[Awards] Game of the Year 2023

WHAT'S UP GAMERS!? ELECTRIC BARRIER COMIN' ATCHA ONCE AGAIN TO TELL YOU ABOUT THE HELLA SICK NASTY GAMES THAT CAME OUT THIS YEAR, HOLLA!

 

HOW ABOUT THAT BALDUR'S GATE 3!?!?! I WOULDN'T KNOW DAWG, CUZ I DON'T PLAY THAT NERD SHIT!!!

 

I play other nerd shit. So let's talk about that. 

This year, I somehow messed up my back near the end and it's still bad(help I'm probably going to need surgery) which has made it somewhat painful to be playing games on my TV and less so to do so at my computer, so I've been playing more PC games and emulating this year. 

Generally speaking too, I've just been playing a lot of old games. I once again played and replayed more previously released games than new ones, so let's, as always, do the Old Games Of the Year segment!

 

Strap in for the whole thing, I wrote a fucking lot about all the games. I really didn't know what to do for most of them other than these mini, or maybe really not-so-mini, reviews of them due to their nature and how much I have to say or how interesting they are to talk about.

OLD GAMES OF THE YEAR!

 

Games I Replayed:

 

 

Okami

Way back at the start of the year, I played Okami again. Not much else to say, Okami is a great game and honestly the best Zelda game out there. Seriously, it's a hard Zelda clone, I feel like Nintendo could have sued if they really wanted to. That's not to say there's no originality or creativity, of course, it's an interesting spin on the core template of Zelda, especially 3D Zelda. I'm sure you know what Okami is if you're reading this, and it's still as good now as it was back then. A fantastic game with very little hiccups. Those being the Blockheads, who you have to have way better memorization skills than I to do properly, which would be fine if they were all optional but... nowadays though, it's easy to just record a video of the screen with your phone and cheat lol. I really can't think of any other issues I have with it, it's just a great and well put together game. I highly recommend it!

 

 

 

Resident Evil 4:

As I played the remake, I ended up having the itch to go back and replay the original as well. Resident Evil 4 is still close to a perfect game, there's really not much else to say about it. I don't give it a 10/10 because that's not the criteria I hand out 10s for, things don't start at 10 and then lose points, they start at 5(well, 6 if we're being totally honest about how I rate things) and gain and lose points. RE4 doesn't gain enough points for 10/10 to me, but it doesn't really lose any either. That's right, I even like the Island part. I didn't actually know people didn't like the Island part until this year when people ended up talking about it because of the remake. It's actually my favorite part. If anything the castle drags a bit for me and that almost loses it some points, but even then I really like all the areas. It's just a great, solid game, and luckily it's RE4 so I don't have to explain it further.

I also played Separate Ways, which is still pretty good especially for some, let's be honest, thrown together mode for later releases.

 

Resident Evil 2

I then ended up replaying Resident 2.

I mean Resident Evil 2, not Resident Evil 2(2019). I played it on original hardware hooked up to my CRT, which really is the optimal way to play the game. People will argue up and down that something like that isn't the case, that despite literally being made for playing on the console they were made for, on a CRT, in 4:3, that they were not made with this experience in mind and that playing old games in emulators hacked to 16:9 is superior. They are wrong. 

Anyway, RE2 is still the best game in the series don't @ me. 

Seriously, it really is great. It's the epitome of the classic survival horror experience, well the "Type A" survival horror experience at least. Silent Hill is the "Type B", where the horror is emphasized over the survival. But Resident Evil is the survival emphasized over the horror. And 2 is the best of that style, in my opinion. Partly because of the Zapping System, so sadly gutted from the remake. It adds another element of decision making to the equation, whether or not you actually wanna take certain weapons and items, since you then won't be able to with the other character. The mixing and matching of the scenarios too, as it's another factor to consider when you know you have to fight a boss with the other character's weapons, maybe you aren't confident in doing that and wanna stick with the opposite scenario. Combine this with the already great formula, the initial overwhelming nature of an area eventually turning into mastery over it as you play your cards right and figure out how to efficiently make your way through, being very well executed once again and you have, to me, the best game in the series and the best of this kind of survival horror.

 

 

 

 

Resident Evil 2(2019)

I did also play the remake again, though, after playing the original. My feelings on it haven't changed; great game, very good modernization of the original idea that keeps it's spirit intact, but not without it's flaws. The zapping system and dual scenarios being cut/simplified, the inferior version of Chief Irons, the wildly inconsistent amounts of shots it takes to kill zombies(that's true of the original I think, but not to this degree, it's like 1 or 2 more shots versus 5 or more), the inferior version of Claire, the cut content, just too many knocks against it to stand with the original. Still a great game.

I played on Hardcore mode, since I never had. I wouldn't recommend it. On hard, basically every hit you take brings you to danger, making mid level healing totally worthless. One minor mistake and it's yeah get the fuck out and heal. It's just aggravating, not even really that much harder. I feel like the enemies are a BIT more aggressive and probably do take more damage, but generally I could handle it without much issue. It's the damage you take that's the issue, just making it frustrating instead. The amount of ink ribbons you get isn't small enough either to matter, while I ended up having less than I tend to stockpile when I play through old RE games I still ended up having plenty. It was more likely I'd make a mistake a couple minutes after saving and just reload, I'd often make plenty of progress just fine without needing to save. Though this did end up with me needing to do certain puzzles multiple times in a row, which was frustrating. Knowing I actually could have saved more only makes that more annoying. I assumed I'd really need to ration them out, but not really. Same with healing items, I actually did kind of have a bunch left over because I reloaded so often, assuming I'd need more than I did... but why didn't it? Even accounting for reloading, this mode really should have drained me of my resources more. Again, it's really just more frustrating than challenging, and I kinda wish there was an option to just turn on ink ribbons on normal. 

Speaking of Survival Horror...

 

Silent Hill 1-4

I don't wanna talk too much about these, since I mean I've probably talked about how great they are before.

 

I did my yearly playthrough of the first 4 Silent Hill games. I did a low save run of the first one, saving only 3 times throughout the whole thing: Once before the first boss cuz he has an insta-kill move. Once after quitting for the day. Once before the final boss, since it's pretty tough. I didn't die once. Next time, I'm gonna do a no save run, and beat it all in one sitting.

 

2 is still an absolutely amazing game, and yeah no it really is deep. 

 

Now, 3, though, that's the epitome of the Type B survival horror. Absolute Masterpiece.

 

4 is the least good of the first 4, but it's still quite good and I really like it!

 

That's all I gotta say this time.

 

I will mention I played the Enhanced Edition of the PC port of 2. Nice job on that one, I think it's the first time I've actually played through Born from a Wish. The options are great and very intuitive, though mostly I just like being able to play it without it fucking crashing on me all the time like the PC port originally did. I played in widescreen despite normally not liking that sort of thing for 4:3 games, I'm of the mind that they were designed with 4:3 in mind and that's how they should be played. For some games maybe it doesn't matter, but for games with such artistry like the Team Silent games, I do think it's best to only be seeing what the developers intended you to see at any given time, I genuinely do think they took it into account when designing the games(this is proven by the fact the HD collection of 3 fucked up a scene when it hacked it to widescreen). That said, I have played these games a billion times, I decided it might be interesting to see how they feel in widescreen. And the hacks for 2-4 do a good job making it work.

 

The hack for 4 was actually baked into it, because I played the GOG version of SH4, which I'm so fucking glad exists. Maybe one day we can get 2 and 3 on there. The GOG version is quite good, obviously those resolution options are in there from the get go, and in my experience the hacks from PC gaming wiki actually just stretch the screen which is NOT what I want. There might have been something I did wrong, but all I had to do was up the resolution with the GOG version so yeah, not fuss no muss. Good job!

 

 

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

I did a no-death, no alert, pacifist run here. I reloaded every time I got an alert or a death, which you could say doesn't count, but I mean I still had to redo a bunch of stuff and go through the tedium of getting myself killed, exiting, and loading whenever I got one. Point is that I never just continued or let an alert go, I had to go back and not get one for this playthough. Now, the pacifist part is definitely 100% legit. I didn't kill anyone, even the bosses. All knockouts baby, even if the bosses still die in the cutscenes... Oh well!

MGS2 is still a great game, not much more to say than that.

 

 

 

 

 

IB

This one is, technically, not a replay; I played the Steam version of the game, which isn't really much different aside a couple bits of extra content and being in widescreen. Thus, I really wouldn't recommend shelling out the 12 bucks it costs if you aren't a fan of the game already. Ib is only a few hours long, it really shouldn't be more than 5 dollars. It's a good game though, so I'd recommend downloading the free, translated version on VGPerson's website. It feels like a classic RPGmaker horror adventure game to me, but it actually originally came out in 2012. No wonder there are a ton of zoomers who are nostalgic for it. I played it back when it came out because I liked RPGmaker games, I thought it was cool someone could make a little narrative based anime game all by themselves. I surprisingly haven't played that many of them, mostly having played the newer ones, but I have played actual classics like Yume Nikki and it's fangame .flow, Ao Oni, and OFF. Ib is a lot more like Ao Oni than the other 3, though closer to a Yume Nikki than OFF. It's a simple puzzle based game, you walk around as little Ib(pronounced Eeb), who's at an art gallery with her parents when things go weird... and she ends up in a surreal alternate version of the gallery where the paintings come to life... and some are hostile. OOH!!! You gotta figure out the way to progress, sometimes find a hidden key, sometimes solve some little puzzle, it's a simple type of game but fun enough and the atmosphere is great. You'll meet a couple other characters also stuck there, such as Garry and Mary, and try to find your way out. Oh, and there are multiple endings, so choose wisely! Again, it's very simple, but has cool visuals and endearing characters. Definitely worth, uh, free, but I dunno about 12 bucks. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tales of Graces: f

Also released around the same time as the original version of Ib, I also replayed Tales of Graces. Definitely still a great game and near the top of the series ranking, but it's not quite as good as I remember it being. I still quite like it, the characters are all still very endearing, and the combat system is still the undefeated champion for best in the series. Seriously, why was this never expanded upon? Why was it abandoned? Like it's got a few kinks, but work those out and you're golden. God damn, what a missed opportunity. 

Regardless, I do love it, but the flaws felt more pronounced this time. The plot is more meandering than I remember it, the characters' arcs are little rough, Asbel is way more irksome of a hero, Lambda is actually a pretty lame villain all things considered and was defeated with the "No you don't understand, there's good in people too!" speech a bit too easily, and Asbel's whole "I could have ended up just like him..." stuff was a bit more hard to buy than other times that's been done in JRPGs. Like, when Zidane says that about Kuja he might actually be right, so it makes sense that he'd feel for him and go back to try and save him at the end... though that part of the story is a little wonky on account of Kuja's biggest crime that wasn't a part of his inherent purpose was genociding an entire planet because he was mad. What I'm saying is, Graces' version of this somehow has more problems. Sorry Asbel, I really do not think you not having anyone in your hour of need would have turned you into a Destroyer of Worlds. Still, what it does thematically is pretty good, especially at the start with the whole fractured friendship thing, and while the execution is off on a lot of this I still find even the wonky parts kind of charming. And the party as a whole still has some of the most fun chemistry with each other in the whole series, making up for any shortcomings they have individually. It is definitely great game even if it's not quite as good as I remember it being.

Pascal is also still really cute, I forgot how cute Poisson was too. Cheria's still lame, though.

Cave Story

I also decided to play Cave Story again, because I'm pretty sure it's been over 10 years. Not sure when I originally played it, probably before 2010 even. This time, I went on the true ending path, which is still kind of obtuse but I think I understand what Pixel was going for when he decided to do this. He was emulating old 8 and 16 bit games, which even in the early 2000s we had people pining for the "good old days" of, and so the idea of the ultra-hard to find and pull off secret ending makes perfect sense, something people would have to discuss the game together about to figure out how to do it. After playing it, I watched a couple videos about it that complained about this. It reminds me of people complaining about how to achieve the Genocide Route in undertale. That's kind of the point, it's emulating older games as I said, that often had cryptic secrets like this. It's meant to feel really rewarding when you figure it out, likely happening after you've played the game multiple times and are scouring for anything you missed. Toby Fox was likely inspired by that, though he made the probably better choice to not make his good ending locked behind this sort of scouring, with the game giving you a lot of hints so long as you don't kill Flowey. Even then, you might think "okay what if I try to kill nobody" after one ending. Daisuke Amaya wanted it to be harder to figure out, but it was meant to invoke a similar feeling. You've played the game, probably multiple times, and are saddened by the ending. Yeah you beat the bad guy, but not only are many of the Mimiga dead, so is Curly Brace and to top it all off the floating island is crashing to the ground! Where will the remaining Mimiga live? Damn. If you played it multiple times, you might think about how you wish things could be different. Maybe you'd decide to do a challenge run where you don't get the booster, or just realized you could jump across that gap where the professor falls down and tried to see what would happen if you went through the door instead... and then, things start to change, if ever so slightly. Maybe you play through but miss a step, but maybe you decide you're gonna try again, thinking you had to have done something wrong because what's the point of this alternate path then? Just a little variation? No way. You do your best, you save Curly, and then...

Then you get to the true version of the Last Cave, and you realize you really are on to something. What that guy on the BBS said was true. Then, the door to that cabin is open as you're running away, and you go inside and see that hole in ground.

Your reward, is the hardest fight you'll have in the entire game. You figured it out, with your determination you figured out how to save her, how to get to the game's true finale. Now, you'll need even more determination. You want a happy ending? You've gotta earn it. Do your best, Soldier from the Surface.

Welcome to Hell.

 

Suffice it to say... I didn't managed to do it. I barely made it through the Last Cave, holy shit. The difficulty spike is big, and the game is already hard as it is. I managed to get past the gauntlet of enemies and the mini boss a few times, but the final boss is too fucking much. I ended up so low health and even managing to save my e-tank- er, life medicine or whatever until then I just couldn't survive. I think I could have managed to learn his patterns and beat him but I'd have to enter the fight with full health, and more importantly, be able to practice before it. Having to go all the way through the Sacred Ground first makes that nearly impossible. I really wish there was a save after it, there really should be. Not even a health refill, just a save. But alas, there isn't. So I just couldn't do it... I did use a save editor to give myself 999 HP, so I could at least see the ending and phases with my own eyes, which was cool, but I don't feel the accomplishment at all obviously.

 

Despite this I wouldn't even call it "too hard", just "too hard for me". It's a grueling onslaught in exactly the way it should be, for the whole "earn your happy ending" thing it's going for. Too much for me to do, I lacked the resolve, but still. In that cavern, with that architecture, shooting around with the jetpack, while those lines about Ballos showed on screen, fighting these angel-like creatures guarding the way, together with Curly, while that music plays? That was kino. I was feeling it, the desperation, the struggle, the tension, the awe, the holy shit this is so fucking cool, I felt it all. I wish I could have overcome the challenge, but I'm glad I at least was able to challenge it at all. Way better than just seeing a video.

So I didn't get the true ending without cheats but, whatever, the game is still great. Normal route is challenging but not undoably hard for me like the true ending, I like the approach to the storytelling where much of the worldbuilding is from the environment and generally understated. It's a complex story told in a relatively straightforward and simple way, and like the true ending example earlier a lot of the story is really told through gameplay. The feeling of making your way through these caves, fighting for these critters, is conveyed by your own travels and tribulations. This is another aspect that Toby likely drew from this game, as that's also quite true of undertale. I like both games for similar reasons, but have other reasons to like the latter more which I've gone into in the past. Still this is a great, classic game, and is essentially the indie game, as well as the doujin game in particular. All the indie/doujin games we know today, good and bad, owe a lot to this, and Touhou of course. 

Yeah I know I didn't explain what Cave Story actually is, are you stupid or something do you not know?

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sonic's Adventures

I recently downloaded Redream, the Dreamcast emulator, and so I decided to play the original Dreamcast versions of Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2.

So first, a quick review of Redream: It's great! It's extremely easy to use, no bios downloading or setting configuration really needed to just pop in a game and play. It's so compatible with PS4 controllers that it even has sensor bar functionality, though obviously that's just a blue light it shines to let you know it's connected. All I really needed to do if I recall is map my controllers. The games run perfectly even on my shitbox, which isn't always the case for even 5th gen games and definitely isn't the case for 6th gen games. Basically runs as well a PC ports of games from this era tend to. Fantastic emulator, would recommend it.

As for Sonic Adventure, well it's still rough around the edges and honestly kind of an ill conceived idea, but the Dreamcast version is definitely better than the GCN version. Like, the Director's Cut is A. not a director's cut, and 2. Ruins a lot of the game's art direction and introduces tons more bugs. I did still experience some, but SA1's buggy reputation is primarily based on the busted ass DX version. 

I enjoyed playing as all the characters, even Big the Cat really isn't that bad. Once you figure out how the finishing mechanics work it's a simple task to just get Froggy/Kaeru-kun and finish the level, his campaign is short as shit. In general, though it's got some hiccups and wouldn't be amazing anyway because it's, you know, Sonic, I really enjoy the whole interwoven, crossing paths storyline. I'm always a sucker for that sort of thing, maybe partly because I played the gamecube version as a kid. It's just a cool, ambitious concept, and gives the world a more "real" feeling to know things are actually happening outside of just one character's perspective. There are some oddities, notably that scenes are slightly different depending on who you're playing as, but it doesn't feel like it's going for a Roshomon type of story where it's just how they remember it. I think it was because they felt people wouldn't wanna watch the exact same cutscene multiple times, but I would have been willing to if it made the story more cohesive. I can only assume the Sonic version of the cutscenes he's in is the canon one, but for the others I don't know. Some of this I noticed is actually the english script, as I heard Sonic saying the same line in japanese as he did in a previous version but the subtitles/english audio audio said a different one. I dunno which way this went, sometimes with properties like this the english is actually the original and the japanese is the dub, but either way, part of it is definitely the english script making lines different. I've harped on about this too long, it's not a big deal just something I noticed I'd like to have been changed. Generally, the game is good, if not a bit wonky. I know people shit on the infamous "Sonic had a rough transition to 3D", and that's warranted because the DC version got glowing reviews while this started being said when the GCN version released, and has become a though-terminating cliche amongst youtubers who talk about it. The mocking is deserved, but the actual statement isn't incorrect. SA1 is a rough transition to 3D, plain and simple, a lot of the controls are a tad wonky and they even knew how broken some of it is since they decided to try and design some of the game around breaking levels in two. It's clear that at the time, figuring out how to do Sonic in 3D was tough and they couldn't do much more than this, they did well considering the task, but they'd go on to do better. It's not a great game but I do think it's a pretty good one, it just is undeniably a shakey first step that they would later rectify, and then do much worse later, before returning to form and then falling off the cliff again. Sonic Team is inconsistent is what I'm saying. Anyway, the characters are still all fun to play as, I like how each one gets a little bit more of the world building with the Tikal flashbacks and stuff, I think the general theme of the story in the end is a fun idea for a kid's game. You know it's some basic oh no human greed caused the echidnas to hurt the chao and Chaos and so now he's been filled with hatred because negativity breeds more negativity, so only Sonic and his Positive Attitude can defeat him, basically. Standard ass "don't give in to hate :(" message and not a greatly executed one because I don't think a Sonic story has ever been that well done, but I dunno I think it's kinda fun. The final boss is still cool, though it's definitely really shakey on that front too. Overall, perhaps a bit too ambitious for it's own good, because it can't quite handle the scale it's going for, but I still appreciate it. Also yeah Gamma's story is still the best one, i cry evertim.

Sonic Adventure 2, on the other hand, that's the real deal. 

The cutscenes are still awkward as hell, no matter which language you have it in, and the mixing is still fucked regardless too, but even that's still charming in a way. The game and the presentation of the story is less ambitious this time around, but that probably does work out in it's favor. No more hubs and upgrades are just hidden in the stages, there are only 2 storylines and they don't interweave nearly as much. One good thing is I think the cutscenes are the same across both, no slight variation on this scene they were all in. There are extensions of them, obviously, say Sonic & Amigos leave and Eggman's still there, you'll see the parts you missed. This is cool and I always like seeing that kind of thing too, and it's really how SA1 should have done things if they wanted to do the multiple characters and have scenes be different. I really love the dumb parts of SA2's story, Shadow's design and powers really is just Edgy Sonic and I don't care, I love him. I love how everyone mistakes them for each other even though they look completely different, even fucking Amy. I also love that this is a game about a blue rodent shounen protag that involves government weapons research colonies on the moon, the government purging the scientists aboard it who Know Too Much, a black rodent shounen rival character who wants to wipe out humanity because of it but then remembers oh actually the girl I was friends(?) with said give humanity a chance, and a crazy scientist who set in motion a plan to crash the colony into the planet because the government imprisoned him and tortured him and he went mad. The game ends with you fighting a bioweapon merged with a laser cannon/space colony that's trying to crash it into the planet while the most rockin' song plays. It's pretty ridiculous, and while it didn't really register at the time, it does now and it's great. I think you need to be able to admit that, while also not getting too ironic with it or thinking these games shouldn't have stories like this. Because I played games like this as a kid, I don't really have the same tonal standards as other people. Like, yeah, sure, why can't a cartoon animal character be involved in serious stakes like global genocide? There's no reason. And while there's tons of dumb stuff about it including a couple actual plot holes, there's a tone of good stuff in it too. Shadow may look like Black Sonic but his character's really interesting, under all the cool edge meant to appeal to 13 year olds is a story about not learning to care about your origins or how "real" you are. Sonic was able to draw more power out of a fake Chaos Emerald than Shadow was and in a shorter time, because Sonic is sure of himself and can be proud of what he's doing, while Shadow secretly has doubts and can't be proud of his humanity destruction plan. After he finds out he's a fake version of Sonic and realizes what Maria wanted for him, he helps Sonic out and instead fights for good, allowing him to play an important role in saving the earth. Cuz it doesn't matter where you came from, what you are; who you are and what you do is what matters. It's simple but still a good theme for the kids. But forget the deep stuff, my favorite part is when the good guys and bad guys team up because I mean, Eggman wants to conquer the world not destroy it like damn man he doesn't want everybody to friggin' die! Come on now! It's just cool when a lesser villain works with the heroes to stop a greater villain, sometimes a bad guy isn't bad enough that he's a-okay with a much bigger threat succeeding, maybe even on moral grounds. It reminds you both heroes and villains share a lot of common traits, their drives and ambitions, their determination, their inability to just leave things as they are if they're discontent with it. Sonic and Eggman share this: They can't stay still for long. They're both men of action. Neat, huh? Overall I think SA2's story has some rough patches and there is still some inherent humor to "Blue animal guy stops a colony drop." but it's probably the best story in a Sonic game, at least since they started having full on voiced cutscenes. I think Sonic's never had a truly great story, but that's a matter of my standards. It doesn't help half of them have tossed together stories because "We can't be serious people said 06 was too serious."

Anyway, on the gameplay front it's a big improvement. Things are a bit more on-rails and I understand people who prefer the more open ended nature of the levels in SA1, but I think the trade off is worth it. This really is my style of Sonic game, just go fast through the level and see how fast, efficiently, and stylishly you can do so. This type of Sonic game allows you to enter into a flow state where you just quickly move to the next target or obstacle, not stopping for a bit as you fly across the stage. Or rather, let's me do that. 2D Sonic games allow for this as well, and so did SA1, but it was a lot more tricky to pull off. I think the difference is one emphasizes staying in that state and being efficient, while the other is more about mastery over the level. Once you learn it you can blaze through it with relative ease, they're both skill based as you still need a good handle on the controls to do both, but for me I'm more capable of the 3D style. Maybe this really just means I'm bad and need to git gud, but at the end of the day it's easier in 3D partly because it's fully designed around that. It's about how well you're doing it, not whether or not you're doing it. 2D Sonic is about either being good or getting hung up on fucking everything. It's simply easier not to in the 3D games, the good ones at least, even if it's difficult to do well. It's a very all or nothing approach with 2D, and I just like it less. I get the appeal, the 3D games allow you to be going fast and looking cool regardless, the style and flow is a reward in 2D... but I'm dumb so I like it when it easier go fast vroom vroom. And SA2 is pretty good at that, having much tighter controls than SA1. I don't know how much worse the controls in the Battle version are, but I don't think they're that much worse or I'd be more certain.

But that's just Sonic/Shadow's gameplay, we got 2 other styles.

 

I will say that yeah, I don't like the Knuckles/Rouge parts. I'm sure there are people who do but they are not me. It's boring, it's lame, I try my hardest to get done with them as quick as possible. I do not wanna play hot and cold, okay? I hated that shit in FF9 too. God, fuck that minigame.

 

Tails/Eggman's parts are pretty good though, I actually like these. I love racking up as high of a lock on combo as I can, these stages I usually scored the highest because of this. It's a level of planning and strategy that is more my wheelhouse than action platforming. Also, they pilot little mecha and that's cool! Obviously the laser sound effect is the worst part, it does get a little annoying, but it's not too bad.

The OST for both games is great, also. Like seriously great. I think this track is probably my favorite.

That's really all I've got to say about these two. It's time to move on, I doubt you wanna hear some autistic 30 year old talk about Sonic for much longer. Not another one at least.

THOUGH THAT'S TOO BAD CUZ THE NEXT GAME I'M TALKING ABOUT IT'S SONIC FRONTIERS AHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHEHUEHUHUE

New To Me Old Games:

 

 

Sonic Frontiers

I finally got around to Sonic Frontiers, just in time for the Final Horizon DLC. 

 

This is both good and bad, because in the meantime they added a bunch more shit to collect and do making it so 100% completing the game took like 50 hours instead of the 20 or 30 it took for other people. I think they changed completion percentage to require finding all the memory tokens too? Either way there were the New Coco, the jukebox songs, and Action Chain Challenges added so it took more time. I don't really recommend doing it especially now.

 

But it's good because I got it for cheap, it's a fun game but not good enough for anything more than what I got it for. 

 

It's really cool and there are certainly some highlights, I think the OST is fantastic as always and the Super Sonic bosses are great. There's a lot I really do enjoy about it, it's like, Sonic of The Wild: Automata and it's got a lot of shit I thought was fun, had a pretty good story for a Sonic game(again, you know, it's a low bar) and some really good atmosphere. Seriously yeah there was this beautiful melancholy to all the different islands, though wow... uh, the first one is basically reused 3 times. One time quite literally, as it's just the second half of the first island that's blocked off. A lot of the stages are re-used assets too, there's a lot of cut corners, and there also a lot of rough parts of the game that kinda pissed me off. Also one of the stages early on is staggeringly hard to S rank, it took me over and an hour, but the others are far easier and it turns out overworld stats don't affect the cyber space levels so you can't even come back later and make it easier as far as I'm aware. It was just weirdly hard. 

 

Overall though, it's a good game, not great but good. I really liked the new character, Sage. What a shock, yeah everyone likes her. It's for a good reason. She's kuudere/tsundere AI girl who Eggman created who initially sees Sonic as just an enemy and coldly goes all "I will eliminate you.", then starts becoming a bit "Stop trying to be friendly to me harumph.", before eventually settling on being friendly but aloof towards him in a very "kuudere that's developed a bit of emotion." way. He helps awaken her to her heart <3. Conversely, she helps awaken the paternal instincts of Eggman who comes to see her as family, initially doing a tsundere routine of his own and it's actually pretty heartwarming. I enjoyed especially that part of the story. And seriously the Super Sonic bosses were rad, I know they're practically glorified set pieces, especially the one where you're on rails, but they really are cool. I don't think anything has properly conveyed the feeling of being Super Sonic yet like it has being regular old Sonic, it's always cool but it's never met it's potential yet. They're big over the top shounen anime fights which are fitting what with Super Sonic being a Dragon Ball Z reference complete with the 7 MacGuffins, though Goku doesn't need to collect them to transform. I also enjoyed the extra Deep Lore about the Chaos Emeralds and how they're from space and stuff, and that the aliens were the same species as Chaos from Sonic Adventure, I enjoyed their tragic story and how well they jobbed for The End setting him up as a pretty intimidating foe.

 

Speaking of Sage and Super Sonic, I also played that DLC.

And it sucked.

That's all!

No but seriously I barely played it. It sucks ass, it's not fun, it's too hard. Sonic Team massively overcorrected here. The main game's open world challenges are too easy? Make them annoyingly hard. The platforming's too easy? Make it annoyingly hard. The combat's too easy? Make it annoyingly hard. The levels are too easy? Make them annoyingly hard. This DLC is for people who thought the base game, even on hard, was toddler game levels of easy because damn is it rough.

First I got annoyed because there were just a billion more things to do after I had just 100% completed the game. I decided hey, you know? Fuck it, I won't do it. I'll just move on. But man, moving on is a problem, because everyone controls like shit. Amy is the best but I still don't quite like how she works, I find her moves kind of unwieldy though I do like that she has the hover ability. Given time to get used to her I probably would have liked it. Which is great, I like Amy a lot so I want her to be fun to play as. But I also like Tails a lot, definitely more than Amy, so it sucks he's so shit to control. Why my cute nerdy fox boy always gotta fly all over the damn place? Yes I know he's supposed to literally fly all over the place but you know what I mean, even when he's on the ground. He doesn't control much better than he did in Sonic Adventure, and that's a DreamCast game from 24 years ago. He was so unwieldy, veering off in a direction if I so much as touched the left stick, the air control felt slippery as fuck. I'm sure I could have fixed it in the settings, but I had the settings on what worked for me for Sonic in the main game and I shouldn't have had to fiddle with it just for him, and I shouldn't need to fiddle in general they should have just made all the characters control well without adjustment. This stupid settings shit is a terrible compromise, just figure out how to make him control well in 3D and then keep tweaking that exact thing every game, it's been 24 fucking years. Knuckles though, he controls the absolute worst, it's not just me or my settings either everyone agrees he hasn't controlled this bad since Sonic fucking '06! His glide is far but feels heavy, it's hard to get him to get on and off of walls, I thought his punch combo sucked, and to make matters worse he can only climb on special walls. Fucking what? It's KNUCKLES. His whole thing is he can climb on walls. I'm pretty sure you gotta unlock his punch combo too? HIS WHOLE OTHER THING IS HE PUNCHES SHIT!!!

 

Also all have to unlock their cyloops and other important, progression necessarily abilities. Come on.

Forgetting all that though, even once I got back to playing as Sonic, I was having issues. The first task is to climb one of like 5 towers, and I couldn't even get a 3rd of the way up. There was this bit, a platform with a bunch of boost pads you have to avoid and do a cyloop around, which if you don't know requires you to form a circle with a blue trail of light. There's just barely enough space, and no matter how much I fiddled with the settings, it was so fucking hard to form that loop without hitting those boost pads and getting launched off the platform. When I finally did, I fell off again at another challenge barely any more distance up. To be somewhat fair, apparently hard actually affects this tower, and as retarded as that is, it wouldn't really have helped if I lowered it to easy because I'm pretty sure the boost pad platform is still there on all difficulties and it's still full of gotcha traps. And that was one tower. Guess what you gotta do at the top, too? Combat challenges where you're set back to level 1 in all stats and have to use the new Perfect Parry. Yeah I would have quit even if I got up there.

Better, you eventually have to fight all the bosses again but like, no hit I think and using that perfect parry which their attacks were not fucking designed for holy shit. Like on hard you have the tiniest fucking window of frames you can parry at it's like super human shit, even on easy it's still super unfair. Very few people have managed to do this stuff. Your reward if you do is "Super Sonic 2" as people are calling it, where Sonic looks a little different than normal and does some seriously sick moves, like it does look fucking rad I'm not gonna lie, as well as new version of the final boss where he basically becomes a Berserk Eva Unit which is cool even if it's really rough, and requires you to use techniques that are actually speedrun exploits to win. Like seriously, this whole thing was designed for turbo-hardcore fans, this is the Limitcut Episode all over again but at least I didn't pay 30 dollars for it like Re:Mind. Oh the other reward is an ending where Sage is saved and gets to hold hands with Papa Eggman at the end instead of the scene where he balls his hand into a fist and laments his lost daughter. Of course, in the original ending he just recreates her in a post-credits scene and it sounds like her memories are intact, so...? It's not a big deal? The scene is cool and sweet though, and the song that plays is heartwarming as all hell, so it would overall be a worthwhile reward if I didn't fucking rage quit. Seriously tone this down by like 35% and I bet I could handle it, but it's too much to bother with right now. 

I give the DLC a big fat 1/10. But the main game's like a 7/10, just a solid "good" game.

 

 

 

 

 

Tales of Arise

The next game I played that is the newest entry in a long running franchise by a AA japanese developer, that also got a DLC expansion in 2023(weird yeah it was like 2 years later?), is Tales of Arise. Though this time I didn't buy the DLC it's not very long only like 15-20 hours and again I don't really wanna pay 30 dollars for that little extra content again. Half the price of the full game for way less than half of it's length? No thanks.

Though I did buy this for like 15 bucks so uhhhhh. 

I don't even really like the base game enough honestly. 

 

Now, why'd I, a big Tales fan, wait until now to play it? Well, I really didn't like the marketing for it. It was very clearly trying to cater to non-fans, normies in general, focusing a lot on the combat system and the graphics(they advertised the fucking shaders. Normies don't even care about shaders), they acted yet again like it was some open world game, they really did treat it like some AAA game when it really isn't. You actually play the game and it's yeah, a slightly higher budgeted Tales game than normal. It definitely has some things, especially early on, that feel very much normie-pandery. I do like that normies might have gotten tricked into a narrative focused, character driven anime game that they ended up really liking by the marketing, but it really just turned me off of the whole thing when I saw it. Why are you catering to people who don't even play these games? I mean I know why, it was because JRPGs and anime games are a lot more mainstream these days, so they were hoping to rope in some newbies to their franchise. But that's just it, felt too money motivated instead of banking on their already existing fanbase. And I mean, it is, but so is FF7 Remake honestly and I still really like that game. But still, I just didn't have a lot of interest in it, so I waited. And what did I think of it? Well...

It's been long enough I've forgotten most of what I felt about it, but I can say it's not super hot. I wouldn't have enjoyed this if I didn't like the Tales series I think, though that really just proves that a lot of people would like these games if more of them played them, because people who did were fucking blown away by it, saying the kind of stuff I say every time I play one of these. They're getting the same thing I always get out of it and man, they've been missing out. This is kind of how they all go, the people who haven't played any other in the series play one of them and get amazed by how good it is, how much the like the characters and their arcs, how fun it is, how much they cared about the story despite being kinda cliche, how cool the twists were, how great the big bad was. It happened with Symphonia, Abyss, Vesperia, a little with Xillia, Berseria, and now Arise. There aren't a whole lot of long time, consistent fans of the series at least in the west it seems. I wanna start telling these people that if they enjoyed it they really oughta play the other games, because seriously they are all like this. Obviously these aren't for everyone, because sometimes people play them and hate them, but those they work for they work well. When it comes to their target audience, the bar is high enough that if you have the experience, games like Vesperia and Arise aren't even that impressive because other ones have done it better.

 

That's really what I'd say about this game. It's a serviceable Tales game, if you like them you will probably like this one, it's just not amazing. I enjoy it because it gives me enough of what I want, but it could be done better.

The early parts are the weakest for me. The characters feel lifeless and boring, very stiff and very dry, with the story being really paint by numbers for that part. The latter is common for Tales games because they start slow and by the books, building until when they kind of go off the rails, though they do usually go off in the same direction each time you know they have a formula. But the characters really are just boring, but then there's this gradual shift when they start becoming more interesting when the full party is together and before I knew it I started liking them. I think this shows something I've been thinking about this series, and really JRPGs in general, is that it's not that the characters are good so much as the cast as a whole is good. It's specifically their dynamics together, the way they play off each other and work together, that makes them enjoyable. They might have quite interesting characters on their own, but it's together they're enjoyable and it can even make otherwise not as likeable characters enjoyable in context of their relationship with another character. Genis for example sucks on his own but I like him because of his friendship with Lloyd. The characters are lame until the gang's all together because they need to all be playing off each other's strengths and flaws to be entertaining. Though I actually do really like Alphen and Shionne's romance even if they aren't fantastic characters themselves, I'm just a sucker for this kind of big romantic gesture kind of love, this whole NO I'M GONNA LOVE U EVEN IF THE CURSE MAKES IT HURT TO EMBRACE YOU AAARGGGG thing is really schmaltzy but hey it's romantic as shit and I like it. Very sweet and nice.

But the game does have issues. The game decides it wants to take back making the bosses cartoonishly evil near the end and half-assedly tosses in some humanizing lines from some guys and I was just thinking it's kinda too little, too late. There's the main bad guy who's pretty lame, he's not one of your serious and principled with lots of resolve Tales bad guys who is doing a really fucked up thing but ain't happy about it, nor is he one of those filled with anger and hatred because of injustice and now going way too far with his vengeance Tales bad guys, he's just kind of a crazy might makes right dude I guess and he was kind of an experiment so it's sort of a "we make our own bad guys" thing. It coulda been good despite not being what Tales normally does, I don't always need a "the bad guy's not really bad" or "he's got a tragic backstory" situation in every story, but he has too little screentime to be interesting. You can have a guy who's just crazy and evil but I want some depth there. How crazy and evil is he and why, what's his philosophy that tells him being evil and/or crazy is the way to be, what fucked up way his mind works leads to this? He's not got enough presence to find out, and this game had 80 hours to do it, he just barely mentions his mindset a few times mostly at the end when the hero the refutes it with some even more naive goody two-shoes stuff than normal which I wouldn't mind had their been a greater idealism vs whatever the fuck debate going on but there isn't. It's just a let down being hot off the heels of Artorious Colbrande from Berseria last time, one of the best antags the series has had.

Also uh, near the start there are like a billion skits. I hate that the skits aren't anime cut outs anymore but the in-game models, in general I hate all the attempts to cater to and draw in more normies this time, though I guess it worked since I think it sold better than Berseria. But forgetting that, there's just too many at the start. Too much character development and world building is done in them at the start, the skits are supposed to supplement it for people who care not be the main source. A major part of Law's character, his personal traumatic experiences with his country's brand of oppression, is put behind a skit. A scene which should have been a real ass scene where he talks about how he had to kill his own people because of the tyrannical grip everyone is in and how horrifying it was is just an optional comic panel scene. Come on man! Worse, I think the main writer didn't know because Law having this trauma is not really factored into his character, he never acts like he's ex-secret police, like a man forced to underhandedly deceive his own people, rat them out, and even kill them to survive. It's a dark bit of character backstory but he's mostly just the happy go luck brute force punchy dude. 

Combat system's good, the team attack finishers and general mechanics are fun, but I don't like how damage sponge-y so many enemies are, or how hard it is to stagger them. It can get very annoying at times and leveling can be way too slow, not to mention side quests are a must if you wanna get EXP and Gald because damn do battles not give you much, even if you rely on battle chain bonuses and even items to boost it. Still, mostly fun even if 75% of the side quests are just "kill big enemy or a bunch of this kind of enemy", I do at least like that they give a bit of characterization for whoever's accepting the quest.

In the end yeah I do like it, I've got my issues which I said, but it is pretty fun most of the time and once the cast came into their own, I was enjoying them and their arcs, there are a lot of good moments especially at the end and I like how the romance goes even if it was blatantly obvious it was gonna happen from the start. Like Sonic, it's just a solid "good" game, if you like this sort of thing.

Also this second OP is lovely.

BTW it wasn't open world. I should have learned from last time when they say that they mean "larger zones than last time." You absolutely cannot just open world traverse, if you're going on foot you have to follow the path back, it's still a linear structure game. The ones that had world maps are more open world than this. I should have known, because they did this same thing with Tales of Zestiria before, and just like that game I played it... and it was okay. I liked it more at the time because it had some cool moments and Zaveid, but looking back I do think this is comparable and around the same spot on the ranking.

Tormented Souls

Now, I'm doing one that I can get through a lot quicker than the last two.

Nothing much to say about Tormented Souls, it's also good but not great but it's a survival horror game which means I love it. It, along with Signalis, is one of the recent survival horror renaissance. For a time survival horror was just dead, people stopped making them around the mid 2000s in favor of RE4 style action horror, Amnesia style Walking Sim horror, and other gimmick horror games that youtubers like to play for their child audiences. Not that some of those 3 aren't good, like Dead Space 2, SOMA, and uhhhh I dunno? A Chilla's Art game? Well those are kind of just walking sim horror games... anyway, I was missing classic survival horror games... and then they came back! Like zombies!!! People started making them, Resident Evil went to a more modern take on the old formula with RE7/8 and the Remakes, and indie devs decided to make some more classic style as well.

While Signalis is more 90s survival horror, a combo of original Silent Hill and Resident Evil, Tormented Souls is more 2000s survival horror, a mix of say Silent Hill 2 or 3 and something like Haunting Ground or Rule of Rose. This is my favorite era since it was really the golden age of it as there were just so many more series and one-offs that cropped up like Siren, Fatal Frame, and Kuon. This is definitely of that era and it's a good recreation of it. I'd say it's definitely of the same quality as a one-off from a no-name publisher in the 6th gen, which means it's not a particularly amazing game but it is a very fun one. It's not heavy on resource management but it's got a lot of good puzzles, some of which were headscratchers for me. I did enjoy the story as simple as it was, and while the combat was clunky I mean that is par for the course, it gave me enough of what I want out of this kind of game and I will definitely be playing the sequel. Next time either get rid of the chaser enemy or make it so you can't instantly despawn it by leaving the room though, guys. 

Curse: The Eye of Isis 

Speaking of Survival Horror and it's Golden Age, we have a Survival Horror, from the Golden Age. 

Now, this game ain't great. You're probably only gonna like this if you really like this genre, or really like early 6th gen games. That's me on both counts, and I enjoyed it, but yeah it really ain't great. It's like Eternal Darkness, complete with some of the same horror tropes as well as the body part targeting system, but not even as good as that one(which also really wasn't as great as people say, but is better than this). Unlike Eternal Darkness, this is more of an old horror serial or pulp book, all about an egyptian curse and mummies and scoundrels with old timey guns trying to steal artifacts. Eternal Darkness was also fairly pulpy and referenced pulp works, but it was much more heavily a lovecraftian story. Lovecraft was playing on much of these kinds of tropes as well, but with his cosmic horror spin on the idea, which is what really set him apart and got him popular.

I say all this because there's not much to say about the actual game. 

It's competent. That's about it. There's not a whole lot of the survival horror gameplay you're really used to here, as the maps and puzzles are simple. Every door but the one you need to go through next is locked, it's just a matter of figuring out which one isn't and going through it, and not going through door's you've already been in. Actually I found the maps kind of confusing, rather than intuitive. I don't remember if there's even a map function, I think there was but it was pretty useless. So may as well not have been. The inventory/supply management is decent though, I found myself often using melee to conserve ammo, and getting low on healing items. This is partly because there's a way to get poisoned, if you get into the Curse Gas left behind by the Eye of Isis's curse, your health bar gets a glowing yellow border and you start losing health. I think it goes away eventually but you really wanna get rid of it. Some items heal it but some do not. One item, which you seriously wanna get, can heal both health and poison. These come from mummies who you need to destroy right and not break the amulet inside them, hence use of the targeting system and maybe even melee to make absolutely sure. There are definitely systems at play here, but they're ultimately really simple when compared to better games in the genre. 

 

The story, also, is lacking. It's very simple, and I barely remember any of it. There's a dude whose dad I think found a cursed mummy thing, there's a lady who works at the museum you also play as, there's a thief trying to steal the thing and guys who work for a bad guy who wants it and also that bad guy. At the end it turns out the thief was actually like, the lady's long lost sister or some shit? For some reason? I genuinely barely remember anything about the story, it's so simplistic.

It's fun enough and you'll get some good old PS2 survival horror atmosphere and feel, but again don't play it unless you're really into that. I played the steam version, and really PC's probably the way most did back in the day, since the PS2 version was a PAL only game. 

Dino Crisis

Continuing on the Survival Horror train, we have Resident Evil with Dinosaurs!

Honestly, I wish that's what it actually was, because boy is Dino Crisis rough. 

Feels like they were afraid to copy Resident Evil wholesale, and in trying to make it different enough, it ends up being inferior. The exploration and Map Mastery of RE is intact, but there are a bunch of different systems that make things less enjoyable for me.

First off the map system sucks. The map's not fucking labeled, I dunno what room is what aside from just memorizing which one is which. Worse, you don't show up on it, so you don't know where you are unless you look at adjacent rooms and figure out which door you must have come in. I can do this, but I shouldn't have to, because the map is supposed to do this kind of shit for me so I can focus on other stuff. Why even have a map at that point? It's practically useless.

It's really hard to tell how much health you have. I could only tell how hurt I was by how Regina was reacting, there doesn't seem to be any indicator in the menus how much you got. Speaking of health, the healing items are weird. Probably a bad translation, but I'm not sure what the difference between Med Pack L+ and Med Pack L++ is, they both say they restore all health. What's so ++ about it? Items in general aren't great. I barely had enough ammo to take care of any dinos, they all take way too many shots, the better ammo doesn't seem to do any more damage, and sometimes the dinos respawn, completely defeating the point of killing enemies in a survival horror game. The lack of ammo is because I need to take down ones I need to get past most often... but they might come back, which means it's really about if you fail to get around them rather than prevent them from being a nuisance. Plus, the combat feels worse here. I'd often, inconsistently, knock dinos to the ground, and waste a shot shooting a downed enemy. Because I'm pretty sure they don't take damage on the ground, despite there being a blood effect.

Also, a lot of the puzzle are obtuse, and when I found the answer I didn't feel stupid for not figuring it out, I felt genuinely annoyed and wondered how anyone is supposed to. The worst one, directly from my notes:

"This puzzle in the experiment simulation room is nonsense. You have to input letters that appear on cards that flip over, but the second set has too many letters and I have no idea which ones I'm supposed to use. Can't find anything that explains the rules either. I thought maybe if a letter appears in the same spot as another one it's wrong but then there aren't ENOUGH letters for the code. The solution? Oh, you're actually supposed to KEEP PUTTING IN LETTERS AFTER YOU'VE FILLED ALL 5. YEAH WOW, HOW THE FUCK WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT, FUCK YOU. Once I figured that out, from watching a 10 year old, 480, stretched to widescreen LP part of this section by some fucking guy, it was actually easy as I just typed down the letters. Now, for the third part, I had to find a neoseeker thread with 2 posts, that explains you need whatever letter stays out before spinning back around longer. "

The walkthroughs I checked didn't actually help. I think they just said "It's random every time so I can't help :^)" but it's like, dumbass fucking tell me HOW IT WORKS.

 

I also don't like how the item boxes need an item to open and aren't universal except by color, one would be okay but both is too much. And finally, I don't know what buttons to push in the DANGER segments so I just press all of them. 

This might sound like I hate this game, but I don't. I actually like it! But it's got issues that Survival Horror games of it's time did not have. It's very, very rough around the edges. It's got a lot of cool shit, I like the storyline, it still gives me a lot of what I want out of survival horror, you know mastering a map deftly evading enemies solving puzzles collecting a bunch of items that I'll hoard until the end of the game where they sit in my item box cuz I got no space for all of them, the works. A T-Rex chases you and you blow him the fuck up. It's got multiple endings depending on your choices. I love the route choice system too, that annoying puzzle was actually optional(though even if it's the harder route, that doesn't justify that OH PUT IN MORE LETTERS THAN IT LOOKS LIKE YOU CAN bullshit), I think that stuff is cool and adds to replayability. I like the item combining, that was cool and novel back then before everyone did fucking crafting in their games. Regina is a cool and sexy action lady and I like her. I like that there are actually tranq darts and stuff to put the dinos to sleep instead of killing them, which is actually more effective as they take less ammo and put them out of commission concretely instead of the RNG of "will they respawn?", which mitigates that issue somewhat. I would have however limited ammo even more and made them not respawn, making it so you had to choose between using limited ammo to permanently kill an enemy or temporarily incapacitate an enemy, deciding which ones you want to do that for and maybe killing one once you've got more ammo. I think that's what they were going for, but in the end I found myself but taking out a dino with whatever I had at the time, as they were both essentially temporary measures, and just being annoyed at how hard and worthless it was to down a dino. Make it hard but permanent and it's worth it, having you sometimes fall back on the temporary measure.

I think if they're refined this approach in the second game, it could have been great, this one just has flawed execution. However, they went with an action approach for Dino Crisis 2... oh well. This one isn't bad, but yeah it was an often frustrating experience, just one with equal amounts of quality Survival Horror goodness. Shame the way they corrected it was "Fuck the Survival Horror part." but hey, I've heard that one's pretty good! 

For the last few games on the "New To Me" list, we have 4 that basically all the same genre! RPGMaker Narrative Game!

Project Kat & Paper Lily: Chapter 1

These two are essentially the same game, so I'm combining the two. 

Project Kat is the "Paper Lily Prologue", a (seemingly) unrelated story that serves as essentially a demo/proof of concept. A "vertical slice" of what the game is, for those who might me interested. It's also, a horror RPGMaker puzzle adventure game, like IB. However, it's actually made with Godot. I approve of this.

See, using RPGmaker now is like insisting on shooting in black and white. Hell, it's more like insisting on using the exact cameras they used in the B&W era of film. You need to have a real, stylistic creative choice going when you decide to do that, otherwise you're just limiting yourself for no good reason. Making pixelart games with chiptune music makes sense because people like those, that's akin to still shooting with film because it looks nicer to people than digital. But if you actually programmed a game for the SNES, that needs to be a purposeful decision, because you can absolutely just make a game that looks like one and nobody would be upset with you. There's another game I'm gonna talk about that I think justifies using RPGmaker to do it, but that's because he's really pushing what's capable with the program and that's cool. Games like Omori could have been completed quicker if Omocat hadn't fallen into a nostalgia trap and decided the game absolutely had to be made with RPGmaker because a bunch of the games she was drawing inspiration from were, because she too wanted to make a weird RPG maker game. The game just would not fit within the engine's limits and custom made versions and plugins had to be made, defeating the purpose of the "weird game made by a handful of people" ideal she was striving for. It turns out you can still make a weird RPGmaker game without actually using RPGmaker, and you probably shouldn't.

So I think it's a good idea that they used a better, easier, simpler program for making this kind of thing. People made these kinds of games with it back in the day because that was what they had, it was a utilitarian choice, not a romantic one. I'm nostalgic for the games they made, not the program they made them with.

And how do these two stack up to those games? Pretty well!

Project Cat is a fun, hour to 90 minute little horror adventure games with multiple endings. The easiest to get is sadly the canon one, though I won't tell you why. I will say, you should definitely play around try different things, as well as talk to the girls in the club, if you want the other endings. 

It's a very simple little adventure game otherwise, primarily just "use x on y" stuff, with a couple little puzzles here and there. The focus is on the story, which I think is quite nice. You play as Kat, a smug and somewhat bratty teenage girl who's nonetheless very likeable and charismatic, a good character. She's looking for her missing father who she believes is like, in the spirit world or something, so she's trying rituals to go and find him. So far, none of them have been successful, but she's trying yet another one tonight. She comes to her school in the dead of night looking to perform her ritual. She meets the members of the occult club who begrudgingly help her find the supplies she needs, sets it up, and... well, you'll have to play to see. Plot wise it's very simple, but it develops the characters well for it's short runtime, especially if you talk to the girls. The characterization is good, and there's an ending where the 4 become friends and go out to do karaoke! I like the way the multiple endings are done, and apparently the full game will work this way as well.

The real star of the show is the main game, Paper Lily.

So far, only Chapter 1 is out, and it's still technically a beta as of writing this(it's going to be finished soon), but it's a good chapter.

Gameplay is about the same as the prologue, so let's talk about the story. You play as Lacie, another teenage girl, who believes she's under a curse. She's also doing rituals, this time with the hopes of finding someone in the spirit world who can undo her curse. Like before, they don't work, until one does.

Lacie then finds herself in a somewhat mystical and somewhat surreal world, kind of reminds me of Spirited Away, but like less whimsical and more dangerous. Contending with odd creatures, she has to figure out how to lift her curse and get back home, hopefully without dying. This was a bad idea, girl. The way back home is to do the Paper Lily ritual, that the game's named after. On her journey she meets a weird creature called Rune who likes runes, and a mysterious boy in a red hoodie who looks oddly familiar(to you, the player). 

Once again the characters are pretty fun. Lacie is quite a good character, she's introverted and kind of dorky but in an oldschool anime kinda of way. She's definitely a cute anime girl, with a light bit of kuudere to her, mostly keeping to herself and being aloof. She has good chemistry with the characters she comes across, and is very likeable. You definitely want her to succeed! Rune and the mystery boy are also likeable, though the mystery boy is a bit generic of a character so far. He plays well off Lacie though so I don't mind. There's a lot of mystery and intrigue in the story, not only with what's up with Lacie, but some other mysteries as well that get hinted at over the course of the game, which may even tie into the curse and Kat's story as well. It's fairly well written, fun, and interesting so I think it'll keep your attention enough to get immersed and do puzzles.

The puzzles this time are a bit more complex. Depending on what you do you might be hiding from a monster like in Yomawari(literally, complete with bushes), or if you play your cards right and figure out how, you can bypass it entirely in a much more interesting subplot. I really like that, there being multiple ways to solve a puzzle is a great way to make it more enjoyable, but also increase replay value. There's also the addition of deaths, so you'd better make sure to save!

I'd also like to say the music is really good in both. Really helps set the mood and add to the atmosphere. Music can help massively for the feel of something, and even help guide how you are meant to feel. I'll probably talk about this some other time, but if the song in something made you sad when you probably wouldn't have, that's not it being emotionally manipulative. It's okay for music to do the heavy lifting, that's all part of the experience. I don't think it's doing that here, but it's definitely contributing to my investment. This is my favorite track, spoilers though you might wanna hear it in context for the first time, it was a nice surprise to me. But it'll give you a good idea of how quality the music can be.

Graphically I also think these games look quite nice, I wanna mention that. I think the pixelart is cute and the backgrounds are good, Not the best looking or most impressive pixel art I've seen, but above a lot of what people make, and even some of the things I like(you probably know the ones). I think they did good work on that front, it helps set the tone and mood too. Good job!

Overall, I think it's a good job! The complete version of Chapter 1 is supposed to have 13 different endings, god damn! Apparently it's made by like 2 people as well, quite the ambitious project and they're doing well so far! Woah!!! I look forward to playing the complete version and the rest of the chapters. By the time you read this, I think the 1.0 version will be out, so you can go check it out!

EDIT: Chapter 1 has now been updated to it's completed state and is much expanded, lots of little fixes here and there, new side quests, 12 different bad endings, and new CGs. There are multiple different ways to solve many of the puzzles and lots of ways things can go wrong as shown by the bad endings, it's really impressive! Seriously, there's a lot to do off the beaten path and many secrets to uncover if you look for them, which I love. Seriously, it's really impressive and must have been a pain to program. For a free game made by mostly two guys this is amazing, and though it might not be amazing by typical standards I think that alone is enough to recommend at least trying it, and experimenting with whatever isn't the most obvious way to progress. You can get it for free on steam and itch.

END ROLL

I have a lot to say about End Roll, even though it doesn't have a lot to say to me.

I played this game because, like the next game I'm going to talk about, it's considered an "Omori-like" and something that might appeal to you if you like it. Some people consider it very similar, to the point that people think Omori ripped it off! I'm here to say in a certain sense, Omori and End Roll are a similar kind of game that appeals to a similar audience, but as for having any real similarity, its surface level at best.

So what is it, first and foremost, so I can get into explaining that and what I like and dislike about it? Well, it's a surreal and offbeat RPG about a young boy named Russel, who is uh... well, he's a serial killer. Let's not beat around the bush or mince words, people got minced enough by this kid. He's now imprisoned for this but he's a test subject for an experimental rehabilitation program. Given a drug that will make him have a very specific dream, he's meant to be faced with the harsh reality of his actions and learn to be guilty and repentant about it. Should he do this, we can say hey look we can actually fix these ones! I tend to believe the only true people in life who are evil are those who simply have no chance to ever become guilty and try to atone, because they simply don't and can't understand why what they've done is wrong... but if we could potentially save even those people... of course, it's not that easy, or that simple. In this dream he'll spend time in a town full of people he's killed and be forced to get to know them and then confront what he's done to them, hopefully increasing his guilt.

Now, the fact they're the people he killed isn't immediately obvious, but it's quickly made clear and will be becoming increasingly clear as time goes on. This is the biggest difference between this game and Omori, aside the fact Sunny didn't kill a bunch of people. It doesn't waste any time just telling you what's going on, there's no mystery aspect where you slowly uncover it, thus there isnt enough intrigue. You know right off the bat that he's done something really horrible because the guard who puts him in his cell tells him he's a monster and deserves this. Hell, the recording that tells him what's about to go down says he's a deranged maniac, so while you might not realize that's who the people in the dream are, you'll figure it out soon like within an hour or two soon. The game is about 7 days of partying up with someone who you killed, fighting a boss named after some psychological issue that represents something to do with Russel and the character, and then get to see a spooky horror segment where they're all "Aaah why why did you kill me aaaah" with some kind of damage to them like the first guy who's bleeding from his head cuz Russel bopped him real good.

Now, it being different from Omori might not be a bad thing(many games are very different from Omori), but the problem is it's really repetitive and pretty lame a lot of the time, with the first two having like, no presentation to them. Not bad presentation, just none. It just throws it at you. It gets a little better later on and there are some switch ups, but you're mostly just doing this. Some of them are quite interesting, particularly the characters that Russel actually knew before he killed them as there's a connection there, and one in particular has a very interesting dynamic that I don't want to spoil because it's an actually interesting ethical dilemma. 

That does call attention to another difference from Omori, the fact that the dream world characters aren't even semi-accurate reflections of the people he knew in reality, he barely knew most of these people, certainly not well enough to form anything other than an educated guess as to what they would be like and how they would react to things. In Omori, the dream world characters, the main ones at least, are people Sunny knew in reality and they're also not dead, plus he is established to have a really good memory and so you're probably learning a good deal about the real people they're based on instead of them just being made the fuck up. The characters in End Roll aren't real, they're all shadows of people who are dead now, so who the fuck cares? They're basically just imaginary friends, and those who aren't are still dead anyway so it's a forgone conclusion, plus you only see the real world a handful of times. It doesn't matter, I don't and can't care about these characters because they aren't even real in the context of the game. After they die in their chapters, they miraculously come back to life the next day. Who cares? One of them is replaced with a fake during her chapter so you can still buy shit from her store. Who? Cares?

So what you're left with is what the game is trying to say, the art of this. Okay they're fake, they exist to make Russel more guilty. But we'll get back to that.

 

First I wanna say the lack of intrigue and mystery is another level on which the game becomes less interesting. You know exactly what's going on and the game goes through the same paces. This makes the game a character study, and while Omori is maybe somewhat of that, it's also a general character drama too. But hey that's fine, is this a good character study? Well, kinda. There's certainly a lot of good in that aspect, but there's some bad too.

 

Russel's backstory is very generic for a serial killer. You know, he was abused by his parents and oh no that turned him into a serial killer because of the cycle of abuse, I guess. It's such a cliche. There are interesting things to it of course, for example an optional area that kind of shows the real start of it all, a very simple thing that might not seem like it would but as the initial spark that started the fire which was only fed more wood, it does make sense. You also get some other optional things like a boss with a character Russel met, but only for one day, who he actually really liked this time. It's a sad and poignant moment. There are a lot of actually good, sad and lonely moments in this game. Another example is another optional area where you can meet with another actual friend of Russel's, this time who he did know personally so it's more interesting. More optional things is you can talk to a guy who will tell you more about what Russel did know about the characters in reality, and his motivations for killing them. It's certainly interesting stuff. I actually do like a lot about it, there are parts that are actually well presented and exciting, sometimes stuff that's actually genuinely thought-provoking.

 

But the game does get in it's own way a lot of the time. For one thing, there's some inconsistency with Russel. In order for you to feel bad for him, he's portrayed as really cute and actually kind of a good boy. He shares this with Sunny from Omori, as well as being sharply dressed. But that's an issue. It's fine if the game wants to tug my heartstrings so I can feel bad for a fucking serial killer, if he looked like Dahmer that might be harder. The problem is that he's supposed to be a delinquent, he's a psychopath he's got a fucking conduct disorder. He's supposed to stay out late, get into fights, commit crimes. He hangs around with the poor kid outcast who doesn't care that he's a delinquent, he comes from a broken home and is so abused he shouldn't be so polite and refuse to do bad things. He does this often, like he won't go in a woman's bathroom or mess around with medicine he doesn't know anything about. He really doesn't seem like the type, he should have no issue with that. It's at odds with itself.

 

To make matters worse, it's often very pretentious and extremely fucking edgy and try hard most of the time. The recording in the intro I mentioned? The full line is "Greetings, deranged maniac!" with happy fun music playing and the face of the recording being a bright smile. WOAH haha that's SO COOL man never seen THAT before! The ending has a lot of this too, which I'm willing to spoil because it's dumb. If you get enough Guilt Points by experiencing enough Guilt Events, many you have to seek yourself and those are the best parts of the game honestly(it's what I mentioned before), you get the "good" ending. The bad ending is he doesn't and they execute him. The "good" ending is he executes himself, which feels really cheap, and I dunno kinda like a cop out. If I was writing a full review I'd sit down and really think about how to explain why it does, even if I get the idea behind it and it seems thematically sensible. I don't know how to describe why it doesn't feel as well done as similar endings in other things, or just big downer "it was all for nought" endings in general, but the key think is that it's about how well you do it and this doesn't. The recording talks about how a wonderful life of giving speeches and being the poster boy for the program awaits him, in the most cynical and mocking way it can, making it clear that death is supposed to be the better alternative. Because the program is horribly inhumane, but not in the interesting way that A Clockwork Orange is, in an edgy and over the top practically satirical way. A lot of the game comes off as an attempt at dark humor, but it's even more haphazard than Andy & Leyley. For example, there's a village of cats who are all hopped up on catnip which makes them homicidally violent and their whole town falls apart by the end. It's fucked up in a way that's comical and feels like a joke, but also supposed to be scary and sad. Like it's kinda confused. Everything meant to be dark and shocking has a very immature feel to it, the ending especially, and it just isn't as good as it could be. It has a lot of potential but squanders a lot of it, only managing to be compelling when it gets serious and melancholy instead of trying to be all dark and spooky and deep. It could have said a lot about the premise, but its totally underutilized and kind of shys away from actually saying anything with depth about the situation except for a few situations. It could just be so much more, and a lot of it comes off as tryhard. Not to mention, a lot of the tryhard, laughable horror attempts, and pretentious stuff feels totally at odds with the rest of the writing which is normal. The Coffin of Andy and Leyley at least has a pretty consistent style of edge that doesn't conflict with the writing or other scenes, though it has a tonal inconsistency instead. More on that later.

 

Also, the gameplay is simple as fuck. There's not really anything to say there, the dev really didn't push RPGMaker's capabilities, there are some small unique bits to the combat system but I barely remember what they are so they must not have been that interesting. Even the final boss and superboss are fucking easy as shit. 

 

That all said, there really is some good stuff here. It's a unique premise, there is some good and interesting imagery, there's parts of the story I really enjoyed(the scene before the "good" ending is especially good, and has a ton of variations as it's based on which character you chose to talk to for it), plus it does kind of work as a character study even if there's some inconsistencies and it's still not all that well written. To really get into it, I'd have to spoil the parts I actually like. All of the good and all of the bad result in it just being okay, but I'd actually recommend checking it out if it sounds at all interesting.

 

You can download it here, for free, so why not? 

 

As always, VGperson's fuckin' trigger warnings are melodramatic. I was expecting a truly black pilling game! 

 

Hello Charlotte Series 

This one might be the black pill I was looking for...

 

How do I even talk about these games? This is gonna be a doozy.

 

First I wanna say I played this because it was said to be like/appeal to fans of Omori, and I've seen a lot of 19 year old twitteroids saying things about how Omori totally ripped this game off or how it's one of the games if you played it you wouldn't be impressed by Omori because of. I'm here to say no. It's really not like Omori. There are some similarities, a lot of them just from both of them kind of trying to make a full story out of Yume Nikki, and some of them because it feels like the dev got tired of waiting for Omori(these games came out around 2016-2018) and wanted to make their own, with black jack and hookers. If it's like Omori at all, then it's edgy and nihilistic Omori. The latter is a game all about hope within the seemingly hopeless, while some dummies don't get how positive and optimistic the ending is, that doesn't change the fact that it is. It gets really dark but the way it carries itself is vastly different from the cynical nature of the former. Hello Charlotte is extremely cynical, and I'm not even sure the sliver of positivity and melancholic beauty I got out of the ending was even intended, wherease Omori is more idealistic about things, or at least not so cynical. It seemed like it original was going to be, but by the time the game came out Omocat had moved out of that phase or at least decided it was better this way. This is just tone and how it carries itself though, in terms of quality while Omori can be kind of messy from it's long development(in fact, at times, upon closer inspections it feels like bits from older iterations are mixed in, leading to a few things a bit at odds with each other), this game is a big mess(which has tons of things that are at odds with other things). So no, they really aren't that similar. There's some similar imagery, similar elements and a couple plot points(which again, is something known about from Omori's kickstarter, and I suspect the dev said "fuck it, I'll do it myself" and this was the result), even a few themes, but it's mostly surface level and that which isn't is executed way differently. Whether or not you'll like both really depends on if you can enjoy a story told like this, or at least which aspects of Omori you like the most. 

Okay, so now how do I talk about the actual game?

 

Well like the others, let's start with what it is. It is an RPGmaker game, the kind with no RPG elements again. You get it, it's an adventure game where you solve a puzzle... well okay, really a lot of what you're doing especially by the end is just going to the next location to the next cutscene. That's fine on my end, you could classify this as a visual novel of sorts, it's essentially the same kind of thing by the end. You know it's just clicking to the next area is replaced with actually walking to it. Other than that, it's complete with CGs! But hey, what's the story of these story games?

 

Well I kinda have to only tell you the premise of the first game, but problem is that the first game's story is 90% red herring/retconned. Well I guess I still will, but I'm gonna spoil some shit here.

 

You're playing as a puppeteer named "Seth", who is in charge of the puppet Charlotte, who lives in a strange monochrome house that she can't leave with a bunch of aliens who all look like edgy anime boys designed by a fujoshi. Her world is a whimsical but dark one, like a Tim Burton movie cranked up and the scary dudes are actually dangerous, and one day she ends up trapped in a weird TV realm, where one of her imag- I mean, regular, definitely real friends is also there. Okay well "friend", he doesn't actually like her. They're looking for some being called an Oracle who is worshipped as a god by this other species of spider-human hybrid aliens. Charlotte goes along with this cuz it sounds fun and maybe she'll get to go home??? She's easygoing like that. Also, the story is definitely weird like that. It's very surreal and nonsensical and also violent and gorey often in a way you either really enjoy or really do not.

 

Also, and this is a problem, most of what you learn in this episode is a lie.

 

Or rather, the dev says it is later on, it's very clear the dev didnt have this stuff planned out, because there are actually a lot of plot holes revelations in episode 2 and 3 open up. At the end of the first game, Charlotte finally takes her Schizo Pills and the house becomes normal, all the edgy aliens turn back into common household objects and one of them bears the name of the guy you were with, that being her stuffed bunny toy. 

Except that's not true. Episode 2 darkly doubles down on the idea her imaginary friends are indeed in her head and a product of her ill mind, but episode 3 actually tells us that's bullshit. Now, this could be okay, if we hadn't seen the scene where taking her pills returns the world to normal, which while it was cliche I feel also could have been interesting. Delving into the twisted fantasies of a girl hallucinating fun adventures and friends, probably due to some horrible trauma that made her want to do this and also made her imagination all dark in the very juvenial way that's portrayed. That would have been like Omori, but edgy, really. But no, that scene was totally a red herring. I was totally planning to take the story in that direction, honest! Except, its not even a red herring, you're just supposed to forget that scene entirely, because if you remember it the twist leaves it with no explanation. The game has a lot of twists like this that open up plot holes, because they just ignore other scenes and hints you were given as if the author forgot them. That said I actually do think it's worth it regardless, because the twists even if kinda bullshit are interesting and out there enough I wouldn't not want them, but this stuff just bothers me so much and makes the story really messy. It's just so clear the dev changed their mind, it's not even like a Kingdom Hearts type of making it up as you go, the retcons there don't flat out contradict concrete info we were shown and ask you to ignore info you had. Here, the game will pull the KH big twist where it's like "Remember that thing? It was actually THIS thing!" while also hoping you don't remember other things. I can't really explain exactly how or why that's the case more than I have with that example, because I don't want to explain the whole story or spoil a lot of it, but trust me; if you sit down and think about it, you'll start going "Hey... wait a minute!"

The next issue is just how it's written. Episode 1 is the worst, just being gratuitous and gorey and fUcKeD uP in a childish way, so much fucking "oh it's cute but it's DAAAAARK" type of edgy and "horror." I can now somewhat appreciate that kind of thing because I mean I don't know, who cares really? The problem is it does want me to care, and treats itself fairly seriously outside the humorous parts. Like I really am supposed to be horrified by this stuff and have emotional attachment but it's just not working. And the reason is I'm not the target audiene for this. So here's another difference between it and Omori, it's actually made by and for teenagers. Omori is just popular with teenagers, but I don't think it was made for anyone in particular aside whoever thought that kickstarter was cool and not even really them in the end. It's another game heavily inspired by games from before the zoomers' time, if there's one thing it has in common with undertale it's that. Toby also did not intend for 7-12 year olds to play his game, he made it for dudes at starmen.net and also I guess homestuck fans kinda since he was using his popularity from composing for it to help boost the kickstarter. Point is the target audience ended up being different from what was intended in both cases. Well okay, it's mostly zoomers who played Omori and continue to like UT and play deltarune, I was first shown UT by someone in college and I know plenty of other old fucks like me played it too. With Omori I really am one of the few people over 22 who played it and that's just saddening, but with Hello Charlotte I'm probably one of the few people over 19 who could get anything out of it and that's well... that's why it was hard to.

I realized it during a scene in episode 2, where Charlotte comes down with an illness brought on by being bullied that can cause cuts to manifest on the arms, or something to that effect. The key part I remembered was the cuts manifesting, and I realized- nay, had a euraka moment where I exclaimed "OOOOOOH, I get it now!", and knew exactly who these games were made for. I They were made for teenage emo tumblr users. I don't need to explain why I think that, do I? Okay, fine. It's the kind of on the nose metaphor-but-not-a-metaphor you'd come up with if you were an angsty teenager writing an artsy game that was trying to be meaningful and deep. This kind of thing is present in a lot of the game, 2 is also where, for no fucking reason, one of the really edgily and presentiously drawn students which all have holes for faces(another very juvenile metaphor)'s head just explodes for no reason and it's not mentioned at all. I guess it was funny? There's also pretentious crap like the teacher sometimes, but not always, talking backwards. It's inconsistent like that too, sometimes it's really surreal and implied to be a dream but other times not. There's an explanation for that later even if it does contradict some things(and clearly wasn't the intent at first, so the dev probably wanted to hand-wave it away out of embaressment then they got older), which I think is actually interesting, but it doesnt change how pretentious and teenage angsty everything is. I like teen angst in my stories, I don't like stories that are written by someone with teen angst and really only appeal to you if you have it too, even when I was a teen. That said, I actually was interested in the end, as much of an issue as it could be, in seeing all the artsy vent-art bullshit that comprises this game. Like it is kind of interesting, even if rolling my eyes got in the way of it. The games as a whole are basically just the dev trying to express themself as best they can in game form, and in the end that's pretty interesting even if it can make for an often aggravating story. This is essentialy confirmed when you finish episode 3, and can get a message from the dev, talking about how much the death of an important friend influenced the story of episode 2.

And I think episode 2 is the best, though despite it's retcons episode 3 is very interesting and I don't want to say too much because I actually liked the twists and explanations even if they open plot holes. It's definitely an issue that you have no chance to guess where the story is going because the clues you have were mostly fake, you can't predict it because its inconsistent and literally gives you twists you just can't see coming. This is the issue with writing a story that feels like it's begging you to figure out what's really going on, and then not just making it up as you go along but clearly changing what the answer is and ignoring much of what you set up; it ends up making it a case where it's actually impossible to figure out what's going on. Another example is how episode 1 shows you Seth when you die in one of the bad endings, but then later makes it clear he wasn't real and you really were just playing as you playing the game.

This becomes another issue with the story. It gets really meta in episode 3, some in ways I like, some in ways I don't. So depending on what kind of meta you can tolerate and how much, that might be a deal breaker. You the player playing the game being a thing is the most meta it gets on that angle, the game isnt a game, it's implied it might be at one point but revealed not later. I can't tell you what it actually is, that part of it is genuinely really interesting, but I can say it isn't all fictional and in fact there's a reason for everything to be getting meta like this. The kind of meta it is, is talking about the nature of storytelling and writing in general, maybe even frustrations one can have with it and it's industry, as well as it's relationship with the audience. When all was said and done and I thought about it, when I wasn't going "hey wait a minute", I was actually appreciating how well certain story elements explain others in a pretty smart way, is all I'll say. Though at times I found it off putting and taking me out of the experience, other times I was actually nodding my head and understanding what it was trying to say. The commentary is sometimes woven in organically but not always. It could be a problem for you. I personally didn't like some of the meta shit it was pulling, specifically the epilogue, but a lot of the commentary made sense to me.

The last problem is just how little I care about the characters. Because of the fact I never knew if they were real or not, and they've all got either nonsense personalities or over the top dark backstories anyway, I kinda just didn't get attached to most of them. Take Benett, who has a crippling addiction to soap. Haha, lol so random *holds up spork*, right? Well yes, but also no, because it's dark and fucked up man soap is a drug that keeps him a happy smoothbrain so he doesnt have to feel the pain of being a slave to this doctor or remember back when he was human experimented on because he's one of the slave caste of his alien planet he's from and man... man I just don't care? Those characters suck, at least they aren't actually her imaginary friends cuz otherwise she'd have awful imagination.

But other characters, starting with the second episode, and culminating with in the third, are actually pretty good if not still a bit teen edge. The dev's writing and ability to be artsy without being pretentious improves a lot with time and I presume age, maybe they became a legal adult by the end of making this, and that really helps things later on. The issue is of course getting there, and the mess that is constantly changing the direction of the games and what the truth behind everything is. While the answers can't be guessed though, they are actually pretty damn cool answers. This story may be a mess, but it's one hell of a ride. You probably couldn't have guessed these answers even if there were clues! The problem would have been you lacking the imagination to! Not to mention, despite these issues, the presentation is pretty damn good, with a lot of sweet music, that all really lends to a fantastic atmosphere that heightens the experience. I was still able to feel it for the good parts because of this, I got taken out of the experience a lot but not enough to ruin it entirely. I think if anything that's the issue with the haphazard edgy and pretentious writing, and the plot holes, it's interrupting what was a cool experience I was having and now I'm mad. I can't stress enough that I found a lot of good here, I'm making it sound like I hated it, but I don't. I just wouldn't give any of them above a 6/10 because of these issues.

It's the kind of thing I don't really like, but I like a lot of. It's something I can really appreciate despite all it's flaws, just like the previous game and another upcoming RPGmaker edgy horror game. This is absolutely art, it's just a wonky one where a 3rd of it was painted when the arist was younger and worse and the rest is trying it's best to cover up the fact part of it's older and shittier and move it in the new direction the painter wants and maybe even trying to be self aware about it. It doesn't all work out, but it's an interesting paining for sure, and I can respect that the artist went for it. Because damn, does this game go for it. It starts unambitious and by the time it's over this is the most ambitious story you could tell on such a scale, with this type of game. I made a visual novel comparison earlier, well this is comparable to out there visual novels with crazy twists and concepts. Just maybe way more cynical about it all. 

In the end I do think playing these games and even paying money for episode 3, as well as the DLC for an alternate universe take on the characters I actually liked for a scenario where there's actually hope for the main character, was worth it. I would suggest playing episode 1 and 2 and seeing how you feel, and if you want to actually play episode 3 or not. Like I said, it's a wild ride and I don't regret going on it. Were I actually a teenager playing these, especially of the type this is really for, I could easily see this being a mind blowing and meaningful story that could alter the course of my life. There's a bunch of shit in here that would be extremely powerful... if I were like 15 and listened to emo bands. For everyone else, you might not get anything out of this, but I luckily at least did. And, can confidently say no man, this isn't better than Omori. It's very funny that you think it is, though.

You can get the first two chapters for free on itch.io and steam. In fact I recommend itch for the paid games too, they're cheaper there. Heaven's Gate, the spin off I mentioned that's an actual visual novel, is free on there and all the steam version gives you is a short bonus chapter that might not be worth it. I do recommend checking Heaven's Gate out if you liked the main games, though.

Finally I'd like to leave you with two things:

This bit of actually kinda poignant musing on the nature and purpose of fiction.

And this surpsing line, el oh el ecks dee. I really didn't see this coming, it didn't seem like the kind of thing a game like this would do! The DLC VN even has the line "Stay on your containment board." from the main character, holy shit. Maybe the issue is me, maybe I'm just not a cool enough edgelord for this game? Maybe it's not for tumblrtards maybe it's for chad edgelords and I just Don't Get It???? Considering my issues with an up coming game, maybe????????

Well anyway, finally, we can talk about the new games.

New Games of the Year

Ah, but now that I've finally finished that, I can talk about the new games I played this year! YEAH, YEAH LET'S DO IT, IT'S NEW GAMES TIME BABYYYYYY

Least Game of the Year

 

Final Fantasy VII Ever Crisis(Steam Edition)

Okay so this one's easy.

It's shit.

After installation, you have to install a shit ton more to play the tutorial. That took like, 20 minutes. To download. For the tutorial itself, that took probably 10. Then, you have to download each part of the game. I did not do this. I've heard that when you do, you're bombarded with ads to buy in game currency and shit. Thanks Square, you can go fuck yourselves. Nomura? Kitase? Toriyama? Hamauzu? Soken? Yoshi P? ETC.? Those guys are cool, the company they work for is garbage. They still call the guys who made the most successful MMO of all time, and were put in charge of Final Fantasy XVI, "Creative Business Unit 3". Fuck off Square, you employ people who make good games sometimes but the company itself is run by fucking chimpanzees. 

Even when you do all this the game is just a standard phone game type deal, the characters automatically fight and you just click on little options with cool downs that tell them to do certain things. Totally mindless bullshit made for you to pull out your phone while on break at work and grind a bit. In my steam library this is filed under "Square Enix Money Farms." It's not a game, it's a racket. 

Worst Game of the Year

 

 

 

Lisa: Definitive Edition

This one's actually pretty easy to talk about.

The original Lisa: The Painful/The Joyful are great games and you should play them. I sure hope you played them before, though, because they're now twice as expensive. You can in fact play the originals, listed in the options as the "legacy version", but if you didn't buy them earlier now you gotta pay more. Point 1 against it.

Point 2 against it is that they made modifications to the battle system. They were worse at the start, but they have changed it slightly back, so it's not as bad. Generally the changes aren't bad, they're acceptable, even though I enjoyed how the combat was before, but it's not a major change. What is a serious problem is that they fucked up all the sound effects. I know they were just stock RPGmaker SFX before, but the new ones sound fucking awful. I got used to it but they're too high pitched, they sound bad.

Point 3 against it is in that same update they fixed a changed some mechanics back, they fixed a bunch of the basic issues they introduced. Like the menu being brought up only with the escape key. You can't do it if you're using a controller, and if you're KBM the more intuitive method of pressing x like in the original didn't work. Yeah sure, the game where z is confirm don't put the menu button near it or anything, where your fingers rest. This is an RPG, where you need to access the menu a LOT. Fucking idiots.

Point 4 against it, the new content is hit and miss. I like having scenes that flesh out the characters more, so the campfire scenes are a good idea. The game has the issue where, once you've done the side quest that gets you the party member, you don't hear from them again until maybe the end of the game if they're in your party. What was that you said about JRPGs sucking, Austin? Guess you understand developing your party members and giving the presence in the story now eh? The problem is Austin has clearly changed too much since he made this game. Some of it's quite good, some of it is a bit... well, it's too on the nose a lot of the time. It might be fine in another story, if you do it right, but Lisa wasn't about beating you over the head with touchy feeling therapist concepts, but now it kind of is. We have the transvestite hooker character giving Brad lectures about feelings and toxic masculinity. The game was always about what people who are stupid and believe feminist nonsense would classify as "toxic masculinity", but now it's so on the nose now that you have to see it as about that. Before it was all stuff that people like that definitely interpreted as it, and it's probably what he was going for, but because it was more nuanced and less overt you could interpret it as about more general, real issues that people face. Now, it feels like Austin is lecturing me about "the problem with men." And besides, a lot of it doesn't even work. I don't wanna listen to this guy who's method of surviving in the post-apocalypse is dressing like a chick and fucking dudes give me advice me about how to be a well-adjusted and balanced person, I don't think he fucking knows.

If it were always like this I might not care, and it could have been worse if Austin wasn't a good writer who actually believes this stuff, but it goes against what was good about the game to begin with. Don't worry, Austin, I got the message before, I just didn't take it as "men need to be better". I know that a lot of people didn't get it and just saw it as the "based game where a dad kills everyone to save his daughter" but I think those people didn't actually play the game. This positively reeks of 1. He became more lefty/twittery in the 10 years since the game first came out and needs to make his message more obvious and "important." and 2. A pushback against part of the fanbase he cultivated, which is gay.

To make things worse, much of it is way more artsy and surreal than the rest of the game. This works in some cases, I liked a lot of the weird stuff with metaphorical dialogue in the optional Joyful stuff, and some of the new superboss stuff in Painful, but even the latter has some issues to it. Like, it's equally interesting and actually artsy and meaningful ideas, and equally pretentious bullshit. It feels like Austin took a look at what other indie games had done since his and got insecure about his, all of it. Some of the scenes are so esoteric that I genuinely cannot understand what the fucking point of them is, like Mad Dog campfire scene going on for fucking ever with weird music to the point it's just boring. 

Then we have the extremely obnoxious scene you're "rewarded" with for doing the extra stuff in Joyful which was already not as good as the main game and felt very feminist-y even when it came out. He really doubled down on that, like he was flipping off the people who rightfully had a problem with how much of a Mary Sue Buddy became, and gave us a wonderful scene where she gives a big stupid speech about shit she shouldn't know anything about yet somehow has it all figured out to the recurring and beloved antagonist Buzzo, which ends with him having what I can only describe as a "pissbaby tantrum" where he actually cries for his mommy because hurr hurr you know those toxic males are actually just big babies with mommy issues not like me the cool male feminist with my actual daddy issues(literally, Austin Jorgensen has daddy issues, it's why he made this game the way it is). It's so obnoxious and terrible and it's so awkward, plus it contradicts shit he put in earlier where he impressed upon you that Brad was actually kind of a monster and you're not supposed to feel that bad for him(again, shitting on his fans), because it then has Buddy blame Buzzo for Brad being such a monster and blame Lisa's death on him which is just so fucking retarded. I know it's an attempt at making the story more nuanced while also being more obvious about things, but all it's done is make it more complicated and like Austin doesn't know how he feels about his own characters' actions and motivations. Before, I understood all of them. They were both broken dudes making the wrong decisions for understandable reasons that didn't justify it, I can empathize with them without condoning their actions. Now, it feels like I'm being told they're a bunch of dumb idiot manbabies who reacted to trauma badly because the patriarchal society has failed men but also it's still their own faults fuck 'em. Austin mentioned wanting to be more blunt about the themes of the game this time, and this is what I was worried about. Being blunt and obvious about your themes can still work out, look at Princess Mononoke, it's as on the nose about what it's about as you can get but you'll notice it's still nuanced, because characters overtly discuss the story's themes and their views on the issue in a way that lets you understand it, instead of you know, just the guy who's right giving a speech about why the guy who's wrong sucks. I wanna think, Austin, not be told what to think. You can make it obvious what you're saying without thinking for me, dude. Well hey, I guess the super artsy stuff fills that gap since half of it's so esoteric I have to really ponder it to figure out what the fuck he was even going for.

There's a lot of good shit within the new content but the bad outweighs it too much, I enjoyed the parts I actually enjoyed(that superboss is grueling and kino as fuck, even if I didn't like the scene after it), but I don't know if it'd be worth it to experience it. Look up the new content and get a feel for it and see if you might actually like it just in case it outweighs it enough for you, but if not just play the base version. You'll get better SFX and the proper Shenmue II sampled Work Harder track too.

I rate the "definitive" edition a "I'm no longer interested in Ninja Tears, Austin." out of 10.

 

Most Controversial Game of the Year 

 

 

The Coffin of Andy and Leyley

Heheheh, hehehhehehehehehehee.

 

This game ain't even that bad. I mean it ain't even that good either, but...

 

To be entirely honest I do think the absolute underage zoomer shitstorm this game caused is more interesting than the game itself. On some level of course not, twitter kids are just like this. You try to tell them that the piece of fiction depicts a bad thing happening as a bad thing happening and if it isn't the most obvious, unsubtle, most directly to the camera "this bad thing is bad" type of delivery imaginable they will absolutely screan and holler about how it's sick and disgusting and the author is sick in the head and thinks it's a good thing and is promoting it and normalizing it and everyone who likes it thinks the thing is actually good and are all evil it must be burned to the ground. The twitter kiddies learned it from the tumblr kiddies who did the same thing, because twitter is tumblr 2.0. God forbid a story be edgy anyway and not actually depict a bad thing as bad because you can use your brain, right? You know it's not evil and promoting it, right? You get it's just supposed to be edgy fun, right? The game doesn't even do that of course but who cares if it did? I fucking hate these kids, when I was a teenager I was absolutely down for some shit where people did horrible shit but the story didn't care. I mean to be fair my teen years were kinda the opposite of where you're supposed to be, where I knew teens were into edgy shit and it's because they're immature so I was all "Ugh, I'm not like other teens, I'm not into edgy garbage." and while I still think it's the execution that matters and if it's a serious story there needs to be more to it or its just a half-assed attempt at being dark and mature, I'm definitely way more open to it now and can enjoy it if it's done right. More on that later, but for now just let it be known I never had a moral issue with it because I'm not a neanderthal.

What even's supposed to be "wrong" with this game? Brother-Sister incest. Man, they're gonna freak when they find out about all the hentai games about Brother-Sister incest, many of them featuring little sisters that are like 10. Of course, it's not even portrayed as a good thing, nor is it even portrayed except for one scene. There's some undertones, or maybe it's more like overtones for some scenes, but there isn't even any actual incest in the game until one optional scene depending on your choice.

That's right, it's a choice. The game fucking warns you. It's not just not shown as a good thing, it could not be shown at all. Yes yes yes, she flirts with him a lot over the course of the game but it genuinely comes off like her fucking with him rather than wanting to fuck him, it just becomes clear over time that it's more than that. There are very suggestiv CGs towards it too. But the fact he doesn't act like it's out of the ordinary yet they're both surprised by the vision implies this was some kind of freudian thing on her part(maybe his too), latent desires she wasn't aware of rather than it just being fine. They both likely viewed it as a joke as it became less and less of one. So this idea that they're incestuous the whole time is wrong, I think, it's like saying the guy and his sister from OreImo were incestuous the whole time; nah only near the end, just cuz it was a siscon anime the whole time doesn't mean they were boning yet. This is kinda like an intentionally dark version of a sis or brocon story, just because some of the CGs are teasing it doesn't mean it's glorifying it, nor does it not taking it seriously or being nuanced mean that. It's camp you idiots. Now, is all this shit supposed to be hot to the author and if you're into that? I mean probably, I'm not gonna be naive about it. But I think if it is, the non-incest part of their fucked up relationship is supposed to be as well. This is by a woman, and women make really elaborate and dark sexual fantasies that are also legit stories on top of it. I'm torn on whether that's what it is, since I did enjoy their fucked up relationship from a compelling narrative and character dynamic perspective, but that actually doesn't discount it as being one. It might be more that it's comedic fanservice for people into that, taking the opportunity to with the subject matter in the way non-fanservice anime do. Or not, maybe the pro-but-it's-still-fetish-material side is right and it really is all an elaborate sexual fantasy that also serves as a dark, uncomofortable, and usually darkly comedic regular story as well and especially for people not into it. I can't tell because I'm not into incest, and I'd trust the experts but they'd tell me Fruits Basket is nothing but fantasizing about hot guys being into you and not a real exploration of the cycle of trauma. Regardless of that, I can pretty safely say it's not glorifying or promoting it, so if you think it is and that's why you hate it you're retarded. If you hate it because you think being into cartoon incest is the same as being incestuous, you're also retarded.

 

But hold up, who even cares, right? Who cares if some teenagers and early 20s losers who probably only watch The Owl House and play Animal Crossing are freaking out about incest in a video game? That's Tuesday. Well the problem is they started harassing and even doxxing people over it. Often in ironic scenarios too, it's not just total babies that are doing it, Omori fans got really up in arms over people drawing Kel in the style of this game. I saw one personally yelling at a guy about how horrible he was for promoting incest, ending with "How about don't be a weirdo?". Okay so 1. Fuck you. 2. You're a fan of a game for weirdos. 3. Wait til you hear about Omori! There's bullying and suicide in that game! Hell, the bully girl? Not even a bad guy! Wow! 4. Wait til you hear about what the creator of Omori is into! 5. Fuck you. This is the kind of shit we're dealing with.

It got so bad that the fucking game's creator got doxxed. Now, this was by a bunch of guys on soyjack.party who thought the dev was a, ahem, Transgender Individual of the Male-to-Female Variety, but they're the kind of guys who assume that about every indie game dev, and every indie game fan. They specified that it was a "degenerate incest game" and that is very clearly the motivation. They might not be the same breed as these twitter kids, but they fundamentally think the same as them.

I'm pretty sure none of the twitter kids at least would be saying this if they actually played the game. I imagine one account was praising the game when it released in early access on steam, and then one account said "Sorry I don't like the incest game, thanks." or something like that, some casual dickish response because the incest scene annoyed them and they didn't like it to begin with. Someone took this and ran with it and it went from a game with a potential incest scene, and some probably incest fanservice here and there, and turned it into nothing but the incest loving coomer game that promotes and normalizes incest. Considering how twitter kids can act like Black Butler of all things is totally not fujoshotacon fanservice, I think if they played it they wouldn't be calling this "glorifying incest game."

 

Because what I saw was a game about a horrifying co-dependent relationship(says so on the steam page btw) between a brother and a sister, one which keeps getting worse. It has all the classic signs, including her threatening to kill herself as a power play, leveraging the fact she knows he cares about her to get him to do what she wants. It's unsettling and fucked up, you get lost in that dynamic and find it hard to say they're wrong in the moment. I mean, you gotta stick by your sister... right? 

Wait hold on, what am I even talking about what is this game?

It's another RPGmaker puzzle adventure horror game, though this one has even more simple gameplay. That's okay because the game's story and overall aesthetic and atmosphere is really what you're here for. It's about Ashley and Andrew Graves, two 20-something... I think they're both NEETs? They never mention any job or college education or anything, they might be NEETs. Well right now they're hikkikomori, locked in their apartment because of a quarantine for some unknown contagion in their water supply, supposedly. I think something's up with it cuz they very suspiciously take some of their blood and there's some notes on the doors relating to that when you escape the apartments. Anyway, these shitty government assholes aren't feeding them and in their desperation, they end up eating the corpse of their next door neighbor who dies in a demon summoning ritual, because you need a sacrifice and well, he was the only one there. This kind of thing escalates, soon they're killing more people, Ashley being the horrible immoral monster she is(I'll get to that) is summoning fucking demons and sacrificing people to 'em, and they're escaping their apartments. But honestly, in the 2 chapters there are so far, not a whole lot has happened.

That's because the main appeal of the story is Ashley and Andrew's relationship. Specifically, how absolutely fucked up it is.

Ever since she was little, Ashley's own parents didn't like her. The only person who did, was her brother Andrew. Or as she called him, Andy. In a moment of love and consideration for his sister, he did what any good brother would do and told her "Hey, I care about you!"

A great thing, right? But something that can be very dangerous, depending on how things go. And they went bad. Andy continued to be the only person in Ashley's, or Leyley's has he had to call her, life who caredbout her and this caused her to develop a strong dependency on him. She needs him, or else no one will care about her, and in the process of trying to make absolutely sure he continues to care about and stick with her, she only becomes much more of a person only Andy could love. Even as a little girl she pushed away any other girls who got in Andy's life and later would harrass them with absolutely vile verbal abuse until they left him, which at the time lead to a very, very dark and fucked up situation that was basically the point of no return for them. This became leverage both of them had over each other, as they had to cover up their crime together, and fucked them both up besides. This is obviously no way to have a relationship, and this experience only made it worse. Ashley's desperate to keep her brother, she needs him to have any positive feelings about herself, to be loved and cared for, and she'll do whatever she has to for him to stay with her, making herself an even worse person to stay with to begin with and further driving everyone but him away from her. Andrew on the other hand is terrified of not sticking with her, and continues to make worse and worse decisions to stick by her side that enable her. She manipulates him and he falls for it and puts up with her, because she's his sister man obviously gotta do this. What, leave you? No of course I won't leave you! Hey, come on, stop crying it's really okay. I promise I won't. What? Promise I won't hang around with that girl anymore? I'm not gonna- oh geez, don't start crying again, okay fine I promise. You know, that kind of thing. But honestly way worse, sometimes in realistic ways like when she threatens suicide to get what she wants like I mentioned, and sometimes in other more unrealistic and exaggerated ways. Ya know, to the point you'd have to be really stupid to not understand that's what's going on there, and think the game's trying to promote anything. This whole thing is a nonstop feed back loop, she gets insecure and feels threatened, so she manipulates him into doing what she wants and he gives in because she starts talking about how oh you dont really care about me you just say that, and he has to fight the urge to admit yeah that's actually fucking true and instead doubles down yet again, convincing himself he's not doing this because he's terrified of abandoning his sister like some kind of shitty person because that's exactly what she says he'll be if he does. Someone has to put their foot down and end this, and it really has to be him given his role in it, and he quite frustratingly(but compellingly, in a character study way) keeps making decisions that keep it going. Such is the nature of a co-dependent relationship. There's one point at which he does try to change things, though it in the end doesn't work. He tells her as they're leaving their apartments that they have to leave "Andy and Leyley" behind, as she often keeps calling him by that nickname. For him, he sees those names as symbolic of their problems, where it all began, and if they can abandon that and leave it in the past, they can change. He wants "Andy & Leyley", the people they've been up to now, to die in that apartment and be left behind. That's the "Coffin" the title refers to. As far as the news is concerned, they're still in there when the place burns down later, making it easier for him to feel as if they can really kill their old selves. The problem is that Ashley doesn't really realize what he means by that, hell she's kinda already forgotten about the incident outside of using it as blackmail, and so she continues to be the same person and not even trying. Or maybe she did know, and was trying, but simply failed. That is often the case with people like this. Either way, she's right back to what she does, and so is he. They didn't change, maybe they can't change. You can fix her? You're just gonna make her worse, and yourself too. That's the kind of story this is, it's about negative character arcs, a downward spiral there might not be any escape from. Their crimes escalate as much as their issues, but I'll leave you to find out what they are. In conclusion, the only reason there's any sister fucking in this game to begin with is because they're fucked in the head and way too attached to each other, it's just a potential extension and endpoint of that. It's really, really not supposed to be a good thing that the game's promoting. It might not actively condone anything the characters are doing, but that's because that's not in keeping with the game's tone, it's presented fairly as-is and you should be able to figure out oh yeah, it's bad.

So, that part of the story is not just the draw, but pretty compelling. It's not amazingly written, and is fairly over the top and exaggerated for the sake of the drama, but it's pretty compelling. I'm invested in our horrible, horrible heroes and wanna see how much further the they can sink in both the quality of their relationship and the quality of their characters. It's kind of like having duo villain protagonists, like these would be two fan favorite minor villains or even the main ones in another story and like this is their origin and an exploration of why and how they're like this. It's definitely really engaging in a fucked up way, it's certainly the kind of thing I like if you're gonna make it the main focus.

But forget that. That shit's the best part of the game, the rest is a bit... uh...

Well, it sure is edgy.

That's not necessarily an issue as I made clear earlier, but it can be as I equally made clear in the old games part with End Roll and Hello Charlotte, and it is here. The game's very tryhard. I don't mind dark and edgy humor obviously, in fact I think it's great, but the way most of it is done here is too careless and on the nose, there's nothing clever about it. It's just "he said a fucked up thing isn't that funny?", even if it kind of contradicts the reality we're presented. A good example is a newscaster who says something about how he's glad those contaminated freaks are contained in the building or something, then switches to er uh I mean thank you for your sacrifice so that we can all be safe from your gross disease. And I just wonder, if we live in a world where everyone's such an asshole and you can get away with such callous remarks as the latter, why can't you get away with the former? I feel like too, the latter, as on the nose and craftless as it was(I'm probably making it sound better because I don't remember the exact wording lol), would have worked more for the edgy satire it's going for. That's kinda the general issue of a lot of it, it's trying so hard to be a world full of jackasses that it ends up not being consistent sometimes, and even then is just too in your face about it all. Like, tone it down a bit, try to be clever, try to say something, or at least put more effort into the joke. Some of the humor worked for me, but a lot of it just did not. You gotta work on your material.

However, another issue is a tonal one. Sometimes the story is a goofy over the top edgefest where you're supposed to laugh at the exaggerated douchy characters and cynical depiction of the world, but then the serious character drama begins and we need to take the setting seriously. Suddenly, rather than everyone being a prick to be entertained by and think about the satirical nature of instead of care about, we actually are supposed to care and empathize with these fucked up characters and especially the victims of Ashley who are genuinely pretty nice girls. Now, I watch a lot of anime, so I can deal with tonal issues where the story wants you to care sometimes and not care at others. I also like Lisa, where sometimes a guy getting raped or abused is funny, but it isn't when it's time for Brad Drama Hour and now rape and abuse is srs bznz. But Lisa had a lot better comedy, and anime has sick action scenes, so it's more of an issue here and it's not like that inconsistency is acceptable anyway. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a big issue, just something I noticed. I can still take the serious parts seriously, but I would prefer if it were consistent. All stories need some levity, but this one flips back and forth between full levity and full drama, and that's kind of a problem. Plenty of things have extreme levity and extreme darkness but typically, one of them isn't so exaggerated the other feels wrong and more importantly, they tend to not have you not take one very serious thing unseriously and then expect you to take another very serious thing seriously. Deltarune being kinda cartoony and having Rudy joke about throwing something at Berdly's head and then having serious scenes about potential existential threats isn't really tonally at odds, at least not in the way "haha we killed and ate this demon cultist" to "hey you know it was really fucked up what we did to that little girl all those years ago" is. You feel me?

These things combine to form a game that just ain't great, not even sure I can say it's good really. It's a bit overbearing in it's dark edge comedy making it harder to enjoy the story of the two fucked up individuals, like if it were 100% one or the other I'd probably like it more. Still, despite it's flaws I do like it and would recommend it if it sounds good to you. The game itself is simple RPGMaker puzzle adventure games stuff, find thing x to use on thing y, watch a cutscene, do it again. That's not an issue for me but it could be for you, so that's a factor. I think Andrew and Ashley's relationship makes it totally worth it but boy, it's rough. I appreciate it though.

Oh and this is technically not a new game, it only released on steam Early Access this year, first chapter was out since last year, just hammering home how much of a non-issue this all is. Where the fuck were you guys that were flipping out before? No one had an issue until the incest fetishists started making porn of it and shit and you all just assumed surely it must be glorifying it! Even more irony for that Omori fan I saw, you know how much Sunny/Mari incest shit people make? And I won't pretend Omocat didn't know people would do that, I'm sure she did depict them in a way where people would do that on purpose.

 

Seriously though, you can tell nobody angry about it actually played it because the murder and cannibalism probably should have been the main issue, especially a certain one later on. I mean I dunno, people do have a bias when it comes to that sort of thing.

Best Re-Release of the Year

 

 

Persona 4 The Golden

Finally, a game I don't have to say much about.

I mean I guess I've never formally really reviewed Persona 4. I did say some things about it in my Top 10 RPGs list from like 2016 or something? That list is outdated and there's a lot more analytical and eloquent things I could say about it now, but it's fucking Persona 4, it's been out for 16 years, it's been in my life for half of my life at this point. Holy shit. What more is there to say about Persona 4 that hasn't been said by someone somewhere since the game came out? Now, true, this is The Golden and it's also a port of the PC port of the PSvita version, with new japanese voice options and higher framerates. I think? I know it has the JP voice acting, which I didn't go with. I feel like I should since I've never actually heard it before. But I made the executive decision not to.

What do I think of Golden in particular? Well, I actually think it's equally as good as the original! I have a lot of nostalgia for the PS2 version, as I was a teenager at the time, the perfect age range for it. While I think Golden provides a lot of improvements, mainly to making Izanami more built up by the narrative, I still like the original version a lot. For one thing the game was not meant to be upresed this much, you can really see how dinky the models are in HD. For another they've changed much of the menus, notably the main menu which I liked. I think they also have a different rendition of Nevermore at the end? That said, a lot of the additions are great, I like Marie a lot I don't care what anyone says you just DON'T UNDERSTAND HER, and I love the addition of the Adachi social link and the ability to get a bad ending related to it even if it's actually a little underwhelming. Still, there's a charm to the original PS2 game and I recommend playing that first if you can, and would like to do so again myself, but definitely do play this version.

As for this current port? Yeah, get it on PC or Console if you don't have a Vita or want to play in on your TV and don't have a PSTV because who the fuck has one. This is a solid re-release of the game.

Persona 4 is just one of the best games of all time, and you gotta deal with it.

 

 

Best Work in Progress of the Year 

Your Turn to Die: Death Game by Majority

Like The Coffin of Andy and Leyley, this is technically not a new release, Nankidai put the first part out in 2017 actually, yeah he's been working on this game all by himself for 6 years. He's a published mangaka though with only one work, and instead of doing that he's living the dream and making a magnum opus doujin game. It's so popular it has a manga adaptation already, though it's story is also unfinished. Unlike Coffin, I'm anticipating the rest way more. 

But what IS Kimi ga Shine? 

Well, it's a mystery sci-fi visual novel/adventure hybrid in the vein of an Ace Attorney game, quite literally. You click around on screens and try to find the next thing you need to advance the game, talk to characters, and eventually take part in logic puzzle debates and such. You'll need to present evidence, use reason, and make arguments towards your point. The only problem is, what you're debating is... who lives and who dies!!!

See, it's a story you've seen sometimes before. It's what like to call a "Cube-like", after the movie "Cube" which was a cult classic about a bunch of guys who wake up in a mysterious, clearly man-made location for an unknown purpose who are trying to get out, all while also trying not to go crazy and kill each other. Only here, that's the goal of whoever's set this up. It's a death game story, with ways to die before the big trial that determines who dies too. The goal is for everyone to mistrust each other and become backstabbers, so their goal is to try their best to trust each other in defiance of this cruel system and find a way out of there by working together.

It's a cool game and cool story, emphasis on story obviously since that's what these kinds of games are about. And how's the story? Really good!

The game is essentially a playable shounen manga, and I mean that in a very good way. No I'm not talking about your DBZs or you JJKs or even you JJBAs, not a battle shounen just a regular shounen. It carries itself in the same way a shounen manga would, same kind of writing, tone, themes, character personalities; all that stuff. But hey, that's anime, that's fun. They're all over the top characters but they're all really likeable, and not without depth despite their somewhat outlandish personalities and designs. The game's separated into story arcs which share continuity and character progression, and all work towards the finale of the story. Which should be soon. In addition to character drama we've also got a mystery to solve. Who made this place, why are they here, what the hell are these weird automaton things that serve as game masters? All questions which have yet to be answered, so even I don't know. 

I seriously really like all the characters. They have very vibrant and likeable personalities and are utilized to express all manner of themes, and react suitably to being in this fucked up situation. Some are steeling themselves and pushing down the fear, others can't and are breaking down. One case of the latter is Kanna, who loses her will to live after sacrificing her sister to escape the first trap that everyone wakes up in. She blames herself and was traumatized by the experience, eventually deciding it would be better to die as punishment and go join her sister. This is the kind of "Yeah, actually, that probably would happen if people were trapped in this situation." character writing that you want out of a story like this, and it's really utilizing the premise besides. They're all well developed, each chapter letting you learn more and more about the characters, and their level of development and seeming importance doesn't save them from death. They will kill off a character who's been developed, one who hasn't, one who seems important, one who hasn't completed their arc; all that shit. No one is safe and you can't predict who's gonna die next. And it all works! There are even 4 distinct routes depending on choices you make that flips which characters die, and two of them get post-mortem development so that they can seem as if they're not on the chopping block yet when they are. Yeah man, 4 story routes, 4 combinations of characters still alive. And one of them is a huge difference changing how a bunch of stuff plays out. A lot of work went into this game, and to the characters. I think they're all great, they have good chemistry with each other, and it's genuinely sad when one of them dies. I kept thinking to myself about how much I wanna do everything I can to keep as many of these people alive as I can, really got into it and played the role. Our protagonist is pretty good too, Sara Chidouin, the "Samurai Onna", works really well as the leader, managing to dodge Mary Sue status despite her arguably unbelievable level of competence at several things due to being unable to save people a lot of the time and having breakdowns over it. Moreover there's a lot to her character that really justifies being the protagonist, she's the ultra-serious, straight-laced, obsessive type who routinely goes too far in her kendo classes. She's probably the type of person you'd want to take charge and would want to take charge, even if she isn't the type of person you'd want to hang out with normally.

The theme of trust is a recurring one, the natural avoidance of it in this situation, and the ability to do so despite it are a big focus of the storyline. Very shounen manga-esque, you know you have the cynical guys who understand human nature saying no no I have to hide everything and maintain distance they can't be trusted, and the more idealistic ones who say no that's exactly what they want we need to trust each other and work together and besides you have to have hope in these situations and believe in others regardless cuz it's the right thing to do. Which side of this dynamic is right is tested and has yet to ultimately be determined, and the best part is despite moments of hope and optimism, there's actually a possibility it may end up being the cynics who were right. Regardless, it's enthralling to see Sara have her way of doing things backfire on her, the people she allowed herself to get close to dying and her trusting of others actually resulting in some getting killed, making her struggle to keep that idealism anyway. Good shit! What else is good is just the general fantastic pacing that goes along with that, taking you from the peaks of hope to the cliffs of despair, expertly flipping between crushing defeat and snatching victory from it's jaws, only to get swatted back down again and then find a second wind. It's genuinely really enthralling experiencing the ups and downs and twists and turns of the story, it's expertly crafted to be a roller coaster of a time.

Art quality is really nice too, visually it looks pretty cool. The pixel art is quite nice, reminiscent of older japanese PC Adventure Games, specifically some of the original games that pioneered the visual novel genre. The character art and CGs are also great, Nankidai definitely has a bit of a new artist look to him, but you can tell he's got a grasp of the fundamentals and is talented at this. The character designs are mostly good, though I do have my issues with some of them. 

The music's cool too! The dude actually made these with garage band loops lol, I mean it's impressive he was actually able to make something that sounds so good with them. I think Akira Yamaoka might have done the same kinda thing too, I know he used a lot of samples in SH2 and 3, but he might have also used pre-made melodies and stuff like here? Well regardless, it's fine, because you still need an eye for composition and to put in the work to make stuff sound this good.

Would recommend it! What's great is you can get it for free on VGperson's website, the steam early access version is just for the bonus character episodes and to get the complete game early when it's done, and to support the creator. Which, I think you should do, but try it out first before you shell out any moola.

 

 

Best Fangame of the Year

 

 

Undertale Yellow

Finally, after 7 years, it's done.

Now, this one is a game you can just flat out get for free, since it's an Undertale fan game. Get it on gamejolt if you want to!

But do you?

I'll say this: If you played undertale and enjoyed it, you should probably play this too. It's fucking free, dude. 

The only real issue is that it's harder than undertale was. Even the neutral route has some brutal and unforgiving bullet patterns, I had a lot more deaths my first time through than I did playing undertale. Sometimes this is alright, it's tough but fair, other times it's just frustrating. They have actually recently updated it to alleviate this somewhat, but that nerfs the final boss of the good ending and that was like, the one uber hard fight I liked being that hard... Though they didn't fix the fucking god awful chase scene near the end that I literally had to do like 50 times because it's so god damned strict. I know UT is popular with speedrunners but please do not make a mini game you need to have speedrunner brain to beat, jesus. That for me is the biggest barrier to me possibly replaying it(and made doing a neutral route playthrough first a pain since I did actually have to replay it), and is the biggest barrier of entry I'd say for a fan playing the game. It's really made for someone who's just obsessed with UT to the point where they've played the genocide route like 10 times by now, the kind of person who does no-hit Sans fights. Okay, maybe not that bad, but someone who's main complaint with the game is that it's too easy. If that's you, play this for sure, if not, well be warned.

What is it though, besides that? Well, it's a prequel to Undertale, set some unknown time before Frisk falls, and stars another human child named Clover, a little cowboy, who intentionally falls into the underground with a missing poster, looking to help any of the previous fallen humans if any are still alive and avenge the ones who aren't. Whether or not he continues this quest is up to you, you can choose to meet out capital punishment on the monsters, or choose the softer and more understanding approach. It's up to you what justice is in this situation. Also it's fairly western themed with an entirely western themed area and group of characters.

 

For what else is bad, due to being a prequel, it does have a few parts that don't mesh with the original Undertale. An example, Flowey is around. That's odd, because you'd think the determination experiments would have happened after they'd gotten 6 souls, hoping to make a substitution for the 7th. There's a lot of little stuff like that, where it doesn't line up 100%, but for the most part I don't think anything is outright contradicted. We don't know specifically when any of these events of the past mentioned in Undertale occur, and in fact I think Toby wrote it that way to leave it up to the imagination and open to fan works just like this. So don't get too bent out of shape about that, I know there are some people who did.

 

For the good, it's worthy of the name I think. It's not as good in the character writing, humor, atmosphere, music, fun and charm, or even the deeper aspects, as Undertale was but for the most part it really isn't that far off. Some of it's a bit rough, I found Martlet to be mostly annoying actually, and some of the character design is definitely not even close to as good and maybe clashes a tad with the style of the original, but generally it's of a fitting quality and execution that it is, as I said, not too far off. Like I also said, if you liked Undertale, you'll probably like this game too. There is a lot here and while it doesn't really stand on it's own, it does work in the context of being something based on an already existing game. It's a fanfic but a quality fanfic, about mostly original characters, and a mostly original story, which is in line with the spirit of what it's based on even if it doesn't hit the bullseye all the time and isn't going to be as great of an experience. It almost feels like an official product, one made by the same team as the head director after he left just trying to stick to his vision while also adding their own flair, with it just occasionally being a detriment. I generally really liked the characters, the story and it's themes, and even the gameplay despite some of the hurdles. Also, the game is mostly new areas, which is cool, the game barely relies on nostalgia for the game at all(and yeah, 20 somethings were literal kids when it came out, it's been 8 years), which I really appreciate. It's pretty impressive that they managed to make a game engaging enough on it's own merits that it didn't need to. I'd need a lot more time to go into everything I really like about it, plus I don't really want to give it away. Suffice to say, it goes even more into the monsters' plight and their dilemma in a way I think will appeal to people who enjoyed the original, and hits a lot of great emotional beats that should do the same. And it's fun, plenty of fun characters to fuck around with, good jokes, an enjoyable adventure to go on if you liked the first one.

I would really recommend it honestly, if you can handle the difficulty(it's probably not that hard and I'm just bad at video games), even though it's really not on the level of the game it's based on.

The music is really good though.

And yeah, congrats on finally getting your game out guys! WOW! I, like others, assumed this was never gonna come out. I kinda think it's worth it to play just for that alone, and not unlike a certain other game, I'm surprised it came out this well. Honestly probably came out better than that one if I'm being objective.

Best Action Horror of the Year

 

 

Resident Evil 4 Remake

Not a lot to say about this one, really.

RE4 Remake is a remake of RE4. It hits most of the same beats but with fancier graphics and a more "modern take" on the story, for good and for ill. I could do a comprehensive breakdown of what's different between the games but you've already listened to me blather on enough at this point and there are plenty of people you can go to for comprehensive mechanical breakdowns. I think that by and large the more carefully considered gameplay of the original is the superior experience, even weapon switching isn't a net improvement. Just being able to stun an enemy and in a specific way depending on where you hit them is better, not only is the stun differerent(and the bullet impacts and melee hits less satisfying), it's also less reliable as it often doesn't trigger. It's now tied to the adaptive difficulty. There are a lot of things like this in the gameplay that subtly shifts how the original gameworked in a worse way. Ashley is probably a more interesting character and has some cute moments but overall I prefer the simple but cute(w/nice boobies) Ashley from the original. Same with Leon, Ada, Luis, and especially Saddler. In an attempt to bring him more in line with the more serious tone of this game, he's ended up becoming a generic and fairly lifeless cult leader character. I think the idea that he wants to unify the world with Las Plagas and end all conflict is an interesting goal for him to have, it may sound ridiculous but that's just what RE bad guys are like man these mutations are the next stage of human evolution don't you know? Plus, he's probably a "puppet of the parasites" like Leon accused Salazar of being in the original, having his desires manipulated by the Las Plagas to make him think he's using them when they're really using him to propagate themselves(and this is what I think was going on in the original too, no RE bad guy other than Wesker has been able to control the bioweapon it always backfired and controlled them, why would he be different?), but this is still good guy shoot bad guy blow up the base save presidents daughter so it can't really go into that as a concept and even if it did, I just prefer cartoon villain saddler because he was more fun and memeable.

I think that there is a big indicator of the game's overall issue. First off, it's just not as impressive as going from PS1 to PS4 with RE2. 4 was such a game changer for video games that everything is still copying it to this day. RE2 Remake was a huge jump, it was absolutely a more modern game based on those original ideas, allowing for it to have similar appeal for older fans but more appeal for newer. RE4R is both too similar and too different, not enough has changed so what has is under more scrutiny from me. But second, the whole thing is trying to fit a more serious tone over the same skeleton we had before which isn't as doable to me, certainly not if you've seen what it used to be like. In both story and mechanics. The guns and melee feeling less "cool", the new tweakedmechanics, it all feels like it's trying to be more modern in that "serious and grounded" way and man, it was just more enjoyable in the old game. That's not to say the remake is not fun, or isn't good, it is! There's a lot I like about it, I actually like the expanded side quest stuff. It did suck before there was only one blue medallion hunt at the start and then the merchant never asked you to do any treasure hunts ever again. But here, there's a bit too many, of both blue medallion hunts and side quests in general. And some of them are like "kill 3 rats" lol. Cut them down by a 3rd and you're good, I think. I like the expanded areas and how the game's a bit longer, there's some story stuff I do actually like, some stuff I don't. Combine this with the base game being good, and hey, you've got yourself a good game! But certainly not a great one, it's not up to snuff with the original. Not even close.

But I'll definitely play both again sometime soon.

 

 

 

Third Best JRPG of the Year

 

 

Octopath Traveler II

See because Persona 4 The Golden and Live-A-Live Remake are the best JRPGs of the year. Oh shit I just spoiled the game of the year. I can't in good conscious give Game of the Year to P4G either because I mean that game's been out since 2012 does it really count? I dunno maybe I've done that before, but that's okay I guess because these aren't really about deciding the best games of the year, it's just an excuse to talk about the games I played and what I think of them. The awards are totally invented for the sake of giving them something, so this one gets this. Cuz I couldn't think of anything else. That's the real reason.

 

Anywho, Octopath Traveler II is the sequel to Octopath Traveler(WAIT, WHAT?!), a game I didn't play because it wasn't on anything I had. Well okay, it's on PC, but I've always had an absolute potato and probably always will so I doubt I could have run it. This one's on other stuff though, like PS4, and I have one of those, so I played it!

 

It's a JRPG in the vein of older 16 bit JRPGs, kind of. It's got some modern amenities but also some of the classic comforts, and I think that ends up working out quite nicely.

 

First I'd like to talk about the combat system, which is great! There are two things that set it apart, the break system and boost system. Wait... didn't Xenosaga have that? Not the first one, but 2 and 3? I think 3 still had the boost... well, fuck it, it's probably better here. Every enemy has shield points, you gotta hit their weaknesses or use skills that lower shield points in order to so. What's great is it's not just spells, but basic attack of a certain weapon type that do it too, making sure you have to have a diverse party. Once the shield is broken, they're stunned and take way more damage, letting you totally wail on them. Add in the boost system, it's actually way different from Xenosaga's boost system, which is moving up character turns. Here, your boost points let you do extra attacks, or power up a skill. Not only that, but you get a cool power aura and your characters go HAAAAAAAH, it's fun. Fun is the key word here, I didn't really mind the random encounters and boatload of fights, because of how fast and fluid the battles become. I did have to think about them rather than just mash x, but the feeling of breaking shields expertly and working out how to do the most damage is great and doesn't take very long. A problem with fighting battles in older JRPGs is they can be kinda slow paced, for lesser enemies it can become a little boring to just do basic attacks or the same skill until they die. You want your common enemies to not be too challenging but require some thought and more importantly, feel more interesting to fight and not like you're taking a long time just cutting down a tree in your path. This does that fantastically, the battle system is not just fast but cathartic and cool to look at, so I rarely ever ran from any battles even when I had something I was trying to do, I really wanted to fight the battles! Damn! For me, the story is usually the best part and the battles are like, cool I guess. Boss fights sure, you gotta strategize and it's usually a story moment, but the cannon fodder? Ehhhhh. Not here! 

The other mechanics are the job system, which determines what kind of skills and weapons your characters can use. They all start out with an inherent job but can learn job licenses as you progress and put more on them. I didn't experiment too much with this just like I didn't in FF5, I just went with simple and sensible stuff. It works differently, with the characters being able to equip a secondary job in addition to their main one, keeping the skills inherent to their job will being able to learn new ones from a different one. So for example, I did simple stuff like give my mages both schools of magic, gave my hunter/thief the thief/hunter job to further boost their agility and dexterity, and weirdly enough gave the warrior and apothecary each other's skills because the apothecary has an ax and ax skills so I just turned them both into warrior-apothecaries. This was simple but ensured I had a well-rounded team, didn't really use any of the advanced jobs or anything, and the only time I had an issue was the final boss but that's cuz it ends up forcing you to use all the characters and I didn't level them all up. My party consisted of the Scholar, the Cleric, the Warrior, and the Hunter. You might enjoy experimenting a bit more, but I didn't lol. What's great about this is what each character has skills unique to them that make them stand out rather than be interchangeable because of this. There are things, like Osvald's ability to analyze the enemy and find weak points, that only he can use. And, there are skills you can only get for someone's primary job too. Not to mention, each party member has skills they can use in the field too! That's right, finally, a JRPG where the classes matter outside of combat! Depending on the time of day, a character can perform one of two actions, with Osvald again, you can learn info from people during the day, and mug them at night. These do sort of blend together so that party setups can still progress, since their success is often level dependent(mug for example means you have to fight the guy), but there are some that are smoother than others. As an example, you might be wanting to use Castti to whip up some medicine to knock a guy out rather than trying to fight him or be high enough level with Throne to do it. So yeah, can't just put whoever you like the look of in and go with that, not without missing out on stuff. I really liked Partitio but he wasn't so effective for my strategies and playstyle so I didn't have him in there. That's how it goes sometimes, and I like that! I want everyone to have a defined role, rather than be interchangeable gameplay-wise.

 

But what are these characters? Well, for that we need to get into how the story works. 

 

Octopath Traveler II is a game all about 8 different heroes who have 8 different stories. Similar to something like Wild Arms(well the first 3 at least, I know 5 doesn't start this way and I've never played 4), you pick which character you wanna play as first and do their prologue before meeting up with other characters. The difference is, you have to pick your main character, and then go and meet the others to see their prologues before continuing. The good is that this is cool, whoever you want as your main character is who it can be, rather than the game just having a designated protagonist character. Sure, games usually pick someone who fits the most for the themes and plot of the story be the lead, but it also sometimes has an issue of contrivance as to why he's the leader. Sometimes it doesn't seem like he should be, the most interesting JRPG protags to me are people like Cloud and Luke(fon Fabre) who really don't make for good leaders but everyone ends up being like "Yeah he should totally lead us!". You even  have cases lke FF8, where wait guys why do you want Squall to be the leader so fucking much this guy's a total asocial werido loner like yeah he's good at combat but what tells you he'd be a good leader? Is it cuz he's the most handsome one??? Here, it's a matter of who's story you wanna focus on, everyone kind of has an equal role in the party because of this, and your leader is the leader because he or she is the one who meets everyone when they're about to set out on their journey(or should I say, their TRAVELS?!) and they need someone to adventure with because, well I mean fuck it's dangerous out there, there's like, giant crab monsters and shit. So it's his or her party, that's only fair honestly. For the most part this really only matters for where you're starting out and what prologue to do first, it doesn't affect that much, but it does technically increase replay value as there are 8 different beginnings to the game. Where you start does affect where you're going to be going first and it might actually swap enemy levels around, so there's a good amount of variation.

I myself chose Osvald as my main character, because he looked the coolest to me on account of looking like this:

I think you can see my reasoning. Also, he starts imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit, being set up for the murder of his own wife and child. Everyone thinks he's a monster who burned his own family alive, but in truth the only thing he burned was his heart which yearns for vengeance. That sounds pretty rad, right? So I picked him, and he starts with his mouth muzzled so he can't cast spells. You plot to find away to escape, and eventually stage a prison break, and then go off in search of Harvey, his former friend and colleague who only really cared about his ambition and gaining the ultimate magic. Osvald is a stern and aloof Scholar who cares for little other than research and knowledge, and his deceased family of course. From there you meet various other characters like Temenos the Cleric, who is investigating the murder of a Pontiff and needs to leave his sleepy town and church behind to do so. Temenos isn't your regular man of the cloth, he's very cynical and disillusioned with the church, as well as willing to be underhanded. He's the kind of guy who's really just doing a job he's been doing too long to give up on. You'll also encounter Throne, pronounced with an accent on the e but I don't feel like putting it there, who is a Thief and assassin looking to free herself from her life of servitutde towards the guild she works for, being imprisoned by lock around her neck, and seeks to retrieve the key from her masters. She is a cold and calcuting woman who will do whatever she can to be free. There's also more simple characters, like Agnea, who wants to become a star Dancer and sets out on a journey to learn new moves and prove herself to the world, just like her mother! She's bright and cheerful and never gives up! But there's also characters like Castti the Apothecary, Hikari the Warrior, Ochette the Hunter, and Paritio the Merchant. But I don't want to explain all their stories.

 

That's your first order of business, meet up with everyone and do all their first chapters. From there, you set off to progress each of their individual stories in whatever order you wish, with level recommendations being the only real barrier. So if you wanna focus on a certain character's story, your main's for instance, you can! Or whoever interest's you the most, the choice is yours! The only issue with this is that, because of this, the game can't account for who you have at the time and make a bunch of different cutscene variations for what party members you have. Each character's story plays out as if they were solo, with they and a side character interacting at best. This means the party's dynamics with each other are relegated to battle dialogues and little bonus scenes you can get depending on who's with you, outside of chapters that require everyone which only really come in at the end. And I spent 100 hours playing this game. This isn't a major issue, it doesn't ruin the story, but it's my biggest issue with the game. Each character's story is great on it's own, but we're missing the camraderie, nobody's like oh Throne kills people geez yeah I want to help you escape that life or, he killed your fucking family god damn he's gotta be punished, or oh man Castti can't remember anything that's terrible you can stick with us at least until you get them back. The characters have no reaction to each other's struggles or the plot twists and shocking developments the way they totally would if they were in the scene and that you want, there's no way they can help out aside in battle, they don't talk to or comfort each other or anything like that. You might get a scene where someone says something about what just happened but they're few and far between and you might miss some if you don't get everyone all at once and don't have the right combination. I personally don't think it's worth it, and wish the story was done in a linear fashion once you've got the party together. Regardless, I still get enough of what I want out of a JRPG story from this, they're all great individual stories. I do think though that the finale, while having some really good twists and cool stuff about it, is overall less interesting than each of the individual stories' endings. Still, good story overall, but could have been way better.

As for the gameplay, well I put 100 hours into it and wasn't bored at any time. Most games I've played that go one for 100 hours, which now counting this one is actually only 4 I think, feel kind of padded out. You couldn't cut enough out of Persona 5 or Tales of Berseria to get it down to anything less than 70 hours w/side quests, but it shouldn't be that long. Not to mention the side quests in both those games are boring, the requests are lame and some of them are just poorly written in P5 and most of the side quests in Berseria are just a guy tells you to get him a thing or kill a monster, you do, go back and he says thanks and gives you a reward. I want real god damn side quests, dammit! Well you have them here, there are some of those, but a lot of the time the side quest is to explore a whole optional dungeon and fight a boss, they usually have more story to them. Not to mention just a bunch of optional stuff that isn't even a quest, not one that gets added to a list at least. There are two super monsters on the seas which gate off some bonus dugeons and an island where you get one of the advanced jobs. There are optional dungeons where you just go in, find a really good piece of equipment and some items, and that's it. A nice reward for your exploration. I was shocked, I was like, surely this results in a boss? Or an event? No, nothing fancy, just nice stuff. Just like in the old days! But if you do want a boss or an event, it's got those too! What a nice way to do things! Despite not having a world map, the game is very open in a cohesive way with shit to actually do and find if you explore, and I really enjoy that aspect. I do like my linear JRPGs focused on keeping the plot going, but sometimes I do actually just wanna explore a world at my own pace and find nice stuff, then continue on with the story when I feel like it. Here, the fucking around feels genuinely rewarding like I'm playing an actual game here, not just ticking off the boxes on my completionism checklist which I feel can be an issue in some modern JRPGs. This doesn't have that problem. I totally enjoyed all 100 hours of my playthrough, probably 70% of which was just doing optional stuff. Whereas I only really enjoyed 70% of Persona 5 and Tales of Berseria, I just really really really fucking enjoyed that 70%. Like I said, this has both modern amenities and classic comforts.

 

As for them graphics, the game looks quite nice as well. This joins the many pixel art games, but this has the benefit of having real cool oldschool FF style sprites for the enemies and nice 3D backgrounds. The game uses a tilt-shift photography technique to make the game world look like a miniature, which has the effect of kinda hiding how low poly-detail it is as it kind of looks like a toy set in some ways. That might sound bad, but just take a look at it and you'll see this style is unique and to it's benefit. 

 

Musically it's also fantastic, my favorite tracks are the boss fight transition songs which have cool names like "In Pursuit of Memories", "In Pursuit of Hope", and "In Pursuit of Legends." But I also really like "At Your Back" and "Tempest on the Battlfield". BTW, don't actually watch the video you see there, just listen, the video itself contains spoilers.

So in conclusion, it's a great game and I'd recommend it! It has issues I'd say get in the way of really loving it, but I had a really good time playing it and the characters are cool and have interesting stories. I really doubt that if this sounds good at all to you that you'll dislike it if you play it, so pick it up for the cheapest you can and have a good time! I sure did!

 

 

 

Game of the Year

 

 

Live-A-Live Remake

Now, this one is very similar to the previous game. That's because 1. I'm pretty sure it was made by the same team, it's at the very least the same style of "HD2D" JRPG. and B: The Octopath Traveler games were partly inspired by the original Live-A-Live.

Because Live-A-Live is a game about playing as 8 different heroes who are all basically the main character in their individual stories, often alone but sometimes with a side character. The key difference is they don't meet up until later so it's totally justified their stories are self-contained. 

And that's because unlike Octopath, Live-A-Live is about a bunch of different time periods with a bunch of different genres and types of heroes. There's the japanese street punk hero who becomes a super robot pilot. There's the cave man hero who goes on a quest to stop his rival tribe. There's the ninja hero in the bakamatsu period on a mission to assassinate an insurgent. And more!

Live-A-Live was a japanese cult classic that was never released outside of japen, but later gained some notoriety amongst JRPG and SNES fans due to a fan translation patch that let us filthy gaijin play it, and because of it's unique premise and shocking plot twist! Until you get through the initial 7 chapters, it's not immediately apparent why people like this game so much. But once you unlock the next one... well, there's a reason it eventually got a remake. Until you get there though, it's mostly just a fun ride through some interesting stories about good guys stopping the bad guys, with the only unifying element being that you always fight someone with a variation of the name "Odio", latin for "Hate", at the end... hmmmm...

I remember 10 years or so ago Square was talking about doing some kind of remake of this, but they were planning on making it episodic. That's not so popular anymore for people who aren't indie devs, so that's probably why they eventually did this. I didn't expect them to actually make a remake of Live-A-Live, and it kinda came out of nowhere! This is actually not a new game, as it was put out on switch after being shown at a nintendo direct, and is now on PS4 and xbox. I'm pretty glad it came out on something I have, because it's a great version of a great game! 

But what is it, aside from what I said? Well first we'll start with what was in the original.

It's an interesting mixed of typical turn based combat and grid based strategy RPG, you get into encounters and an invisible ATB bar fills up with you or an enemy is moving around that grid. When it's your turn you can move around the grid as much as you want, but your enemy's guage is filling too, and when its full it'll attack if you moved in range, or move into range if not. To prevent this, you're going to want to perform a technique called "shooting first", and instead move into a position where you can hit them with whatever attack it is you wanna hit them with. Obvious each one has different ranges and areas of effect on the overall grid, some can be sent diagonally, some hit through targets, some hit multiple targets, etc. You learn these by leveling up, of course, and they're you're only means of attack. There is no basic attack skill. Also, some skills offer strategic benefits like status effects and even changing the enemy position like pushing them back or turning them around forcing them to re-position themselves. Encounters are on-map, no random here. Well, aside from certain chapters of course, you'll see. 

Now, in this remake, there's been some changes to some of the areas and a couple mechanics. Good ones, actually! It fixes a bunch of my issues with the original, like how the encounters work in the cave man chapter and the layout of the ninja chapter which not only is presented differently and in a really cool way, but is way more readable now and not as easy to get totally fucking lost in. The battle UI is generally more readable too, and they also made the ATB bar not invisible! Generally it's an improvement! Graphically it's all been updated and looks more like Octopath Traveler, and I personally like how it looks quite a bit. I do like the charm of the original, but I've played that, and this is a very nice rendition of the areas. The characters too are improved, originally the field sprites were tiny, done by the same guy who did the FF5 sprites, and while they're once again charming, I like the bigger and more detailed sprites now. Speaking of sprites, the original had really cool and big ass enemy sprites, but they didn't animated like the protagonists did. Well now they do! And it looks really nice! 

For the music, they've offered new arrangements of the old music by almighty music witch who has sold her soul to the devil so that we may experience her immaculate compositions, Yoko Shimomura, and while they're not quite as good, they are still pretty good. I'd give you some examples but Square cracks down real hard on uploads of music from their recent releases, you'll just have to take my word for it that they're not as good but are still good.

More on the audio front, we now have voice acting, holy shit. Unfortunately, the dub is hot garbage. Anything that has japanese or chinese characters, over half the game, has these terrible actual native asians voicing them and many of them have thick fucking accents and just can't annunciate english worth a shit. Those that can aren't much better. For many of the english characters, we have people with heavy ass british accents voicing them. See what I think happened here is they hired people for the Kung Fu chapter and for the Medieval chapter and then just has them do double duty. The only one with decent voice acting is the Wild West chapter cuz we need texan accents for that. I think this is just the state of modern voice acting, they apparently cast for authentic ethnicity now instead of talent, except if it's asians because all asians are the same no it's cool put Yong Yea as a japanese man doesn't matter if they're totally different countries and also he can't fucking act. Why didn't I play in japanese then? Well, I should have, but unfortunately the bosses have unsubtitled mid-battle lines. I do like this, but I don't like having to listen to this shit dub so I can tell what they're saying. Also generally the new script is just bad, it's censored and edited for "modern sensibilities" from both the original japanese and the original version. Not to mention, the medieval chapter is written in such flowery faux-Shakespearean language that it's often difficult to parse what they're saying. They added some stuff to the finale that I really, really like, but they sadly butchered a certain character's big thematic speech about the nature of hatred and the birth of evil. Like, he's still getting across the same, general idea when you really get down to it, but he's not only saying something different, but you can barely tell unless you pick apart the metaphor and it's just not as elegantly succinct of a summary as what he originally said. It's not a bad line, persay, but it needed to be edited to be less pretentious and it's just inferior to the more blunt way of putting it from the original. I get it, they wanted this version to be classier, but there had to have been a better way. The original was direct about it on purpose. They also ruin a part with the cave man, who is supposed to say LOVE! instead of a grunt. Okay, well, it's complicated. In the english script, he says "Aieeeeeee!" which is what he says earlier. He is in fact yelling that out, but it sounds like the japanese word for "love", ai. The idea, I think, is that this is supposed to be not only the origin of the word, but he first word humans ever created, which came about because this kid was in love and was screaming because he got a kiss. The english script doesn't seem to pick up on this double meaning at all the way that the fan translation did, or at the very least they made the opposite descision since it certainly is tricky to figure out how to render this in english. The fan translators realized it was thematically appropriate to just translate it as "love" so that when he says it in response to a certain someone, it works as a refutation. Forgo hatred, and embarace love, that will save the world. But it's weird that he, in this society without words, just randomly decides to say LOVE! when kissed. So the translators of this version dropped that entirely, making it so that he's just happening to use the same scream he made when he got kissed later. Either way there's no double meaning, but the former implies a reason he's saying that. The old script makes it clear he invented the word and associates it with the kiss and with love, so he's saying it now in response to the idea hatred rules all. In the new one it feels like this scream is just something he says when he's excited, like I guess you could kinda say it's associated with love so same deal but like... it's just a bad choice, you really gotta squint to figure it out, or know the japanese word for love. The former choice lets those who don't get the same sentiment later, the original japanese let's players go "ooooh, 'ai'!" later on, and the new one makes you go "oh uhhhh, what? I-I guess like, he's maybe saying, oh love will win cuz he's making the love noise? What?" if you're lucky. So much harder to pick up on. Man, the dub sucks it really just totally ruins the theme and message of the game.

But whatever, fuck all that, that's an issue with the localization and they all fucking suck these days. Don't play in english it's not worth it just go for the japanese dialogue. Nothing to do about the text but it always alliviates some of the issue if you know any of the words they're actually saying. The game's still good, great even! In some ways, I like it more than the original, especially because of a new scene they added near the end which is really great for someone like me who had this game's story stuck in his head for over a decade now. Its a great game for people who already like the game and not a bad way to experience it for the first time either, though I'd really strongly recommend emulating the original fan translation first if not just so you can join me in being mad the botched the delivery of the themes.

This is a seriously good game and I'm so glad it came out on a system I have, do play it the original is seriously a JRPG classic and this is a great version of it!

And that's it for this long, long Game of the Year Post. That's right, you're finally free. By the time you're done reading this it's gonna be time for 2024's Game of the Year, so get on out of here and play all the new games before the year's over. Or old games. I dunno just play video games they're pretty cool.

Thanks for reading all of this if you did, I know there are better and more productive ways you could have spent your time, like picking your nose. 

Just kidding, my posts are more important than world hunger and global conflict, sit your ass down and read.