when I'm in a mediocre mystery game competition and my opponent is spike chudsoft

I don't know about this. I kinda like the plot, generally, and it's impressive that they managed to tie it all together, but it's also like... insanely immature? Tonally stupid?

The many overarching paths means several pieces of information you will simply read like 3 times. Luckily there's a skip button, but once you discover it it's hard to not use it constantly to skip the awkward facial animations and filler dialogue that takes forever to appear, and just use the log to read it instead. I'm usually a cutscene enjoyer, but maybe the fact that I expected like a modicum of any sort of gameplay (beyond 3 QTE sequences and trial-and-error-point-and-click puzzles with barely any logic behind them) when starting this cracked my patience, or maybe this game really does just keep yapping, or maybe watching too many Youtube Shorts finally fried my brain. I'll leave that up to the reader's imagination.

Nevermind the dance number at the end, every action scene being centered on a porn mag kinda really took me out of it. Not that I dislike heheh booby comedy, but it didn't really feel like they handled it well. It's weird. Also despite playing the game in Japanese the final dance number is completely in English, which only made it feel even more out of place - I'm not like allergic to English or anything, I swear, but it's suddenly completely different voice actors. Plus a character whose life was completely ruined is just uh, yknow, dancing. Just really weird. Odd game. I won't play the sequel. I wouldn't do that even if I liked it because everyone apparently hates that, but now you know. If you even care about me...

Demon's Souls feels like it is both a more polished yet more primitive incubating egg of Dark Souls. It's worse in some ways, better in others.

Every level in Demon's Souls is some kind of environment puzzle, and everything that isn't that environment and world is basically superfluous and often feels like it was tacked on as random systems that an RPG is "supposed to have". I want to menu less. I want to think about stats less. "Erm.. acshually you can beat any souls game with any build🤓 ☝️" yes yes ok but they are so very clearly built into the game with the intention of interacting with them, and that is still my biggest complaint about these games - interacting with them isn't fun. It's really a minor complaint in the grand scheme of things, but a complaint nonetheless. Also if you ever speak to me like that again we're through, capische? over

Maybe it's because I played them back to back but I really just can't help but compare them. Demon's Souls feels like a cross between an art experiment and a western RPG and Dark Souls feels like it was supposed to be the "real Demon's Souls", but in the process something was lost (not just because they ran out of time and money mind you). It's a weird one. I'd say DeS does better on gameplay by being less focused on combat, but I guess some people might disagree with that and prefer more combat focused bosses. I'd also say Dark Souls environments and atmospheres generally are better, but at the same time World 3-2 here is one of the sickest environments I've ever seen in a 3D game. There's something inherently charming about this that didn't really tickle my brain in the successor.

Maybe I'm just going insane from playing through all of Demon's Souls in 2 days. Who knows. I'm looking at those yummy maiden toes with lust in my eyes. When she sits on the staircase and swings her legs I want to raise a child with her. I imagine our life together. What?

I'm giving insane credit for giving you two swords named Demon and Soul. That's fucking cinema baby

This is the second part of a two-part review for Monster Hunter: world, except this one will be for Iceborne. I strongly encourage you to read the first part here. Iceborne is an equally long game as World, but I don’t have as much to cover this time, so it should be shorter. This DLC has been hyped up for me way before I got into Monster Hunter, so I went in with moderate expectations, but considering my issues with the base game, I wasn’t expecting anything mind-blowing. Needless to say, it was a fantastic experience with a few snags, let’s get right into it.

Iceborne is a substantial DLC right away because it fundamentally changes how each weapon is played and what they can do. Longswords for example, get the Iai slash and Iai spirit slash. Iai slash becomes an essential tool since landing it will allow your meter to naturally charge overtime, giving you more room to disengage from the monster without fully compromising your ability to perform your Spirit Slash combo. Iai Spirit Slash on the other hand is a higher skilled foresight slash that rewards you with tremendous damage, large part-break damage, and is visually striking. However, the issue with this particular move is the timing is far too tight at times, and it has a lot of factors that make it unreliable and random which severely hinders any sort of benefit it could provide on paper. I’m not an expert when it comes to how this move works, however, I recommend watching this video by Peppo, a former speedrunner about Iai Spirit Slash. It was incredibly informal, and was personally the decision for me to never use this move despite the theoretical potential and advantage it provides. With that said, the simple inclusion of Iai Slash makes Longsword much more forgiving to play despite already being rather easy. Other weapons I can’t comment on as much, however a lot of them usually tie into another mechanic introduced into Iceborne, which is the Clutch Claw.

Clutch Claw is a rather divisive mechanic overall. In concept, it allows you to latch onto a monster from a relatively close distance, once you are latched onto a monster you have a few options. You can “tenderize” that part of the monster, which allows for more damage to be dealt in that specific area. Tenderizing takes two strikes to tenderize with light weapons, while heavy weapons only take one. This would be a fantastic mechanic because it’d allow the hunters a much faster means of defeating monsters while also rewarding monster knowledge by tenderizing weak points to deal even more damage. The issue with this mechanic for Iceborne specifically are the monsters themselves, or rather their bloated health pools. Monsters in Iceborne require you tenderize them to deal adequate damage for them to go down at a reasonable pace, which bogs down many fights to “clutch claw and tenderize as soon as possible”. It heavily restricts the approach one can take fighting monsters in Iceborne, that’s not to mention how inaccurate The Clutch Claw also is. Aiming the clutch claw requires you to aim a reticle at the part you wish to clutch onto, if you aim successfully, then there’s no issue, but that’s the problem, the aiming is terrible. Monsters are incredibly fast and always moving, so having the time to carefully aim and clutch onto a monster is a nightmare, on top of its short range, you really need to put yourself in danger to do it. At least if you latch onto the wrong part, you can jump to other parts of the monster, but this can waste time and has incredibly odd input buffering issues from personal experience, but this may have been my own issue entirely by quickly hitting the buttons, it was annoying all the same.

Clutch Claw’s second important use is wall banging with the slinger. In World, the slinger was mostly used for environmental interaction and getting the monster’s attention while also being able to interrupt their attacks if timed right. Wall banging is not only better in every conceivable way to these options, but once again brings up a balancing issue, except in reverse to tenderizing. If you can clutch onto a monster’s face while they’re not enraged you can use up all of your slinger ammo to make them go sprinting into a wall, which will deal tremendous part break damage and have them topple over, giving you a gigantic opening. You can also adjust where the monster is facing to ensure they run into some obstacle or wall for the topple, which is useful. Wall banging pretty much trivializes any fight before Iceborne, and in Iceborne itself, it can be equally trivializing with the right coordination, guaranteeing a topple is already strong, but wall banging itself can deal immense damage to a monster as well. While I think the challenge of the monsters you fight in Iceborne can make up the difference here, wall banging at first is an incredibly satisfying and fun mechanic, but it’s far too easy and rewarding for something that only requires some slinger ammo and the monster not being enraged. Let’s not forget to mention that tenderizing the monster will drop slinger ammo for you if you use a light weapon, the game is giving you the resources to repeat this process over and over. That’s the fundamental problem with Iceborne to me, they design these monsters around both of these concepts, to tenderize, and to wall bang,, so to make up for that, they made monsters have so much health and resistance, if you decide not to use these methods, I’d argue your chances of succeeding later become vastly lower. Not to mention it can slow down certain fights to an absolute crawl, because you need to use the clutch claw, but if the monster is moving around a lot, and you’re just getting unlucky and knocked off a lot, you’re just kind of screwed. Granted you can still fight the monster normally, but with their health, and that lovely time limit adding pressure to be a bit faster, it’s a combination I did not enjoy very much initially, but you do get used to the new flow Iceborne presents, though I feel it dumbs down gameplay a lot and can be a crutch.

I think I’ve addressed some negatives, let’s get into some positives! The monster roster for Iceborne is nothing short of utterly amazing! While I definitely had my favorites from World like Nergigante, Teostra, and Odagaron to name a few, Iceborne quickly introduced me to some of my all-time favorite monsters ever in both design and fights. Nargacuga’s blinding speed yet incredibly fair openings, Brachydios being a knuckle duster with explosive AoE’s, and Barioth’s blinding speed and aggression that can be stopped cold by shattering his wings. There were very few fights in Iceborne I didn’t enjoy or at least tolerated compared to base World, it gave the game much needed variety outside of World’s roster which felt very dinosaur and dragon loaded. Iceborne certainly doesn’t shy away from adding more of these types of monsters, but was pleasantly surprised to see more diverse design inclusions like Banbaro. One thing I could have done without are all the new variants of old monsters. In concept, I think the idea is good, but in Iceborne, they didn’t feel substantial enough at all to warrant including in my eyes. There are exceptions of course like Coral Pukei-Pukei, and Frostfang Barioth to name a few, but others like Ebony Odagaron and Nightshade Paolumu felt more like padding than worthwhile variants worth being in the DLC. That’s a negligent issue in the grand scheme of things, but still an issue regardless, still an amazing roster of monsters I was very pleased with.

Iceborne also has us exploring a new region: The Hoarfrost Reach. Hoarfrost Reach is a beautiful landscape covered in snow, but wasn’t too large or difficult to navigate, on top of being rather flat compared to the likes of the Ancient Forest, I was immediately a fan of this new area. One thing I was not a fan of constantly having to consume hot drinks to ensure my stamina wasn’t lowered by the cold. Thematically speaking, it’s incredibly cohesive and makes sense, mechanically? It’s bothersome to keep up with, but considering it’s not that often you need to refresh your immunity, it’s ignorable, but something I noticed compared to Elder’s Recess where you only needed to consume Cold Drinks for specific sections, not the entire map. We also get an entire new hub for this DLC, Seliana, wow. Seliana in stark comparison to Astera, was remarkably designed, much flatter, much easier to traverse, and had an unbelievably cozy and immersive feel. I loved everything Seliana had to offer in both layout and new activities such as the generator which just made certain items an absolute breeze to get without farming expeditions anymore. Seliana also had a much better and inviting Gathering Hub, with hot springs, more convenient layout, and again just really cozy. It has much better music, you get your own room you can customize and do side quests to obtain more decoration options which is an awesome inclusion that’ll give the game far more playtime and longevity for people who enjoy that. I personally only dabbled with it, but I was thoroughly impressed with how much you could do with it. As soon as I reached, I never went back to Astera, it’s just too bothersome and badly designed to navigate. I appreciate its verticality and scope, but Seliana is just more inviting and non-intrusive, it wins by a landslide.

Progression with Iceborne also felt far better than base world. A plethora of new monsters means more gear than ever to craft, and most of them are once again useful in their own right and look good to boot, with the added bonus of not having an armor set that can essentially carry you throughout the game like the Defender Gear. With that said, the last armor set in the game one could arguably obtain is far too versatile with how it’s designed, every single weapon or playstyle can be supported by it, and it’s due to this armor set that Iceborne’s endgame grinding is always the same, which is a huge detriment. Had the game allowed for any and all armor combinations to, in theory, be viable, it would have made building and using them long-term far more satisfying and valuable, but instead, what awaits you is a far superior armor set everyone uses, with zero reason not to, no negatives, no drawbacks, nothing, the only caveat being how you obtain it, but we’ll get there. Besides that one issue, the plethora of new options is great, and I very much enjoyed the progression in Iceborne more than the base world. I personally built far more weapons and armor in this expansion than my entire time in Base World because the monsters and difficulty increase every mission warranted it enough to feel important to do.

Iceborne unfortunately retreads the same issues the base world does with cutscenes, missions, and characters. None of it mattered to me, it’s all simply, once again, a means to justify why you’re fighting specific monsters, it works, but is completely unimportant overall. I once again found myself wanting to skip these cutscenes in favor of fighting large monsters. Characters are as one-dimensional as ever, but we do get a break from the Handler in this expansion for a little while, which was nice, but nothing significant. It’s honestly a tragedy these negatives still exist, as you also need to watch the cutscene first before others can join your hunt, which was equally annoying in base World, this same issue persists here. For as much as Iceborne improved upon base world, this was not one of those areas, and it’s a shame too because this DLC truly felt like it was really trying to right every wrong, but I guess it can’t all be perfect.

Let’s get into my largest criticism for Iceborne, the endgame, or more specifically, the endgame monsters you will be fighting. Now, it’d be hard for me to talk about this since it’s riddled with spoilers. I was inspired by one of my friends and inspirations, @DetectiveFail to use pastebin to discuss spoilers. So for the last section of this review, I highly suggest reading it here if you want my thoughts on it. For those who don’t, or wish not to, I will still give a brief summary here. Essentially, a lot of the final Monsters you fight in World boil down to DPS checks that don’t necessarily cater to skill, but more so how good your build is, and forces you to grind for something good enough to overcome the challenge. Monster Hunter already made it difficult at times to win due to the time limit implemented in hunts, and here that problem is exacerbated further. If your damage isn’t good enough, then you will simply wipe, that’s all there is to it. Not to mention the difficulty spike in the last two monsters especially is far too high, and I personally struggled to defeat them for several hours, to days. It was certainly rewarding and a huge accomplishment, but also an obstacle that will ensure I will never aim to complete this DLC ever again because the entire grind was rather unpleasant and not very fun. Instead it was incredibly frustrating and felt like the odds were always against me to win, this is ironically in the same spirit as Monster Hunter aims for, to feel an insurmountable challenge against giant monsters you can and will overcome. But here it feels legitimately impossible, and many have told me from talking about the final boss in Iceborne that they never came close to beating it.

This has been a very long review in the making, I appreciate everyone’s patience and support as I got this finished. I’m happy to say it is now finished, and ready to review some other great games I’ve been playing while working on this. Overall, I did love Iceborne, it was nothing but an improvement from the base game with tons of implementations, monsters, and ideas I felt were mostly good, others I can’t necessarily say I’d be sad if they never returned. While I do take many issues with the game and its expansion, I got to say it’s still a remarkable game. I’ve always wanted to get into this series, and I’m glad I did with this one! I can easily recommend it to others for the immersive monster behavior and designs, the soundtrack, and the fun combat that hits a few snags along the way. Thank you all for reading my review of Iceborne! Next time, we’ll be mixing drinks and changing lives! Until next time.

Confidant who is hyperfocused on burning ants: Alright Joker... it's a deal then... I'll be your ant burning friend from here on out
*flashback animation*
My sexy hag prosecutor: You must have had some kind of insect combustion expert on your team.. who was it!! TALK!!!!
Me, popping a stiffy so hard I'm about to pass out: i think i hauve mental shutdown syndrome

Great game, ultimately still strictly worse than the other 2 modern Personas if you care about anything else than presentation. Concept is great - who doesn't love silly Lupin heists? The story immediately drills into the core of Planet slop at the start of the Medjed arc and doesn't recover for more than brief moments of JRPG cheese (I like the gooey cheese though). All the Social Links (that's what they're called man) are pretty good, but none are really great unless it's like the two that I missed. The soundtrack? It's great. The UI? Okay this might get assassins sent after me but to me it's very busy for a UI and I think it's a bit overrated in terms of being the be all end all of design for that reason. It is beautiful though.

I really like the additions to the combat system, despite it all feeling a bit overtuned - I died like three times in my entire playthrough and 2 of them were due to not having high enough damage and 1 of them was me nuking myself on a reflect. The baton passing, extra elements and Social Link buffs really help One More stand out as Not Just Press Turn But Worse (it still is worse, but you know, it helps, and it's fun).

Honestly after P3 the whole time management system and Social Links kinda feels tacked on to the other Persona games. Like it was meant for that game in particular and makes total sense with the theme whereas here they are just... systems that surround a JRPG. If that makes any sense. If I'm crazy you can shoot me in the head.

I stopped at the third semester. "Why"? I shouldn't have to justify that. Why didn't you? You should explain yourself. The story is over. If you continued to play for 30 hours you don't care about story do you? You don't give a shit about storytelling at all. You just care about characters and seeing them interact in little set pieces. You're a poser. You just want to play with dolls in your head because the cast functions as premade OCs for your fanfiction when you can't write your own. You're having the Phantom Thieves step in for real relationships in your life. You're pathetic. Sorry.. sorry about that. I don't know what came over me. Forgive me.

Nitpicky Rant Minor Spoiler Asshole Lightning Round:
- I think JRPG creators have realized 60% of people only play the first act and that's why a lot of modern JRPGs are frontloaded nosedive halfway in. Much research to be done here.
- Morgana has decided 30% of my nights simply can't be used for anything
- Please do not give me insanely overpowered DLC items for no reason you crazy bastards
- Why are we still pretending Persona protagonists can be self insert? Please just name him next time. He's stuck in this weird limbo where he's an unvoiced blank slate but also randomly will have lines. Give it up Atlus.
- Could not fuck Akechi Goro
- Morgana cat form? Cute. Cuddly. What a little guy. Love him. Morgana Metaverse form? I'm going to kick him over a building.
- Ban all localization from saying "kek"
- Having the optional dungeon turn mandatory in the final act is insane, it didn't affect me but for those it did I am so sorry
- The in media res flashback structure contributes absolutely nothing other than to do a "Ohhh I actually forgot crucial details" plot twist, it's basically just there to be there
- "The Councillor" Tarot? Really? Come on.
- The final dungeons(s) are basically completely disconnected from the theming of the rest of the game which makes them seem really out of nowhere and lame
- Like 3-4 instances of Japanese being spoken but no subs anywhere. "Just play in English" Haha, no, obviously. Don't be fucking stupid
- Demon negotiation is actually just SMT But Lame
- We have yet to find a good way to hide elemental weaknesses and then show them later and this is no exception

I wanted to like this game more than I did, lots of busywork with finding new items and backtracking through the game to find where to use them, most of the later game items didn't really change the game enough to make that a fun process.

The initial 6-8 hours or so for the main game were cool, I liked how the items/upgrades weren't typical for metroidvanias so you really had to figure out how to use them for yourself. Visually it was stunning and all the lighting effects were very impressive. However, the post game of finding all the secret eggs were just okay, lots of them were just about noticing a small gap in the corner of a room and getting your way there. Luckily I found a lot of the eggs just as I went through the main game. Also, traveling the map so many times looking for the last few things makes you realise that the world in this game isn't very memorable, I didn't develop that inherent understanding of how to get around like I did in other games.

Also wish there was a real soundtrack, it is mostly ambient but the few longer music bits are cool so would have liked to hear more.

Animal Well never really had that joy of discovery from games this is compared to like Fez and Tunic. The big secrets didn't really blow my mind or truly excite me like those other games, nor did I spend a long time scratching my head at them like I did with the golden path in Tunic.

There are a few Quality of Life additions that would have improved this game, why can't I instantly teleport back to my last checkpoint instead of having to go find somewhere to kill myself.

Also really annoying that the craziest traversal item is given to you so late after already completing everything.

This game, along with some crow game and some cat game (of all things) created a Holy Trifecta™️ that made May 9th, 2024 a game that will go down in indie game history forever. Or so what I was told. I know almost nothing about the crow game and I literally forgot the name of the cat game before I was reminded of it. And this game, well I’ll tell you that I think about it right now, after around 2 1/2 hours.

I don’t get the hype. At all.

Supposedly this is a life changing game with unique and intricate puzzles that unravel an incredibly deep story. I even bought this game with the expectation that it would influence my knowledge on game design. However I have seen none of that. All I’ve been doing is jumping around, finding some admittedly unique abilities (eg spring, yo-yo), collecting eggs that don’t do anything for the most part (besides the swan egg), and solving a lot of puzzles.

And the puzzles aren’t mind-blowing genius or anything. They’re mildly unique at best. Some puzzles that I can think of are one with a wave that you manipulate to cross 3 separate points, placing the spring at a certain spot to hit 3 switches without hitting one that sets off crows, and one where you distract weasels from destroying your spring that sets off switches to go through.

Speaking of the animals, this game is similar to Rain World in that the supposedly deep interactions with the animals are underwhelming. Most of the time they just stand there and make noise and don’t do anything. For example early in the game there’s a duck that quacks and that’s it. Doesn’t do anything else. The only useful interactions I can think of are the big rabbit things and the birds.

I have no idea what the story is. All I can describe it as is “you’re a frog and you need to collect 4 flame things for some reason”. The puzzles have told me NOTHING about the story. And supposedly if this game is like an onion then at least give me a hint on how to find and solve the juicy puzzles that MAYBE have lore. But I don’t have a clue on where to find them. The game hasn’t showed me anything. I saw a post saying someone didn’t know what the game was trying to tell them and I wholeheartedly agree. Where is the deep story?

Also, the graphics and music. The graphics make everything look the same, and the pixel art is just okay. Nothing to write home about. The game is really dark visually. Seeing the same shades of blue and black over and over gets pretty old. And the OST is non existent. Just the title theme and the simple telephone save point theme. You will be playing the game in silence with ambience most of the time. Again, like Rain World if you’ve ever played that.

I know some people are going to get mad at me for not giving this highly praised game anything but a glowing review. “This game isn’t for you” why not? I like Metroidvanias (I just finished Islets, a vastly different game but if you’re reading this play islets it’s amazing), puzzle games not as much but I’ll give them a shot if I’ve seen enough good word of mouth like this game. “You are taking the game at surface value” because I haven’t seen anything else that makes me think I shouldn’t. All I see is a game where you hop around and collect flames. Yeah there’s some vague cryptic stuff but if it’s just gonna sit there and look cryptic with absolutely 0 pointers on what it means then it might as well mean nothing.

TL:DR. Don’t get the hype, game is underwhelming and directionless

Wasn't super interested at first but seeing the comparisons to games like Outer Wilds and the Witness piqued my curiosity. I've gotta say, I think those comparisons are a stretch. This is ultimately still just a metroidvania, even if it's more puzzles than combat. Felt more reminiscent of Tunic, borrowing some of those thinky elements but ultimately layering them on top of a more traditional game. While it has some clever mechanics, I was waiting for it to blow my mind and it just never happened.

Getting the items and uncovering the map was decently satisfying, but as it went on there were more and more situations that felt reminiscent of the worst moments in a Super Metroid first playthrough, where you've got no idea where you even can progress and so you end up just poking around, shooting rockets at every tile on the screen, hoping that this hidden passage isn't yet another missile stock upgrade, and the pacing screeches to a halt. I suppose this is me being a metroidvania hater and I'll cop to that. Had my fill.

After sleeping on it, I decided to give the postgame a fair shake. It was as tedious as I expected, full of backtracking and pixel hunting. The additional powerups didn't break the game open quite like I'd hoped, and accessing one of the postgame areas depends on RNG spawns, which, IMO, sucks ass. Maybe the idea is that you'd run into the thing over the course of the game, but it just didn't happen for me - only seeing it once, very early in the game. Ended up spending as long as the base game just to track down the odds and ends to get to a generally lackluster finale.

Animal Well is Tunic if it didn't have terrible combat. Alternatively, The Witness if you wanted it to be a video game.

Similarly to those and other figure-it-out games, it's nigh impossible to discuss without spoilers so I'm just not gonna. Point being if you like puzzles, platforming, and pretty visuals, you'll probably enjoy it.

...look, I know you're probably questioning the 3 star rating. In a nutshell: I thought the game was undeniably well crafted, but I'd be lying if I said I really had fun with a lot of its puzzles. There's a difference between solving and completing a puzzle, and despite the puzzles themselves being clever Animal Well handles the in-between rather poorly.

Pretty often you can see what needs to be done early on, especially if it fits on 1-2 screens. Aside from main route obstacles, most have enough execution steps and/or failure points that they take a while to be done even if you already see how to do them. Throughout the game I often completed a section only to feel more relieved than satisfied. Games only have so long to cash out their dopamine after any given revelation, and Animal Well runs the clock way too long more often than not.

The post game does go crazy though. I respect such a strong commitment to the bit.