After playing OT2, I had to come back to a game with characters I actually care about.

In my opinion, Fire Emblem: Awakening is one of the best gateways into getting into JRPGs. While there's a pretty cliche storyline, it more than makes up for it with character interactions and dialogue that keep making you want to play throughout the game. Furthermore, being able to choose which characters bond through gameplay is an amazing idea and is something that keeps people playing all the way until the end and maybe even into a NG+.

The gameplay is nothing to scoff at either. The classic JRPG strategy gameplay is in full force here, even with the somewhat annoying resource management mechanic. It's not really changed up from any of the other FE games, but it's still satisfying as ever and can cater to both casuals and tryhards. If anything, some of the map designs are flawed and the graphics have become a bit dated but they still hold up extremely well today considering this was made for the 3DS.

I just like this game a lot because every character is oozing personality, and if you wanted to go further and explore the backstory of each character you can. Even the less interesting characters like Anna and Gaius clear like 80% of JRPG casts nowadays. You can feel the writers personally developing each character rather than grabbing a cookie-cutter personality, slapping it on an anime character and calling it good. My favorite part of the game, grinding support bonds, definitely shows this. The writing isn't perfect or amazing, but it's 100% GENUINE. They're not saying stuff for the sake of it, but you can tell the writers cared about having conversations between characters feel real, or at least have some sort of substance. There's actual dialogue that's worth reading and listening to outside the main story that add so much to characters.

It's no surprise that FE games are carried by their characters, and this game displays that beautifully. While dated by the presence of Three Houses, Awakening will remain a FE classic from now until the end of time.

I want to like this game.

(minor spoilers) I started Partitio's storyline and within the first 3 minutes I was like "I hope this game doesn't do some super predictable shit like having the only other minor character named in this cutscene besides this dude's dad betray them" and it turns out the only other minor character betrays them. That is literally the writing for most of the game.

I played for a couple more hours hoping the writing would get better and it just didn't. Partitio's whole shtick is that he's a capitalist that wants to eliminate poverty, and I'm not expecting Square to write a whole Disco Elysium Marxist Revolution but something other than "money should be used for GOOD!!!!" would maybe make me care. I can't stand personalities that are as deep as No Man's Sky gameplay on release. Like, just compare the personality sections of characters in the OT wiki to characters in the P5 wiki, hell even the P4 and P3 characters. You could argue that this is due to fanbase size but it's pretty obvious that the lackluster writing and character interactions in OT2 are to blame for this.

It sucks cause every single aspect of game design is perfected for this particular game. They outdid themselves with the art and music design. It doesn't really get much better than this for a stylized JRPG. The combat system is a unique but engaging way of recreating JRPG turn based combat in a modernized style, and it's fleshed out beautifully. I just can't power through the story though. I just don't fucking care. If you can genuinely resonate with the plot and be emotionally invested in these characters, I'm glad you can but I can't. It's just so bland. If Forspoken has that shitty marvel-type writing, OT2 has the boring and safe anime-type writing.

At least you can skip cutscenes in this game, but when I start skipping everything in a story-based game I just realize this shit isn't even worth playing anymore. I tried giving other character storylines a chance, but I just come to the same realization. Reading reviews and seeing people saying the story is "much better" than the first makes me scared of the first game.

In a game where a main selling point is that you can play 8 different characters and plotlines, it would really help if literally ANYTHING was interesting or thought-provoking at all. Maybe the story gets better once everyone is intertwined, but it's pretty clear it's not worth staying around to find out.

Carried by it's charm.

Have A Nice Death is basically Hollow Knight gameplay with Dead Cells progression and level design. The art style creates so much polish within the level and character design. The dialogue isn't anything amazing, but fits well under the art style. My favorite part is probably the scythe attack animations, they have weight but are still extremely flashy.

Gameplay, on the other hand, is fun for like the first 5 runs. There's really no point in exploring the levels like Dead Cells as the most you can is a little bit of extra currency unlike Dead Cells where you can get a ton of shit in one level. It also has the Dead Cells unlock mechanic where you turn in currency to unlock an item for future runs, but also suffers the same fate of having not being able to test those items and now you have to hope you don't get a dogshit item for future runs. This point becomes even worse when you realize that like 80% of the items/weapons/cloak arts or w/e in this game are dogshit and aren't fun compared to the top tier ones. So you start unlocking stuff and realize it's harming you more than helping. Like yeah, I get that higher tier items should be cooler, but at least make the base ones fun to use lmfao. This is one of those games you just hit reset over and over until you hit something good if you want a remotely good run. There's not really a lot of thinking or playing around a "bad run." It just becomes not fun.

For your roguelike upgrades, Curses, you can choose between physical, survivability, or magic. The upgrades themselves are actually really fun but it's really hard to mix and match, like dabbling into physical while magicmaxxing. They're fun for a while, but it's hard to create unique builds and you're pretty much forced to max one out.

Some people say the bosses are too hard in this game, but honestly it's a coinflip. Some bosses are simply skill issues with timing/nerves control, but there are some bosses where it's genuinely impossible to dodge a move unless you're Faker. The telegraphed warnings for certain moves are useless and they stay inconsistent throughout the entire game. I'm pretty sure a lot of people who like the art style of this game are getting fucked by this.

If you like dead cells, you will like this game. If you like hollow knight, you may or may not like this game. If you like the art style of this game, watch a video first lol.