I had a friend once. A man I met under inauspicious circumstances. It was a trying time in my life, and at first, to be honest, I didn't trust him. An ally of necessity, not of my choosing. But if I can credit anyone with getting me through those hard times, it was him. Other acquaintances came and went, I couldn't tell if my ex was trying to help me or just using me, my second most constant companion kept getting kidnapped. But whenever I needed him, my friend was there, with a jaunty greeting and a cool new shotgun to sell me.

I lost that friend a long time ago. But recently, I've been seeing something wearing his face.

This new... "Merchant" has none of my friend's warmth or charisma. He has an oily, sneaky quality that some people seem to think is apropos. Are we really at the point of pretending Resident Evil, of all series, is too good for camp? Whatever happened to showmanship? My friend set the tone for the entire game, such was his force of personality. The only lasting impression I get from this wet blanket is of deafening, aching lack.

Also, the guy never shuts the hell up up. Who was it that decided vendor NPCs don't get enough voice lines in video games? Who decided they should periodically nag you about how long you're taking while you browse their wares? (No, seriously, what's patient zero? It's a very similar vibe to how all the companions complain every time you change your party composition in Baldur's Gate 3. Unpopular opinion apparently, but I like it when games don't make characters constantly whine at you for engaging in basic, necessary gameplay functions that should barely even be diegetic.)

When I was a child, a kind girl named Navi literally just said "hey" or "listen" about once every fifteen minutes if you were wandering around somewhere other than the critical path and she was absolutely reviled, pilloried and stoned for at least a real world ass decade. Just for being very occasionally heard. Just for trying to help. But this pod person, this soulless imposter, this fucking Cockney FRAUD stands here and belittles me every fifteen seconds for sitting in a pause menu pondering how I should spend my money in a game where scarcity of resources is a core mechanic, and gamers are silent??? The real Merchant was more than just a funny meme man, sir. He was a CONSUMMATE. CUSTOMER SERVICE. PROFESSIONAL. You really wanna bring this kind of naked rudeness with your only fucking customer? You think you've established that kind of rapport with me? You bring shame on his house.

And to all the sycophants and enablers, who settled for less and let this character assassination pass? History will remember your cowardice.

Anyway apart from that it's a great game! I was really worried about how it would sort of interact with the original in the cultural memory but I think we got basically the best case scenario, where it's a different enough beast that both versions have lasting creative value. It's not as replayable, I think--I always play a new Resident Evil early in the year when it comes out and then replay that October, but I got bored and went back to Armored Core during my RE4make replay--but the action just feels so good and Ashley is much more of a character.

Edit: Maybe I'm full of shit. I want to play more of this now..
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I liked dressing up my dog and the tonal clash of the happy Wii dog graphics and the heavy illness-focused slice of life story. Actually even sniffing around for new items was kinda fun. But the way the two fit together makes them both mutually feel heavier, and there's not really any substance to the sniffing out of items. I was kind of impressed they would put this story in a kids' game: by all means kids' games Should be about these things! But the gameplay otherwise was kind of infantilely simple.

I really hate this mindset that preferring the original Yakuza 1 and 2 over the Kiwami remakes is nothing but elitism.

I started playing this franchise when 0 came to PC in 2018. Even with that, I still prefer these versions of the games. These games have a unique grit to them that the Kiwami games do not capture well at all. For Kiwami 1 in particular, it feels more like 0 but worse and with less content more than a remake of this game. Worst part is that Sega is actively treating the Kiwami games as replacements instead of alternatives.

In terms of the game itself I think it mostly holds up well. Even without the ability to change the directions of combos it does not take long to get used to. Story is still entertaining with my only issue being Nishiki's sudden betrayal (the one thing Kiwami objectively did better).

If you can I do recommend starting with this game and the OG Yakuza 2 and go from release order from there, and playing 0 in between 5 and 6. You'll appreciate how the series naturally grows instead of starting with 0 (which is the best game in the series) then following up with the Kiwami games.

Treasure Of The Giantess purports to be a game with a big giant sexy "Giantess", but in actuality, she is only like 1 (or 3 inches(NOT 2)) inches taller than the main woman (whose boobs look like shoes). Sure, there may be one scene where you are a giantess until you are kindly asked to stop being one, but there is no good scene of Giantess action! Fail game!

But for real, this game is just a short amount of platforming traps that one shot you. Some of them are fucking placed stupid and annoying as hell. God I wish I had a double jump, please just put dumble jumps in games. I tried getting the other ending, but I coudln't do the shit I had already done again so whatever.

The ending I got ended with the protag going "Hmm, i need to pee", then she just full front pees standing up and the end screen overlays her.

being an axl main is awesome. everyone hates you and routinely skips past playing you for the simple crime of forcing them to play a bit of neutral. you prevent them from running their twenty second lockdown pressure drills for a bit and it’s the end of the world; they’d much rather go up against the litany of other rushdown characters who can all do that or the guy that can eat your healthbar in three decisions.

the game is fine. as far as its pace is concerned, strive is essentially rocket tag, and that’s a fine thing to enjoy. it just comes at the obviously infamous cost of representing a departure from xrd (or prior entries but i won’t pretend to be knowledgeable in this arena). this has invited natural comparisons to street fighter (super turbo in particular) and samurai shodown, but i think the core system mechanics manage to carve their own niche within the high damage subgenre. for all the debate around simplification, it seems clear to me that arcsys’s goal was to create a fighting game that the majority of people familiar with the genre can learn simply through relevant match experience, avoiding the confines of the training room and bringing the title in line with an older arcade experience. again, totally fine thing to be. i do think i prefer xrd’s brand of bullshit but not because it’s inherently more cerebral or anything - matches just tend to feel more dynamic. it’s an instance where strives emphasis on creatively using meter’s hundreds of applicable permutations to open holes in opponents defense is somewhat negated by the lack of opportunities to tap in per round and by how viciously quick some of these rounds can close out.

i strongly dislike the menus, user interface, and lobby system, but this aside it’s curious to me that strive represents an artistic departure from the rest of the series as well and this aspect has mostly been swept under the rug by the community. i assume this is fine for most because it’s pretty and because we will never escape the fondness gamers have for the metal gear rising/anarchy reigns soundtrack. still, its very much an intentional continuation of xrds aesthetic sensibilities - understandable given that titles landmark reception - but it feels worth mentioning that we are at this point quite far removed from the grungy, muted, and punk tone of earlier entries. but giovannas hot so who can say whether this is bad or not

Saccharine and dream-like without deliberately ignoring the harshness of reality that spurs on those idle fantasies. Since it's a period piece of sorts (set around the time of Barack Obama's first electoral win) there's plenty of anachronisms you could nitpick, but what I think it gets best is the hypocrisy of the era -- that empty hope for something better that we all know never really came. There's lots of "unrealistic" aspects baked into the experience, and I feel a nitpick would probably be that all the characters feel distinctly queer, but I also magically ended up being friends with a bunch of closeted queer people circa 2008, ones I'm still friends with to this day! And like, depending on the era the story is taking place in, the characters might act a little older than you'd expect for people of that age (both in the elementary school flashbacks and the "modern" high school perspective), but it fits so well into the game's themes, premise, and ultimately the fantasy that Butterfly Soup is trying to deliver that it's not even a legitimate criticism in my eyes.

The humor definitely seems hit or miss for some people, but I thought it was cute!! The most accurate "child-like" aspect of the characters the writing lands is their sense of humor and it honestly rules for that; I definitely knew people like and was friends with people like Akarsha in middle and high school. Plus, there's just genuinely snappy humor goin' on here (in the end though it was the "Mile 'Tails' Edgeworth" that really got me, probably because that's exactly the type of joke me and my friends would've made back in like 2009).

Butterfly Soup is just a really lovely visual novel, I think more people should check it out if it interests them!!! Also, I am definitely not beating the Min allegations.

A potential masterpiece riddled with flawed systems. Trick weapons are genius, and FromSoftware should definitely revisit the concept in future games, but all of the ones I tried had a form I preferred to use almost exclusively in any given fight. The rally mechanic is a really good idea, but I still often felt it was optimal to back off and heal instead, given how much less health I regained from rallying than blood vials. Blood vials are a great healing system mechanically, ruined only by being a finite consumable for some reason (of all the things to bring back from Demon's Souls, why this). Lamps are easily the coolest looking variation of the Bonfire, but are also easily the worst implemented. A limb-break system sounds cool on paper, but basing it on damage dealt rather than implementing a posture system meant I wasn't able to play around stance-breaking enemies like I would in Elden Ring despite using the heaviest weapon available (first the Kirkhammer and later Ludwig's Holy Blade) and focusing on charged heavy attacks.

For me, one of the most important parts of a FromSoftware game is the boss roster. Having started with Dark Souls 3, which I personally feel has some of the worst regular enemy encounters and many of the best bosses, I expected Bloodborne to be similar. In some ways, it was. Many of the standard encounters in Bloodborne are frustrating to me in the same ways they are in DS3. Too many fast, aggressive enemies all bunched together in small rooms or wide open spaces with no good way to split them up. Call it a skill issue, but I just don't like playing through most of the levels in these two games. In DS3, the bosses counterbalance the frustrating levels by being pretty consistently excellent. I even like the Curse-Rotted Greatwood somehow, DS3 just understands what makes bosses fun. Bloodborne simply doesn't have a comparable boss lineup. The best of them are pretty good, but still not amazing. Father Gascoigne and Martyr Logarius were the only bosses I actually liked before playing the Old Hunters DLC. A lot of Bloodborne's bosses were just forgettable or annoying, but none came close to being as bad as Micolash, who sits solidly at the bottom of my FromSoft boss tierlist with only Bed of Chaos for company. I waited until after finishing the Old Hunters to fight the final three bosses, and that might be part of why I found them so lacking. Mergo's Wet Nurse looked very cool, but wasn't mechanically engaging. Gehrman I expect to enjoy more in future playthroughs, but his fight didn't click with me this time. The Moon Presence was a disappointing final boss, mechanically just another beast boss with a few spell attacks that I barely had to try to dodge and one arena-wide "you have 1 health now" spell that didn't really add anything to the fight.

Some of my problems with the game might have been less grating if its performance wasn't a hunter's nightmare. On PS4, where I played most of the base game, this was one of the worst performing games I've ever experienced. Load times were agonizingly long, so needing to sit through two loading screens to fast travel was very annoying. The framerate and smoothness of my PS4 experience can't all be blamed on the game, as I had it hooked up to a cheap TV that definitely hurt performance, but even on my PS5 and 165hz monitor, it's still noticeably choppy. Load times do seem much better on PS5 at least.

Despite how much I complain about this game, I do still think it's good. I don't think it's the masterpiece a lot of people say it is, but the bones that make the Old Hunters DLC so incredible are built here in the base game.

TLDR: I can't get gay married to Eileen the Crow, 0/10 fuck this game.