Games I Played in 2025

Henceforth referred to as Atelier Rias.

Usually I’m not a fan of crossover megamix games because the interactions all feel shallow, or it will inevitably pick characters from a different point of time than I’d prefer (adult Rorona will never appear again ;-;). Dissidia Final Fantasy’s story was incredible, but Love Live School Idol Festival is lacking in meaningful interactions, for example. And to an extent I do still feel that Atelier Rias is affected by that crossover curse; the recurring cast largely only exist for callbacks and references, rather than creative plot applications. It’s always just “I had my character arc in another game” and then the MC goes “Wow that’s so cool, I should be like them.” However! Counter point: Totori. Counter point: Wilbell. In conclusion, this crossover is based and epic actually. Sophie was a beast in combat too and it gave me a new appreciation for her as an alchemist, but the fact that Atelier had the good sense to single out Totori and Wilbell for its crossover party is a blessed decision. Furthermore, when talking about its character interactions, I can’t remember the last time – if ever, really – that the Atelier franchise has committed to such a visible and prominent romance. Sterk & Rorona will miscommunicate until the end of time, Escha & Logy weren’t this direct about it, and all recent entries have been a string of CGDCT yuribait. To see Rias and Slade growing closer and properly coming together by the end of the storyline was a beautiful surprise. Each time they had one of their scenes together I was in disbelief at what Atelier, which is usually waifu status quo, was actually giving to us.

Loved it. Atelier Rias’ overworld, dungeons, crafting and soundtrack are all smaller in scope than Atelier Ryza 3 or Yumia, but it thus has a tighter core quality. I had been disappointed by Atelier Yumia, partly in the concept of its combat and exploration, and partly because of open world fatigue from my long trek through Final Fantasy VII Rebirth -> Xenoblade X Definitive Edition -> Atelier Yumia. But I knew there would be no point lingering on that because of how rapidly Gust puts these games out, and I was just believing that the next one would be as fun as they usually are because idk why not. I will admit I was wary of Atelier Rias’s alchemy balancing when I saw that the ingredient basket was once again massive and we were getting such a huge supply of materials with each swing. Like Yumia, duplication and restocking are once again unlocked way too early, there’s too many filler items, and synthesis isn’t as deep or rewarding as past systems. But ultimately none of these elements were as egregious or damning as they were in Yumia. Can happily report – Atelier Rias is once again the kind of game that you can play for hours and hours and hours because of the addicting gameplay loop that always makes you say “just one more thing.”

Difficulty in Atelier is an ongoing struggle that they just can’t seem to figure out, but the balancing in this game felt like a return to the days of Arland and Dusk. Particularly in the higher-level dungeons, the bosses were genuine risks which required you to play well. There is still that crux which plagues modern Atelier where the skills using a replenishable mana currency de-incentivizes attack items, but it actually felt challenging at points in a way that Lulua, Ryza and Yumia never did. Of particular note is the clash against enemy alchemists Lara and Geron. What a brutal boss fight. Modern Atelier is generally a cakewalk even on Very Hard (and Atelier Rias is largely no different so long as you remain around the target level) but that chapter 6 boss is ruthless. I can’t remember the last time Atelier had such an uncompromising difficulty spike. Maybe all the way back in 2015’s Atelier Sophie? Of course, it does eventually peter out to your usual Atelier level of whoops I melted the final boss, but there were a number of genuinely challenging moments like that, which were nice.

Production quality goes up-up-up after Atelier Ryza. A few days before release I’d seen a headline naming this to be the most expensive game that Gust has ever produced, and it immediately shows. Atelier Yumia opens with a bombastic cutscene sequence. The beginning of this game is just like, yo, we got budget in Atelier now? We got genuinely serious story drama and actual fight choreography in proper cutscenes now? Incredible. Then when I finally reached the open field, looked around at the camera perspective, the movement, the scale of the map, the way the music and the lighting combined with the environmental design, it just hit me, y’know? Bliss. Just waiting there watching the river and taking in the atmosphere. Atelier is one of my favourite franchises and I could tell that I was standing at the cusp of one of its biggest innovations yet…but, unfortunately, I don’t think it took too long to fall short of that glory. Don’t get me wrong, the production was great all throughout and I enjoyed triple-jumping up all the cliffsides I wasn’t intended to, but in a cruel twist of fate it is unfortunately my least favourite system for combat and synthesis in any Atelier to date…by a pretty significant margin. Ryza 3 is right near my top in both regards, so to have this be what follows is a shame. Atelier Yumia’s button-mashing combat felt like the team probably took the wrong parts from that game’s systems, learnt the wrong lessons from its success. Ryza’s ATB was fun because you still had that solid JRPG combat system underneath. The combos and special moves felt expressive because it was almost as if you were exceeding the limits of the menu-based combat; At the start it’s just your standard RPG battle system, but by the end Ryza has totally come alive while using ATB skips to launch into her 6-hit combos and decimate enemies. To entirely strip that away leaving only the button-combos is boring. The range mechanics and switching between equipment or items seemed like it was going to be interesting, but it wasn’t. It was boring. Exploration generally satisfied my wanderlust because of the strong world design, but as the game went on I felt myself becoming bored by the generic collectathon and unsatisfying rewards, and I mourn that this game will surely be used as fuel for the Atelier fandom to strengthen their crusade against open spaces. Ryza 3 was great, okay! But I think Yumia faces a similar problem as that of Tears of the Kingdom, where adding more and more exploitable traversal options ultimately makes the world less rewarding to sightsee in than Breath of the Wild or Ryza 3 were. I think in both Yumia and TotK less may have been more. Furthermore, Gust simplfied synthesis so much that it completely sucks any joy out of it. I never thought I’d encounter an Atelier game where I dread going back to the workshop. Filling out the resonance spheres is sluggish, and fundamentally uninteresting due to the near-total lack of restriction on what items can be used. At the start the game, my big question was why anyone would ever bother to use materials other than neutralisers. Yumia seemingly offered little reason to. This sentiment was only reinforced as the game went on. It didn’t take long before I even abandoned neutralisers and took the easier + more effective option of simply spamming hundreds of copies of whatever material has the highest resonance rate. Material duplication is usually among the last of Atelier’s endgame unlocks, so the fact that they give it to you in the first of these regions is wild. Wild, that is, in a boring way. It’s crazy and ruins any chance of taking the synthesis seriously. All this only exacerbated by the fact that it’s just way too easily to accidentally power level. I didn’t mean to be max level with 500+ quality items and strong material duplication already set up before the first boss, it just happened organically as a result of playing the game in the way best presented to me.

Nevertheless, despite my scathing remarks on the core gameplay systems, I do like this game. I gave it a somewhat high score because I do have plenty of praises for the production values and story content. It’s just that unfortunately there were also a lot of elements that bore me. Atelier has historically been a series where the games captivate me from day to night, running down a full Nintendo Switch battery in a single session of Atelier Ryza, Totori, Sophie and so forth. Of all the criticisms to leverage against Yumia, calling it “boring” is perhaps the most painful and the most frustrating, because I always rave about Atelier being the most fun JRPG franchise; ‘pure uninterrupted fun and good vibes in a series formula that plainly does not have a low point’ is my exact product pitch in a different review project. And among them, the Ryza trilogy are my favourites from game design standpoints. So I had high expectations for this one. I can give some lenience because this is probably the most dramatic departure from the standard formula that Atelier has made in a long, long time – potentially ever – and Gust releases these game so rapidly that it’d be silly for me to dwell on any negativity because the next release is only ever a year or two away. Regardless though, I find myself merely whelmed with Atelier Yumia. Despite seeming to have all the right artistic elements operating on a visibly bigger budget, the exceptionally poor balancing (even by modern Atelier standards) and terrible synthesis leave it as a total middle-of-the-pack title. It’s certainly not bad – I use the whole scale so 7/10 is a good score in my books. As mentioned earlier, it was real nice seeing Atelier have such a present narrative. It didn’t feel as backburner or half-hearted as many of the other plots in the series do, this was an intriguing story with heavy stakes, as well as some not-so-nice introspection about the nature of alchemy and how it implicates Yumia as a practitioner. The 3D graphics are for sure the franchise’s best, the character designs are very pretty (complain all you want but after 20+ games of thin pixie protagonists I welcome this era of thick girls) and I enjoyed all of the party’s storylines, Yumia’s triple-jump is one of the more unique mechanics I’ve seen in this open-world boom where everybody else just copies Breath of the Wild’s climbing, I appreciated many of the smaller quality-of-life features like the ability to skip victory animations for quick seamless battles, and the soundtrack is once again very very phenomenal. I had fun and would still recommend it for the music and world design, it’s just that my more analytical review points are trending negative. On the whole, it just wasn’t the successor to Atelier Ryza which I was hoping it to be and, as blasphemous as this may be, it’s a kinda boring Atelier game.

So I didn’t imagine it after all, BL2 is indeed just better than the Pre-Sequel and BL3.

Despite the horror stories, I was sitting at a mostly consistent 45fps running this on my 2070S. Which isn’t necessarily good, and BL4 definitely didn’t seem like a game which should be struggling to hit 60fps at 1080p in the first place, but nevertheless it was surprisingly playable. And the game itself is easily my favourite Borderlands entry. Definitely controversial, but I vibe with it. Borderlands has always had a lot of back-and-forth through the large overworld anyway. So personally I think Borderlands blends well with the more open-ended direction and the constant sidetracking. Playing with a friend, I greatly enjoyed just exploring around like “guess we’ll just keep heading north”, “I wanna head west and see what’s at the coast” or “maybe swing by the Rift Champion while heading to that thing” etc. It also helps that movement in Borderlands 4 is so slick. The fact that you have actual momentum now means it’s satisfying to grapple & jetpack to fling yourself super far, or totally abuse the bike dismount to quadruple-jump into everything.

What a delight. I’m sure I’d have been less kind to this if I at any point dropped the in-built invincibility cheats and 2x speed to try and make sense of the weird combat, but keeping those active permitted me to just bask in the aesthetic and plotline. I wasn’t aware that this would be another game in the style of FFVII to FFX, and that is perhaps the greatest surprise a man could ever get. Square’s prerendered era was so good. Every hand-drawn background is gorgeous. The world was compact enough that I never really had an issue keeping track of what dimension things were in, and it felt natural to figure out which party members I would need for any given event. The music was pretty good as well. Though I don’t necessarily revere Mitsuda to the extent that everyone else does (no hate, just an observation), in these older titles I do admire his ability to compose such a wide variation of moods and emotions. His strongest invididual compositions are imo found in Xenoblade 2 and 3, but in those games he tends to have only come in for tracks of a specific style: grandiose and choral. So it’s interesting to hop back to the Chrono games and listen to what he can do when handed responsibility for the entire score.

Considering how much I personally like to drone on about Chrono Trigger, FFVII and Xenogears as a stylistic trilogy of sorts (though Chrono Trigger and Xenogears are both also products of FFIV and FFV), I do love how much leftover DNA there is in Chrono Cross from the time when Takahashi’s project was being considered for the Chrono sequel. You see FFVII and Xenogears in it so strongly. It’s gratifying to see something like Kid’s final speech about the tender value of human life (which was essentially just a reskinned version of Fei and Elly’s conversation with Krelian) happen within the boundaries of the originally-intended Chrono series. Chronopolis is Xenogears as heck – they even mention phase shift! Furthermore, so much of Chrono Cross seems to have fed back into Xenoblade 3 with the two parallel worlds cleft in twain, and the way it ends chapters with the diary entries.

Not much to say. Neat little text-based adventure.

Officially a Lilithmon simp. Girl obliterated the back half of the game even on hard difficulty, just spamming AoE attacks while gaining a plus on absorbed MP each turn. Despite thinking I’d aim for Megidramon and Beelstarmon the entire game, my main team at the end was Lilithmon, Chaosmon and Armageddamon (apparently I took no screenshots of this group however).

Wild to think that I finally have another Digimon Story in my hands. I do feel that the balancing was a little different, in that Potential levels went too high too early which meant not as much back-and-forth digivolving, but still a total blast. Digimon has struck such gold with this gameplay formula. Story hits in the way I wanted it to as well. I’m glad that they were willing to explore this more mature route where Aegiomon gets negatively influenced by people who were too nice to ever tell him no, causing his time-altering powers to run wild as a rampant god, and the storytelling knowing to treat this as a bad thing.

Donkey Kong is one of my most important childhood franchises. It should have also been one of Nintendo’s most significant pillars, and yet there’s long been a sense of them neglecting poor old DK. But here we are as the first big single-player game on their fancy new 4K console. For Donkey Kong to be the series given such a premium position is a dream come true. Bananza by and large does live up to being the Mario Odyssey successor we wanted, but with DK in the protagonist seat instead. That part is an objective upgrade and I will hear no claims to the opposite. Donkey Kong oooo. Despite its controversies I do quite like the redesign he got as well (the base design at least, their insistence on overalls or making his fur reddish at max gauge I don’t much care for). Bananza is a fresh, creative 3D platformer with a great amount of levels and pretty satisfying movement. The fact that such a complex title runs with minimal slowdown is amazing (elephant could easily tank the framerate but my experience was otherwise stable & smooth). I was always excited to see what new environmental layer would come next, and many of them were truly unexpected such as the Resort Layer, Racing Layer, Feast Layer or Forbidden Layer. With that said however, Bananza finds itself in an odd position for me. Fundamentally it’s a great time and I did enjoy myself all throughout, I’ve come out feeling quite positive. And yet I have such a long list of complaints about the openness of the game, because I just don’t really think the game philosophy worked in the way that either Nintendo or I wanted it to.

For me personally many of the design precepts in Bananza ultimately detracted from the experience, and I quickly came to feel that I would have preferred more rigid level design and puzzles. I’m the kind of guy who likes Mario Galaxy and 3D World more than Mario 64 or Odyssey, if that helps. It’s fine for Bananza to have been so experimental, variety is the spice of life after all, I just probably wouldn’t ask for a second helping of this destructible-collectathon gameplay formula. Yes it is fun wrecking things, in some senses this does feel like the Bowser game we were all wishing for after Mario Odyssey’s finale, but the levels all run into a Tears of the Kingdom-esque problem where my instinct while playing is to just exploit every room and every puzzle. The sonar would often ping a banana at the end of what seemed to be a puzzle sequence, and after simply punching my way through the dirt to reach it I would stop and ask myself “Is this gameplay? Does this actually count as playing a game?” It falls into every one of those pitfalls which Nintendo have been willingly jumping down lately. They’re obsessed with these sandboxes now, where everything is free to be completed in any order and every obstacle has infinite ways to be completed. The game is free-form to a degree where challenge is wholly nonexistent (quite literally the worst bosses I’ve ever seen) and there’s no meaningful sense of progression. Exploration feels unrewarding because of how quicky the terrain becomes unrecognisable, meaning you never really get a sense of place. Enemy variety is generally lacking, and there are far too many repeated cutscenes or information dumps. It is clearly felt how Mario Odyssey and Donkey Kong Bananza stand on opposite sides of Tears of the Kingdom’s release date. Things only got worse upon discovering how optimal it is to vacuum terrain with the Elephant transformation, ruining the purpose of base DK and punching entirely. This would then also hamper the aesthetic experience, because I was hearing Pauline’s Bananza tracks on loop so much more than I was hearing the actual level bgm. I fully expect to go to the soundtrack and recognise nothing other than the Bananza tracks and Gangplank Galleon. These transformations being present at all is something of a nitpick for me too. Firstly because I only liked the gimmicks of the Kong and Elephant transformations; Zebra, Ostrich and Snake are all clumsy to control. But more significantly because they’re one of the biggest indicators of Bananza’s aesthetic barely resembling Donkey Kong Country anymore. What with Pauline riding on DK’s back, the cartoony rock people, the collectathon and the transformations, it honestly began to feel like they’d infused it with Banjo Kazooie DNA. Which isn’t necessarily bad, conceptually that feels like a very smart move, but the Fractones simply aren’t the right middle ground for me. Also, just personally, I found the whole game being styled around music-making is a theme that missed its mark with me. I know there’s Jungle Beat, but making this DK’s thing to such a degree felt very forced.

In spite of all that, still very fun. And to be blunt, I stopped caring about a lot of those review elements when they finally gave up the goods – the crocodillian king back at last. The levels could have used more focus or length, but I still had fun anyway. The story mananges to completely contradict every possible interpretation of the DK and Mario timeline, but that’s ultimately just not too important to me in this moment. Seeing K.Rool reclaim the final boss seat was amazing. He brings with him a barrage of new Donkey Kong Country music rearrangements, the only two decent boss fights in this game, and that awesome New Donk City level with the neon lights and rising lava. The game did a real good job at kicking things into high gear at the 11th hour. You do feel a serious tension that K.Rool brings during that last section. He’s so tenacious as the battles keep dragging on, and ferocious with his goals of wanton violence. Every time you think that you’ve beaten him, he just comes back for one more round. Then at the end he blows past the cartoony schemes that Void had been pursuing to simply go “I’m going to eat everyone alive”. K.Rool leaves such a huge impact in this game despite only appearing for a fraction and having basically zero plot justification. On one hand, the nostalgia-centric bait-and-switch to K.Rool is a little stupid plotwise and does come off as a disrespect to VoidCo, as well as inadvertently dissing all the other non-Kremling villains like the Tikis. The way it was implemented feels like K.Rool pointing at all the bit-players and telling them to shove off because the real villain is back now. It is an insult to the era where he was absent. However if you were to ask me “do I want to disrespect the DKC Returns villains”, then the answer is yes. Yes, of course I do. Give me K.Rool. My boy, after so long. There are many other villains who I would have been less forgiving to if they literally stole the show in the way that K.Rool did, but here it really is a highlight. I loved that intimidating rendition of Crocodile Cacophony they used for his first cutscene. I once read a Youtube comment saying “Gangplank Galleon is how K.Rool sees himself, Crocodile Cacophony is how his enemies see him” and I’ve been enamoured with those two tracks as a pair ever since.

Anyway. Very good game. There’s quite a lot that personally didn’t work for me, but it has Donkey Kong in it and Donkey Kong is awesome. Please make more Donkey Kong.

Classic.

I do like how compared to many modern platformers, this game requires you to be good at it. The latter half is tough.

Most iconic levels personally. DKC3 on SNES is probably the earliest gaming memory I have, so that first world in particular really tickles my nostalgia.

Cecil, Rosa and Kain are absolute units in combat and I enjoyed just wrecking everything with Berserk -> Pray -> Jump. This is the entry in which I most appreciated the Auto Battle feature, which locks every party member to their previous action. Set everybody to do what they need, hit Auto and just rush through everything until you need to drop it and input manual healing or buffs again. It’s a very enjoyable gameplay flow, faintly reminiscent of FFXII’s Gambits. The soundtrack melodies are iconic enough that I already recognised a bunch even on my first playthrough. Guess I must have heard their remixes in Dissidia or Distant Worlds and had them unknowingly stick with me. But the story is obviously where the game shines. FFIV is wild, man. So many times did I find myself awed at where this game was headed. Definitely the most ambitious Final Fantasy to this point. Around the middle of the game I was idly reminiscing about how famous FFVI is for having two world maps even though FFIII also had more than one, but I was not prepared for this to have three of them! Three! You hop into the Lunar Whale and head to the moon as if it were Phantasy Star or somethin! While I felt FFIII’s story a touch too basic after the dramatic highs of FFII’s war, FFIV gets right back on track with the intensity. Right out the gate we have Cecil grappling with the realisation that he’s just slaughtered a whole town of innocents for a king he’s beginning to no longer recognise. Stakes are high again as one city after another gets bombed by the unstoppable air fleet, the party repeatedly fails to prevent evil from claiming the crystals, and there’s a constant stream of sacrifice on the party side. Palam and Porom petrifying themselves to stop the crushing walls was a real shock even in spite of how little time I spent with the characters. Both party members and villains were enjoyable. Golbez’s fearsome musical theme turns his every appearance into an impact, and final boss Zeromus makes up for his total lack of screen time through the intense music and insane visuals as he fires off big bangs and black holes from within hyperspace.

By the end we’ve gone to ye olde tried-and-true JRPG space station, facing futuristic robots that attack with nuclear fission and antimatter. A fantasy world twisting into sci-fi is one of my favourite tropes in the genre whenever it appears, and this could possibly be the earliest instance? FFIV gets a lot of mileage out of that fact alone. I loved viewing it through the lens of its genre heritage. The way it was presented here is specifically akin to Xenoblade 2 as well (aka the GOAT aka bonus points), where a seemingly fantastical tower of legend is actually revealed to be a supertechnology orbital elevator stretching all the way from the underworld through the overworld and then into space. I did just so happen to glance over at the exact right moment to spot Tetsuya Takahashi hiding in the credits list. Looking into it and learning that FFIV was the first thing he worked on for Square makes a lot of sense (even if he wasn’t involved in writing). Many of these setting elements seem to have left a profound impact on him. So as always, it’s fun to look at Final Fantasy in sequence and see how one game becomes the next (plus finally seeing context for all these characters & locations I recognise from Dissidia). Final Fantasy IV feels like one of the most influential games in the whole series for the tropes it created, both internally for Final Fantasy moving forward and for other JRPGs which would follow. In particular here I enjoyed getting to know summoner Rydia and observing her to be the prototype for both Terra (VI) and Eiko (IX), the path to the moon inspiring Lunatic Pandora (VIII) and the history of the slumbering Lunarians being echoed in Terra (IX), or a setting which places importance on a northern crater and ultimate magic spell Meteor (a la FFVII).

Well, here we are. This is it. The last blind spot in my history with mainline Final Fantasy (excluding the MMOs). Honestly, I’ve subtly dreaded this day for a long time, because where do I go from here? Dragon Quest? I am interested at least (a Pixel Remaster series for those games would be amazing too) and I do still have sagas yet to play in my beloved Atelier – but to me Final Fantasy has always reigned supreme among its peers. Its superior symphonic quality and the particular design sensibilities of its plotlines have always gripped me the most. I vibe with it, and I love the way its worlds develop. There are still a handful of spinoffs remaining, but to think that I’m kind of…done now is something I’ve always been a little scared of. Perhaps unti now I’ve always kept III, IV and V unplayed as a safety cushion of sorts. But nevertheless, Final Fantasy V is a great game and I thoroughly enjoyed playing it. I really am loving revisiting these older titles where the world design is so much more straightforward. Not that I dislike the larger worlds of modern JRPGs – they’re my preference and passion – but after this year’s back-to-back marathon of FFVII Rebirth PC, Xenoblade X Definitive and Atelier Yumia, I desperately needed these Pixel Remasters as a breather. Straight to the point storytelling, simple art styles with no visual overload, music that’s short, easy and catchy instead of multi-phase orchestras I feel the need to analyse. Where do you go in this dungeon? You go forward. Stuck on the world map? idk man just wander around a bit, there’s probably only like two places in reach anyway. It’s refreshing. Here I also quite liked the job system’s progress loop, building up archetypes while thinking of how I wanted to specialise each character. Finally switching onto Freelancer for the endgame to unleash the combined stats I’d accumulated to that point was awesome. And, of course, the music was nice. Uematsu’s work on these games really is iconic, and the new instrumentation is gorgeous. Again I was finding that there were actually a lot of melodies I did remember well enough from Distant Worlds and Dissidia. Battle on the Big Bridge is obviously the major standout in the game, but I also quite like Sealed Away, Cursed Lands, A New World, In Search of Light etc.

All in all, FFV ended up being a very fitting spot for my franchise journey to loop over on. While each successive Pixel Remaster game has been building in quality until now, this is the one where I most strongly see that familiar writing and aeshetic of the Final Fantasy series start to come through. So much longer and more cinematic than I-IV were, and definitely the most complete package until now. I still have a lot of personal bias for FFIV’s sci-fi elements – it’s an incredibly important game to a lot of my important games. But in FFV I can really, truly see the Final Fantasy I know and love reaching a matured, established identity. I’ve noticed that FF in this era has always tended to follow a whimsical game (I, III, V) with a serious one (II, IV, VI), and in FFV this is immediately apparent. It legitimately takes like five minutes for Bartz to establish him as the most charming FF protagonist to this point. The dialogue is for sure the most comical and charismatic yet. In the same way that the massive leap in narrative quality of FFII blew my mind, I felt I was constantly in awe witnessing FFV come out swinging with such confident, fun dialogue. Every single part of this game has such incredible expression of character, from the way Galuf teases Bartz at their first meeting, to Faris popping into the weapon store saying “don’t forget about me” when she’s not in the party at the beginning, Bartz inquiring if Ghido had established a “psychotic” link with Krile or, of course, the famous banter of Gilgamesh. Everything I know about Gilgamesh suddenly makes that much more sense, he is well and truly a product of Final Fantasy V. Despite being his polar opposite, the cold Exdeath was a fantastic villain as well. It takes a while to meet him, but once unsealed Exdeath has great presence throughout the game, and I finally understand why people often rank him among the most powerful of Final Fantasy’s evils. The scale of his magic is pretty insane throughout the cutscenes – breaking out of a magic seal that had held him captive for 30 years, summoning a magical barrier which flings the party all the way to the northern hemisphere, threatening the existence of multiple worlds by being one of the few FF villains to successfully breach into the multiversal rift – and golly is his castle disturbing; A grotesque flesh construct straight outta Song of Saya, with pulsing ribcages in the walls and digestive acid pooling on each floor. That one caught me off guard, Exdeath nasty.

Even though FFV largely falls more into the whimsical category of classic FF it does have those shocking moments, in that sense also adapting the tone of Final Fantasy IV with some scarier sci-fi elements and ancient hypertechnology waiting beneath the surface of the setting, as well as yet more visitors from another world. That’s one major thing I love about Final Fantasy. You really do feel how each game becomes the next. Every new entry always keeps something in the gameplay, story, setting or music from the prior game. and so it becomes incredibly rewarding to follow along in sequence and see this franchise grow. For example I found it interesting to watch Cid’s grandson Mid building a special ship, since this is later copied by the Cid and Mid of FFXVI. The random pianos around the place suddenly give precedence and context to the random pianos of FFVII Rebirth! It’s got the first appearance of the submarine’s underwater map, tons of spells that still carried their way forward into the PS1 FFs (Blue Magic in particular like Missile, White Wind, ????, Level 5 Death, Flamethrower), etc. I definitely see the line running from Bartz (V) to Tidus (X) to Zack (VII) as well…and Rex (Xenoblade 2) with his personality, character design and that quiet visit to his parents graves in his backwater home town. I have Xeno brainrot okay, but not without reason! Just like with FFIV where managing to catch Tetsuya Takahashi’s name in the credits roll got me to discover that the SNES version was his first Square job, therefore validating the impact I clearly see it leaving on his own work through all the similar setpieces in the Xeno series, FFV also has a lot that I could point to with how Exdeath uses the Void to delete chunks of the world in a circular blasts akin to both XC3’s Annihilation Events and XCX’s own Void. But yes, anyway, this was even more fun than I expected it to be. While I do find FFIII fairly forgettable, the quality leap from FFI to FFII is crazy, the quality leap from FFIII to FFIV is just as crazy, the quality leap from FFIV to FFV was even more crazy. And FFIV was already a great game, okay!? Yet each new entry has been such a massive step forward in quality. Final Fantasy V is a fantastic retro JRPG, as well as an important milestone for both the series and the wider genre, and despite my fears and hesitations in at last closing the gap I’d left open in early Final Fantasy, I’m glad to have it under my belt.

Initially I was unsure if I’d play this or not, since completing III, IV and V meant the Pixel Remasters had allowed me to fill the gaps in my knowledge of early Final Fantasy and thus, in some sense, run their course. However, these remasters breathe such new life into the games with the updated music, random encounter toggle and faster overworld movement that, upon closer reflection, oh yeah wait a second dude this is Final Fantasy VI of course I have to replay it duh. Not that a game as timeless as FFVI particularly needs remastering as dearly as the prior games did, but the Pixel Remaster is nevertheless still a very welcome way to replay. Back in high school I had the PSN version so this version’s instant load times are a real blessing, and I loved the remade soundtrack. Proper singing in the opera scene makes one of the most iconic scenes in RPG history even more iconic, and the extra oomph spotlighted tracks I’d never paid proper appreciation to before such as Magitek Research Facility, Awakening, Phantom Train, Strago’s Theme, The Fanatics and especially that haunting Gestahl Empire theme (FFVII Ever Crisis has also faithfully remade around three quarters of FFVII’s original soundtrack thus far, so in the past few years we now have high quality musical remakes of the first seven Final Fantasy entries). I’ve already been through the game before but the remaster was a nice way to reconfirm my feelings on it, and FFVI’s incredible reputation precedes the experience in any case. Unsurprisingly, this is the best 2D Final Fantasy. Across the Pixel Remaster journey I did find myself really quite blindsided by the high quality of FFII, FFIV and FFV as well, and am grateful to have them now included in my ranking, but come on man – it’s Final Fantasy VI! The culmination of everything Square had built up in this 2D era of Final Fantasy, a constant contender for peak of the franchise and furthermore just one of the most revered JRPGs of all time.

Spritework, world design and storytelling take yet another dramatic leap in quality from the preceding entry. Despite being right near the top of FF’s protagonist power ranking, Terra is such a gentle girl. Struggling with her identity while seeking honest input from the people around to try piecing back together her fragmented emotions, and feeling a tender frustration while she watches Locke gravitating towards Celes instead: “But I want to understand love now.”, “If humans and espers could love each other, then do you think I could love a human?”, “I feel like I’m on the verge of realising something important, so I’ll remain here and be their mother.” – Terra’s dialogue really makes you want to see her find happiness. Having this vulnerable young thing as FFVI’s innermost protagonist makes the tone of the story unique among the other games so far, who have generally all been lead by energetic or headstrong warrior men. Celes’ signature scenes at the opera and cliffside are both still hard-hitting as well, and the guys are all really charismatic. It’s funny watching Locke and Edgar both repeatedly fail to woo the women around them, Cyan’s bumbling mannerisms are very endearing, and Gau telling that he’ll “Get strong, smash Kefka” is a hilarious line to throw against one of FF’s strongest antagonists. Things are fantastic on the protagonist side. The main characters and their storylines are as potent as ever. However on this particular playthrough, I’ve gotta say that I gained a new appreciation for Sabin. Not necessarily in storyline (no offense), but that I just don’t think I ever particlarly used him in my original playthrough and so totally missed how much of a unit this guy is. Blitz is an insane class ability – absurdly strong abilities which don’t use MP and you get to do fun little fighting game inputs in an RPG. Suplexing ghost trains and more or less just running this entire gauntlet himself with Aura Cannon and Rising Phoenix (superseded by Razer Gale once applicable). Barring a few gimmick enemies I genuinely feel Sabin could solo the entire storyline, he must be among the most useful Final Fantasy party members. Or at least, insofar as Sabin is very very good as soon as you get him, and he remains a real force the entire playthrough. Though in general I feel that FFVI is potentially the FF that willingly encourages you to get the most busted. Terra is nuts by the end. The Miracle Shoe equips for permanent Haste, Protect, Shell and Regen. And really, what does anyone think they’re gonna do when Quick-Trance Terra uses the Celestriad + Soul of Thamasa to effortlessly fire off two turns of dualcasted piercing Ultimas for only 1 MP a pop? Everything melts before her.

However good the main cast may be though, Kefka’s screen presence is not one to be shown up. He really is as great a villain as his reputation suggests, with his sinister bait-and-switch during the first act that eventually leads into his legendary multi-phase battle. At first he’s a selfish bully who’d stoop so low as to poison an entire village’s water source or raze it to the ground simply because they’ve put him in a bad mood. He’s insane to the extent that even his own allies hate him, and you’re supposed to view him as just a scumbag riding on the emperor’s coattails while always getting humiliated in proper confrontations. These underhanded tactics & his earlier battles where he repeatedly flees from Sabin deliberately trick the player into perceiving him as a coward and a lackey – making the moment where he finally reveals his hand by effortlessly wiping out the espers that much more shocking. Kefka, that pathetic clown from the start of the game, effortlessly dispatches Leo, who we had believed to be the empire’s strongest warrior, then utterly outclasses a horde of those same espers who had previously fuelled a century-long war. He backstabs the emperor and disgracefully kicks his corpse off the floating island, hijacks the source of all magic from the sealed gods and successfully seats himself as the ruler of a cruel new world. While perhaps less fleshed out than that of FFV and Chrono Trigger’s secondary maps, the World of Ruin is my favourite instance of this trope in Square’s early catalogue. The eternal sunset soaking the sea blood red, the cults permeating each village, the populace weary and terrified of divine retribution, and of course that chilling overworld music – it all hits. While truthfully not too much plot actually happens in the World of Ruin, its strong atmosphere make it one of gaming’s most memorable events.

Like I’ve also noted in my reviews for the other Pixel Remasters, there are obviously elements from everything prior that feed into FFVI’s design. We’re back in a dictatorship like FFII, the game opens witha similar story beat to that of FFIV where the protagonist unwittingly plays part to massacre. The whimsy of FFV is felt full-force in VI’s dialogue; Locke, Edgar, Cyan, Kefka, Ultros – sometimes even Terra and Shadow, are all just a bit off-kilter. The secondary world maps of FFIII, IV and V are once again seen. The character-building freedom which the Esper system provides is an evolution of FFV’s Jobs and the precursor to FFVII’s Materia. But me and my biases, the thing which sticks out on a replay is that it really cannot be understated how much you will feel game informing the setting of Final Fantasy VII. The greedy old man sitting atop the central tower in his industrial, war-mongering Gestahl Empire while scheming to break into the World of the Espers so that he can harness their lives as Magicite in the Magitek Research Facility is almost totally analogous to President Shinra’s Mako, Mako Reactors and his pursuit of the Promised Land. Both games feature a painfully long stairwell. Once the World of the Espers is finally breached, the monsters all fly out in the world in a scene reminiscent of the Weapons awakening at the North Crater. Setzer’s name, silver hair and dark cloak at least somewhat call to mind Sephiroth. The droning and bells of The Gestahl Empire could easily be mistaken as a Sephiroth theme and so likely had an effect on Those Chosen By the Planet. More notably though, Aria Di Mezzo Carattere has the prototypal melody which gets used in Aerith’s Theme (VII) and then again in Timber Owls (VIII). You’ve got your overabundant minigames, your coliseum rewards and 3D perspective while atop chocoback or airship – that kind of thing. It’s all in the setpieces and the imagery. You can so tangibly feel how FFV & FFVI combined to form Chrono Trigger, FFVI & Chrono Trigger combined to form FFVII, FFIV & Chrono Trigger combined to form Xenogears + the Deathblow combos are probably an evolution of Sabin’s Blitz, FFV, Chrono Trigger & Xenogears combined to form Chrono Cross, etc. That kind of conceptual progression is so prevalent in the days of Square, and so rewarding to follow along. While you can play Final Fantasy in any order you’d like, there’s tons of merit to be found when you look at them all in sequence.

Still in just as much disbelief that this is real as I was at launch. I have so many great 4K screenshots to use in discussions now. Can’t wait for them to reach the later parts.

I guess my controversial take is that Ever Crisis is worthwhile. You look at any review space and people treat it like literal trash that should not have been made and has no single redeeming feature. And I get it because the original trailer that made EC look like a full-scale remake of the entire Compilation in an updated version of FFVII’s original aesthetic is quite literally my dream game, so the fact it was dangled in front of me like that does hurt. But to say that it has no worth or value is blatantly just wrong imo. At worst, you ignore it. At best? Look at it. Gorgeous remakes of FFVII’s original dioramas. Listen to it. Remake-level instrumentation utilising the original compositions. It sucks that it wasn’t what we truly wanted, but it is still such a gift as a die-hard FFVII fan.

While Crisis Core may seem the most unassuming of the Ever Crisis campaigns due to lacking any new music and already having high quality graphics (unlike OG FFVII), a demake like this presenting Crisis Core within FFVII’s original prerendered aesthetic is quite literally a dream come true. I loved this. I appreciated all the little detours to further pad out Crisis Core’s storyline, such as giving Zack more downtime at Shinra Tower, or acutally explaining how Zack had raised money to catch the ferry from Gongaga Port over to Banora. Having Zack do so many odd jobs in the subsections helps solidify why his plan is to return to Midgar and become a handyman mercenary. That accompanies new insights such as the world map now revealing that Banora is to the west of Mideel on the southern archipelago, or establishing Lazard to have been another of President Shinra’s illegitimate sons like Evan.

I can already tell people will immediately, instinctually hate the implications which arise out of this episode rewriting Masamune to be a substantially more important, Jenova-linked sword, therefore also establishing that Jenova had called to Sephiroth’s mind at some point before the Nibelheim Incident. FFVII is in a similarly awkward position to Alien where the original is considered functionally perfect and any addition, regardless of whether it’s good or interesting, is treated with extreme reluctance. And to be honest, when I’d heard they were retconning Masamune in the new story, I was quite prepared to disavow it too. But I loved this episode. A lot. This sold me on a Sephiroth prequel far more than episode one of The First SOLDIER did. I think Sephiroth having Jenova-induced dreams during this expedition works fine because he is in proximity to her spiritual residue or scattered flesh in the Igara region, it’s not like Jenova had extended her reach from Nibelheim all the way to Shinra HQ. There’s a specific cosmic artifact which Sephiroth gets too close to. I think it’s cool that Jenova doesn’t ever actually puppet Sephiroth in the same way that he does to others, she just influences his mental faculties. Iit feels in line with a prototypal version of the script where ‘Jenova’ was going to be some repressed gene which gets activated in the human brain. So in that sense it’s no different to when Sephiroth is in proximity with her at Nibelheim. Since I’m okay with that development, I think that the new revelations here are all really exciting additions to the lore and character settings.

I loved all the cosmic horror which arose out of the decision to make the Masamune a more significant plot item with Jenova’s consciousness latched onto it via the meteor metal worked into its blade. Things like the talk about how it possessed the swordsmith Masamune (using wording which directly parallels Sephiroth in the Nibel Manor), and the terrifying tale of the villagers all slaughtering each other out of a sudden, inhuman lust for that accursed blade. It’s not totally out of left field either. Remake and Rebirth already laid some groundwork for the Masamune having specific Jenova connotations. Jenova Dreamweaver can be spotted summoning energy in the shape of the Masamune for one of its attacks, Roche’s sword similarly become engulfed in purple energy and takes the shape of the Masamune once he starts succumbing to Sephiroth’s influence, and if you pay attention to party member Sephiroth during the first chapter of Rebirth you can spot it phasing in and out of existence with Jenova’s signature purple haze. Additionally, this now creates a symbolic link back to the cursed sword Masamune from Chrono Cross, which drove a great hero mad after he secured it from within its grotesque, hellish dungeon. Final Fantasy VII, Xenogears and Chrono Cross are all considered sister projects with heavy overlap in plot and imagery due to how they were all inspired by Chrono Trigger, so it’s cool to see FFVII introducing this similarity in the Masamune’s demonic nature. The Remake saga is also heavily adapting spirituality concepts in line with Xenogears.

Previously I did have reservations about what Jenova appearing in the wild before Nibelheim with Buno D’rhad at the end of the first episode would do to the timeline and character integrity of Sephiroth, and I was likewise initially quite conflicted about Jenova contacting Sephiroth in Wutai for this episode too. Make her so ubiquitous and it may start to feel like suddenly Jenova is the answer to every question ever asked in FFVII, stripping complexity away from the setting. But actually, the way it was executed here was great. Rebirth had already given an account of two separate conflicts she had with the Cetra (the Hall of Murals and the Shadowblood Queen), so there’s some precedent which eases me into this new story. It provides another glimpse into her centuries-long history by detailing her clash against Dao Chao and the Igaran Cetra. What specifically caught my attention, is that we see Jenova manifesting into a form unlike any ever known before. The Blighted Spirit’s face looks closer to Jenova Synthesis than anything else, but the gigantic humanoid arms are a new feature. The Revenant Mother form also is close to Jenova Synthesis with how it has a woman’s form attached to its grotesque mass. During Rebirth I noticed that the Hall of Trials had statues some skull creature alongside the Cetran priests, which made me question if perhaps the appearance of Jenova that we’re most familair with originates in some demon from that region’s Cetran folklore. Seeing the Blighted Spirit and Revenant Mother have such a dramatically different shape perhaps supports this theory in some way, since the spirits summoned here may be memories of Jenova at a time when she had taken her demonic appearance from the a different group of Cetra.

Establishing that Jenova’s will had made contact with Sephiroth prior to Nibelheim is imo fine as well. The point at which he wrestles control of Jenova for his own goals is after jumping into the Lifestream at Mt Nibel, that much is very directly stated in FFVII and the Ultimania Omega. This new information doesn’t compromise that. It just heightens his cosmic horror, emphasizes his poor mental stability, and provides a better explanation for why Sephiroth feels as though he recognises Nibelheim when he arrives for the first time – because the Masamune had been subtly calling him toward Jenova’s main body for years.

All in all, it sucks that Ever Crisis has such an overwhelmingly negative reception because that means there’s basically no discussion on it whatsoever. The mainstream only ever brings it up to insult it, and its own community really only comments on gacha banners, seasonal events and weapon builds. So there’s a veritable well of character implications, lore and theorycrafting that will just never take hold. Do we actually think that swordsmith Masamune had a piece of Jenova’s space metal which he smithed into the blade, or was it a sample of her flesh that had survived incineration in the battle against Da Chao’s party generations prior? What’s up with that spike through Masamune’s chest in his demon form, is that the meteor shard itself? Since everyone other than Sephiroth saw Alissa with her true appearance, I think the sequence of events is probably that Jenova’s remnant spirit energy in Igara and Robio messes with Sephiroth’s mind so that he perceives her as looking like Lucrecia, and then perhaps the Jenova cells in him jump to her and this combination is what allows Jenova to transmutate her into the Revenant Mother? Or maybe there were some living cells still attached to the meteor shard that was infused into Masamune, which infected her once they found it? There are a lot of little details in this chapter which would make for good discussion, but that forum simply does not exist.

Neat little side story (though EC turning an important piece of canon into a seasonal time-limited event sure is a decision…). While short, it helps ground the Wutai War further by showing us some battles that took place, and it helps solidify the timeline of events for Glenn and the Shinra Resistance Committee. Based on Rebirth I had assumed that Rufus disposed of Glenn years ago, but it was actually only around the time that President Shinra was killed. I was curious about the mentions of Matt and Lucia in Rebirth as well, wondering if they were Jenova imitations like the Glenn who meets with Rufus at Junon is. Based on this sequence of events though, it must have been the genuine Lucia and Matt who went straight from Arsenal Island over to Shinra Tower to help AVALANCHE with their raid. Not all of its great, but this is what I love about the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. All the moving parts, and the wider appreciation of history it brings to the setting, detailing stories and locales that Cloud Strife would never have visited. Ever Crisis unifying all these different branches into a singular visual direction enhances that sense. Banora, Arsenal Island, the Igara Exclusion Zone and ruins of Robio – I really hope these will manage to make their way into part 3’s overworld.

My enjoyment of this game was only heightened by replaying it on the PC version. This is the first game I’ve ever played at 4K so subjectively I just got a lot of spectacle out of that, and it being compatible with the Unreal Engine 4 Unlocker out of the box was amazing because I really love using freecam tools to explore JRPG environments and take hyper-specific screenshots for blog purposes. Replaying Rebirth after having had time to familiarise myself with the soundtrack also allowed me to better appreciate the complexity and scale of its music.

Other thoughts after this replay:

One-Winged Nightmare: Why Remake Sephiroth is NOT from Advent Children

The Mindboggling, Utterly Ludicrous Scale of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth’s Soundtrack

Timeline & Void in Final Fantasy VII Remake

Is that…a new Madou Monogatari in the year 2025? Officially released in English and everything? Never thought I’d see the day. Admittedly the game itself wasn’t great – but it’s Idea Factory after all, I wasn’t expecting it to be great. Were it not Madou Monogatari, then I likely would have dropped it in chapter one. But out of affection for this series and excitement to see it resurface in contemporary times, I pushed through and did have fun enough. During the pre-release period I was quite concerned about the cutesy art style and the effect this may potentially have on Fia, worrying that the decision to replace Arle may be indicative of them taking away some of that attitude the older games had. Which would defeat the whole purpose, because 99% of Madou Monogatari’s appeal is seeing all the fun and creative ways that Arle finds to sass her enemies. Thankfully though, that fear was unfounded. Fia is plenty expressive. While not as blatantly rude and mean as Arle often was, Fia still has plenty of sass to her interactions. Honestly still would have liked Arle, but on the other hand I do see this as being the most eloquent way to revive the Madou Monogatari series from its long slumber without stepping on the toes of Puyo Puyo. I did enjoy all the references to the past games which were snuck into the dialogue. Each time Fia spoke about her grandma had me going “It’s Arle, right? The ‘wrong’ history Fia was taught are references to Arle’s dungeon adventures, right??” Critically I do think that Fia and the Wondrous Academy may have leaned a touch too hard into that nostalgia-baiting (compared to something like Atelier Lulua which respects the new cast just as much as the returnees), but honestly I ate it all up. This game serves as a meeting point between the classic Madou Monogatari series and the modern spinoff Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God. It retains many quirks from the former such as the way characters are constantly saying silly things like “I feel gross” to express their status, and prominently features Arle’s iconic battle shouts like the deadpan “yatta na!” and “battankyu~”. And for the latter – this game is simply a sequel to Sorcery Saga, both in terms of design and story. I did also appreciate that this game had its own new storyline, instead of just reinterpreting the first Madou Monogatari game like had been so many times before (the five different console versions, the SNES rpg, Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God).

An amazing reminder as to why Metal Gear shot right up into my top 3 game franchises when I played it back in highschool. Serious geopolitical drama in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, oh but here’s a guy that shoots bees at you then explodes like a tokusatsu mook. And a guy that photosynthesizes. Aaand that tank just roared at us. Snake turns out to be some oddball super-spy who hyperfixates on eating every animal he sees, unabashedly staring right at Eva’s cleavage every time they meet and nerding out about guns. Ocelot meows at you and spends five minutes straight twirling his revolvers each time he appears, acting so cringe that it successfully loops back to being cool once you realise just how deep his triple-crossing performance had run. It’s so good. I feel like this time I finally fell in love with MGS3. It’s always been the darling for the fandom and most the gaming community, but idk it never clicked with me in totality during my original playthrough of the franchise. I liked the story and presentation, but didn’t agree with the more complex loadout & sneaking systems compared to MGS1 and MGS2. This time I really resonated with the whole project though. Great fun to play, story is unhinged in the best way, and of course the ending is as legendary as ever. Snake you poor, broken soul.

I know Solid Snake is the ‘original’ in the sense of being the first protagonist, but I’ve surely spent more time playing as or writing about Big Boss by now, and his downfall storyline has left a larger impact on me. So honestly sometimes I feel odd seeing Solid Snake and remembering that half the franchise is centred on this other guy with a whole different cast of supporting characters. Here’s hoping that they’ll continue the Metal Gear Delta remake series for the others too.

I enjoyed it and was having a lot of fun with the sheer fact that I’m playing a new Metroid Prime in 2025. Felt almost as true to its Aliens inspiration as Samus Returns was. The architecture is more HR Giger-esque than ever, so much of its hallways or iconography is yonic in the same way that Alien’s derelict spaceship was; though on the Xenomorph scale of phallic symbolism it definitely goes Ridley -> Zeta Metroid and Omega Metroid (Samus Returns) -> Grievers (MP4). And those first few moments stepping into Sol Valley were mesmerising. Wandering through that massive desert with nothing but the sound of Samus foosteps crunching in the send and some eery, the strange sun dogs in the sky, an enormous tornado in the distance, and eery, distant chanting is arguably the most alien Metroid has ever felt. Just truly isolating while you’re wandering a planet-spanning desert like you’d find on Mars.

But I totally empathize with the complaints about it misunderstanding Metroid’s appeal, and feel as though it fell victim to modern Nintendo in the way that every post-BotW game they’ve made has. Too large, too open, shallow collectathon chores not worth my time, and far too much repetition. I really do hate how Nintendo thinks it’s okay to just shamelessly repeat shrine layouts and cutscenes so much these days. Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom and Echoes of Wisdom were amazing! I loved them so much. But applying those wide-scale design philosophies to a new Donkey Kong and a new Metroid Prime just feels like such a misstep to me. These two series in particular are prided on their careful content curation. Opening them up like Bananza and MP4 have done was a detriment to me. However, I can at least somewhat rationalise it in Alien terms. Most the Metroid games are like Alien in tone and atmosphere (even Metroid II whose story is heavily modelled on the second film), while Prime 4 is more in line with Aliens with its quirky military. Definitely would preferred the game without them, but I can accept it as being done with intention. But why on earth is there a giant empty space in a Metroid game? A series known for its dense, overlapping level design? Why am I getting my Driver’s License in a cyberpunk minigame arena in Metroid Prime of all things? That ain’t right. It feels wrong in my soul to say this, but having played both concurrently MP4 did stick out like a lesser version of Borderlands 4. BL4 does everything MP4 wants to, but at a much better executed and more fun level because of the slick movement. The fact I even have to compare these two series of all things is wild though. After the dubious trailers I was really hoping that this would not be the Subnautica Below Zero of Metroid, but it unfortunately was.

Despite many design qualms, I had fun with this. The aggressively friendly tone of this game is a joke, the city is sorely lacking in environmental variety, shinies are less special than ever, and I just don’t feel that ATB was a good fit for Pokemon. I’m an ATB defender, it’s awesome in the Final Fantasy series and Atelier Ryza, but Legends ZA’s combat felt like an incoherent mess. However I did enjoy characters like the energetic Lida or insane Jacinthe; It’s cool to see another evil chick after successive depictions kinda ruined Lusamine, and her electro swing battle theme is probably the most sophisticated instrumentation in any Pokemon game. I was also impressed that this series was willing to actually address AZ’s violent sins and roll credits on a shot of his tombstone. Granted I haven’t played Sword or Scarlet yet despite hearing good things about the latter’s endgame, but it’s just cool to see the Pokemon Legends series taking some more risks with the plot and gameplay formula. I don’t necessarily think that Legends Z-A is the answer, in fact just about every part of it felt like a regression from Legends Arceus, but I love to see the franchise trying something new after having such a set formula for so long.

Also gotta say that it had me thinking about Final Fantasy VII a lot, and that’s just bonus points.

• The opening ten seconds of Lumiose Daytime reminds me of The Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII motif every time.
• The final boss theme has many motifs that resemble FFVII melodies like Let the Battles Begin. The same is true of sections in Hyperspace Battle and Mega Darkrai.
• The gameplay shifts to ATB, similar to Final Fantasy.
• Lumiose being a circular city divided into sectors immediately gives Midgar vibes.
• The sewers are visually very reminiscent of FFVII Remake’s. Obviously they’re just sewers and sewers look like that, but the colours and specific architecture match to where it almost looks like a mod of Pokemon characters wandering around Midgar.
• Team MZ are comprised of a spiky-haired blonde guy, a black guy and an asian woman, similar to the main trio of FFVII’s AVALANCHE and Team Glenn.
• Quasartico Inc daylights as an advanced technology office, but has conspiratorial undertones. The company is helmed by a wealthy older woman, who sends Vinnie, a man in a black suit, out to do her bidding. This creates similar visual presence to President Shinra and the Turks.
• AZ’s ultimate weapon burns Pokemon lifeforce as fuel, like a Mako Reactor.
• Mega Mawile’s mouths resemble the Diamond Weapon’s shoulders, and they open to launch a barrage of energy blasts in much the same manner.
• Mega Absol Z is a one-winged creature, much like FFVII’s infamous one-winged angel.
• Zygarde is a shapeshifter so its 10% forme being a dog is undoubtedly a reference to John Carpenter’s The Thing, which is also the primary inspiration for Jenova.
• The story is about Zygarde Cells recombining into Zygarde Complete, similar to Jenova’s Reunion and Jenova COMPLETE. Its battle theme is, as expected, a dance track similar to J-E-N-O-V-A.
• Exposure to Zygarde has robbed Lysandre of his memories turned his hair white and made him largely immortal, similar in effect to Jenova’s cultists.

Thank you Pokemon ZA very cool.

Ansha is precious, Rayquaza’s new theme is sick, and I have a frankly unreasonable amount of shiny pokemon now. I did have a few days of unfathomable, smoldering fury at my unbelievably bad luck trying to roll the Latias portal, but then it turns out I’d never done the quest that unlocks them…whoops.

Joke about Sonic in a car all you want (or just install the mod to make him run on foot), but I think that the blue blur is the understated king of kart racers: Sonic & Sega All Stars Racing was awesome, and if anybody ever talks to you about Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed these days it’s to tell you that it’s their favourite in the genre. Team Sonic Racing admittedly was left to die because of its overcentralising multiplayer gimmick, but the actual racing was fun. Playing SRB2Kart online with friends was so important to us during the pandemic, and Dr Robotnik’s Ring Racers has been my ideal pick-up-and-play Steam Deck game. Crossworlds is another banger, and I am so happy to see it finding such overwhelming success in the review space. This game has seen all positive press all the time (aside from the bad, muddy soundtrack), so I really think this will be the game to finally claim the kart racer spot for the PC space, which had been desperately needed for so long due to Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing’s console exclusivity. What really calls to me here more than any of the other kart racers in the Sonic Racing series is that all the side routes, secrets and shortcuts honestly make the courses feel like Modern Sonic levels more than the usual racetracks. The winding paths and pacing of shortcut interactions feels like boosting through a Generations level. The physics and handling may be less technical than Transformed, but because of that and the refined level design I feel like Crossworlds’ flow state is better than ever.

Crossworlds does feel Mario Kart-ified somewhat, in that skill expression seems a bit lower than Transformed and there’s much more chaotic rubber-banding (both of which would be addressed if they brought back the mechanic where boosting at the last second would dodge a lock-on item). However I think simplifying the gameplay will serve it well in the long run and make it easier for this to be playable with friends. Must admit, I was glad to see that the boat and plane modes had been stripped back from Transformed, they’re less jarring of a gameplay shift now. I know that’s a hot take, but in Transformed I felt the car was far and away the most fun vehicle to control, and the reason I wanted to play a kart racer in the first place. The plane was tolerable but boring, and the boat was annoying. It was definitely more complete and technical, but simplifying them for Crossworlds has been a breath of fresh air for me. Less is more here. The different boost types they have now (corkscrew for plane, jumping for boat) help differentiate them enough without being a totally overpowering gameplay shift like they were before. Price aside it is tons of fun. Level design is at an all time high compared to the previous Sonic kart racers & the second lap being run on a different track helps avoid course fatigue. As well, the changes to the boat and plane transformations streamline the course experience and address one of my lingering issues with Sonic Racing Transformed. They’re simplified, but not for the worse imo. That sentiment could be used to describe Crossworlds on the whole. Far more chaotic with the rubber-banding, and items are very much out of control right now, but it’s managed to stick a landing more than the prior entries did. I could see this finally dethroning Transformed for me with enough time and some balance changes, which was something Team Sonic Racing could never dream of doing. It’s less technical by design, but feels very good behind the wheel.

Sonic Racing Crossworlds being built on Unreal Engine additionally means mods are popping off immediately. Sonic running on foot, Surge, Scourge, Mario etc. Only a few days after release I had already seen Hex Maniac, Sans, the Red M&M and Peter Griffin on the Gamebanana page – it’s basically big-budget, mainstream SRB2Kart and I’m so here for that. For those that don’t know, Sonic Robo Blast 2 Kart and its successor Dr Robotnik’s Ring Racers are Sonic fangames that basically became kart racer MUGEN. But with this many eyes on Crossworlds as a modern, high quality, cross-platform kart racer with actual working online, I think its modding community will be so much more fervent. At the moment it’s still all character swap mods it seems, but fingers crossed it won’t take too long for people to figure out how to expand Grand Prix slots and just import every Mario Kart and CTR course ever.

A lot of fun to play co-op. It’s hilarious how quickly everything can go wrong.

Stellar Blade Review

Small scope, cheap price, but lots of arcadey fun. The developers had a single idea for this game and let it hang around just long enough that you enjoy it without the simplicity overstaying its welcome. Taking the Breakout formula and turning it into something more active like this is super cool. I’ve heard people compare it to Firestriker, so that might be good to check out at some point too.

Genuinely so hard-hitting. It sucks to get drawn into this story and realise that there isn’t a correct answer to most things. You can’t help everyone, heck you can’t even placate all sides, because this zombie apocalypse is just so thoroughly terrible that there isn’t really room for happiness to grow. I can see how this became such a phenomenon.

Amazing to see Kenny again. Witnessing his decline really does hurt, and the swell of emotions when Clementine has to make the hard decision to leave him behind because he’s become too broken and toxic stayed with me for a long time.

It’s interesting to see Clem’s thought processes and mannerisms in this one since she’s a kid who’s spent the majority of her life in this violent new world. I like the conflict between the brothers as well, and the city setting was interesting.

Conflicting feelings on this one. It means a lot seeing this final part of Clementine and AJ’s chapter, but by this point the Walking Dead’s plot setups and setting really has begun to feel formulaic. And although the gameplay is a little more complex than prior entries, I’m not sure that’s actually to its benefit. Still, like I said it does carry a lot of emotions to see Clem and AJ finally connecting with people their own age like this.

Has a reputation for being lesser than the main series, and it certainly is so, but I like the idea of these smaller side stories just showing glimpses into other parties in other areas of the world. Still some real tragic irony throughout every story here.

Just felt like traversing through Aionios again. Great game. I often think that Homecoming might be the single best track in the series. Not the definitive music piece necessarily, since The Tomorrow With You is very obviously that which best embodies the heart of Xenoblade both in emotion and composition, but Homecoming is perhaps the most sophisticated in its ebb-and-flow and instrumentation. That comparison is indicative of XC3’s soundtrack on a whole, really. The leap from Xenoblade Wii to XC2 was wild, and XC3 I would say is actually a similarly massive step up in symphonic quality. XC2 is imo still far and away the best complete score in the series because of its incredible melodies that stick in your mind after only a single listen, but even if individual tracks and motifs are harder to remember (the music is more nuanced with more subtleties than ever – simultaneously a benefit and detriment) XC3’s music is just so high quality across the board.

Answers! At long last, there are answers to many of Xenoblade X‘s many cliffhangers or incomplete plot threads. I really yearned to to know more about the Vita and the Great One – the updated story content delivered. I wanted to learn of Elma’s race – the updated story content delivered. While I still would have preferred a big, messy ‘theory of everything’ type explanation by linking XCX and XC2 histories together, I can’t complain about them taking the cleaner option of parallel worlds. It’s good to finally have that issue laid to rest after all this time. Though I do have my reservations about the decision to destroy Mira and how it results in many of the other hanging plot threads getting snuffed out early, I nonetheless appreciated all the new lore attached to the XCX universes. Histories and phenomena found exclusively here and not in the main trilogy, which make the back half of the story pretty interesting. Therefore chapter 13 was probably my highlight. I’ve replayed XCX three times already so obviously I’d favour the new content, but it’s more that I felt the new chapter had cutscenes and storytelling slightly more up to par with that of the mainline games.

The gameplay journey though…Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition got hands, huh. I haven’t replayed the original without cheats since the first time, so running into its absurd difficulty spikes again was a shock. Just a brutal uphill battle the entire time where every boss required me to lose enough that it triggers the easier fight and then still make waste several Skells just to scrape through. It wasn’t until literally the final-final boss that I stumbled upon an infinite Overdrive setup by complete accident and eviscerated him with complete ease. The high difficulty was frustrating. Having to spend hours grinding levels just so that I could barely keep up was frustrating. That they don’t have a Load Game button despite having three save slots so you frequently have to quit to title is frustrating. Especially when every boss in the second half is nearly impossible without your non-respawnable mech (or said Overdrive tech that I only stumbled upon by chance). The lack of event theatre is frustrating, since it was one of the main features I was excited for. Xenoblade X was already a game full of inconveniences and frustrations, and the quality of life features added in the port don’t address nearly as many of them as I’d have liked. Yes I’m grateful that we can set party members from a menu now and have finally been returned the ability to simply jump in a jetpack Skell, but those are only a few from my long laundry list of complaints. Don’t get me wrong it’s a pretty good port otherwise and I mostly enjoyed my time with it, but I’m definitely peeved that it lacked the accessibility options or considerations I’ve come to expect of a modern Xenoblade release. I usually play these games on easy, man! I haven’t replayed XCX without gameplay modifier cheats since the first time, and had hoped to never do so again.

Those issues aside, I did once again enjoy exploring Mira. While XCX has always been far from my favourite entry in the series, and Definitive Edition has done little to really change that, I was uniquely afforded the free time to immerse myself into its sidequests and exploration now more than ever on account of losing my job with unfortunately fitting timing.