Six years was worth the wait.

Granblue Fantasy: Relink helps scratch an itch for both fluid action combat mechanic and MMO-style boss mechanics. This is the perfect game for the era of live-service schlock- a flawlessly integrated online co-op ecosystem, with all its substantive content able to be fully enjoyed offline as well. The only way it could be fundamentally improved (outside of the crossplay issue) is allowing for LAN play- but that's sadly something of a dinosaur in today's AAA releases. Otherwise PlatinumGames, well known for its ability to translate beloved IPs to quality action games, has stuck the landing here.

Any Cygames veteran can attest to the quality that goes into each of their productions, but they somewhat fail to transcend their mobage framework. Granblue Fantasy (2014) proper is a ridiculously tedious grind, such that even spending tons of money doesn't fully circumvent it. Hidden deep within Granblue's stigma as a gacha game is actually an extremely in-depth JRPG storyline, to speak nothing of its combat mechanics and boss design. After several years, I couldn't be bothered to enjoy it anymore underneath the crushing daily grind- but there was so much to love about it. There was incredible art direction by the CyDesignation team (which also did similar fantastic work on Final Fantasy Brave Exvius: War of the Visions) and wonderful music by the likes of Nobuo Uematsu and Tsutomu Narita. A vast, well-established world and characters whom the team truly cared about, meticulously developing their stories and updating units. That is what makes Relink that much more special- seeing these characters and their various skillsets rendered beautifully and allowed to escape the small aspect ratio of the phone screen. Each respective character was brought to life here with a stunning attention to detail by PlatinumGames. And that's not to discount the wonderful job Arcsys did with Granblue Fantasy Versus, but the game is far more accessible to a wider audience. This is what helps bring this game from fan service to a niche base to something capable of engendering an entirely new audience to its universe.

Cygames was actually no stranger to highly-polished action combat either, with Dragalia Lost (2018) offering some of the best co-op boss raids for its respective platform. The gameplay loop in Dragalia was a cut above what most gacha shovelware was offering, and it had a similarly well-respected single player campaign to Granblue as well. Dragalia's end of service was a stinging loss to many people, but PlatinumGames has managed to deliver them from janky private servers. The boss mechanics are highly reminiscent of Dragalia's and serve as a worthy successor. It is pretty easy to pick up and play too. The only real hurdle Relink players will have getting started is wrangling the camera and targeting system, something Dragalia didn't really have to contend with due to its top-down perspective. I did get kind of frustrated with this at first, but it mostly boils down to a couple hours of experience to resolve. Kind of a Super Mario 64 situation, but a lot less egregious.

Everything in Relink just manages to feel right, and feel good. Surely it won't hit as hard with people who aren't interested with things like incremental mastery of the different characters' mechanics, or people who don't like seeing numbers go up. But there is a market for that, and its a big market if Monster Hunter's meteoric rise was any indication. Action game fans with no knowledge of the source material won't really find any of this too daunting either. The 10-15 hour initial campaign can be played and enjoyed standalone, and the combat itself is self-explanatory. I do recommend getting acquainted with the basic Granblue lore through the Lyria's note section (as well as the Fate Episodes) as it will help contextualize a lot of what people love about these characters and their world. The writing might be a little flowery in some parts, a little nekketsu in others, but overall its pretty good. I would consider Relink's story basically akin to a movie adaptation of an anime- with dubious implications as to the canon and basically non-consequential to the overall plot. It is thus pretty easy to just enjoy as its own thing.

Notably, it's kind of hilarious how Cygames integrated the source gacha's DNA into the UI, sometimes seemingly for the sake of it. It's never too intrusive and its really only there for the hardcore players, but it is still very funny to see cursed Granblue mechanics like Plus Marks, Over Mastery Bonuses, and Spellbooks in an action RPG title. They all work well enough though, and the difference-maker here is the pacing. Take the Treasure Trade and material system they transplanted from the gacha. The grind in OG Granblue for certain materials can take weeks, even months. In here, its just going to be a few hours at worst. Allowing one to enjoy all the aesthetics of Granblue without having to devote enough time for it to being a second job? I would have stuck out ten years for this.

Fire Emblem 7 is my personal favorite video game ever made.

I received it for Christmas of 2003 from my aunt along with my new Flame Red Gameboy SP from my mother. I don't know why she got it for me, nor will I ever question it. Cause it changed my life, for better or worse.

The original Fire Emblem games by Shouzou Kaga were smash hits in Japan. Kaga wanted a strategy game wherein "each character is a protagonist in their own right, and you can actually get attached to them, making it closer to an RPG[.]" I always wax poetic about "player expression" whenever I am reviewing games nowadays, and that was what Kaga wanted in his series. When asked about it in the same interview, he opines, "I think this is something people understand once they play the game, but most of the characters are usable. And characters who at first seem like crappy, throwaway characters–if you take the time to build them up and nurture them, they can become incredibly powerful. We made a lot of characters like that."

Fast forwarding to 2003, Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade follows the same design philosphy. Tohru Narihiro, a producer at Intelligent Systems states in a May 2003 interview that "The primary focus was to enable people do not play SRPGs to enjoy it." It is a simple game, released 6 years after Final Fantasy Tactics, the game most people (myself included) would credit as having popularized SRPGs in the west.

Firstly, I will get the obvious out of the way. This is an absolutely beautiful game with stunning pixel art and an incredible score. It is an absolute aesthetic masterpiece, with much of the groundwork laid out by its predecessor The Binding Blade. These two games are some the best looking and sounding titles in the entire Gameboy Advance library. That honor is owed to two veritable superwomen of the genre who do not get enough credit. There was Sachiko Wada, who did the character portraits as well as in-game CGs. Her art was the stuff of dreams for me, and it honestly still is. She can nail quiet beauty to war-weary stoicness; adorably cute to horrifically ugly and everything in between. Her art gives the game so much of its character- it wouldn't be FE7 without Wada's portraits. As much as I really like the art from the older entries, her work is the Fire Emblem platonic ideal. Her designs really do form the baseline by which I often compare other characters, even in other games. Wada has only worked on the Fire Emblem series to date and she is seriously incredible. She still does artwork for the Fire Emblem Heroes gacha and some commemorative pieces as well, all of which can be checked out on her Pixiv. Then there is the game's composer, Yuka Tsujiyoko. Tracks like “Wind across the Plains,” “Companions,” etc. have become iconic pieces within the series and that is all thanks to Tsujiyoko’s virtuosity. “Bern - A Mother’s Wish” deserved a real sound chip! As much as people hate the squeals and scratches of the hardware, she made it sound wonderful, particularly on the main theme, which to this day is my favorite rendition of such an iconic leitmotif.

Fire Emblem’s story is segmented into three different “modes,” one of which is a prologue and two of which exist as parallel timelines, each focusing on one of three central protagonists.

Lyndis, the first protagonist, acted as a model introduction for so many people into the world of Fire Emblem and strategy RPGs in general. It is comprised of ten simple maps and appropriately scaled narrative- a tight well constructed intro arc of a young woman of the plains discovering she is of royal birthright. Lyndis meets friends and foes alike who each introduce core concept of the games mechanics - the weapon triangle, siege maps, rout maps, terrain bonuses, party organization, enemy reinforcements, fog of war, etc.

Lyndis is a strong character, never a damsel in distress, neither beholden to expectations of her ethnicity nor her gender. Her journey through a war torn Caelin hints at far greater forces at work, but keeps things focused on her own personal odyssey and growth. Lyn Mode does have it’s fair share of criticism, particularly the forced tutorial aspects which has annoyed veteran players to the point that removing it has become a staple for ROM hackers. Lyn Mode is very easy too, but it is supposed to be, because it’s supposed to be an introduction to major gameplay concepts. It is a tutorial that has gone a step beyond, with a likable character arc and some of the most endearing playable units in the entire series. One of my main criticisms of the game is that Lyn ends up being less useful from a metagaming standpoint, because she is one of my favorite characters in any video game.

“The nomads of the plains do not abandon their fellow tribespeople. Eliwood and Hector are my dear friends… Their sorrow is my sorrow. Their anger is my anger.” - Lyndis in Chapter 31E/33H, Light

Then the world opens up to Eliwood’s story, the game begins a proper progression into an extensive and oftentimes challenging strategy game. Eliwood is a comparatively tame and even boring choice of protagonist compared to Lyn, sort of the picturesque shonen hero that we associate with earlier Fire Emblem. He even has the big sword to boot. Yet as the world opens up and we meet the cast, learn of the surrounding nations and their inhabitants, his story arc still maintains high quality. Eliwood mode, for better or worse, is the way we are introduced to the meat and potatoes of the game. You fight your way through sprawling maps with scores of enemy units, conveying a desperate struggle as the flames of war engulf the surrounding landscape. The political intrigue and stories of love, loss and betrayal convey great emotional weight; they serve as amazing backdrops to particularly difficult maps. The game oozes despair as armies of unfeeling humanoid killers descend on Prince Zephiel in the dead of night, or when Ostia lays under siege. The constant threat of the mercenary group The Black Fang, whom have sentenced you to death “softly, with grace.”

“In the name of the Fang, I sentence you to death. Do not blame me for your fate. It is your own doing.” - Lloyd Reed, in Chapter 23E/24H: Four-Fanged Offense

Of course the real star of the show is the game’s third protagonist, Hector, he of the blue-haired and brash Fire Emblem family. Hector Mode is considered Fire Emblem: The Blazing Blade’s greatest triumph- specifically “Hector Hard Mode” (HHM) which is considerably more difficult than any of the other game modes. Hector was the proto-Ike, a gigantic presence on and off the battlefield. He feels much more magnetic than Eliwood, but their brotherhood is what serves as one of the best parts of the game’s narrative. Hector essentially abandons his post as a royal to help his friend and must deal with the consequences and his own regrets. Eliwood’s story is fully complemented and two’s stories intertwine in perfect harmony as both come to terms with the realities of the war. Hector’s path also opens up several different maps, all quite difficult; and also serves as the basis for unlocking all the hidden lore within the game. Once you have experience HHM, you really have experienced the full breadth of what this game can offer- it is an immensely satisfying and well balanced experience with a great trio of protagonists.

“Listen, Mark. You know how Eliwood is. Never wants to burden anyone else… Takes all responsibility on himself… Now, more than ever, we have to support him. Let’s go, Mark!” - Hector in Chapter 28E, Valorous Roland

Much of what we understand as the modern conception of the "SRPG" is owed to Kaga's production of Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon and the Blade of Light; which on its own was produced to be a more accessible, character-driven answer to strategy games prior. Indeed, Fire Emblem throughout the years has relied on rather simple calculations for its different gameplay functions. Take the calculation in Blazing Blade for Attack Speed (which determines if you will attack twice during the fight, referred to a "doubling"):

AS = (Speed) - (Burden)
Burden = (Wt) - (Con); negative Burden values are set to 0
Wt = value of unit's equipped weapon's weight
Con = value of the given unit's constitution.

The calculation for whether or not you can "double" is as follows:

[(Unit's attack speed) − (target's attack speed)] ≥ 4

This is something that can very easily be calculated in a couple minutes just looking at a unit's stat spread and their weapon stats. Everything is simple to understand. You can tell just from looking at the Mani Katti weapon that is effective against infantry. What does that mean in the context of the game? It simply deals bonus damage; calculated as 3x the amount of damage you do (which has its own calculation.)

The best part? You don't even need to know this math in FE7. If you can double, it gives you a x2 indicator next to the might, which is calculated for you. Effective weapons will have glowing text. The weapon triangle is a relatively simple Rock Paper Scissors mechanic as well. This sort of simplicity is what makes the game’s combat intuitive for me to play even back in 2003. It has a high skill ceiling yet isn’t obtuse. The ultimate accessible strategy RPG, a direct descendant of the forefather of the genre itself.

Throughout the development of the series, Kaga noted that some people found the games too simple on a mechanical level; to this, he responded that "Well, that is an understandable response from the perspective of hardcore strategy buffs... [b]ut for Nintendo-made products, the baseline for the development is always that it be easy to play to the end, something “anyone can pick up and enjoy.” And I think that is a perfectly fine approach in its own right." Hironobu Sakaguchi, who had the very same design philosophy for Final Fantasy, would agree; and he was in fact a fan of the series himself.

I have great reverence for Final Fantasy Tactics and I think it is one of the greatest contributions to the entire corpus of strategy games. Just from playing the first few maps of Tactics I understood implicitly that this game had depth far and beyond anything produced during the SNES or GBA era of Fire Emblems. Tactics pushed the boundaries of the genre, both from a mechanical and storytelling perspective and I love the game. Yet I wouldn't recommend Tactics as an introduction to the genre to most people. Sure, it popularized the genre to people who didn't know anything about strategy RPGs prior, but I think Blazing Blade is in fact the real perfect introduction to the genre and works as a gateway into the wider world of the genre- which includes Final Fantasy Tactics in its unfiltered glory.

The units in Tactics are for the most part faceless generics, whom allow you complete freedom in how you shape you army. By contrast, every playable unit in Fire Emblem 7 has a face, a story and a unique role with stats to complement. These approaches both have merit. I love the generic soldier concept, especially in games without permadeath systems like the fantastic Fell Seal: Arbiter’s Mark. We have Final Fantasy Tactics to thank for that.

The strength of Blazing Blade's approach sacrifices individual unit freedom for the prospect of forming emotional bonds with the characters, whom have established backstories and personalities. I always enjoyed Serra’s love-hate relationship with Erk, even if both units were weaker and harder to train. I felt a strong connection to them as characters and had a vested interest in raising them within the army. As a kid, I simply wouldn't have been able to fully appreciate the gameplay freedom inherent in FFT’s generics in comparison versus the strong personalities of Erk and Serra. I certainly would not have felt as compelled to reset a map to save a generic, faceless unit if there was a permadeath mechanic.

The approach towards unit death in strategy games has always been traditionally one of the numbers game, especially in games that try to hew closer to realism. Julian Gollop taught the world with XCOM: UFO Defense that overconfidence invites disaster and we must learn to manage our losses- not everyone is going to make it out ok and sometimes your best soldiers have to be sacrificed to make it through the mission. Real-time strategy games are so often about throwing hordes at one another, because that is truly what war is.

Kaga took this approach with the initial games in the series because he "wanted to create a game where the player could get more emotionally invested in what’s happening." He wanted a refutation of the numbers game, and this is often highlighted by each character’s individual death quote if they are slain in battle. Any Fire Emblem player can tell you stories of the permadeath system and the psychological impetus it puts on your actions in this game. I remember running through Four-Fanged Offense in my first playthrough as a kid. Doing everything right, and I understood implicitly I had put in serious progress for my overall army's strength. All of that... just to lose my underleveled Guy to a terrifying guerilla attack from the boss. I was in tears of frustration. Then I reset the game and did it all again. I did that despite the fact I didn't even need Guy to continue on through the game. I did it because I was invested and I wanted him to be stronger and see it through to the end. I could've continued, replaced him in the army. But that wouldn't be Guy in my army. I couldn't just replace him with a identical, perhaps even stronger generic unit. He would be lost forever, and dead from a narrative standpoint. Lost as a casualty of war while the other characters pushed through to victory. I couldn't deal with that. This is something Fire Emblem really became famous for among gaming circles.

Permadeath is so contentious that the series itself changes its attitude towards it as it attempted to garner more mass appeal. Permadeath in the later entries like Three Houses is now locked behind “Classic” modes while consequences are far lighter in casual or normal gameplay difficulties. That feels like a poignant descriptor. The specter of permadeath and its affect on your gameplay is just quintessential Fire Emblem to me. There isn’t a better word to describe the experience of Fire Emblem 7 than “classic.”

"[Interviewer:] There is a scene where an important character dies along the way. What was the reason behind including this death scene?

[Tohru Narihiro:] This is a recurring theme throughout the series. The game is one with fighting, but is not just about fighting. The underlying theme of the series that we want people to feel is the foolishness and fickle nature of war and battle. This has been the continuous theme of the series."

Simply put, I don't think I would have been able to appreciate Final Fantasy Tactics as that kid back in 2003, and possibly not have forged the same relationship with strategy games (and games in general) as I did with Blazing Blade. I don't think that lessens Tactic’s impact as a seminal piece of art. I think it just speaks to why my connection to Fire Emblem 7 feels more significant.

Playing as an adult, the game hasn’t remotely lost its luster to me. I don’t even view this as a product of nostalgia- Fire Emblem 7 stands proud among its compatriots with a well designed ratio of difficulty, strong characterization, implicit depth, intuitive game design, and player expression. You can take the road of ruthless efficiency, sacrifice units if you have to, and achieve your low turn count mastery of the game. You can raise your favorite units and see them through to the end. You can do a little of both. The game is amazing regardless.

I love Fire Emblem, I love strategy RPGs and I have this game to thank for that.

I picked up Shenzhen Solitaire by Zachtronics a couple years ago and didn't think much of it. I played it a little and found it confusing and arcane. My mind couldn't think or plan ahead the way the game needed you to, and I got frustrated having to reset constantly.

For a long time I have struggled with feelings of inadequacy, in all aspects of my life. What is self-worth when you have so little with which to define one's self? The kind of destructive thinking that informs anything and everything you do. I have 3000+ hours on Paladins. More than half of that time I have probably spent frustrated- about my aim, my KDA, my game sense and knowledge. Constantly checking the stat trackers, getting discouraged that I can never be like the good players.

Shenzhen Solitaire has a way of sneaking up on you, as you sit there resetting the board. I got into the habit of clicking and slightly dragging a card over and over as I scan the board for possible routes, the way someone might shuffle or fidget with a physical deck of cards. The same droning ambient loop plays in perpetuity, to this day I don't even know if I really even like it. But I could listen to that loop for hours, and I did end up listening to it for hours. Turning it off was weird- the silence actually felt deafening.

Getting my first win was a revelatory moment, cause I had probably lost 50-100 times before I finally cleared the board. The feeling of accomplishment may have been the closest I had gotten to self-actualization in a long time. I have these moments of hyperfixation my entire life. They all matter to me in different ways, but solitaires a bit different. I felt like I was clearing cobwebs in my brain through constant iteration. I felt satisfied, and I realized I had stopped getting frustrated a long time ago. Awhile later, I reached 20 wins, and it clicked for me why it was working so well for me. It's because I was feeling, for a brief moment in the whirlwind of life, like I was actually at peace.

There's a lot of writing out there on what makes solitaire so compelling. Francine Prose wrote in Solitaire: Me vs. Me the following: "Like writing, it’s entirely private, the exertion is purely cerebral; you’re playing against yourself, against your previous best, against the law of averages and the forces of chance. You’re taking random elements and trying to put them together in a pleasing way, to make order out of chaos."

As I sit there, fighting against both my brain and the board state, I finally make a move that allows me to sort out an entire pile. I feel a feeling of elation that video games very rarely give me anymore. Its as if my thoughts have decayed by the constant low-level dread of depression, and I have sunk into the worst kinds of maladaptive coping mechanism. Competitive online gaming gave me an outlet to let out frustration and anxiety, but I rarely was feeling good whether I won or I lost. I was always on-edge, always annoyed at something. Even the act of running the game itself became a source of anxiety. Researching monitors, FPS optimizations, mouse polling rates and DPI. Everything felt like a constant tightrope and I think to myself, when did this stop being a game? When did I stop having fun doing this?

Zachtronics Solitaire Collection has allowed me a calm respite in the storm of my thoughts- a world in which I can both relax and challenge myself in a healthy manner. While regular Freecell and Klondike solitaire are very simple conceptually, they provide a solid blueprint for creatives to remix into extremely deep play experiences.Fortune's Foundation, with its beautiful tarot cards and complicated ruleset, is a particular standout. It has so many possible fail states that Zach included an Undo button, which is somewhat of a rarity in the popular Solitaire-likes. Even with the option, it's such a difficult game that I have yet to clear it. I have gotten close- so tantalizingly close- only to realize an action I made 50 moves ago has painted me in a corner. I realize it, I note where I went wrong, I reset, and I try again.

I think it has taught me to deal with failure in a far more healthy way. I come from a career field where making a mistake is met with open hostility, and I make many mistakes. It's so easy to internalize failure in the immediate moment as an inherent failing of either the self or others. In the smorgasboard of sight and sound that is competitive gaming, where its so easy to tie your self-worth with your mechanical skill, it becomes natural to spiral into the worst impulses.

The repetitive, calming nature of solitaire has become a therapeutic exercise for me, in ways I mostly imagined games to be. I long called gaming my coping mechanism- but it was hardly anything like that. Being able to find an experience like this, in solitude, has made all the difference for me. Gaming is a personal experience, as all art is. So what makes something like a standard deck of cards into a meditative gaming experience is just that.

In Solitaire, all that awaits failure is the humdrum ambience of the background and the opportunity to reset the board and try again. In solitude, I learned to center myself in the moment rather than allow my anxiety to consume my every thought. In solitude, I learned to give myself a chance.

(Note: I am just putting a general content warning here as I feel that is the right thing to do.)

Everything this game tries to tell you is all wrong.

And yes, it is a game. When I was really young, I had a passion to try and make an adventure game and I used this really awful little program called TADS to make a demo for something called Gates to Purgatory. I only coded a starting area, some basic puzzles and interactions, and an "ending." After that I never touched it again. You can still view the TIGsource thread for it and even play it. (Don't play it.) It's nothing but a bunch of nonsense text, but I still consider it a work of art; a work of creativity. We can argue at length about the intrinsic qualities of art, what constitutes art, what constitutes specific types of art. Entire schools of philosophy discussing these intangibles but in the end its easiest to default to broad interpretations.

Maybe there is no real art to either my game or Notch's, but there is "passion"; in Drowning in Problems there is a passion to appear extremely profound, a passion to sound smarter than everyone else, a passion to express how much of a tortured soul you are. Notch released this in 2014, the same year he jumped ship from Mojang and the creation that had made him a literal millionaire. The game's thesis boiled down to the absolute futility of life and death- baby's first rumination on nihilism. Nothing matters, what's the point?

I went through this exact same conversation with myself well into my mid-20s, dealing with the worst depression of my life. Two inpatient stays, many medical leaves, some broken hearts (I guess it would be 3 on Drowning's meter). I don't look back at this as a deficiency, but I learned from it and grew from it. Notch was 35 years old and rich as hell, and two years later he decided to double down on his prejudices towards the others he felt had somehow wronged him. Going into social media tirades and projecting his own extreme self-hatred on people much more at risk than he is. Notch can pay for therapy. The entire groups of people he chose to antagonize and target, a lot of them cannot. He never learned or grew from Drowning in Problems, he just channeled it into cruelty. This is one of the major problems with adults who choose to be defeatist and nihilist; when all that discontent and dissatisfaction gets funneled through the pipeline of hatred.

You get +Body at the start of this game... there are people who are born into this world without a fully functioning body, or mind. People who can never walk, talk, see. What does Notch propose here? That they have even less in their inventory were we to gamify their existences? There are people born with nothing. Born without any of the comforts or conveniences that you and I share, who still choose to greet each day with courage and strength. People in Gaza are drowning in more than just self-pity and yet they continue to resist in the face of overwhelming death and despair. If nothing matters, what's the point of them doing what they are doing?

Life is worth much, much more than Notch implies it to be. You do not need to be told that what you do doesn't matter. Your actions will affect people no matter what. This tantrum of his could come from the most sincere place of extreme depression and that would not change anything about how fundamentally wrong it is. When I was depressed, I didn't go around telling other people they didn't matter. I felt that about myself, but it was all a product of extreme self-hatred. I knew even then how irresponsible it was to extrapolate my own psychosis and apply it uncritically to everyone else. With the benefit of hindsight, it just feels like Notch is trying to absolve himself of the consequences of having to exist in a world that is always going to be "political" in the way he didn't want it to be.

Just like Notch himself, Drowning in Problems is trash, and as such, belongs to the dustbin of history.

Sure, I know that the only winning move is not to play. The cycle of ultra violence is self perpetuating. You are your own worst enemy- a willing genocidal puppet, and the game wants to make that clear. Yet Hotline Miami undermines itself with its complete disrespect of the player's intelligence.

My eyes rolled into the back of my head when, after smashing in a guard dog's head like a wet pumpkin, Hotline Miami gives you an achievement called "Dog Lover."

This kind of wanton ultraviolence is presented as subversive critique, but it is toothless. You have no other way with which to complete the objective than murdering all these people and animals. There is no creative way with which to clear a level- you must kill, and kill brutally. You kill and kill and kill and kill, no other choice in the matter, and then return home to have the game preach to you about how you're super desensitized to violence cause its just a video game. The game maintains this same juvenile sense of superiority for the entire runtime. It seems to believe everyone who plays it is so stupid as to not really understand the weight of their actions.

"Do you like hurting people?" Snore.

The cult of hyper masculinity has been a disaster for the human race, so I can buy that some people will just see this the way they want to see it. Yet, most people with any sense of the concept of ethics will immediately understand this game's repudiation of violence. Thusly, the extremely overt messaging comes off as bitter pretention. It was 2012 when this game came out. It wasn't the first game to present us with the concept of violence against faceless enemies. None of this arrogance feels earned.

Released years later, 2019's Streets of Rogue plays extremely similar to Hotline Miami and it was similarly wont to mock the player for their brutality. In this case, the mockery has justification- for every time you run into a building, swing a knife or firing a machine gun indiscriminately, there were dozens of other ways to solve the problem at hand.

This game thinks it is very profound for playing as an assassin, being told to kill everybody in a building, and having no other recourse than to either kill everybody or not play the game. Even No Russian worked better as a critique, because it didn't make you shoot everyone in that airport. You had the choice to pull the trigger.

I guess Jacket also had the choice not to swing the bat on the 99th dog for that achievement. It would've been nice, in that case, if I actually had to go out of my way to do that, before being derisively branded a "dog lover" for doing what the game is forcing me to do.

Absolutely incredible soundtrack, though.

It is a reflection of the crustiest self-indulgence and excess of the FGC before eSports began to sanitize everything. Full of jokes that will make no sense to all but a very small subset of a small niche of gamers. In a sense, its a time I am thankful we are past, because there were a lot of "influencers" within the community who were in fact very harmful people. As a fighting game, this doesn't even pass for something to run on a kusoge night. Its full of corny humor, ugly to look at and it isn't actually fun to play. They were more interested in epic references than trying to make the game at all appealing to anyone outside of their hyper-specific niche. Once again, a reflection of the nature of competitive fighting games during the era of Street Fighter IV.

This game would smell just like those green cans of Axe deodorant.

A perfect storm of the horror lurking just behind the corner and the ugliness that lays just behind a person's true feelings. Perhaps the most gothic thing I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. The greater mystery within Misericorde is given foundation, but Volume One serves mostly as an introduction to the complex, flawed actors. Everything is carefully crafted right down to certain lines that receive no further attention.

As a period piece, it is made to be accessible as possible to the reader in service of the overall narrative - this works in Misericorde's favor as a piece about a 1400s priory could easily be impenetrable. The dark setting of the abbey is truly one of the scariest things I have ever seen in a game- the black and white imagery lends to a giallo aesthetic that is sublime. Also, this has one of the best soundtracks ever.

And xeecee's philosophical explorations of the time period have now engrossed me: the demerits of literalism (biblical or otherwise), class in the gothic era, how theology and sexism intertwine in this sort of monastic process... a truly fantastic game that has gotten me doing my research. Can't wait for Volume 2.

Edit: The dialogue in this game- as mentioned before- is made to be accessible as possible to read. This means the game overall bucks authenticity in favor of better animating the character's personality. The characters speak modern english, in the sort of timeless tradition of graphic novels and media that takes a similar approach. This can serve to break the immersion, but for me, it worked 90 percent of the time. There is one scene where the characters get into a debate about ducks that didn't really work for me, but otherwise, its good stuff.

This might be one of the worst SRPGs ever made. It's as if somebody at Masaya saw Fire Emblem: Awakening and said "Just make something like that, I don't know." Every aspect of a once well-regarded series has been butchered to be unrecognizable. I know Langrisser wasn't a franchise with much appeal outside of Japan, but it's still unfortunate this was probably some people's first introduction to it. It reeks of desperation to co-opt trends, but fails to actually do anything enjoyable.

Satoshi Urushihara's art has always been a bit goofy, with the barbie doll-like proportions. But here, it has been replaced with generic nu-shonen abominations. Urushihara's art feels like it is from the Italian Renaissance in comparison. There are a ton of disgusting, pedophilic design choices such as putting what appear to be children into hyper-sexualized lingerie (just like Awakening, which I haven't forgotten). Within the first 15 minutes, there were three such cases of these designs. This was not an isolated decision, but rather a reflection of the trend of lowest-common denominator otaku bait.

The disconnect between this game and its predecessors almost makes me feel as if they took Langrisser and its mechanics and pasted it onto a concept they had for an original IP. We have seen when long-standing series need to reinvent themselves to face changing market realities. Awakening and later Three Houses were successful applications of careful market research used to revitalize their dying franchise. Re:incarnation Tensei has none of the nuance such games employ in bridging the old and new. You have a bare approximation of classic Langrisser combat, some of the music, the sword is called the "Langrisser Sword." Yet that is all hampered by the horrid presentation, and the baffling design choices. Listening to As a Knight play for 15 seconds during the results screen for a map had me looking like the wojak pulling at his eyes in despair. The complete disconnect between the music and the game itself is so stark: hearing music composed for a game full of genuine artistry be paraded on the rotting, bloated corpse of the franchise at that point in time.

The art is hideous and the actual battle animations are just as bad. The overworld sprites show just a bit of promise- that is, until you start combat and its two Funko Pops running at eachother with a total of 5 frames of animation between them. Not joking here. They run at eachother and wiggle a bit. That's the ENTIRE combat animation. It is shockingly lazy considering the game this is trying to bite off of. The captain units, which traditionally have a squadron surrounding them, fight alone and it looks jarring during the combat sequence. Your recruits are still depicted as full squadrons- why did they change how the leader units work? It just looks embarrasingly bad; as if some sort of extreme budget cut happened midway through development. I wouldn't be suprised if that is what actually happened, considering how the game runs.

Performance is terrible across the board. The game itself seems to struggle to render even these sparse animations. The maps are so large, the map grid seems to cause the game to hang as well. This might just be a quirk of emulation accuracy, but the game is just so damn slow it reminds me of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. I could only make it through about 3-4 maps before I realized there was no possible way I could ever enjoy playing it.

And last but not least, the insane design choices that drag this game from just a terrible spin-off to something uniquely bad as an SRPG. Gone is the tight gameplay and strategic depth of the original series. There is a Final Fantasy Tactics-styled turn order that does not lend to the large sorties of Langrisser at all. Then there is the issue of the huge maps with no way to speed up or skip enemy movement, leading to inflated and tedious enemy phase times. This is hardly atypical of Langrisser titles, but here's the unique kicker- you cannot save your progress mid-game whatsoever. In a 2015 title with huge maps and long enemy phases, you can't stop playing or you'll be forced to do the entire thing over again.

Langrisser is always going to be a bit of an acquired taste when it comes to both its macro- and micro-strategy, but had this been my first introduction to any of it I would have given up on SRPGs altogether. Avoid this game and continue to pray with me for a world where we don't have to endure lolicon fetishes in our tactical RPGs anymore.

Even though I initially played for about 20 hours, lost interest and dropped it to rot my brains playing Apex Legends and other such dopamine addiction fixes, I knew this was an extremely good game from what I did experience. I recently returned to it, sunk another 20+ hours in and realized that Fae Tactics is easily one of the best indie offerings to the genre because it is unapologetically itself.

Many of the prominent indie titles of the past decade (Symphony of War, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark, Dark Deity, etc.) have kept their influences closely abreast as the tactics genre can best be described as "burgeoning" on PC. As a style of gameplay, SRPGs are quite niche. So understandably, the best route to more players will have these developers jockeying to give us the next FFT or Fire Emblem on PC, titles that have long been relegated to consoles. Many of these games are straight up unplayable without emulation, though the increased popularity of PC gaming and Square Enix's embrace of such has given the true believers a chance to revisit the classics (still no Final Fantasy Tactics remaster or port, though..) But the library of PC SRPGs has been steadily growing, thanks to lower barriers to entry.

Endlessfluff's Fae Tactics is in fact a port of an Xbox game, but it is very much in the new tradition of the PC indies I listed, a new-school SRPG developed by fans who grew up on the classics and hope to bring the genre to new audiences. But Fae is a somewhat stark departure from many of the others. While we have come to be used to the high fantasy environment and Japanese anime-inspired artstyles ushered in by the predecessors, Fae Tactics visual signature is far more distinct. It has the colorfulness and whimsicality of EndlessFluff's earlier work in titles like Valdis Story, bringing to life its various characters and biomes with an aesthetic similar to Ralph Bakshi's artistic direction in Wizards (1977). The emphasis on color and distinct sihouettes allows EndlessFluff's artist CaroMoya to transcend the rather generic art styles of its contemporaries and focus on designs that communicate personality, environment and race. And shoutouts to Sam English's wonderful score for further bringing this game to life.

The comparison to Wizards is apt beyond just the art style; as it brings together the same thematic and narrative elements as well- a world that has been reclaimed by the magical fae after a cataclysmic event; natural elements allowed to spread unhindered by human technological advancement but still coming into conflict with that which has been left behind, like scars that threaten to be reopened.

Fae Tactic's experimental heart permeates every aspect of its SRPG foundations; you're not playing a bishonen royal prince with a small company of knights in this game. Its main character is a precocious young witch in a world that fears her very existence and your initial companions are a bird with water magic and... a dog. (Shoutouts Faerghast, you did it first) Peony is a lovely character; instantly recognizable by her bright design and personality. Each new character you meet have their hearts and minds slowly opened by her unflinching altruism and childlike innocence, I could only join them in being won over. I was laughing every time she got embarrassed; felt my heart melting every time she cried. One of my favorite protagonists by a very, very long shot. Truly, women are powerful and Peony is the most powerful.

Fae Tactics also has an unconventional approach to how it develops its narrative. The game itself operates on a week-based calendar, with the passage of time affecting things like access to certain areas or quest timers. This works well for me, as it allows me to tackle the campaign at your own leisure. Generally speaking, until the lategame there will always be 2 or more major quests to challenge. So if you're struggling with one, you can just play another or do some "free matches" to farm scrolls. Thanks to each weekday being represented by an element, the system has strong ludonarrative significance with each day buffing its corresponding element.

This game flew under the radar if there ever was one, so finding information and discussion on this game was somewhat tasking. If there is a common sentiment I have seen about Fae Tactics, cribbed together from various posts through the years I have managed to find floating about the ether, it is that the game can sometimes present an unfair challenge. This is an interesting dynamic when you start to consider how pared down the actual combat mechanics are on the surface. You only have three actions: attack, assist buff or wait (self-buff). Further, Square Enix set a benchmark for build complexity with Final Fantasy Tactics by which most hardcore SRPG fans will anchor their expectations. Subsequent games within the genre focused heavily on customizability within your army. The ability to modify your units to your preferences with things like skill trees, inheritances, reclassing is now genre standard. Fae Tactics chooses to trade in some of that build complexity for a more streamlined experience- there is a smaller scope of progression for units outside of the basic stat modifiers as you level up. The main characters (dubbed "Leader Units") have all their passives by default and can only change these passives through very limited customization options. For example, Peony can swap between three different weapons, each bestowing her new element and some different passives.

Apart from Leader units, there is also a monster-collection subsystem in the game in which killing certain enemies bestows you summon cards, allowing you to bring up to three additional units to the fight. These monsters are a case of "what you see is what you get," their passives are set and only base stats can be augmented via scrolls. Thusly, the importance is placed on the team composition that will utilize these monsters to maximum efficacy. In addition, the monster collecting process is a welcome diversion from progressing the story- with rare monsters to hunt only available in certain locations on certain days. Satoshi Tajiri, eat your heart out.

Fae arguably succeeds in streamlining the process, as builds are much simpler and straightforward and the much of the "planning" phase instead centers around macro-level strategy. Rather than spending hours tweaking individual values on the characters, you instead match teams based on elemental affinities and passives that "combo" together well. Thus combat is focused how well you effectuate these combos, and the inability to optimize will significantly contribute to the difficulty.

The difficulty of the game boils down to two factors: 1) the enemy level scales with the highest level member of your party (and since she is mandatory for every encounter, that is almost always going to be Peony unless you intentionally do not use her) and 2) the enemy has access to the same powerful offensive and defensive buffs you do, often multiplied to insane values. Bosses in this game can easily stack upwards of 200+ defense, high amounts of damage reduction, and will one shot you if you are not properly built to take their hits.

The solution to this, however, is actually quite simple thanks to the nature of the game's overall mechanics. You pick the element that is advantaged, equip and upgrade things that will buff that element, and take advantage of the "weekday" you are choosing to fight. Even though the bosses may sit across the map permanently buffing themselves until you reach them, I have yet to meet a challenge that was insurmountable during my playthrough. There's always clear answers to specific enemy tactics, ie. you have an enemy stacking defense buffs? Bring defense imperils. The level scaling makes things difficult, but imo it also keeps things fair. The enemy keeps pace with you statwise, and can easily destroy you if your plan of action isn't solid- and I think this overall creates a satisfying level of challenge in which you cannot simply dominate the enemy on stat differential alone. And to be sure, there are very, very broken passives in this game (Protector, I am looking at you) that can make even the most impossible-seeming scenarios in this game doable. But I can hardly call this a demerit. The greatest games in the genre have been deconstructed ad infinitum to come up with strategies that trivialize the hardest content; for me, this is part of the allure of the strategy RPG.

Then, my major criticism can mostly be boiled down to technical deficiencies that came with it being ported from consoles to PC; but for the most part these can be overlooked. The game has too much going for it for any of my criticisms to diminish the overall experience.

Fae Tactics does things different, it plays with its food and is focused on innovation and expressing itself over sticking hard and fast to the classics. This experimentation is only to the games benefit, its missteps end up being more interesting than something like Dark Deity's most faithful and successful recreations of the formula. We need more games in the genre like this that seek to push boundaries, rather than reify them.

If Valorant represents the hero shooter at one extreme, Gigantic sits at the other: it is primarily a MOBA with shooter elements, more in a line with a traditional League of Legends or DoTA 2 experience than anything like Overwatch, Paladins or Apex Legends. Because of the massive burst damage and CC potential of the melee units, you get that tight negotation of space so emblematic of traditional MOBAs: players engaging in passive stare downs, waiting for the slightest perceptible opening to pounce. A high stakes game of chicken where there is just a hairs breadth between "overextending" into certain death or confirming a kill. In contrast, the ranged characters play and feel like your more traditional hero shooter fare, but the power that would come with so much map control has been heavily nerfed to compensate. Primary fire damage is low, time to kill is obscenely high, and everything revolves around disengagement and cooldowns. There's no creeps to farm, but the movement and mechanics are undoubtedly MOBA.

But these concepts don't translate as well as they probably should. I noted it in this game's Korean cousin, Storm Strikers, as well; this game's readability is complete trash. The time to kill being so high, you just get a crowd of characters wailing on eachother, spamming cooldowns with very little thought. Bright colors flash all over the screen, giant AOES of no discernible origin cover the ground, and giant white letters pop up to say "FROZEN. ARMOR BROKEN. SLOWED. POISONED. VOID GRIPPED." It's just graphical vomit, the kind people will tell you "Don't worry bro, it all makes sense after 1000 hours bro, I swear bro." Be that as it may, the problem with these games is player retention, and it doesn't have the benefit of the older MOBAs long-running communities to fall back on. New players are not going to know what is killing them, how fast and why. It might be novel while everyone plays with the new toy; but as the playerbase wanes and the skill gap widens this is going to be a problem. Just ask Storm Strikers with its 10 daily players.

As a long time player of these titles, I know good concepts when I see them, and Gigantic has some really strong points in its favor. The game has great pacing in the current "Rush" mode and I feel like it rewards both game sense and high mechanical skill equitably. I can see why this game had a diehard community, and it's satisfying to see these players get their game back in the era of GaaS. Many of my favorite MOBAs and hero shooters are gone for good, casualties of a mix of bad marketing and corporate greed. I never even got to play Gigantic before it got hit with the end of service announcement. Now that I've finally played it, I can see both why its loved and why it was canned.

Games like this need to focus on player retention, especially if they are paid titles. So the developers undoubtedly have their work cut out for them. Framerate optimization, server stability and UI fixes stand out as the most important pain points; but the new user onboarding has to also be drastically improved. Then it is a matter of making sure those players stay onboard- and the answer is never a battle pass or balance patches. What we need to see out of Gigantic is alternate ways to play the game- as these sorts of options are appeal to casual userbases. Different gamemodes are an important part of the hero shooter ecosystem because they allow for healthier player seperation. Let the tryhards dominate modes with more competitive depth, but give the normal players a low-stakes gamemode where they can just relax and turn their brains off.

As it is, Gigantic feels doomed to fail, but all hope is not lost if the developers have been paying as close attention to the industry as the players have.

I'll keep it simple: it just hits a sweet spot of polish that I can't really fault it for anything. I don't think tann is doing anything new with Slice & Dice, but they are doing everything well. It feels like a gold standard when it comes to scale for a game like this. 20 randomly generated waves, 5 randomly generated heroes, and upgrades between each round. The combat is standard Dream Quest or Slay the Spire but the pacing is much faster straight from the get-go. Health is low, enemy damage is high, and typically you're looking at a potential dead unit every turn. The undo mechanic ties everything together with a neat bow, allowing for players to explore different chains of combat resolution. The freedom to view cause-and-effect allows the player to easily understand some of the more deep interactions and plan around them. The reroll feature is also nice; it makes me wish there was the option to shuffle-draw in more deckbuilders as a standard. There are similar mechanics in Children of Zodiarc that has been quite enjoyable.

It's an exceedingly simple gameplay loop that you have definitely seen before in many other games, but it is the valedictorian. When it comes to broad descriptions of "replay value" and "bang for your buck," you can't beat an offering like Slice & Dice. The sheer amount of content will keep anyone receptive to it engaged for hours. It will be considered a classic in a couple years.

A basic but effective roguelite, that trades the depth and gameplay variety of Emerald Rogue for the QOL of Pokemon Essentials. It is sadly buggy and unfinished; I freaked the game out by tricking a Choice Scarf onto Ferrothorn and PP stalling it. It caused a debug flood every turn, which means the developer probably never coded such an interaction. While I don't blame them for not knowing every nuance of competitive Pokemon, these sorts of fangames are always implicitly relying on such mechanics. You give me a Choice Band and Switcheroo in a game where the difficulty is this high, it's the natural next step.

I also find the balancing a little too on the punishing side, even for normal mode. Healing is very scarce and healing items are prohibitively expensive. In a game like Pokemon, switching is core to manuevering to your win condition- it is thus inevitable to rack up a ton of residual damage. In the context of a ten-floor roguelite involving competitive Pokemon mechanics, this gets pretty difficult. The AI is still quite stupid, but the game splashes just enough random coverage moves, held items and abilities to make it very challenging. Stuff like running into a Mega Gardevoir with Hidden Power Fighting.

The developer seems to have abandoned Battle Woods, which to me is kind of a disappointment. Emerald Rogue is undoubtedly the gold standard for roguelikes based off the main series gameplay (Mystery Dungeon, of course, remains the best crossover between Pokemon and Rogue) but the problem is... it's based on Pokemon Emerald. The battle animations are painfully slow, and having to use a fast forward macro in between actions is very cumbersome. In this regard, I feel Pokemon Essentials titles are far superior to their progenitors. The option to disable animations, among other QOL, vastly improves the formula. Things like ability capsules, EV and IV displays, and much more robust menus really improve the experience. On the other hand, there is just enough changed and things implemented from later generations that I'm not exactly sure what to expect. There aren't many resources on the internet regarding things like movesets and such, so it is very much a coin flip when it comes to match start. A bad lead matchup can mean losing 3+ Pokemon, and in Battle Woods any Pokemon that are fainted are removed at the end of the battle.

The non-battle rooms are well-designed enough, though a bit boring. Move relearners, egg moves, TM shop, a lottery, etc. It works well enough, but it lacks the unique and varied maps offered by Emerald Rogue. You are ensured a new Pokemon, as well as a teamwide heal, at fixed intervals; so you never really feel like you are totally screwed over when it comes to traversal.

The game has a total of 4 stages with something like 11 rooms each. If you play quickly, a run will last an hour to two hours and that's a decent session. Don't feel like I want to sit here obsessively playing again and again, such as I did with Slay the Spire, but only because I am so used to Pokemon. Just battling is great and all, and I love the aspect of building your team composition on the fly thanks to the roguelite mechanics, but its still just Pokemon battling. I have spent hundreds if not thousands hours doing it; in main series games, romhacks, fangames and Pokemon Showdown. So while the roguelite offers a fresh spin on the formula, there's nothing fantastic here. It lacks any story, it uses boring characters from the anime and generation 1 games, and it doesn't particularly innovate on the battling itself.

Overall, the game is a solid effort that would have greatly benefited from further active development. The balancing issues and bugs hold it back from being truly great, and that will remain the case for as long as it is abandoned. It is fun enough to give it a couple runs and try to hunt some achievements, but I don't see it being anything worth heavy time investment.

"The important thing for games is that they allow you to lose your sense of time. The better a game is, the more it does this and makes you feel like you’ve been playing a very long time each credit. I don’t say this because short play times are best for earning income..."

- Kouji Hiroshita, one of the main developers of Contra (1987)

The punishing run and gun platforming gameplay loop that was given life with Contra (1985), the profit motive of arcade game development, and Japanese cultural depictions of the "Wild West" of post-colonial nations all combine in Metal Slug and Metal Slug 2.

Metal Slug as a franchise is something I have considered to be style over substance, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. There are plenty of games where the main draw is being as flashy as possible, and the team at Nazca was doing it better than anyone else at the time. It is a masterpiece of sight and sound, albeit a flawed one.

The obvious issues that come with a modern appraisal of a game released several decades ago- unfair game design meant to extract as much money as possible from arcade patrons; the game itself being unable to handle all the particle effects and slowing down to below 15 FPS; the fact that this is simply an emulator running the game rather than a real PC port- it all takes a back seat to how amazing the game's art direction is. The gameplay itself is a frustrating mess, especially within the context of an arcade machine that requires credits. In comparison to many other staples, the room for error is especially small in Metal Slug 2. There were moment in the playthrough where the two lives you are given evaporated in under 2 minutes.

Yet, I could never imagine myself giving this a wide berth were it to appear one day at the local Round One or Dave & Busters. It is the same reason so many people cherish games like Street Fighter 2 and The Simpsons: you get a memorable experience regardless of how many credits you were willing to devote to it.

The level design is solid and delivers plenty of variation across its initial 5 stages (the final missions is a glaring exception.) The soundtrack is a home run, the boss fights are enjoyable for what they are and overall it delivers some truly hilarious moments- all strengths of the genre. Perhaps we look back upon these Japanese science fiction epics with a bit too much of a rose-tinted lens, but Metal Slug 2 is one of the more solid arcade titles of the era.

This is a McRPG. I mean that somewhat affectionately, because the team behind this game is pretty high pedigree. But this is the most inoffensive, toothless, middle of the road RPG I have played in awhile. The formula here is sanitized, a corporate approach to the genre. It's a McRPG. That's fine if you want more RPG. I love a McRPG now and then. This one just isn't hitting.

Also the screen tearing makes me nauseous. There is no VSync option and forcing it through your graphics card doesn't seem to work.