Coming off the heels of completing Golden Sun and Golden Sun: The Lost Age, I was hesitant to try out Dark Dawn. It's a title many have noted frequently as disappointing, bland, or just flat out bad. I wasn't keen on souring my very high opinions on Golden Sun so I wasn't sure I was going to give Dark Dawn a go. That said, I'm glad that I did. While some fans may have you believe it's an absolute travesty, the honest but boring answer is that it's just an okay game. Therein lies the issue because it's not an excellent game like the previous two titles. On its own, it's a sort of forgettable DS JRPG that came and quickly went. It's not what one would hope for as a followup to the previous games. I'm going to try and allow Dark Dawn to be viewed in its own light, but I will have to draw frequent comparison to the original GBA games.

For the sake of brevity, I'll refer to Golden Sun 1 as GS1, Golden Sun The Lost Age as TLA, and Dark Dawn as DD.

If you were interested in reading my thoughts on the original two games, the link is here

General Plot Overview Thoughts - Major spoilers for the story

30 years have passed since the Golden Sun event at the end of the Lost Age. Alchemy has returned to the world saving the land from crumbling apart. Alchemy flows throughout the world now, with common folk now generally knowing what adepts are and how alchemy works. With this new power comes what was warned in the previous titles - a return of old powers, the rise of civilizations, and wars.

Similar to Golden Sun 1, and many other JRPGs, Dark Dawn starts off slow with lots of text and cutscenes. You take control of a new protagonist, Matthew, son of the renowned Isaac. Visually speaking, he looks practically identical to how Isaac looked in the first games. Similarly, you meet his friend Tyrell who looks pretty much exactly like how his father, Garett, looked in the originals. Isaac and Garett are living near Sol Sanctum, where their hometown village of Vale once stood. Nothing of it remains after the Golden Sun event, but they have been seemingly living in the area for quite a while looking to investigate these strange voids that have been opening up in the world that suck up alchemy.

If I understood correctly, their mission appears to be to re-enter Sol Sanctum, though with much of the geography in the area changed, it has become impassable. I'm not entirely sure what they were doing for the past 30 years, but at the start of the game, they get their hands on a soarwing, invented by Ivan (who doesn't appear at all in this game) to try and fly towards Mount Aleph and find their way back into Sol Sanctum.

When I first started, I was really intrigued by the general plot points that were being set up. It seemed like there was a lot of promise to the whole thing. Strangely enough, most of these plot points are abandoned after just a couple of hours. Instead, the game starts with Tyrell grabbing hold of the soarwing, taking it for a ride because of his ego, and ends up crashing it because he can't operate it properly. The entire game's plot and main quest focuses instead on having you trying to hunt down a rare bird to get a feather to fix the soarwing. The stakes feel very low.

For the first few hours after, you do appear to be following in the plotline by meeting up with Kraden, solving some puzzles with some voids, and meeting mysterious soldiers/henchmen using strange technology that appears to be linked to the voids. You also come across two new villains, Blados and Chalis, very much in the same vain as Saturos and Menardi from GS1, or Karst and Agatio from TLA. Alongside them is the ever mysterious Alex who now goes by Arcanus, who never had his plotline ever resolved in the original two games, and sadly will similarly not have anything resolved here either as he barely makes much of an appearance throughout.

This whole opening sequence feels so different in comparison to the first GS: a massive boulder during a heavy rainstorm comes crashing through your starting village, with some of the characters seemingly losing their lives while you come across the villainous duo of Saturos and Menardi who beat you to a pulp and leave you knocked out. You then head off on a quest 3 years later after uncovering more intrigue regarding the mysteries of alchemy to try and save the world. Though it's text heavy and a bit of a slog to get through, it's a very strong start and pulls you in to the world. Compare that to your dumb friend crashing and breaking a glider and having to go on a quest to fix it. It's like a world-spanning trip to a mythical hardware store.

In all honesty though, on its own, this intro really wouldn't really have been a bother as I felt the developer's intent must have been to use a fairly standard JRPG trope of using something on a small scale as an excuse for you to experience how the world has changed over the past 30 years and uncover new troubling plots as you progress. Throughout your journey, you'll travel through towns and cities and learn about the power of the ancient civilizations that once existed that is now returning to the world. You'll also see that rising powers are already waging war on each other and tensions between other neighbouring regions are growing. I'll be honest, I couldn't really tell you why some of the wars were occurring. Much of it felt quite forgettable. A lot of names I couldn't remember with the alluded backstories being equally forgettable; some leader doing something or another against another leader that I couldn't really care much about. I think the characters in each region were just fine but the subplots were forgettable.

I think this exploration of the new world and uncovering the mysteries and powers of the ancient civilizations was pretty cool but if I stop to think about it, I don't think it necessarily makes a whole lot of sense. From what I remember of the first two games, the knowledge of ancient civilizations had long passed. All the world tends to really know is that these civilizations were very powerful with amazing powers, wars were waged, great destruction occurred in the world, and then that power was then sealed away. These civilizations, all except Lemuria, faded away. Their power and knowledge was lost to the ages, with Lemuria entirely isolated from the rest of the world. In Dark Dawn, it was a bit surprising to find that many ancient ruins never really mentioned in the originals were mostly rebuilt for people to live in with much of the old technology still in tact and now powered up with the return of alchemy. In just 30 years, everyone seems to know the history of the ancient people who lived there while also having an understanding of their technology. Unless I'm missing something, that really doesn't align with the lore of the original titles.

I found Dark Dawn, at least for the first half, leans quite heavily on the Warriors of Vale and the events of the first two games. Lots of not-so-subtle nods to how great that journey was with those characters. An entire beginner area after your adventure starts summarizes many of the main plot points of the originals while teaching you basic puzzle solving and psynergy mechanics. They even have books you can find or buy that recap the story of the original titles with nice little picture book style animations. I wouldn't say it's in poor taste or anything, but it often gave me a strong feeling like Dark Dawn had a very "fan-made game" quality to it, which I wouldn't say is much of a compliment.

In the first half, I was pretty high on the game. I loved the puzzles and dungeons, and the exploration was not too bad (even considering the points of no return). The story was a bit boring but the gameplay was interesting enough to get me to keep picking it back up. The second half, or perhaps final third of the game, I really started to dislike my whole experience with the game. Things both seemingly started to feel rushed and also incredibly dragged out. Once you get to a castle town called Belinsk, an area where Beastmen live, the story ramps up very quickly in stakes. A catastrophic event referred to as the Grave Eclipse occurs that blocks most of the sun in a large part of the land, spreading aggressive monsters and gloom all over, killing loads of people. It is a pretty dark (unintended pun) progression considering all the events that came before it. You escape Belinsk and set off on a boat to copy a similar exploration format as TLA with Eoleo joining your party, the son of Briggs, who was just a toddler in TLA. The linear nature turns very open world, but in a much smaller area compared to TLA. You set off to find some map and some Umbra Gear and some other mcguffins and here's where I really lost interest as to what was happening. I didn't understand what was going on plotwise and I didn't really care. You quickly meet the final member of your party, Himi, who just has some magic power that tells you what to do next and then now she's with you on your quest. She has no real personality of her own and is more plot device than character. You were supposed to find a map that tells you where the Umbra Gear is, but I just ended up wandering all over the place and found it all myself and ended up finding the map at the very end.

Combat

The combat in DD is still the same system as before, no real changes, and that's perfectly fine with me. The combat difficulty, however, is a definite step down from the previous titles. I think there was a lot of throwaway random encounter combat in TLA and I found GS1 had better difficulty balance and combat pacing. Dark Dawn's general combat feels just as trivial as it did in TLA. You level up very easily and it's rare to have much difficulty with any of the combat. A huge criticism I have of this game is that there really aren't many boss battles at all and they barely push many of your abilities. One of the best parts of the originals were how you had to really balance your usage of djinn so as not to bring your stats down mid-battle too much, use powerful summons, stat buffs, heals, revives, shielding, and offensive skills to find sort of a rhythm to defeat lengthy and challenging bosses. In Dark Dawn, I felt really overpowered. Even if one of your party members happens to get KO'd, it's more of an inconvenience than anything to worry about. Regarding djinn and summons, there feels like there is little to consider in their usage as spamming them feels like a perfectly viable strategy now. This is all true right up until the final boss, who is incredibly challenging and a massive difficulty spike. Unlike the previous two titles, I really didn't enjoy this final fight. I found it to be pretty unfun and tedious. I think there is one main reason for this that will take a little more to explain why:

In GS1, you follow a party of 4 and get invested in all their skills, weapons, djinn, etc. Same thing with TLA except with a different party of 4. Each party member is introduced steadily and you understand all of their abilities essentially one by one and it's something I didn't really think about until playing Dark Dawn. For the final third of TLA, you get all 8 party members joined together with a new mechanic of being able to switch between them mid-battle. Since you are already invested in all these characters and know how to use them and their abilities, switching when necessary becomes pretty useful and fun, especially during the final battle. It felt incredibly satisfying to utilize all 8 characters based on the conditions of the battle and it was a perfect way of ending that series.

In DD, you are introduced to all 8 characters in one adventure with no real use for most of the them. The only switch I made was when Amiti, a Mercury adept, was introduced - I switched him in for Rief because Rief felt kind of useless in comparison. Once you get Sveta, a Jupiter adept, I felt no real need to switch her in for Karis as I felt Karis was strong enough. That means I never realized how different Sveta is. She has a full on beast transformation that gives her a secondary moveset along with some other unique skills. I used her only two, maybe three times, throughout the whole game and still felt no reason to switch her in over Karis or anyone else. Then you get Eoleo, a Mars adept, who feels like a worse Tyrell so same thing, I never really used him. Then finally, Himi who is the most forgettable of all of them and would be a potential sub in for Matthew as the other Venus adept. I never used her so I don't know what she's capable of. Because of the way these characters are introduced, I had little interest to do the mid-battle switch function like I did in TLA for the final battle. I was forced to a couple times but it felt like more of a necessity since I felt no attachment to the other characters.

Throughout the game, I also never once died or had my party wiped out. I remember this happening at least a few times in the original games. I also never really needed to rest at an inn - your passive HP and PP recovery was super high just walking around. If I had ever reached a somewhat low health state, I would just use a heal spell and my PP would be recovered in no time. By the time I ever reached the next destination, there would be no need to stop by an inn, I was already full health and psynergy. I remember having to go to those sanctuaries and pay good money to have my party members revived a few times. I never had to do that here in DD. That's really a shame too since I felt that the character abilities, djinn, and psynergy spells seemed pretty well thought out and unique, but there's never a challenge that actually lets you utilize them to their full extent except at the final boss.

A few bonus points I would give to DD are that I felt like the random encounter rate was lower overall (except in the Grave Eclipse areas which started to be really annoying) and the monsters at least more visually threatening in their design compared to the previous titles.

Switching to 3D graphics has slowed down the pace of combat a bit but I was pleased that it's still quite snappy and easy to navigate. The animations are quite nice and combat doesn't take long to get through. The summons are really nice to look at, spanning both screens for satisfyingly powerful attacks. I'll discuss the series' 2D to 3D transition a little more later.

While the challenge of combat isn't well balanced at all and despite my criticisms, it still mostly works. That classic JRPG style that this series nailed so well is still here so it still scratches that itch.

General Gameplay

In terms of pacing, dungeons, puzzles, and exploration, I think Dark Dawn does a mostly great job and is the strongest part of the game. Before I discuss the oft-reviled points of no return, I have to note that I had a lot of fun with traversing the world, finding djinn, solving puzzles, and completing dungeons. I felt it was much more in line with the first GS, where the pacing is quite linear, the dungeons are not particularly lengthy, and the puzzles are not that hard. Even though I found the challenge of puzzles quite straightforward, there's just something so satisfying about completing them and progressing that I think Golden Sun in general just nails, with DD being no exception. That said, there were still several instances where I found puzzles had me a bit stumped and were really well designed, with satisfying rewards at the end (usually another overpowered piece of equipment or a new djinn).

In terms of the points of return, in all honesty, they really didn't bother me at all and I don't really have a whole lot to say about them. Arguably, they are the least of my complaints about the game. There are I think 3 points in total where you are unable to turn back, blocking exploration of places you have already been to. So if you miss something, like any treasures or djinn or if you just wanted to talk to those NPCs and explore a bit of those areas again, well too bad. I can't say I really wanted to go back to any place though anyway but I feel I can understand the complaints that it turned some people off. Thankfully, I don't think it hampered or really even affected my experience at all. Maybe if I didn't know about them beforehand, I would been genuinely bothered by them, it's a bit hard to say. I'm not one to often backtrack to places in games unless I have to. I'll usually just move on, even if I missed something. Knowing beforehand that these points existed, I believe I had my expectations adjusted and I can't say they bothered me at all as a result.

I did end up missing one djinn at the first point of no return, but surprisingly managed to get the rest of the djinn without any really issue and I did so almots entirely without a guide. I did use one a couple of times after I had already found the location of the djinn myself if I couldn't figure out the puzzle to get them and was spending too much time on it. For example, there's one where you have to fish a djinn out a pond with a fishing rod. An NPC in the house next to the djinn tells you he wishes he had a sturdy stick to go fishing. I looked around for a stick in the nearby ruins with no luck. I was very much on the right track of looking to buy one in the store in the adjacent town but I couldn't find anything. I gave up and checked the guide - well I was almost there, I needed to check in the artifacts section of the general store, NOT the weapons/armour store. Little things like that I would look up if I felt really stumped an didn't want to waste too much time. I felt using the guide to get all the djinn affected my experience in TLA where I felt a little stronger than I should have been compared to the first title, where I thought the difficulty was really well balanced because I only had a small number of djinn. But here, even without a guide, I felt like I was drowning in djinn and was way overpowered. They were still fun to collect because of the puzzles you had to solve to get to them.

A little nitpick - with the transition to 3D and the design suited for a stylus on the bottom screen of a DS, I found I didn't like how you controlled Matthew. I played on a 3DS and I never used the stylus, just the 3DS thumbpad. Matthew's movements have a bit of momentum to them, meaning there's a bit of a build up between his stand still pose to his running animation. While I got used to it, I really disliked the feel of it throughout the whole game. It felt a bit slippery and less precise. I frequently found myself having to make slight adjustments to his position to get him to stand where I wanted to jump on certain platforms or use psynergy. Not too bad of a complaint, but still an annoyance that I felt merits mentioning.

Final Thoughts

I mentioned before that for the first half-two thirds of the game, I was pretty satisfied with it. The plot kind of sucked, but I think the main characters were actually more interesting (except Himi), but the gameplay was really fun. The puzzles were great and the use of psynergy/magic to interact with the world is something I don't think many JRPGs ever really do often. After the Grave Eclipse, I really started to sour on the whole thing. I couldn't tell you the details of the plot at this point, just that you have to stop this Grave Eclipse. I don't remember how it happened, why it happened, or what it was intended to do. I only know that you have to stop it. Arcanus/Alex is involved as usual manipulating the main characters into doing his bidding but his intentions are still completely unclear. The pacing also slows down a lot, where I just wanted the game to end after that. I kept coming back to it just to see it through. That's never a good sign.

After beating GS1 and TLA, I remember feeling really satisfied with the final battles and the overall experience. TLA's plot ending was pretty weak in that it felt like there was still a lot left unresolved, but gameplay wise I was happy. DD, the game ended after a difficult final boss that I didn't enjoy with lots of boring dialogue and some characters that I don't care about. Then the post credits scene where Matthew, Tyrell, and Karis return back to their home to meet up with Isaac and Garrett - but now there is a massive void opened nearby. And the game ends. I put the game down just feeling annoyed. I've written this review after a few weeks to let those negative feelings mellow but I think they haven't really subsided. I'm very tempted to say the game is bad simply because of how it had me feeling for the final third and how it ended, but it's really not bad at all. Even the final portion of the game has fun puzzles, cool secret areas, collectables, etc. I just think the plot felt like a generic Saturday morning cartoon with some generic villainous nonsense occurring that the good guys show up to stop.

I know someone posted about this game several weeks ago, but I could not resist posting my own review as a non wrestling fan and my experience.

This is one of the strangest and most addictive games I may have ever played. At face value, it looks nearly unplayable, but once you get into it, it hooks you. There is logic to the madness.

The game starts off with a wrestler selection screen, you choose from roughly 75 different wrestlers and pick one with stats that align with what you want (which are all fairly low, as they are all newbie wrestlers). You customize your clothes, body, music, moves and many other factors. It can take a good hour before you are done with your base wrestler and ready to head into the game.

You can also customize any other wrestler you want. This can be really fun if you want to create funny/interesting rivals to play against (like one streamer made a bunch of mega man characters and soda product characters). It takes a lot of time but it also adds a lot to the game.

Gameplay: The game is split into three different areas, the wrestling arena, off hours and the overview.

Wrestling Arena: This is where the action happens. Every week you are given a set of matches and activities to perform. When you first start out playing the game, you are a nobody who is in 'wrestling school', your matches are against other wrestling school newbies. The game takes some getting used to and wrestling school is the perfect low-stakes area to introduce you to concepts, controls and the overall function of the game.

You are thrown into your first match right away. You have no idea what buttons do what (as there is no control guide within the game I could find), you just have to hit buttons and start to learn on your own. While this may sound frustrating, it is actually quite fun. As you wrestle more and more, you figure out how to do more and more moves and play better and better. Your understanding of the controls aligns with your growth as a wrestler. I know that sounds crazy, but trust me, it actually works.

As you enter your first match, it becomes clear that this is not a game where you are going to win all your matches. You will have time where you are not even winning half your matches. Even if you have a wrestler dead to rights, you might get blasted into a submission hold and cry uncle, losing a match that you had in your pocket, just like a 'real' wrestling match.

While this may sound frustrating, it really isn't frustrating at all. It simply motivates you more and creates a list of your own rivals. That one asshole who used a cheap shot to win that one time? You are going to feel even better when you suplex his head into the cement floor and break his/her arm later.

The ring has a variety of match types, you have anything from your traditional 1v1 matches, first person to pin to 3 count wins, up to a 20 person free for all where you have to be the last man standing.

One of my favorite memories in the game is winning a 13 person free for all while in wrestling shool. Complete mayhem going all over while you try to leverage other wrestlers against each other to come out on top.

Wrestling isn't the only thing you do in the arena, you may be asked to commentate or referee. That doesn't mean you have to just sit there, you can feel free to cheat, help someone win or just beat up on your nemesis. You may lose money for your poor behaviour, but this is wrestling and you are going to do what you want to do.

Overworld: The overworld is mostly experienced in 2-3 minute bursts. You try to heal up after matches, workout at the gym to improve your skills, trash talk other wrestlers and even go into the subway to murder a rival by throwing them in front of the subway car and everything in between.

There are many instances where you go to freshen up for your next match only to get your ass kicked by some random rival. I was literally sitting on the toilet taking a shit, only for my rival to show up and suplex me off the toilet while I tried to crawl away and make it to my match.

You can also pickup and use anything on the floor, eating food and drink will heal your health but also put on weight. You can go to the hospital to try and find medical kits and sleep off the last match, it goes on and on.

You will have random events that occur within the overworld as well, someone might try to sign you to their company, you might be taken to court for some shenanigans you pulled off in your last match, pulled into your managers office to do a favor or have your manager turn you into a heel and change your costume.

Overview: The overview map allows you to see what matches are coming up, view other wrestlers, customize other wrestlers and modify just about anything in the game.

I know this all sounds crazy, I feel crazy even writing it out, but something about it just WORKS.

If you're on the fence about the game, there are some really good long plays to watch. I am not someone who watches youtube regularly, but something about watching someone else play this game was highly entertaining. I watched DDRJake's longplay and spent a good 12 hours watching it while I did other things around home and he is the one who really hooked me and taught me to play the game.

The game is available on PC and Switch, I believe those are the only two platforms. I've put in a good 50 hours so far and I can see myself putting in a few hundred hours. The amount of insanity in this game and the way crazy things just happen over and over, keeps it fresh and interesting and you are always invested.

I don't know what else to say, other than this is probably my game of the year.

I remember being in high school and being extremely excited about Mass Effect 3 coming out. I also remember the discourse online about the ending to ME3 and the expanded ending content coming out. I remember vaguely being quite happy about the ending after the expanded content came out. I also remember having a real case of post game depression after it. I played the trilogy again in anticipation of Andromeda coming out 9 years ago, but didn't play it since. I bought the legendary edition when it came out, but left it sitting in my Steam library. This summer I finally sat down (a couple of times) and spent about 100 hours playing through it. Was it as good as I remember it? I quickly realised this will be too long to fit into one review, so I'll probably upload my review of each game over the course of about the next week.

Mass Effect 1 - The difficult birth of a legend

Mass Effect 1 was rougher than I remembered it. Despite all the improvements the legendary edition brings, it still really hasn't aged well. And yet you have to remember that the game is almost 20 years old. Released in the same year as Bioshock 1 and Modern Warfare 1, for example. The music and atmosphere is good. The main story quests are good as well. The tone is a bit sombre, and just dark enough. There is a lot of mystery in the galaxy. It makes sense for Shepard to not know a whole lot, since humanity is the new kid on the block in space, among species that have explored space since humans discovered that iron is better than bronze.

It doesn't look as bad as it did in the original game, but it isn't just the graphics. Shepard and the squad members feel a bit flat and underdeveloped. I remembered Tali, Garrus and Liara as these strong complex characters since I mainly remembered the last game, but there isn't a whole lot to them in this first game. As a man myself I like to play male Shepard. My romance option of choice was always Liara, and I repeated it this time around. I also remembered her as this strong complex character, but Liara declares her feelings for you after spending probably a grand total of 7 minutes with Shepard. It's a bit hilarious. Especially considering her romance clearly recieved the most attention from developers, especially in ME1 and ME3. It struck me talking to her for the first time on the Normandy how glad I was that ME1 didn't release under gamergate and post-gamergate discourse, since she right away starts explaining how her species don't have gender. This conversation also has a hilarious moment where Shepard can be a real idiot. Shepard can say something along the lines of how he though asari always preferred to breed with other species, where Liara can correct him with informing him that they would have to breed with each other on their own planet before they started exploring space. It's funny since the lore in these games really doesn't make any sense at all if you start thinking about the biology of the species for more than a second.

The gameplay was also rougher than I remembered it. Outside of the main story quests, which are mostly really good, there really isn't a whole lot to do in this game. Driving around planets in the Mako is mostly extremely boring. All of the planets are pretty much the same, with completely pointless collectibles and some side quests set in buildings copy-pasted every time. The gunplay is really janky. The overheating system of ammo is pretty bad. The AI on enemies and squad members is also very bad. The game also delights in flooding your inventory with stuff, weapons and armor that are mostly slight recoloured skins of the others. And mods, loads and loads of mods. The sheer amount of inventory tetris you have to do if you make sure everyone is at their best all the time is insane. You are also locked into bringing a member specced into being able to open all these chests all the time. Yet you still have to go through the same silly frogger minigame for all of them. Every member can have every weapon, even though this doesn't really make sense for them. They mostly stick to the one weapon by default, and the overheating mechanic doesn't really require you to ever switch weapons.

The citadel is a main hub you keep returning to over the course of these games. The seat of the galactic government and therefore also a huge megacity. It's built on a space station that has always been there, nobody knows how it works, maintained by a species of keepers nobody understands or knows really anything about. Again, this is just one of those bits of lore you really should try to not think too much about, since it might make you question why the bloody hell you would choose to make this the seat of galactic civilisation, especially again after the battle at the end of this game. There is loads of content here. Sadly, the citadel in ME1 is such a slog to navigate through that I avoided spending much time there. Sadly, this will make you miss some content that pops up there after you reach certain points of the game.

Despite all of these flaws, you have to recognize that this game was pretty great for it's time. And it started one of the most beloved video game series of all time. Even though the squad interactions are very stiff and bland, there are moments in there. Ashley is a fun character, pretty much because she is the only crew members with opinions on anything. It's also the game where Shepard feels the most like the "daddy" of the team. I especially remember the Garrus companion quest, when you track down a criminal he has been looking for. The paragon route leads to trying to take him in alive. The criminal reacts by starting to shoot, forcing your hand. Garrus understandably reacts in confusion to what the fuck the point to not just shooting him was. Shepard says something like how you can't control what other people's reaction will be, only your own actions. Small moments like these make Shepard feel like not just an empty slate to project yourself onto, but an experienced military officer who has been through some shit. The way in which all the companions gradually show great respect and admiration for you feels really good and well made. The companions are a bit flat, like I said, but they are great at introducing the player to the different species and conflicts between them. The voice acting is good, but doesn't really become great until the next two games. For now, it's a bit stiff.

The morality system itself isn't the best. It gets better in subsequent games, but not much. I love how the game stats shows that basically every single person played paragon in all three games. This again makes sense given how the paragon response is the empathetic reasonable thing to say, while the renegade option is often just needlessly cruel or angry. And yet... a couple of times over the trilogy the renegade option is very tempting. The problem in ME1 and ME2 is that you have to collect enough good guy points to be able to say the good guy thing. If you haven't done that, you might be forced to gun down a crew member on the Virmire mission. The same mission where you're forced to choose which crew member to sacrifice and leave for dead. Like every other situation like this in the trilogy, your good guy/bad guy-points can't solve this.

And yet, it feels rewarding when your sheer god guy rizz is so good that you can force the main bad guy to shoot himself in the end, because he realises he is indoctrinated by the reapers. That brings me to the real main bad guy. This is a really strong element in the series. A lovecraftian race of super powerful ancient AIs is coming to harvest all life, and there doesn't seem like you can do much despite delaying them. And the most sick thing is that Shepard and his crew are the only ones who even know about the reapers, and has to spend the rest of the game, and the next one, raving like a lunatic about how the end of days are coming. The pacing of the overarching story regarding the reapers and the frustration Shepard feels over not being believed is good, since this was always plannet out to be a trilogy. So the end of the game perfectly sets up the next one.

Trying to think how this game could have been better constructed given the constraint of having originally being designed for a handheld console, the conclusion I come to is more of a persona style slice of life.
The plot is at it's strongest when it focuses on Zack and his relationship with Aeris, a more fleshed out telling of their romance could have been quite sweet.

I think the focus on the expanded universe with Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth was a mistake. The whole plot is nonsence, no motivations are clear, it undermines sephiroth's character, him calling zack to chat about work wasn't something we needed. It's also so separate to the other events in the game that it undermines itself, we have a climactive fight with Genesis which should have been the emotional peak of the game and then we have the awkwardly bolted on death of Zack afterwards. In a vacume both are fine scenarios but taken in context it really didn't work for me.

The plot stuggles to balance making Zack a likable protagonist whilst working for the evil shinra organisation.

I think the main plot should have been more around Zack establishing himself in Shinra, becoming a hero in the wutai incident and being promoted to first class. Then having an internal conflict over the acts he's asked to commit being part of SOLDIER, culminating in the Niblheim incident

the turks should have remained in the shadows and I don't think Zack would have approved of their underhand methods.

I quite liked the combat, it's a fairly fun mix. Being able to switch between loadouts in battle would have been useful but I understand why it wasn't permitted. The missions were so tedious and the constant stopping for a pointless cutscene really killed any pacing the game could have had.

So fun in parts but plodding in places.

Overwatch is a game that has evolved a lot over the past decade. It has changed to the point where people who loved it four years ago could genuinely hate it today.

I've been playing consistently again for the past couple of weeks after taking a three-year break. I just didn't vibe with the whole Overwatch 2 situation and what felt like a scam, so I decided to walk away from the game.

But now... I'm having a lot of fun.

I forgot how much I loved the characters, the gameplay, the abilities, the ultimates, and especially the teamwork.

I remember being extremely competitive. I would get tilted, frustrated, and genuinely upset when things didn't go my way. Now, I'm just having fun. Maybe I grew up and became more mature about competitive games, but I honestly don't care that much when I lose anymore.

Funny enough, back when I was completely obsessed with climbing the ranks, I was stuck in Platinum. Now that I'm much more relaxed about it, I'm only a couple of games away from Grandmaster.

When you really get into Overwatch, it's easy to see all of its flaws: balance issues, questionable matchmaking, and all the other things that can make the experience frustrating. But if you're playing casually and just looking to have fun with friends, it's still, in my opinion, one of the best shooters out there. And it's free-to-play.

The only major complaint I have is that 5v5 still feels like an actual torture simulator when you're playing Tank. 6v6, though? Super fun.

If you're looking for a multiplayer game with a lot of content, I'd say give Overwatch a shot. For me, at least, it just doesn't get old.

F.E.A.R. 3 is easily one of the most disappointing games I have ever played. What makes its failure so baffling is that it actually starts off quite strong. Visually, the game is excellent, with early levels showcasing top-notch lighting and atmosphere that make you think you are in for a worthy entry in the series. Unfortunately, rather than capitalizing on those atmospheric strengths, the game proceeds to abandons the “less is more” philosophy that made the original F.E.A.R. a masterpiece. Instead, it attempts to transform itself into a generic 2010s achievement shooter, chasing trends made popular by games like Call of Duty and Gears of War.

That shift in identity brings with it frustrating mechanical choices. Chief among them is a poorly implemented cover system that regularly gets you killed. You end up velcroed to walls, and moving away isn’t as simple as navigating away; you have to explicitly press the cover button again to detach. In the heat of battle, if a grenade lands at your feet and you forget to manually unstick yourself, you are dead. Compounding this clunkiness are constant, immersion-breaking achievement pop-ups that completely ruin the tension of otherwise well-designed levels, pulling you out of the horror atmosphere the visual team worked so hard to build.

As the campaign progresses, the core combat devolves even further. The gunplay feels weak across the board, and even franchise staples like the shotgun are surprisingly not fun to use. Toward the end, the gameplay becomes unbelievably repetitive as levels devolve into mindless, wave-based shooting galleries where ammo scarcity becomes a constant nuisance. These later stages highlight how heavily the game was built around co-op play at the expense of the single-player experience. Playing solo as Point Man feels very unbalanced, especially in the final two chapters. The game assumes you will want to replay these disjointed levels as Paxton Fettel once you unlock him - a bold assumption, like I would want to play this slop one more time with a different character.

Holding all of these disjointed levels together is an absolute mess of a narrative. The story is so poorly narrated that it is almost impossible to figure out what is actually happening. Admittedly, I am not good at following story lines in video games, but in this case, the fault here lies entirely on the game itself for failing to maintain any level of engagement. I tuned out by the second level. I had no idea what was going as the campaign drunkenly stumbles toward its idiotic conclusion.

By the time the end credits roll, the game even attempts to hint at a potential sequel, but we all know that is not happening. F.E.A.R. was a masterpiece celebrated for its god-tier enemy AI and brilliant combat design, but corporate gutted its identity to chase mainstream trends. F.E.A.R. 3 serves as a tragic, pathetic end to a once-great series, leaving it dead and buried.

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

There will be spoilers for both Rebirth and the original Final Fantasy VII in this review. If you are a remake-only player, you have been warned.

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth was a game I long had my eye on. I have a ton of love for both the original and Final Fantasy VII Remake, but figured I'd hold out for a Switch 2 port for the sake of having such a massive game portably. We got it, and so I jumped in excited and nervous. I was curious about how I'd feel about the game given the chatter about it online; the bloat, how faithful it is to the original, the censorship/softening of the tone, and especially the ending... yet none of those complaints landed with me.

What a bloated mess! I didn't feel this way at all, though I understand why it's a common complaint. Rebirth is a lot of video game. I clocked in at ~130 hours after rolling the credits, and it throws a ton at you in those hours. There's lots to do in its open world: side quests, mini-games, combat challenges both in the open world and via Chadley, etc. It's an exercise in pure excess that harkens back to Final Fantasy's SNES and PS1 roots and very much in spirit of the original Final Fantasy VII.

The combat challenges were a fun way to flex your muscles and put Materia builds together. They range from quick challenges you can bang out in a few minutes, to puzzles where you have to, say, beat x enemy before y enemy explodes. Fun time, and a way to show off the game's stellar combat.

I loved the mini-games and how they broke the pacing up... except for 3D Brawlers. >!Fuck you Sephiroth.!< I found the attacks to be pretty unreadable. I could never be an actual boxer or an MLB player. Subtle movements are not my strong suit. The Cosmo Canyon proto relic mini-game was a bit of a miss for me as well. I liked the idea of having Final Fantasy XII's Gambit system return, but the mini-game was just too complicated on a meta level and there was too much to learn for what largely amounted to just playing rock paper scissors and placing some little guys down. It's simple enough to brute force, so it doesn't really feel like you need to engage with it. Plenty has been said about Queen's Blood, so all I'll say is... the hype is definitely earned. It's so much fun, and the QB puzzles throughout the game are an unsung hero of the mini-games. I enjoyed them just as much, if not moreso, than the actual Queen's Blood matches.

Your love for the mini-games will largely come down to what you value in a game or in an RPG. Some appreciate them as stuff that freshens the game up, breaks things up a bit, and gives you more to do. Others feel they get in the way of the game's story and combat. I expected myself to fall into the latter, but ended up being in the former camp. There's a nice variety of things to do in this game that you just don't see from most outside of mini-game collections/compilations like UFO 50 or 51 Clubhouse Games. I've said it already, but it almost harkens back to the PS1 days of Final Fantasy, where the excess was just as much a part of the series' identity as the anime melodrama and ATB battle systems were.

I enjoyed the open world, too. Yes, it's checklisty. Yes, Chadley can be annoying. But it's a checklist done right. I actually really enjoyed navigating each of the areas - especially Gongaga - and each area didn't have too much content so you could clear them reasonably quickly. Any excuse to engage with Rebirth's combat is good in my book, even if traversing the open world was a bit clunky. It's not going to sweep you off your feet like Breath of the Wild or Red Dead Redemption 2, but as far as checklists go it's a damn good one. Not hitting the highs and constant dopamine rush of Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, but not a slog like, say, modern Assassin's Creed or Ghost of Tsushima is.

What, no changes? I'm gonna be honest... I found myself wondering if I even played the same game as other people. All I heard was about how outside of the ending, nothing is different with Rebirth's plot VS the original, and how disappointing that was coming off of Remake's ending and the promises it made. I feel like people really glossed over some major story changes just because they weren't accompanied by plot ghosts or because the broad strokes are largely the same.

>!Cloud starts remembering Zack in Nibelheim, for one. Why did I hear nobody talk about this? He starts to get a faint recollection of Zack in Gongaga, and then flat-out remembers Zack's name during the Nibelheim revisit. That's a massive change from the original, and a major lynchpin in Sephiroth breaking Cloud at the Northern Crater. Yeah a lot of the details are still wrong and pretty hazy, but they moved that up way earlier.!<

In general, I feel like Rebirth's plot changes are more detail-oriented ones that haven't had a chance to play out yet, but will have a major domino effect come time for Revelation. It can come off as them not really being faithful, but when you've played the original there's a lot of little things that are different in Rebirth. Which brings me to...

They ruined the ending! I... don't feel that way at all, and frankly I found the complaints about the impact getting muddied or things not making sense to be vastly overblown. >!Aerith's death still hit me like a truck. I was crazy emotional. The stuff afterwards and the things they fooled around with like Tifa seeing both dead Aerith and the "other" Aerith were actually super interesting and got me excited for the future. It's a bit confusing in the moment but once you get that scene of Cloud and Sephiroth talking with the three worlds in the background and Sephiroth basically spells everything out for you, I went "Ah, I get it."!<

As far as Square Enix's Patented Bullshit goes, I found this one pretty easy to wrap my head around. In general, I actually really liked the ending. I liked it far, far more than I thought I would. It lays some very interesting groundwork for how things will play out in Revelation while still preserving the emotional impact that >!Aerith's death!< should bring. They're gonna break Cloud...

It's so goofy and anime now! Shit's getting as long as Rebirth is now, but basically... you win some and you lose some here. Yeah some parts like Dyne and Barrett's part are a bit lightened up, but some parts are darkened up, too. Rebirth leans a lot into Cloud, his arc, how things are affecting him, etc. They really play it up here and push as far as a T-rating will let them. It actually caught me a bit off guard. All I heard about Rebirth's tone was about how the game is so much lighter than the original, so to have scenes like >!Cloud's outburst at the Gongaga reactor and his slaughter of the Shinra soldiers in the Temple of the Ancients!< where they also went harder than the original too came out of left field for me.

It's a game of contrast and extremes, which was just as much part of the original's identity as it is the remake trilogy's. There's a lot of goofy stuff, and there's a lot of dark stuff, too. Some lighter than the original, some darker. Most of all, it still feels like Final Fantasy VII. Not the edgy, grimdark version you have in your head of the game you played as a kid, but of the actual Final Fantasy VII that you can boot up and play right now.

In all this, I found that sometimes you really do just have to play stuff for yourself and form your own opinions. Sometimes you'll agree with people, sometimes you won't. Sometimes you'll see where people are coming from, but not feel the same way. (Like I do with Rebirth's mini-games.) It's hardly a riveting statement to make - "No shit," you'll say - but in an age where discourse is everywhere, I feel it's pretty easy to internalize others' thoughts and opinions as your own. It's important to just try shit out. You never know what you'll care about and what you won't. You might just surprise yourself!

I just finished Small Saga, an indie turn based RPG which got ported to Switch on Friday, inspired by animal centric stories like Secret of NIMH. And I found it to be a delightful experience from start to finish.

It tells the story of Verm, a mouse on a quest for revenge training to kill a god…

The god in question being…the exterminator that killed his brother. The game knowingly leans into the JRPG escalation to fight god, and puts a different spin on it through its smaller runtime and minature of rodent colonies across London, and the way the various species interact not only with each other but also with humankind.

It condenses the adventure and character growth of an RPG into a really compact, satisfying adventure. All the characters are extremely likeable and get satisfying exploration in only 8 hours. And it’s extremely gratifying how unabashedly queer both the main and supporting cast are. Though I think the humour is going to be a matter of taste. I think the extremely contemporary humour with characters calling each other ‘soft boi’ and ‘twink’ in this low fantasy NIMH esque setting will be fairly subjective but it clicked with me.

But behind the slightly Tumblr core humour the game is quite adapt at juggling multiple tones and extremely direct in its depiction of overcoming facism, struggling with the desire for revenge, and the difficulty of tearing down and rebuilding a broken system. All while celebrating queerness at every turn. And this is all bolstered by gorgeous pixel art and an excellent soundtrack.

The game uses turn based combat with no random encounters and no experience points. Battles are pretty much only limited to mandatory encounters and level ups are given at specific plot milestones, allowing you to spend and reallocate an increasing number of skill points to build your characters. This makes progression extremely slick and free of repetition, with gameplay upgrade tied to the story and character development. That being said, it’s also incredibly easy. This new Switch ports adds a hard mode and arena battles to address the original criticism of its low difficulty. I’d say hard mode brings the combat up to an acceptable level of challenge. I did have to somewhat think about my turn economy and some fights are legitimately challenging. But even then, it’s still exceedingly gentle. I’d say if you’re even remotely familiar with RPGs, play on hard mode for a gentle but still engaging experience with the combat.

This really is one of those games where the only real negative is that I was hungry for more. Which honestly is the best complaint to have. I would love to see a sequel where this team can flex their muscles with more resources and a longer runtime. But this is still a wonderful project that I can see becoming a frequent cozy replay.

So yeah, play Small Saga, it’s less than 10 hours, only about 15 quid and I can’t recommend it enough.

I had a long review where I broke down all the gameplay elements to explain why everything works so well. I decided to scrap all that to just say that this is one of the best open world action games ever.

The onscreen action is intense. Explosions are going off in slow motion sending enemies and cars flying. Aiden moves seamlessly from up close takedowns to long range headshots. Movement is fast allowing you to quickly close the distance or gain some verticality.

The focus shot is the heart of the combat. It gives you a bullet time mechanic that rivals that of Max Payne or Fear, but you get to experience it in a fully realized open world. The many negative reviews I’ve read on this subreddit or seen on YouTube tend to not mention the focus shot.

When you’re not in combat everything else is great. The map is varied and there’s some fun puzzles and mini games. The handling of the cars could have used some tweaking but the bikes are amazing. Very responsive controls and it’s awesome to clear jumps at top speed. The skill tree rewards players who want to engage with the side content but doesn’t punish those who just want to stick to the main story.

The story itself is excellent. It has great pacing, the plot is always developing, and the game always gives you a reason to do the next mission to see how everything unfolds.

Overall, one of my favourite games of all time. I don’t want a remake but I do want a remaster. I think the sound design on the guns can be improved and the textures and lighting can be overhauled. And Ubisoft needs to do some better marketing because I don’t think enough people realize just how good the combat is.

WWE Svr '06 is often put on a high pedestal as being one of the best wrestling games ever made with the likes of no mercy and here comes the pain, the latter of which I replayed recently and really enjoyed. I cannot say the same for this one, the reasons why I'll try to quickly surmise here.

Before I dive into the gameplay side of things, let me quickly go over the presentation. Which, luckily, is pretty great. You got a newly licensed soundtrack with some absolute bangers, all the wrestlers and their entrances are represented pretty faithfully, voice acting is done in the season mode by the wrestlers themselves, and it's actually pretty good. There's ring announcers as well as play-by-play commentary making a return for the first time since shut your mouth. One thing that I will say that sucks is the mocaped cutscenes. Whoever did them did NOT want to take a bump. Speaking of season mode, it's painfully linear and not really my thing, seeing as it has little repeatability value once you complete both branded storylines.

As for the new features, you get a few new match types, buried alive matches and fulfill your fantasy, nothing special if you ask me. But on the other hand, you get more customization options as well, possibly the best game mode and the only reason why I would recommend this game over the other offerings—GM mode.

In it, you try to compete for the GM of the year award by booking your own shows, scouting for talent, building rivalries etc.,

It's really basic here, and I think '07 would refine it for the better, but you can't deny its addictive quality—especially on the go via the mostly uncompromised PSP port. Simply amazing

And last but not least—the locker room, which you'll get to customize however you like over the course of the game.

Now onto the gameplay.

  

First, the gameplay struck me as a sort of awkward middle ground between arcade and simulation. The controls remain mostly unchanged from here comes the pain and the animations still look and feel impactful, and now you can choose between 5 different grapple holds as opposed to 4. However, the Irish whip, and its new strong variant are now relegated to a triangle and circle button press. Where things go for the worse is the inclusion of a stamina meter, which isn't implemented in the best way, seeing as wrestlers will tire out very easily and be unable to perform any moves if their stamina bar is completely drained, which can and does affect the flow of each match. Luckily, it can be turned off, which makes it almost a non-issue. The same for which can't be said about the following.

The opponent AI in this game is incredibly dumb, they're really predictable as they mostly go for strikes or Irish whips. The balance between strikes and grapples just seemed more organic in the previous games. They'll also frequently try to get themselves disqualified by bringing weapons into the ring. In ladder matches, they'll exclusively try to climb the ladder and nothing else. I could go on and on basically. A shame too, as these issues really soured the overall experience for me.

Ultimately, I think it's a pretty competent wrestling video game. However, I'm in the camp of people who think '07 is the better game, and it doesn't even begin to compare to here comes the pain.

tl;dr: Game is just not fun. The gameplay basically does not change aside from getting new skills, and there are a humongous number of negative QoL experiences that make the game an extreme slog.

I've always enjoyed ARPGs. I've played quite a number of them - Diablo 3, Diablo 4, PoE, the new PoE, Grim Dawn, Last Epoch, Torchlight 1, Torchlight 2, even some smaller ones like Victor Vran. I'm not a hardcore grinder, for the most part I enjoy playing the campaigns the most, but I have reached around the middle portion of the endgame in some of the games (Empowered Monoliths in LE, GR80ish in Diablo 3, Pit Level 90 in Diablo 4, T13ish maps in PoE, etc) at one point or another. I've probably got over 1000 hours in ARPGs over my lifetime.

I thought it would be a super cool experience to play Diablo 2, given how influential it was to the development of all of these games that I loved. I picked it up on Steam and played it entirely on Steam Deck. It ran well, despite Blizzard's fuckery around making sure you log in to validate the game or whatever the fuck that means.

But 15 hours in at Act 3, and I already feel tired of the game. Here's a few reasons why.

Limited Inventory and Stash Space

The inventory in this game is TINY. Since Charms provide passive benefits, and potions are individual items, about 30-40% of your inventory at any time is filled up with these items. Even after getting the Horadric Cube and using it as janky additional backpack space, you have room to pick up at best maybe 4 or 5 non-jewelry items before you need to make a trip back home.

Ok, so why don't we just be more selective of the gear we pick up so we can spend more time fighting and exploring?

Ground Loot Sucks, but Merchant Loot is Good

Good ground loot is very rare. From my brief time with the game, it feels like there are two important things to look for - +Levels to skills you're using, and then resistances. A lot of good loot is actually available from the Merchants. No big deal, right?

Well, buying stuff from the Merchants costs gold. So you need to grab as much stuff as possible on the ground so you can identify it and then sell it to make the gold you need to actually buy the good items.

That means even more trips back home just to sell junk to eventually bank up enough gold to buy good items.

But there's more problems - the Merchant doesn't have any search functionality at all. So not only do you have to make frequent trips home, you also have to sit around hovering over every single item to read the stats on it and see if it's any good. It's a huge waste of time.

Good Loot Doesn't Change Gameplay

Alright, so we've found some items, we're all resisted up and we have a bunch of +Levels in the skills we want to use. Great!

But it actually changes nothing about the way the game is played. I played Fireball sorcerer. My plus levels made the Fireball do more damage. That's it. No changing my Fireball to a different element, no splitting it up into multiple Fireballs, no increasing the area of the explosion, no causing ignited enemies to explode, nothing. You press Fireball, a fireball comes out, it does damage, and it does a bit of splash around the primary target.

The gameplay only changes when you unlock new skills. But the skills behave exactly the same way. I even spoiled myself and looked up what good endgame Unique items are like. And it all seems the same - just more resistances and defenses, and +levels in skills. Alright, so fine, we can just wait till we unlock a new skill to keep having more fun, right?

Individual Skills are Not Particularly Exciting or Fun

After having played so many modern ARPGs, the individual skills simply are not particularly exciting. It doesn't help that a good chunk of them are do-nothing passives, or are very close to having no effect on your gameplay. Mana regeneration. Having Energy Shield. Press a button to get better defense for a minute and a half. An aura for increased damage, or health regeneration. An aura that slightly reduces damage from monsters.

I just don't feel excited putting points into these things. They don't make the game more fun, but sometimes I feel like I'm forced to or else my character just doesn't function properly.

General Negative QoL

There's a lot of parts of this game that just suck for no good reason. Here's a list of random ones.

• The quest log is horrible and barely gives you an idea of what you need to do
• You drop all your equipped gear on the ground when you die, so you need to make it back to your body to actually pick the stuff back up again
• You randomly walk way slower when your character is traversing some kind of elevation change like stairs
• The textures make it difficult sometimes to see where a door is, so you end up running into walls often
• No overarching "world" or "act" map
• No easy way to compare items in a shop with the items your Mercenary is wearing
• No compendium of discovered Rune Word combinations so you're forced to just look it up online
• No information about what prefixes affect what things (eg. I didn't know until I looked it up that "+X maximum damage" does not apply to spells, it only applies to weapon swings)

So yeah, I didn't like it. In fact, I think it might be the worst ARPG I've ever played. I can definitely see how it had a ton of influence on the genre, but compared to modern standards for how ARPGs play, it sucks.

Destroy All Humans! 2: Reprobed Review

RELEASE: 2022

TIME PLAYED: 25 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+The upgraded graphics are colorful and striking, with a cartoonish art style that works wonders

+Like the first remake, some of the most fun arcade-style shooting and superpowers in gaming

+Crypto remains one of the more amusingly sociopathic gaming protagonists +Fun weapons that are ripe for emergent gameplay and comedy

-A lot of the humor has REALLY not aged well, whether due to being overly referential or just insensitive

-Many missions are either repetitive or just extremely poorly paced

Back when I was a cynical teenager in 2005, I thought the Destroy All Humans! games were the funniest thing in the galaxy. A sociopathic alien that sounded just like Jack Nicholson telekinetically throwing cows around and lampooning us silly humans for all of our stupid habits? It was absolute catnip to a fifteen year old who thought he knew everything and was fed up with the world. Over twenty years later, the remake of Cryptosporidium's sophomore outing is a surprising reminder of how well its fun-first, balance-second gameplay holds up - but also how dependent much of its humor is on being mean-spirited above all else.

Fresh off a total victory in in the 1950s USA, Cryptosporidium-137...well, he's dead for some reason, but not to worry! A decade later, Cryptosporidium-138 has all of his memories and is stronger to boot. Masquerading as the extremely human President of the United States, he's closing out the swinging 60s in style: trying to get revenge for the Furon mothership being blown up by the KGB and his boss/resident science expert Orthopox 13 being killed...though the ever-irascible commander, voiced by Richard Horvitz of Invader Zim fame, remains in the form of a floating hologram with his downloaded personality. Inevitably, he's dragged into a gonzo conspiracy involving drugged-out hippies, British superspies, and an extremely unfortunate portrayal of Japan.

Let's address the elephant in the room first. I try to take a nuanced view of 'offensive' humor; while I'm unapologetically one of those filthy 'woke leftists', I know everything exists in the context of the era it was created in, and that many jokes that don't land well these days are more out of ignorance than malice...but Destroy All Humans 2, much more than the first game and remake, REALLY makes some ill-advised decisions in my eyes that are tough to excuse even giving it twenty years of grace. Plenty of the humor, while occasionally eyeroll-worthy, isn't that bad; hippies smell, KGB agents all love vodka, whatever. And it IS funny a lot of the game, mostly when Crypto, slowly becoming more frustrated with his lot in life, starts snapping at anyone and everyone. But once I got to Japan...woof. Not only is the enemy faction there made up entirely of ninjas - in 1969, again - but they all speak with incredibly caricaturized accents voiced by white actors. When it comes to 'offensive' humor, I tend to respond first by asking myself: What's the joke? And in a lot of cases, it never seemed to go deeper than 'Asian people sound funny'. It was too lazy to even make me feel outraged, really; I just cringed. The game's treatment of the British and Russians isn't all that much better, but there's a weird specificity to the way the game lampoons the Japanese that just feels particularly one-dimensional.

This isn't, I emphasize, an attempt to tell anyone how to feel. I don't think that's useful, nor do I see it as practical; some will read the above paragraph and feel the need to defend the game's choices out of spite, and that's their prerogative. But a review - a good one, at least in my eyes - is about communicating the experience I had and advising of what a game contains, and I think this is all worth mentioning. If it doesn't bother you, great, have fun, but games cost money and those who might find this kind of content objectionable - or even just stupid - should be fairly warned.

Thankfully, the gameplay does hold up a lot better. Across a surprisingly meaty campaign, Crypto is tasked with blowing up buildings, slaughtering humans, and impersonating VIPs with his enormous suite of alien technology and psychic powers. The game shines when there's a chance to cut loose; while bonuses are usually offered for performing specific tasks, the best missions simply set the player loose with a goal in mind and let them solve it how they want. Because I'm vanilla as hell, I never stopped enjoying hoverboarding around simply flinging targets away with my mind, but I was also a big fan of Gastro, a summonable buddy that constantly talked shit, and the gun that summons actual meteor strikes.

Sadly, too many missions restrict the freedom that Destroy All Humans 2 excels at. Whether it's an overly-lengthy escort of Crypto's human love interest (yeah...) or defending fragile targets against multiple waves with little room to maneuver, the seams really start to show; enemy AI is incredibly simple, meaning that challenge usually just comes in the form of special foes who are immune to most of Crypto's kit or have highly inflated health bars. It never reached the point of becoming overly frustrating - though one mission, involving having to take down an enemy tower that seemed to summon an enormous wave of difficult enemies every time I so much as slightly damaged it came close - but Crypto being rather fragile even when upgraded meant that I spent almost as much of the game running around taking potshots and hiding behind cover as I did indulging in alien power fantasy.

Still, as juvenile and mean-spirited as Destroy All Humans 2 can get, there's something to be said for how much simple fun it can provide in an age where a surprising number of AAA games seem to struggle often with providing satisfying combat or a meaningful sense of growth. I can't presume to tell someone whether or not they should endure its puerile sensibilities to get to the good parts, but despite its pacing issues and occasionally ill-advised mission structure, it's a well-designed playground for those who want to see just how far they can launch an unfortunate cow into the stratosphere with their mind.

Souls-likes are my favorite genre of games. I have beaten all mainstream souls-like, including all of FromSoftware’s titles and played dozens of lesser-known games in the genre. FromSoftware is one of my favorite developers, and I even completed the original PS3 version of *Demon’s Souls*. However, I couldn’t bring myself to finish the PS5 remake. Here are my thoughts.

A good game for its time, and historically important to the Souls genre, but after playing dozens of modern souls-likes, Demon’s Souls feels noticeably dated—especially in its gameplay structure and quality-of-life features.

The areas are visually distinct, but the level design is disconnected and straightforward. There is little sense of an interconnected world, and exploration rarely feels rewarding because the paths and objectives are usually obvious.

The combat was another disappointment. Compared with more recent souls-likes, it feels too simple and lacks variety. Enemy behavior is often predictable, and many enemies can be defeated using the same basic strategies. The bosses are even more problematic: most of them are extremely easy, gimmicky, or designed around a specific trick rather than providing challenging and engaging fights. Because of that, victories rarely felt satisfying.

The upgrade system was another reason I stopped playing. Improving weapons and equipment can be unnecessarily complicated, with specific materials, upgrade paths, and obscure requirements. Some resources are difficult to obtain, and the game does not explain the system clearly, making progression feel more tedious than rewarding.

World Tendency was probably the most frustrating mechanic. In theory, it is an interesting system that changes the world and influences events depending on the player’s actions. In practice, however, it is poorly explained, inconvenient to manage, and extremely time-consuming. There is no quick or intuitive way to change it, so getting the desired tendency often requires performing repetitive actions, dying in specific ways, or using external guides. This makes the system feel more like a chore than a meaningful gameplay feature.

The game also lacks several conveniences that have become standard in modern souls-likes, such as faster progression between areas, more flexible character development, better combat variety, and clearer explanations of important mechanics. The remake looks fantastic and preserves the original’s atmosphere, but its visual improvements cannot completely hide the fact that much of the underlying design comes from an older era.

When experienced after games that refined the formula, it feels restrictive, repetitive, and unnecessarily inconvenient. For me, the dated level design, overly simple combat, underwhelming bosses, and frustrating World Tendency system were enough reasons to stop playing.

OBS: I dropped the game with only the two bosses of the poison swamp area remaining (and the last boss). I even tried go through the area but I was bored and decided to stop playing.

So recently, I had an itch to replay XCOM 2 again. I first played the game a couple years ago, and something about that playthrough was that I save-scummed a lot! Pretty much anytime something didn't go my way, I'd reload a save and play through it again. This time, however, I wanted to do something different, so I played the game on Ironman mode. How Ironman works is simple. Instead of having control of when you save, the game instead saves automatically every time you perform an action. What this results in is an experience where you can't do a mission over if something goes wrong, and you just have to live with the mistake and keep going.

My first attempt at an Ironman run went...bad. It started out okay at first, but then the moment everything went downhill was when I got the mission to go rescue Mox. For some reason, I didn't get the memo that this was supposed to be a stealth mission, so I played through the mission as I would any other, killing everything that stood in my path. Because I played it like this, the facility was already on max alert before I even got to Mox's cell and I didn't know how fast the reinforcements were going to overwhelm me until it was already too late. The mission failed with all my soldiers dying, including my reaper, a unit that took much more effort to replace. The second blunder came with a retaliation mission, where I bunched up my units near cover that I didn't know was explosive. My last unit accidentally triggered a pod of enemies, and because of the explosive cover, one volley of bombs from a MEC blew the cover up, causing half of my squad to die in an instant, forcing me to evac out. My third failure resulted in another squad wipe, partly caused by me misclicking when choosing a target, causing an enemy I wanted to kill to end the turn alive.

At that moment I decided, "Okay, this isn't working. The mistakes are piling up, I'm running out of resources. I'm gonna abandon this run and start a new one". Now, I'm sure in theory it might've been possible to salvage this run, but I do not think I would've been able to pull it off, so I figured cutting my losses was the best choice, especially since it was only a few hours into the campaign. For my second run, it went significantly better, as the mistakes from my first run served as lessons for how to play the game better. I learned how to make proper use of concealment, made sure to actually be stealthy on the rescue missions, and spaced my units further out. As a result, I had way less casualties compared to my first run. Yeah, I did have some units die on me, especially at the beginning, but I was a lot better at keeping my units alive. What also helped matters was that I got really lucky in the early game. I got a mission that only spawned beast enemies and at the end of it, I had enough Faceless corpses to craft two Mimic Beacons, which were basically "get out of jail free cards" in case I fumbled a turn.

So what did I learn from my XCOM 2 Ironman playthrough? When it comes to learning a skill, you'll learn more from your failures than your successes. It's true that it felt unpleasant to have my mistakes be permanent, but being forced to live with them made me analyze why the mistake happened. Instead of just blaming the game (which is easy to do because it's XCOM), I had to actually be honest with myself and admit that poor planning on my part was what got my soldiers killed. And being able to come to terms with setbacks and learn from them wound up making my victories feel all the more satisfying.

When it comes to XCOM, people's fondest memories with the game aren't the missions where everything went off without a hitch. The XCOM missions people remember the most are the ones where things go wrong and they manage to still come out on top. And my favorite mission of my run was a mission where I did just that. Towards the end game, the danger I felt earlier in the run had all but vanished. I had so many souped up soldiers and so many powerful weapons that even the toughest enemies were now complete jokes. However, I got thrown for a loop when one mission forced me to only bring 3 soldiers into battle, half my usual squad size. As a result, I had to play way more cautiously and had to make full use of each soldier's abilities to take out the pods. As I begin my next turn, I reveal a pod of enemies, and as soon I saw a Sectopod amongst the other troops, my heart dropped. If that thing got a turn, I was fucked, but luckily, my Specialist had Haywire Protocol, which could turn the Sectopod off for two turns. However, it only had a 53% chance to work, and I remember starting the hack and waiting with bated breath to see if it succeeded. It did not.

At that moment, I thought the mission was fucked. I thought I should just evac out of here now and save myself from the wrath of the Sectopod. Despite that, I stuck it out. One of my soldiers wound up in critical condition from eating a Sectopod blast to the face, but thanks to the skills from my Psi Op soldier and bluescreen rounds from my Specialist, I took the Sectopod down and finished the mission without anybody dying. The euphoria I felt when I completed that mission is something I'll remember for a very long time, and it's a moment I never would've gotten if I just reloaded my save as soon as the Haywire Protocol failed.

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

I recently finished AC Shadows (as much as you can "finish" it without the DLC, which is really where the story actually wraps up). And I wanted to share a few thoughts, going section by section.

Graphics:

The game is genuinely gorgeous. I struggle to think of another game set in Japan that looks better, especially when it comes to the Sengoku period. No complaints here at all.

Stealth:

This is by far the strongest part of the game. Honestly, I can't remember a better stealth system since peak Splinter Cell. Whoever designed this part of the game did excellent work.

Parkour:

Very solid, the best since AC:Unity. Climbing finally feels meaningful. In the last three entries you could often climb, but it rarely mattered since the environment was mostly low anyway. Apparently, there were technical issues at launch, but what's there now works well.

Combat:

This is where things get mediocre. As in previous entries, the RPG system inherited from Odyssey means that even on higher difficulties, stealth loses its point, since you can just tank your way through as a walking bulldozer. Enemy animations, and Yasuke's in particular, come off pretty stiff and puppet-like, hard to describe it any other way. I also dislike how the enemy armor works visually: once you break it, the armor just pops and suddenly you've got a dozen naked enemies chasing you, which breaks immersion a bit.

Base and crafting system:

This is the weakest part of the game for me. Gathering resources and waiting for them to get transported back to your base feels lifted straight out of a survival or economy game and AC Shadows is neither. In practice it just artificially padding playtime and slowing the pace, without adding any real value to the game. I was constantly low on cash and resources as I wanted to upgrade both characters and the Base. It's hard not to suspect this system was designed mainly to push microtransactions.

Story:

The core premise is interesting: a classic samurai/western movie setup, visible even in how the cutscenes are framed. The problem is the execution falls apart. In the prologue, a group of twelve masked men attacks, kills the protagonist's father, and steals a mysterious MacGuffin in a box that we never actually see. These attackers aren't connected to any previously established faction, the thing in the box would supposedly allow them to change the fate of Japan. (AFAIK it's not an Isu artefact). Later it turns out most of them didn't even know what is inside the box, and one of them doesn't even know it exists. (I guess guy just decided to nap during the cutscene)

The pacing is worse than even the content-bloated Valhalla. At least Valhalla's regional quests had some story to them, here it's usually just "kill five bandits marked on the map." The main story quest works the same way, just with cutscenes and fetchquests attached. The twelve antagonists from the prologue blur together. By the time you kill the second one, you've already forgotten who the first one was. On top of that, there are dozens of characters who exist solely to hand you a regional quest and then never appear again (even after quest completion), which makes it hard to tell who actually matters in this story versus who's just an avatar on the quest map (since the game doesn't have a proper quest log).

Overall, it's just not very engaging. The Assassins vs Templars conflict has even less weight here than in recent entries. The series mostly moved away from that theme after Syndicate, but before that you could still point to something meaningful:

• Origins - the founding of the Brotherhood
• Odyssey - the Templars' backstory (Edit: In the Legacy of the First Blade DLC)
• Valhalla - the Isu backstory and their reincarnation (a theme borrowed from AC4, honestly)
• Shadows - the protagonist's mother was supposedly an Assassin, except that character never actually appears in the game, and there is a single (Historically Significant) assassin in the game, but he is only an episodic character with little connection to the main plot. The Templar who kills Yasuke's mother feels tacked on just to tie him into the series' main conflict, even though that thread barely affects the story at all.

What really got to me, though, was a moment in the epilogue: the kid you're forced to babysit for most of the game makes a banner for your settlement and it happens to feature the Assassin symbol on it. Where did he saw it? He could’ve not see it anywhere, yet he made a symbol established since 44BC. What a coincidence.
Like they needed to remind us that this game is connected to the rest of the series.

Summary:

If I hadn't gotten this game bundled with a laptop, I'd probably regret spending money on it. The stealth system deserves to carry over into future entries, it would be a shame if it disappeared along with the rest of the game. Other than that, this is probably the weakest Assassin's Creed in a long time. Less exhausting than Valhalla, but at least that game's story kept pulling me forward, here, I just didn't feel that at all.

Being a big fan of Metroidvania games, it's kinda noticeable to see that I haven't really played much of Metroid, which feels like a gap in the resume. Having took more and more of an interest in playing randomised games, I felt it would be fair to see if Metroid could be added to my rotation on that front (SMZ3 especially seems neat), so with that, I decided to boot up the GBA app on NSO, and try out the two Metroid games on there as a fair primer.

I played both games back to back. I played Zero Mission first, then Fusion after. IIRC, that's the opposite of their release order, but it is accurate to their chronological order.

Both games follow the standard idea of a Metroidvania, a maze like world, with many paths to take and places to go, not all of which can be accessed off the bat. On your adventure, you'll collect upgrades and items that help you along the way, opening new areas and increasing your ability to fight back against your foes.

Beyond this, the two games take different approaches to how this goes. The maps? Zero Mission's map is an underground cave system, and as such, feels like it goes where it wants, and the places are just where they are. Fusion's map is a space station, and feels much more structured, right down to the major zones being numbered. Neither approach is objectively better, they're just different, and the difference is a very deliberate choice to match the feel of the setting.

Speaking of things feel structured, the structure of the games are quite different. Zero Mission is a very isolated game, with Samus as the one actual character (yes, Ridley, Kraid, and Mother Brain are there, but they're effectively just obstacles as far as the narrative is concerned), and the game doesn't give you any direction either, which makes sense when you consider that it's a remake of the NES original. Fusion meanwhile has Adam, the space station's master computer, as a secondary character, who gives direction on where to go next, and provides lore along the way, making the game more story driven. Both structures work, and compliment their games well.

Both games have their own moments to provide that special dopamine. Zero Mission has the more directionless nature meaning that figuring out the way forward is an event. Fusion meanwhile has a higher degree of action difficulty, with much stronger enemies, making it satisfying to survive combat.

Between the two games, I find that I enjoyed Fusion more (a sentiment my girlfriend also expressed after I mentioned finishing the two games). I enjoyed the setting of the space station more than I did of Zebes, the more structured nature allowed for the more off the rails moments to feel more engaging, and I quite enjoyed Adam as a character.

At the end of the day though, both games were a great time, and yes, I would recommend you should try both of them out, and see which one grabs you more. I'm definitely enjoying the series so far, and am planning to tackle Super Metroid next (booting it up on NSO as I type this)

On my quest to play old games that I missed back when they were new releases, I actually stumbled on Driver San Francisco by chance. I was never a big fan of non-karting racing games in general, although I did enjoy some arcade racers in the past, and I never played a Driver game properly either. I vaguely remember trying Parallel Lines 20 years ago or so, but I'm aware that the series took different directions with 3 and PL so overall that wasn't what got me convinced to get a physical copy for my old PS3 of San Francisco when I found it in a local shop: rather, it was a youtube video I watched a few years ago that gave a brief look into the main mechanic that makes this game unique.

Well... my expectations were exceeded :O

San Francisco is, in practice, an open-world racing game comparable to Burnout Paradise and the late PS2/early PS3 Need for Speed games: you have access to an open-world where you can freely drive around, and events are spread across the map which make you beat challenges of varying nature. The main story missions unlock as you go through them, and progressing unlocks the side events (races, chases, time trials, and so on and so forth) and the "hazards" (smaller challenges that usually ask you to perform a stunt of some sort within a time limit while driving in the open-world).

The thing that makes this game unique is the "shift" mechanic. Without going into detail at the narrative "reason" that makes this possible in universe (it's not that important IMHO), the game lets you go into a "fly-through" mode with the press of a button, abandoning your current car. You have the option of moving all over the map (at varying zoom levels, which are also unlocked by story progression), pick any vehicle you find on the road and take immediate control of it. You can always do this in the open-world and during all missions except for the few ones that limit it by design.

This unlocks a wide variety of approaches to beat story and secondary challenges that are not possible in other racing games. For example, if the game requires you to chase and destroy a car, instead of chasing and ramming it, you may decide to shift to a random car coming from the opposite direction and crash into the target for maximum damage. If there are a lot of cars that you are chasing at the same time, you can also choose for example to shift into a large vehicle (e.g. a bus), drive into the wall and block the way in a narrow street, causing everyone to crash into it. The game is filled with situations where shifting is either required or useful, and while there aren't a lot of strategies, the game has a wide variety of event types that always give you a new situation where you can apply said strategies.

This is also enhanced by the (in my opinion) wacky atmosphere. The story is definitely over-the-top and while it isn't exactly a writing masterpiece it never takes itself very seriously which helps in making the journey at least good as an excuse for the gameplay. There is one aspect I found very funny at times: the protagonist, when he shifts into another vehicle, takes control of the driver and any passenger that may be present will still act as if the original driver is there, resulting in some funny dialogue exchanges every now and then.

Even the base driving model is fun, as far as my very limited experience with arcade racing games goes at least, and the game sports more than 100 (mostly) licensed cars that often control completely different from each other: so you feel incentivized to keep trying new cars, beat secondary events to obtain the in-game currency needed to access new cars, and stick to them to learn how each car type behaves. For some secondary events choosing the right car for that specific challenge will help as well (e.g rally cars for events mostly taking place on dirt tracks).

Now, Driver San Francisco isn't perfect. For one, while the premise is great, the game does suffer from some repetition that gets worse the more you play (there are a lot of things to do, but a lot of things are variations of pre-existing events; main story missions are better but there aren't many of them either). I loved the game a lot, as you may tell from this mostly gushing post, yet after some time I still decided to stop doing side events and focus on the main story to complete it. So, in practice, the good parts of this game don't make it stay fresh forever, and based on how much you'll like the gameplay I imagine it may not even last as long as it did for me.

The execution overall isn't perfect, but considering the end result I'm still very happy that a game like this got to be made. It's even made me to consider playing the earlier Driver games despite none of them being like San Francisco, which is quite the result! (spoiler bonus: >!a certain secret mission in San Francisco may have helped with that :D!<)

It's too bad that San Francisco suffered from the same issue that many other driving games (arcade, sims and all of the in-between) from the past suffered from: licensing issues causing them to be delisted. It really doesn't deserve to be forgotten, especially for a game with such an interesting idea that could've been iterated over by sequels or just other racing games!

...or maybe there were similar games, especially on the indie front, that I missed. In that case, consider this post also a request for recs :)

TL;DR: Driver San Francisco is a unique open-world arcade racing game that introduces a mechanic that lets you "shift" into any car in the world, making for incredibly fun gameplay challenges. The game doesn't stay fresh through a 100% completion but in my opinion still holds your attention throughout the main story and some of the side content, making for a memorable experience even within its own genre. I would recommend trying it without hesitation... if only it was easy to get on modern stores!

This is one of the few JRPGs that's entirely built on its mechanics rather than its story and it does indeed have really good mechanics. It's one of the few JRPGs out there where if you're having trouble with a boss, you need to come back with a better plan rather than grinding. I liked the nuances of the Press Turn system compared to the blunt simplicity of One More and Baton Pass in Persona, as well as the fact that you get to actually engage with this system against bosses when you really don't with One More.

It does have a few shortcomings, tho. After like the awakening of the god Noah 3/4ths of the way into the game, you can basically become immune to everything except for Almighty no matter what, meaning the bosses need to devolve into just mashing out big Almighty attacks so they don't just immediately die, meaning you also need to start mashing out big almighty attacks because nothing else deals a relevant amount of damage all while curbstomping random encounters, and then once you get demons that know Victory Cry, a skill that fully refills their HP and MP at the end of battle, random encounters may as well not even happen. I was also not a big fan of there not being any kind of Heat Riser move that buffs every stat for the party when there is a Debilitate that debuffs every stat for the enemies. It also just in general has that JRPG problem of enemies die just as easily to regular attacks as they do to status ailments and all of the bosses are immune to status ailments so why would you ever want these?

This game also contains Dante from the Devil May Cry series sporting his Devil May Cry 2 design as a mandatory boss near the start of the game and then an optional one later. He's the easiest boss in the game, but he's cool enough that it doesn't matter. You even get him as a party member near the end of the game assuming you've been doing the optional Fiend fights so far. I liked the reference to Devil May Cry 2 where he asks you to call a coin flip to determine how much you pay him to join.

The story exists mostly in theming and symbolism. The literal plot is a lot of you being told to go somewhere and listen to three dudes talk about their equally shitty ideologies. The world has ended and is about to be remade, and now you need to choose a Reason, a way of thinking that will shape how the world is remade. You hear the three main Reasons all throughout the game. The reason of Musubi is about total solitude. The world is absolute and everybody will be able to shape their world to their personal paradise. The reason of Shijima is about stillness. It's a world where there is no conflict, no destruction, and no misery. The final reason of Yosuga is about power. The strong rule the weak through divine right. And the final part of the game explicitly criticizes all three of them when you choose to go against them. Isamu of the Musubi reason is pissed off you won't join him in his quest for solitude, Hikawa of Shijima is pissed off and fights you in his quest for a world with no anger or conflict, and Chiaki of Yosuga cries when she loses despite believing the strong have a right to do as they please.

There are also three other secret endings, one of which I got. The ending I got is the one where you get your own reason sponsored by Lucifer to destroy the world and lead Lucifer's armies into heaven to fight God. I'm pretty sure this is considered the true ending as this is the one is achieved by fighting a bunch of optional bosses and going through the optional dungeon called the Labrynth of Amala.

The symbolism has that characteristically Japanese lack of subtlety to it. The world-ending calamity is called The Conception and the "vortex world" that Tokyo is inside of is the inside of a sphere. Wonder what that means. The leader of the Manikins conceives a Reason where everybody lives in equality and harmony, but is killed by Chiaki and her goons, which are the angels. Not sure what that means either. I could go on, but this is a great game that you should play for yourself, so I won't.

There are a few gripes I have with the game's exploration. There's basically no place where you cannot get random encounters for like 10 hours of gameplay. The first city you get to where there are no random encounters is the Manikin hideout underneath Ginza and that doesn't have a healing fountain. The second is 10 hours later at Asakusa and that eventually does become a place you can get random encounters (maybe only if you support the Yosuga reason like I did idk). It still became my go-to fast travel point for when I needed a healing fountain or the Cathedral of Shadows because they're both immediately in front of the save point you warp to, but still I would like to not always be at threat of random encounters.

The far bigger problem I had is with demon fusion. This is not like Pokemon where you are intended to bond with and carry your favorite demons throughout the game. They are not going to keep up either in terms of stats or skills and you need to fuse them into better demons. However, you may still want to keep some of those earlier skills, and you do get to pass along skills during fusion. However, what skills carry over is entirely random, so if you want specific skills to carry over, you need to select the fusion, check if the right skills carry over, and, if they don't, go back and select it again. Maddening. I did this for 10 minutes trying to get a Metatron that knows the skills Prayer and Samrecarm for the final boss fight because he doesn't learn either of those skills naturally. I was told this was fixed in the HD version, which I didn't play as I didn't know it existed until I was already halfway through on an emulator.

Overall very fun game for people that like JRPG combat but want a seinen anime plot instead of a sounen anime plot.