit, it was a tough pill to swallow at first seeing the effects of the Sector 7 plate collapse, such a pivotal moment for the original, having its death toll greatly reduced. Still an important moment of course, but it lacked the same immediate impact. Reaching the end, however, it became clear I was having a moment of dissonance. I was experiencing the same plot beats (roughly) as I had a few days prior, but they were communicating an entirely different message to me.

The Final Fantasy VII Remake takes Shinra and builds it up as a unilateral force, one with eyes and hands everywhere, and asks the question: what can we do against that? And it ends up showing a bunch of small actions, not just by the main party but many of the side characters they build report with, slowly chipping away at Shinra’s impenetrable wall. The only reason so many survive the plate collapse is a Shinra guard seizing his humanity and opening the gate blockading evacuees. Parallel to it is Sephiroth, and ultimately the party’s, attempt to fight against the impenetrable wall of fate. Both seem like a perpetual state of being, where loss is inevitable, and yet beyond that is a vast world of possibility, where things can be better.

By shattering these walls at the end, both the part and the game as a whole open up a whole new world. One that can be just as exciting as the original adventure it’s based on, expanding it into something new. One where Avalanche still gets to have a presence?! One where Aerith, perhaps, doesn’t have to die????? And with most of my issues with the pacing and uniformity of the Remake being down to its very conception, Rebirth seems to have well fixed them. I have pretty good faith that by the end, unless something goes really wrong, the remake trilogy will go down as one of the most interesting, bold series of big budget games ever produced. I’m so glad I get to be here for it now.

I knew Final Fantasy XV was a massive mess of a game. I’ve known it ever since the game came out in 2016, consequently seeing them try to patch it together into something more coherent. Despite that deep-seeded knowledge, what drew me to this? Was it a pressing desire to engage in high octane combat after a series of games with sparse physical gameplay engagement? The fact it was on sale for $14? A gut feeling that I would actually think the game is pretty good (I mean it was patched a bunch)??? Was it the twinks????????? The answers naturally follow: yes. Ultimately, it’s the hunter to blame for being slain by the beast if they were given sufficient precaution to its ferocity.

These initial drawings started to wear away quite quickly. After an opening that throws you into it with little pretense and the "Stand By Me" car pushing scene that I always thought was referring to the movie when people have talked about it prior, combat rears its fangs. You can attack enemies with a volley of sword swings, warp to enemies, have your allies pull off their own moves, aaaaand... that's about it!

To be blunt: the combat sucks. Even my desire for something physically engaging is shot by the fact that the basic cadence the sword not feeling very satisfying. Otherwise, you can use the complete non-starter of a magic system or cutscene attacks that lose their luster almost immediately. With so few options at your disposal, it ends up being perhaps the very epitome of hold attack to win... very slowly... either taking down one giant dude with way too much health, or handling a way too large number of goons in a game severely lacking in crowd control options, often just leading to a several minute long clusterfuck.

Sword warping is perhaps the most disappointing element, when its so clearly meant to be this combat's "thing". You can warp to an enemy to do a fairly strong attack, you can warp to a safe point to heal, and... again, that's it! Frustratingly, the game does show the cinematics it so desperately wants for all of two boss fights: following them throughout the air, clashing arms, sending them to the ground. It makes every other uninteresting, incredibly samey-feeling fight all the most frustrating, because there's clearly potential here that's barely tapped into.

This fleeting potential is a story that repeats itself throughout just about every single aspect of the game. A couple of moments of absolute brilliance that's drowned out by a flood of incredibly poor construction. One particularly prominent beacon of light shines during the open world exploration, a fairly novel approach to it where you're largely stuck to your car as a base, going from it out to do sidequests before wrapping back to a campsite or hotel after a couple to cash in your experience. While the world itself is fairly barren—with a number of enterable buildings rivaling that of the latest Pokemon games and sparse incentive for natural exploration outside of sidequests—the interactions with your cast are such a treat that it made the mundanity of the moment-to-moment gameplay itself so much more tolerable.

Noctis's entourage—Prompto, Gladiolus, and Ignis—are the blazing heart and soul of the game. There's a bevy of unique lines for each location and quest and really eloquently made animations for each camping section. One of my favorite moments was after camping for the night, when Prompto asked me to wake up early the next morning for a short sidequest to capture a picture of a giant monster nearby. It was such a natural excursion that really made the game feel alive for those few moments, like I was really going on a road trip with my bros. It's a great feeling! Prompto ended up my favorite of the bunch, not just because he's the cutest (though that does help!), but the way his photography integrates so naturally over the course of the game. It's such a joy flipping through the snapshots while camping as a brief retrospect of what you did, saving the best to create a growing compendium of your entire adventure. And to the game's credit, it very well knows this!

It's so great then when the game decides to rip off what little appeal is left draped on its shambling corpse. I was well aware that the open world is abandoned in the game's back half for something strictly linear, but it didn't properly prepare me for how much it would make the open nature of the game prior a fading star. All of the time spent on a roadtrip with your pals is thrown out for traveling down a fuckton of barren hallways getting into the nitty gritty bullshit of its swiss cheese-ass story. It's really, really hard to care about a lot of the events that are going on when the game never takes the care to set them up properly due to its immensely fucked up dev cycle. How am I supposed to care about the death of Ravus when he's in two scenes of the game prior and gets his demise announced in a completely missable radio broadcast???

So many characters in the game end up unceremoniously killed despite having 5 minutes of screentime prior. Noctis's dad being assassinated in a nonsensical supercut of a scene from the Kingsglaive movie that wasn't even in the game prior to its day one patch. Jared's death leading to Noctis having an outsized breakdown for a character that is the most literal who imaginable. Lunafreya being such an important cornerstone of the game's plot, but the swift knife of messy development basically cutting her out of the game!!! Did you know: the developers of the game called her a strong female character? Despite the only thing she actually does in the game is help make sure her groom-to-be could continue on his destined path???? But hey, another character calls her strong for doing this in a flashback several hours after her death, so its fine.

The linearity really comes to a head in the penultimate Chapter 13, a winding gauntlet where you're stripped of both allies and weapons. You have to slowly plod through this place, slowly gaining back what you've lost to overcome the odds. I can see the intention: illuminating the weaknesses and insecurities of Noctis as a solitary figure, split apart from the allies so vital to him. It's meant to be scary, but it just ends up being tedious. It really had no reason to keep going and going and going AND GOING, keeping up the same monotony for a solid hour. And this is after the patch that gave you the ability to sprint during the chapter and let you kill enemies way faster! I can only imagine how miserable playing this chapter must've been at launch.

But for all the misses with its ideas the game has, again, some of its ideas are still able to shine through. After Ignis is blinded due to [DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT], you spend Chapter 11 traversing a dungeon where the tensions of the group are at an all time high. Gladiolus just got done yelling at Noctis for his inabilities and now you have to slowly walk through this pit while making sure the cane-wielding Ignis doesn't fall behind. If you try to go ahead, Prompto and Gladio will passive-aggressively snark at you to wait up. The whole experience genuinely started to piss me off, bringing me right into their shared mindset. By focusing on these characters I already grew an attachment to in the game's first half, it ends up being an incredibly effective, and genuinely impressive, unity of gameplay and story beats.

This game has a vision that illuminates so clearly in its final act. Noctis Lucis Caelum: a pampered prince thrust out into the real world, going on a 10-year journey to learn the sacrifices we must make for each other such that he is able to become the King of Kings and free his kingdom and his people of the darkness once and for all. When he's able to enter the throne room for his final duel, he takes one last look through the photographs saved throughout the journey, a reflection of all everything that led to him being the man he's become. This moment shows that the developers knew what they had here, and it hit me so well. Then Noctis enters the throne room, and makes the ultimate sacrifice to complete his destiny. And the final scene transitioning into the game's logo. Beautiful on a level few games are able to reach. On paper, it is such an incredible epic to be told.

Which makes it so supremely frustrating that's not what Final Fantasy XV is.

The losses Noctis has suffered are almost all stunted by being characters with so little screentime or being omitted almost entirely. The 10-year timeskip just kinda happens without much reasoning behind it, besides it advancing what the devs wanted the endpoint of the game to be. It ends up being really jarring, and hampers Noctis's grand return when he was only gone for like 30 minutes of actual game time. The game brings itself to such an epic conclusion, with its lavishly rendered cutscenes and incredible music, without building up a story that deserves such a finale.

And yet, the final campfire scene, where Noctis, about to leave behind his friends for good, tearfully bears out his love for them. And it got me! Because I love these characters! It's such a genuine, hearfelt, incredible place to leave them off, it almost makes me angry. Noctis, Prompto, Gladio, and Ignis deserve the 9/10 game this 4/10 game so desperately wants to be, but it's too late for that to happen.

—————————————————

I also played the four DLC episodes that released, the first three presenting the truth of things that happen to the three members of Noct's entourage in their absence that are never elaborated on in the game. While on their own they're largely inoffensive (a tedious enemy gauntlet, a not very good feeling shooter, and an actually pretty cool elemental combat system), they mainly suffer from the fact that, since they're so disconnected from the game itself, what happens in them can't actually have an impact on the main game's story. Gladio's and Prompto's stories don't end up adding to their respective characters much, and perhaps even worse, Ignis's does!!!

Finding out the reason Igniswent blind is that he sacrificed it to put on a holy ring and save his king is so much cooler than what I expected the reason to be and fits in so well with the game's central theming of sacrifice. It makes it all the more frustrating that this can't be explored in the main game because the reasoning for his blindness is completely skimmed over there. I don't understand if its out of a greedy desire to make people buy the DLC or a prideful desire to only show this reveal in the best light possible, but even if they couldn't rewrite the story with the mess they had... at least mention this plot point! Even the messy development can't really excuse the nonsensicality of this.

Then there's Episode Ardyn, following the eponymous villain of the game (which was spoiled for me due to the DLC's description. lol. lmao). The gameplay is genuinely really cool, with what's by far the best boss fight in the entire game, for as low a bar as it is. Yet, letting the story sink in during the following hours has soured me a fair bit on it. Selfsame to my problem with the other episodes, the story it covers just does not interact well with the main game its supposed to slide into, and even worse feels kind of contradictory. Ardyn turns out to have been the true king chosen by the gods and Noctis's ancestor, the first king of Insomnia, acknowledges himself as something of an illegitimate heir? Perhaps I did not read well enough, but that sense of Ardyn being a tragic villain who was betrayed does not come across AT ALL in the main game. In fact, it makes the whole story of Noctis coming back to reclaim his throne feel kinda weird!

This was meant to be the start of a series of DLCs, Dawn of the Future, with an alternate telling of the game's story, before being unceremoniously canned in possibly the strangest developer broadcast of all time. Ardyn and Noctis and others were to team up against the gods and unseal themselves from the fate set upon them, with a drastically different ending from the one in the main game. While I'm not against the concept of DLC delving into alternative storylines, its such a bizarre decision here. Final Fantasy XV's ending is already its best realized part and is firmly rooted in the idea of Noctis fulfilling his destiny. To make a path focused on breaching that destiny feels like it undermines what made the original ending so powerful.

All of this DLC doesn't change what Final Fantasy XV is: a deeply disappointing, unfinished, not very fun to play game. If they didn't want to make the full effort to integrate these stories into the game, I really don't think they should've bothered. It's not that I would expect them to do that, considering how much effort would need to be put in to wrangle this game together into a something that's truly quality. This isn't something that could be, or should be fixed. The effort required would be so much better put into new stories and experiences. I don't even feel like I wasted time with this game, despite having such a distain for so much of it. Despite everything, this game still managed to make me care about Final Fantasy as a series. I've dabbled in VI & VII, but this was my first time digging really deep into one, and now I'm voracious for me. I'm already planning on playing VI, and VII and VII remake and XVI when it hits PC. Final Fantasy XV is perhaps the most interesting failure of a game I have ever played, and for all of that, it at least managed to make an experience I would call unforgettable.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned this year, being lied to is awesome—in media anyways. Going into the Scott Pilgrim anime, knowing that it wouldn’t follow the exact plot of the books but still expecting an adaption akin to what the movie did. Then at the first episode’s closing, I was strapped in for 3.5 hours of a brand-new story my mind was not prepared for. Such a jolt of emotion unexpectedly thrust upon me, leaving such an awesome, intensely memorable experience in its wake.

The first Somnium Files game built up an incredibly engaging mystery, peeling back layer after layer of reveals as it developed a cast I fell in love with. But within all of that, one of the most memorable moments was falling down the Annihilation Route, watching the murders therein take place, hitting the lock, and getting whisked to the timeline screen I had never visited before then. Finding out solving the mystery involved hopping across timelines completely changed the dynamic of the game. It is really, really cool to get expectations shattered in such a way you never even considered a possibility. Then I finally get around to Nirvana Initiative and hearing from several friends it's got some really audacious twists in store. What a word to use for it: audacious.

Obviously, I knew going in about the game's general structure: hopping between multiple timelines to solve the Half Body Serial Murders, following a co-protagonists Ryuki and Mizuki. Yet, I was unaware them two make up near-completely disparate halves of the game, separated by 6 years*. But whatever, it's a cool setup to explore more of the detective goodness from the first game!

The immediate standout is how monumental of an improvement the Somnium gameplay segments are. While I get the concept of the first's fairly nonsensical Somniums are meant to reflect the reality of subconscious, as it turns... nonsensicality does not facilitate itself to a good gameplay experience. Who woulda thought. While this game's Somniums skew a bit to the linear side, they're filled with so many fun concepts and (surprisingly) a couple of genuinely good puzzles that make even the least notable Somniums here better than the vast majority of the first game's. Particular shoutouts to Tearer's Somnium for its cool number puzzles integrated into a series of really interesting discoveries, and the incredible symmetry of Amame's two Somnium's.

Even with the first game's dogwater gameplay, the main appeal was the characters and story, which is really where Nirvana Initiative felt like it faltered. The new cast in particular was the weakest link, with so many different characters both new and returning that it just couldn't juggle as efficiently as the first game's core set of 4 main characters. I grew attached to Shoma, Komeji, and Gen large in part thanks to their really well done ends, but no matter how many times the game shoved it in my face, I was not going to like Lien and Kizuna (aside from the cute dance he did holding her). Regardless of who it was though, a lot of their development felt really... weird... despite there being a 6 year time skip right down the center, it felt like they had really inconsistent development**. And why do none of them get timeskip redesigns?

Still, there was a lot portrayed that I did get fairly invested into. The new cast slowly unveiling to be essentially a support group of genetic abnormalities was really cool, and carried a lot of the most emotional moment of the game. Then it was really interestingly wrapped up with Naix, showcasing not only a really cool fleshed out cult integrating so much historic/mythological/spiritual precedent into its ideology, but also how cults like this end up trapping the most vulnerable in our society. Funnily topical too, considering this game released like 2 weeks after Shinzo Abe got owned. I'm always down for seeing what topics Uchikoshi did a Wikipedia binge in the middle of a writing session.

And, hey... the writing in general, while mostly really charming and funny, also felt a tad sloppy? A lot of seemingly important plot moments just being lost to the aether, or not fitting together in a way that didn't make a ton of sense. What happened to Ryuki's demotion? Or the supposed event happening on the 15th in the Slayers X video? Why does it feel like I'm being told to watch the same video several times? Something felt off, but eventually all of those strange moments got flooded out with a bunch of new information in the ongoing case.

So I got towards the end of the game, finding out the twist of there being two separate bodies of "Jin" and there being two different Mizuki's. They're certainly twists, but nothing that I didn't at least intuit something close to it leading up to their reveals. Really, most of the game leading up to the end felt like meandering through a pretty decent story, but not one that came within a shot of the first game. I was feeling quite whelmed.

And then. The twist.

The helix twist.

I spent a good 20-30 minutes trying to recover from the shock of finding out the past 20-something hours were spent being totally gaslit by this game into believing I was experiencing the game in linear chronology. The next 30 minutes were followed with the game explaining in every way "hey idiot, remember this thing you found strange a couple hours ago and completely forgot about. You could've figured this out!" And hey, it's right! If I wasn't such a rube that could comprehend the idea of experiencing a story non-chronologically, the pieces were ripe for putting together! I totally get why this twist is so decisive, even amongst the people I've talked about the game with. It's such a ballsy decision, and not everyone is down for media that actively lies to their face. But her in particular, it's mystery clicks so violently into place in such an overwhelming way, in a way I haven't seen any other video game do before, I simply must respect it.

So it creates this really harsh contradiction, where the game leaves itself off on such a strong footing thanks in large part to its twist (and a finale that's just good fun), but as I said before, a game leading up to it that's... enjoyable but nothing really all that special. It's hard to grow an attachment to these characters when so many of the interactions you have with them are purposefully misleading. Not to mention poor Ryuki. Even after the big twist, he's left with absolutely nothing to do in the story beyond continuing to be a little trauma boy. He's just unceremoniously taken out in the final battle! What was that about! I don't want to be all choosing between the twist and better character development, because I don't think it needed to be a choice. Really, if Ryuki was given any sense of closure beyond short peptalk from Date in the cathedral, I'd probably think the game more of a 8/10.

Even if it ends up being a game I respect more than I like, I still did like Nirvana Initiative. The game took a massive swing and hit it for me, and everything else worked well enough even if it wasn't as well as I truly hoped for it to be. I'll much sooner take a game that fails in some places and remains on my mind long after than an unremarkable experience. If Uchikoshi and the rest of the devs want to take a similarly bold swing with Somnium Files 3 (assuming it happens), I'll be their strongest soldier.