in a desperate bid to win over the western audience team ninja brainstormed everything americans love most and put it into NG3: shallow combat, qtes, jeeps, dinosaurs, moralizing, slow walking, being condescended to, and troy baker. naturally, it was fucking awful

nine months later it got reworked as razor's edge, and while many of its peripheral issues persist to varying extents, they completely salvaged the combat!!! 🥳🥳🥳

not as stylish or gratifying as NG2's musou x bullet hell approach, but about ten times better than any action game actually made in the west. despite showing its fair share of stitches + staples where everything was jammed together it responds surprisingly thoughtfully to the strengths, weaknesses, and exploits of past games while drawing even more juice out of the amputationist setplay. folks give FFXIV + fallout 76 a lot of credit for turning bad games into different bad games, but this is the real gold standard turnaround if you can tolerate the lingering yeehaw stink

hold heavies, guard resets, parry OS, dash interrupts, cancels (various), steel on bone, cicada surge, and bow extends are sick; removing menu heals is sick; integrating ninpo more directly into the resource loop is sick. the skill ceiling's on the moon; no matter how good you thought you were at these games there's some dude making fucked up 480p youtube videos that'll make you feel like living garbage. they took the DmC of the series, turned it into the DMC4 of the series, and the sickos have been making the most of it ever since

the final boss on master ninja made me wanna brain myself, the encounter design at its worst (6 goddess prototypes!!! 12 alchemists!!!) can make even the smoothest victories feel pyrrhic, and I still Do Not Like troy baker, but this was a million times better than I expected going in. can't imagine a better outcome unless they gave the splinter cell t-rex a monologue about the cuban missile crisis or stopped a certain goofy haired bitch from doing his grima wormtongue stuff before things got this bad in the first place

you guys remember yaiba?

jesus christ

K I finished.

Digital Devil Saga 2 is excellent. After the first game ends with you in a different location and back to square one, you're once again on the run with your old party (and one omission) to try to find your savior and the truth about your existence. The games setting is actually pretty small, being set in one big city that contains what's left of humanity. Pretty much every major character here is fleshed out, and I know it sucks to do the whole 'oh heehee you need to play to find out what I'm REALLY saying' but you kind of do. Just know all the characters are great and all the locations are cool, got it?

And then there's the gameplay, and it's peak...if you pick the exact party the game wants at the beginning, or else you're fucked. Basically, the game lets you customize your party members to an absurd degree, letting every character fill out a cool niche. But the game has all but two party members (Gale and Cielo, use them for the whole game for the love of god) leave for a long while, so if you don't just guess who'll be there for the rest of the game, you'll end up INCREDIBLY underleveled to the point you might as well restart because the game doesn't give backup EXP. It gives backup Mantra for gaining skills, but not EXP.
But aside from that, it's classic press turn gameplay with all it's perks, with some great boss fights that make the most of the mechanics. And it's classic blocky PS2 graphics, helped by Kaneko's amazing PS2 era art and killer cocteau twins inspired(?) soundtrack (seriously, Pitch the Baby sounds perfect for this game)

So it's peak fiction. Loved the ending as a perfect sendoff, so if you're one of those people who request a DDS3...why exactly? Anyway, play this while the roms are out there lmao.