Totally did not have my save wiped randomly after putting 70 hours into this and watch a playthrough for the rest of the game. Definitely did not happen at all...

Anyways, Persona 3 is a classic and many people have already written in length on the greatness of this title and its impact for the series going forward. The cast is amazing, the battle system still feels good to this day, the music is peak 2000s J-pop and Hip Hop edge, and atmosphere and central narrative is brilliantly dense and oppressive, and stands as the strongest in the entire series for me personally. Hyped to experience this world and Tartarus again in Reload in a few months.

An exceptional AAA survival horror experience chocked full of incredible visuals and presentation and a strong narrative between Saga and Alan. The exact content of the story isn't groundbreaking like most games, but I really enjoyed Remedy's approach and attention to detail such as the meshing of live action scenes with the traditional video game cutscenes and the stellar color grading in scenes. The entirety of Alan's chapters in the Dark Place are downright beautiful and trippy and Saga's chapters, while more grounded and realistic, still manages to evoke a foreboding and off-putting atmosphere; Watery itself giving Silent Hill-esque vibes during the first visit with plumes of fog enveloping the landscape. Remedy's always been great with this and Alan Wake II is yet another achievement and visual marvel coming off the isosteric and terrific presentation in Control. Also happy to report that I enjoyed the gameplay for once in Remedy's games. Who knew injecting the modern Resident Evil juice would absolutely make the gameplay, though it's not perfect.

While the gun play feels tight and varied and the dodge finally feels just right, encounters can get dull or frustrating with Alan and Saga's crazy slow movement speed compared to how aggressive and fast (and slightly bullet-spongy) the enemies are, and the game sure loves to throw so many at you at once. The flashlight feels like a downgrade from AW1 with worse feedback and inconsistency with aiming on enemies, leading to more frustrations with wasting battery charges since there are some puzzles that require light boosting to leave the area. Did you also know that enemies respawn quite a lot and that makes navigation around the areas feel even more insufferable, especially worse because traversal, and even healing, is so god damn slow and compounded more by all the other issues brought up? RE4(R) this game is not in the gameplay department, except Leon's equally slow-ish movement while sprinting and the fudged quick turn in the remake.

Moving from gameplay critiques, I didn't expect to take issue with the bugs in this game since I feel like I have a pretty good tolerance for this stuff. The massive one I faced was having to reload my save a few times after my controls completely stopped working during Saga's 2nd boss fight whenever I get hit by the boss at a random moment. Minor ones like some of the subtitles glitching out, the enemy music and sounds meshing into a few cutscenes, and part of the inventory being bugged out for most of my playthrough even with some items taking up the spots that I cannot select. Maybe a bug too but Saga's key item menu doesn't differentiate and remove the key items that had their one use versus the reusable ones, making her menu a bit annoying. I did not happen upon the worse like some people are reporting with their experience, but I do hope they get ironed out as they do take away from a pretty excellent game and moments meant to showcase its greatness in action.

Before I end this, I want to bring up the Mind Room. Alan's is pretty lackluster outside of using his story board to change the environment and detail of certain scenes, which is pretty fun visually. Saga's feels more involved and fully realized, encouraged and made more fun by engaging with the puzzles and exploration in the environment. Connecting evidence on the file maps and profiling major characters for their thoughts on specific topics never got boring at all.

And one last thing, I do wish the route switch was implemented a little better in the end as its fully optional nature does undercut some momentum leading up to the final act if one side isn't progressed enough, which wasn't signposted at all.

Even with my issues on the gameplay front, Alan Wake II is still pretty great and is an easy recommend to anyone even vaguely interested in it. It feels real fresh and ambitious as a AAA survival horror game, the genre which has been feeling a little stale lately with remakes and re-releases being the most of what's there and popular. I do hope that this game does end up with a physical release somewhere down the road just for preservation and box art appreciation, but the current dilemma isn't too bad since this game seems like it will do well. Way better position than whatever is going on with Silent Hill recently and in the near future.

Edit: lowered the score to 4 stars after playing new game plus

1 star reviews, Sonic fans and gamers calling for Sonic Team's heads, so much frustrating jank that would make Heroes blush, and a slightly undercooked game/update with multiple playable characters. We are more back than ever before dark age heads.

Sonic Frontiers' Update 3 is a complete mess and a bizarre note to end Frontiers on, both exciting and concerning. Update 3 is reductive and bloated as hell for a 3D platformer, but I might like it anyways.

The three amigos finally return as playable characters in a mainline 3D entry and I'm surprised with how decent they control, given their more underdeveloped applications in the past. Tails has his best iteration in a 3D Sonic game, Amy has a decent showing with a nice focus on aerial/verticality applications calling back to the advance games, and I'm just happy Knuckles is playable again even if his gliding and punching still feels like a far cry to his surprisingly well-executed kits in SA 1 and 2. Most of the update was just me running around the zone as each of them since it still feels unreal that we can control them again finally in an open 3D field. Hopefully their gameplay becomes more developed and given more distinguishing factor in the future games as they all feel a little too similar to each other and each of their challenges suffer from this as well. The fact that none of them can or are even built for combat encounters outside of Sonic sucks, especially with Amy and Knuckles here.

The difficulty and its design within the new update is atrocious. Yeah the main game was piss easy (which still felt engaging given Frontiers' new style for a Sonic game), but at least it didn't expect you to play near-perfect in combat and boss trials that feels like a demented fan mod trying to mold the game into something it's clearly not built for. Can't say I enjoy the stipulations in the trials; I'd let all those kocos burn than do those missions on hard, even 'easy' for the boss rush trial gave me some trouble with how weak Sonic is versus the enemies. Playing on easy for these sections did allow for some fun in this chaos but I think they went a little too far in trying to up the challenge of the game with the trials.

I wasn't a fan of the towers at first but I slowly began to appreciate the more open and intricate approach that made them way more engaging than their Rhea counterparts. The cyberspace levels are all amazing and add so much creativity that I felt was lacking in much of the main game's cyberspace levels, and they are all in 3D and feel like a dream to blast through.

Fortunately, the ending is sick and feels way more complete than what the original ending was. Supreme is an actual fleshed out encounter, but still kinda easy and really annoying in his last phase when trying to target his life source provided by The End. Weird they focused on Sonic's new super form, only for it to gain just an easy perfect parry option, and then whatever his "cyber" form is that we probably won't see again. Wouldn't say the ending is an overall improvement but it is a solid and more formulated conclusion to Frontiers, though I miss the trash talking The End did during the random Shmup section. And the new versions of One-Way Dream and I’m Here are okay compared to the originals.

For as psychotic this entire update is, it's good to see that Sonic Team is willing to go even further with this open zone format, whether the results fully worked this time or not. Really hope the team and Sega don't look at the response to this as a reason to go back to the insufferably safe era of Sonic games prior to Frontiers.

There's something oddly comforting about Ridge Racer Type 4. It's a title I missed for many years because I owned a Nintendo 64 as a kid rather than a Playstation. Racing titles also never really caught on for me growing up outside of spending insane hours on my dad's psp playing his copy of Midnight Club 3 Dub Edition, and also Sonic Rivals 2 which is a story for another day. Of course it's different nowadays since I've gotten into many phenomenal titles and series over the past decade or so like F-Zero and Wipeout, but I do regret not taking advantage of these games in their heyday whereas arcade racers have almost dropped off the map in the current landscape for more simulated, grounded ones, which can be pretty fun too but they just do not compare to many 5th and 6th gen entries. My PS Vita's been sitting here collecting dust, so I might as well make it useful and get creative with playing all the games the industry doesn't seem too into bringing back.

Unsurprisingly, Type 4 kicks ass. It would still be legendary based on the intro alone, but the gameplay itself is exhilarating and tight as hell too. It's the standard racing format of the time, but the way the game controls and feels just ripping and sliding around the courses just feels unparalleled. The Grand Prix set up is so simple yet genius in its progression of first settling into one of the vast array of vehicles available and then ramping up even further in difficulty to ask you to meet the standard of a Grand Prix winner. Despite being kinda ass at times with my cornering, I got so much enjoyment out of this mode and loved the mini stories in the background revolving around your success in the race and the interactions with the coach. There's a surprising amount of human drama here that added much to the experience and made winning feel even more at stake and necessary, which I can't say I feel too often in many titles.

The aesthetics of Type 4 are to die for. On top of the incredible FMV setting the optimistic and sublime tone effectively, the main menu oozes with so much personality and neon style. This game is loud, full of wonder, carefree, and dreamlike that I end up losing myself in its 90s feel despite never really growing up with this game or the context surrounding it. The soundtrack bangs and the sound design is downright magical, ripping and screeching wheels on the pavement with a racing heartbeat in ear and tearing up the roads just nearly crossing the finish line first in a photo finish. No racing game has hit as hard as this game for me outside of F-Zero GX.

Ridge Racer Type 4 is an adoring and loving letter to this beautiful genre that I can't believe I missed all these years, but it will definitely remain with me for many late afternoon and evening runs to come now. Masterpiece, they don't make them like they used to.

I can't lie, this is pretty heartbreaking and the reveal at the direct depressed me so bad. Love the fact that if you're disappointed or not too into this, you're essentially contributing to Nintendo never doing another F-Zero game like they even were going to began with. The whole "you should be grateful for this" attitude around this fucking stinks and this would be laughed out of the room if Sony pulled a stunt like this.

Still I downloaded it and played it, and it is alright. The central gameplay loop of being pit against up to 99 players and enduring the race can be fun, and Nintendo clearly put a modicum of effort in this to not feel like the most soulless and replaceable online BR title with a short ass shelf life that dominates the industry. I still doubt this will be a thing longer than a year or two with how dry in content it is opening with and Nintendo's recent thing of dropping titles dead on arrival with plans to update them with more content falling hard to the wayside.

You could say F-Zero 99 is better than nothing I guess, but saying this feels like an awful excuse and joke that gnaws at me whenever I turn it on or even think about it. I really hope I'm wrong about this and Nintendo secretly has a GX remaster with online in the wings because this is essentially the new product for the series. Back to dolphin I guess until I'm proven wrong but given Nintendo's track record this generation, I'm not holding my breath.

Pikmin 4 is the best game Nintendo released this year by far. Tears of the Kingdom can eat dirt-

Okay but seriously, this game was a great time. Loved sinking 40 hours into it and collecting everything and being a C-tier Dandori player. Can't really speak to how it stacks up to the others since Pikmin 3 is a vague memory from the switch release years back and I haven't played the first two, but Pikmin 4 is peakmin for sure.

Things that bothered me because I'm too tired to make them into actual writing so a list:
-Character creator is pretty lackluster and I wish there were more options to it, or just putting us back into original characters like the past games.
-Loading times can get very long.
-The characters are insane backseaters. A majority of the time, the Rescue Corp won't shut up about losing Pikmin, using the survey drone to observe the area even when most of it is mapped already, and repeating other things even till the end of the game. I understand why it happens but it does feel pretty patronizing like Nintendo doesn't trust me to do things on my own. Wish there was on option to turn it off. Speaking of...
-This game is absurdly easy outside of a handful of the caves and almost the entirety of the sage leaf cave challenges, but I don't really see it as a huge problem outside of the ongoing use of days without the limit and the timer being pretty useless now.
-The 3 limit on Pikmin types to use in the areas suck.
-Night missions are disappointing tower defense missions. Feel like they could have been the "hard mode" to what is the usual, low key daytime exploration.
-Wish day exploration could lead into night exploration rather than them taking place on separate days.
-No enemy respawns make the worlds feel a bit dead on returns.
-Auto locking can be really finicky and the lack of an option to turn it off is baffling. The worst manifestation of this is the 7th sage leaf challenge, one fell jump, where I fought more with the auto lock than the actual enemies I had to kill quickly.
-Louie still hasn't been choked out.

At the very heart of Sea of Stars lies a pretty competent indie rpg. Evoking back to 90s era jrpgs, SoS is a 25-30 hour sprawling journey with two chosen orphans as the main protagonists, with a selection to choose between the two that doesn’t really amount to much difference in how the game goes. It follows the same formula of several classics of the genre and the game won’t make you forget how much it really tries to be them, despite missing the mark. That said, there’s still a couple things the game does pretty well.

My strongest praise has to go to the incredible animation work and presentation that makes the environments feel so lively. Unfortunately, arguments still continue to be made that ‘pixel art’ as a central design and aesthetic for video games, particularly AAA games, is outdated and wouldn’t be marketable without a fully realistic 3D fidelity style that dominants most major releases. With this line of thinking, We’d miss opportunities for games like Sea of Stars to exist in addition to these games showcasing the styles this medium can still stylishly pull off if it wasn’t constantly constrained by toxic market interests and corporate grifters who care more about their yachts. Sea of Stars has better presentation than most games that are released today for twice its cost.

On top of that, the music in Sea of Stars is consistently good and has decent variety between the islands and worlds. The Mooncradle theme is an obvious favorite outside of a handful of others, though most of it didn’t really light my ears on fire or had me in anticipation for getting back to the regions or battling. The combat operates similarly to early Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger, and Mario RPG, and incorporates an interesting ‘lock’ system that adds more strategy to the combat, but I generally feel more negative about the battling and encounters overall.

I honestly believe Paper Mario and the Mario & Luigi games (rip) are the only ones to get hit timing right for me, and Sea of Stars isn’t much of an exception from how off it feels in most others in its field. Zale and Valere’s attacks are pretty easy to read and I get consistently, but then you have Serai and Resh’an, the latter who’s attack timing sometimes works and sometimes it doesn’t. The enemy timing is fine until the later half of the game where I just gave up trying to get the timings right, which isn’t a huge loss considering how forgiving this game is for most of its runtime.

Destroying locks does make the encounters slightly more intriguing but it doesn’t save them from becoming repetitive. There’s no option to run from battle for some reason. The available special moves and combos for each character feel limited and are passed out horrendously overtime with the first third of the game telling you to just take strong special moves to the face without much to counter them. While combat does open up later on with the addition of several party members and other elements, it’s bizarre how little there is in Sea of Stars considering it is a love letter to Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger, which have beefier depth and utility to boast in their combat department.

I never really connected with the main plot and characters in my 30 hour journey. Zale and Valere are painfully generic leads, and the rest don’t amount to much outside of maybe Garl but being “fun” is still a bit shallow since there isn’t more to him besides that. It would’ve been better if he was the main character even if it would’ve felt like a rip on CT with the main protagonist who sacrifices himself, only to find that you can revive them, Sea of Stars having this in a true ending route. The regular ending blows and I just watched the true one, and I struggle to see why this couldn’t have just been the regular one other than adding more replayability, but like I don’t feel like completing everything for this game and backtracking is awful for how accessible Sea of Stars is in some respects.

The discourse around this game is more interesting than the game itself, even if the discussions aren't really new but are just as tiring. The aforementioned 2D sprite style vs 3D style debate, not to mention the turn-based vs real time action discourse that I’ve noticed some people throwing up with this game and Final Fantasy XVI for example, a kernel of this discussion feverishly focused on veteran franchises like FF allegedly disrespecting their 'turn-based' legacy and long-standing fanbase. I personally like the series in either format from the classic ATB ones to the more action-y entries, and the blending being done in the ongoing VII remakes. If Sea of Stars and its huge success does inspire some stylistic sea change in a few of the big dogs, I’d say it’s a good thing, especially if it leads to better rpgs with more to them than Sea of Stars. The game here to me is just alright.

Absolutely gutted at how much I could not get into this game because gravity shifting is so much fun and the potential within the concept is so huge. The soundtrack is grand and beautiful and the styles and world are dope, but this game's insistence on combat and stealth drove me insane while fighting with the finicky camera and shit targeting. Technically "beat" the game after seeing the credits roll, but I doubt I'll continue with the Eto chapter as chapters 20-21 drained me and I didn't click with the story anyways. Gravity Rush 3 could fixed many of my issues with the second game, but that seems unlikely with Japan Studio's disbandment and Sony seeming more interested in funding sloppy, short-lived live service shooters and generic action games over a series like Gravity Rush.

So the surge 2 is pretty great actually.

I didn't really expect much from this game given that it's a 'soulslike' but I'm honestly pretty impressed by it after finishing. Really strong AA game that manages to be real unique in its aesthetic and gameplay. The story and lore isn't much to write home about, but I still found much of the world and characters to be pretty charming, even the middle-of-the-road, cheesy voice acting.

The combat, exploration, and weapon/build variety are the main strengths of the game and where I got the most enjoyment out of surge 2. Combat operates as the usual with the souls formula but relies less on evasion and more on directional parrying and blocking to break down enemy defenses and eventually dismember them in an impressively satisfying way. Though I wish the direction prompts weren't locked to a certain implant, I got so much fun in learning enemy patterns and delivering sick counters in both the regular enemy encounters and the bosses, the latter of which especially were surprisingly fun such as the fight against the Delver bosses. Combat kicked ass in the surge 2 and was very rewarding with the dismember system used against enemies.

Depending on what limbs are cut off, certain weapons, armor schematics or materials are dropped and this feeds into crafting new armor sets with certain bonuses and upgrading stats and equipment. Weapons and set variety is huge and I ended up swapping between so many across my time in the game that it's hard to pick a favorite; maybe the punching gloves, spears, and twin-rigs as weapon type favorites because of the cool combos that can be pulled off with a combination of horizontal and vertical attacks. New Game Plus will certainly make digging into the depth of these options just as satisfying and even more as it was the first time.

Exploration across the game's zones blew me away with the smart and deliberate level design of areas like Downtown Jericho City and the Underground. Many zones contain numerous beaten paths and hidden ones that usually result in scrap, weapons, gear, logs, and other valuable rewards that further encourage searching every corner of the map which thankfully isn't too large or too small, and felt pretty perfect in scale. Unlocking shortcuts such as previously locked doors, magnetic lifts, and zip lines felt so gratifying and made sure traversal across each map each time never got monotonous. The developers really outdid themselves with this aspect as I'd say it's as strong and addicting as the exploration and shortcuts found in the Dark Souls games.

Deck13 surprised me with the Surge 2 and I probably wouldn't have got this game if I didn't dig into their catalogue after becoming interested in their new game Atlas Fallen. They are definitely a studio I will keep my eye on now as this was a great AA game that lives up to the 'soulslike' name without any severe problems holding it back besides the narrative, characters, and world/lore. On my knees for the surge 3 from these folks when/if that does happen, and with even more budget put behind it because the surge 2 absolutely rules and this series deserves to get another follow-up.