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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 8 months

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About Me: Favorite Video Games

So you may not know this, but I’m a gamer. Shocking, right? Who’d ever have guessed it? But to be totally fair here, I rarely talk about video games on Tumblr. I talk about movies, and there have been a handful of times where I reviewed video games, but I focused more on the story, characters, and all that then I did on whether or not the gameplay was good. In my earliest days, before I found my niche, I talked about games a fair deal, but that fell by the wayside so I could focus on films (my true passion).

So hey, look at this! You’re all going to get to see what my favorite video games are now! Remember, everything here is just my personal opinions; I'm not trying to give actual reviews of each of these games in a couple of sentences or trying to sell you on them, I'm talking about the stuff in them that makes me love them. All of this is my subjective opinion, and I'm not asking you to agree with me here, I'm just trying to talk about stuff that I love.

Oh, and here are some honorable mentions: Super Mario Bros. 3, Banjo-Kazooie (I still haven’t finished it and I don’t want to include games I haven’t played through), Kid Icarus: Uprising, Bayonetta 2, Injustice 2, BioShock, Doom Eternal, Super Metroid, Dragon Age II, God of War II, Castlevania: Aria/Dawn of Sorrow, The Wolf Among Us, The Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando/Up Your Arsenal, and Heritage for the Future. Also a shout out to Tell Me Why and Life is Strange, games I watched my wife play and loved the story of but that I didn’t actually play myself; the former in particular has all sorts of elements I love in my stories.

Now, without further ado, here’s my top 50! Oh, and only the top 30 have pictures because there's image limits on posts! What a load of BS!

50. Animal Crossing: New Horizons

Ok, maybe this game is lacking in a few areas at the expense of its massive customization system… but boy howdy what a system it is! I cannot tell you how much time I’ve sunk into decorating my island, reorganizing my villagers, and just making all sorts of weird themed areas. It’s a lot of fun, and I get to do all this work while hanging with a bunch of weird, cute animals.

49. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure All-Star Battle R

The original game was a lot of fun, but even I’ll admit it felt like it was missing something. That something was probably Foo Fighter, but guess what? She’s in the updated rerelease, along with aslew of other new characters like my favorite minor antagonist Mariah and the bane of Heritage for the Future players, Pet Shop! Add onto that a much better campaign mode with some fun little AU shenanigan matches and you have the most loving fighting game tribute to JJBA imaginable! Now if only they’d give Part 8 a little more love...

48. Batman: Arkham Origins

This is the redheaded stepchild of the Arkham series, and on some level I get why. It is very much aping City, right down to the map despite their being some expansions here and there, and the combat is much more of the same with little in the way of evolution, and don’t get me started on the fucking Joker showing up again. But this game also features some of the best bosses in the series such as Firefly and especially Deathstroke, a Bane who isn’t just a mindless mass of muscles like in the other games, and some interesting sidequests that make this early look at Batman’s superheroics a worthwhile entry in my eyes.

47. Miitopia

This is one of the easiest games out there, what with the autopilot combat and minimal difficulty (though there is a big spike late in the game). But the sheer vastness of the facial customization means that literally anyone from all of art or history can take part in a wacky, cliché RPG adventure. Hank Hill can fight the evil overlord Seth MacFarlane with a crew consisting of Chowder, Thor, and Japanese comedian/director/actor Beat Takeshi. If that’s not worth the price of admission, I don’t know what is.

46. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

The DS is where Castlevania truly shined, and my favorite of all the handheld entries is this portrait-hopping journey to defeat a mad artist and his evil vampire children. The locations are pretty great, there’s tons of sidequests and alternate game modes (my favorite is the one where you play as the Old Axe Armor), and there’s an awesome brutal bonus dungeon where you get to fight the bosses from Dawn of Sorrow without the stupid drawing bullshit!

45. Maximo vs. Army of Zin

The original game was a fun, yet very flawed action platformer. This game veers more into the hack-and-slash genre to great effect; it’s not the deepest combat ever, but it’s a lot of fun, with much better platform, bosses, and story than the first game. There’s just something cool about a world that mixes Gothic horror, steampunk, and other fantasy elements together all in one place.

44. God Hand

This is one of the most deceptive games you’ll ever come across. On the surface, it might seem like an ugly beat-em-up, but it’s so much more than that. The bosses are brutal yet fantastic, the music is fucking incredible, and the humor is just the right level of absurd to be incredibly charming. It’s ball-bustingly difficult, but let me tell you, when you finally overcome a fight or a boss battle that’s been giving you trouble? It is literally the best feeling in the world.

43. South Park: The Stick of Truth

‘Member when South Park was funny? I ‘member. And The Stick of Truth really brings back all those memories because this is a hilarious and loving tribute to the series made with the help of Trey Parker and Matt Stone to deliver the playable South Park experience of your dreams. It’s gross, immature, raunchy, and funny, and best of all it doesn’t get too preachy or up its own ass with messages—no, it gets up Mr. Slave’s ass to defuse a bomb. Peak South Park right here, though the gameplay is kind of basic. It’s all carried by that stellar writing.

42. Crash Bandicoot: Twinsanity

This game mainly scores a spot on my list for being fucking hilarious. This is the funniest Crash Bandicoot ever got, with all sorts of wacky gags and clever dialogue. Cortex really is the MVP here, with the constant slapstick that befalls him combined with his snarky dialogue making him a standout. It’s a bummer so much was cut from the game, and it does feel a bit incomplete in some areas, but for what it is it’s a damn fun time.

41. Pokemon White/White 2

It was genuinely hard to pick a single game from the series to go on here considering how much I loved Gens III – V. Emerald perfected the generation I first got into the series, LeafGreen is the definitive Kanto experience to me, Platinum polished up Gen IV’s uneven debut and made it incredible, and SoulSilver is a fantastic remake of the first Pokemon game I ever played (Crystal). But I think I have to go with the Gen V games I played as my favorites. They’re fun and challenging, and while the first game has a ridiculously restrictive regional dex and the second has an overreliance on defunct wi-fi features, the fantastic story and fun new Pokemon make up for it. Can’t be too mad at the games that let me make trashy cult classic B-movies with my boy Garbodor, can I?

40. Batman: Arkham Knight

I put off playing this for years, because I wasn’t happy with some of the things I heard about it, such as a lack of traditional boss battles and an overreliance on the Batmobile. These are still problems, but not near as bad as I feared (obviously, since it’s on this list); everything about the gameplay is the series at its peak. The main story is a bit lacking and ends up being a tad too predictable for me to love it as much as the other entries in the series, but the fact it has Professor Pyg and Man-Bat really helps make up for its shortcomings.

39. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

This game is just as silly and clunky as I imagined an older Bethesda game would be, but to my surprise I think it holds up incredibly well even compared to Skyrim. It’s a bit more complex in a lot of areas, but it’s not too daunting. What really strikes me is how this game actually has a really good story; it’s nothing groundbreaking, but when you look at how bad the Civil War plot in Skyrim was it feels like Shakespeare in comparison. Throw in a ton of unique sidequests with interesting plotlines, a gruesome Dark Brotherhood plot, an interesting villain, and Patrick Stewart for all of about five minutes, and I’d almost say I like this more than Skyrim. Almost.

38. Wolfenstein: The New Order

Sure, it doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel when it comes to FPS games, but does it need to? All I want from a Wolfenstein game is a horde of Nazi motherfuckers to mow down, and guess what this game gives me? What really surprised me was how genuinely cool and likable BJ was. He might be one of my favorite heroes ever after this game. It’s a shame they couldn’t keep this level of polish up in the sequel.

37. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

In a lot of ways, this game is objectively worse than its predecessor. Like the story is ass for sure; I could not give less of a fuck about the Stormcloaks and the Imperials and their stupid civil war if I tried. But the vast world filled with things to do is so much fun to explore, and there’s all sorts of sidequests and shenanigans to get into. This game is pure, stupid fun, and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve restarted it just to play as a different race or class. Maybe someday I’ll make it to the final boss. Maybe.

36. Psychonauts

The original Psychonauts is one of the last great platformers, and among them it’s a lot more unique than many of its peers as you’re platforming through the minds of all sorts of wacky characters to help them overcome their issues. Bouncing through the conspiracy theory-addled brain of a disturbed milkman or decimating a city kaiju style inside the mind of a hyper-intelligent mutant lungfish are the kind of off-the-wall ideas this game throws at you, and in my opinion the only thing that could hold it back is if it had a really janky final level that combines meat, circuses, escort missions, and an underwhelming final boss… Oops. Still a great game in my eyes, one that’s 95% perfect.

35. Final Fantasy VI

For a lot of people, this is the best Final Fantasy game, and I definitely see why. It has a truly massive playable roster of unique characters with their own special gimmicks (of which only a handful are actually useful, mind you) and one of the greatest video game villains ever conceived in the mad clown Kefka, plus it is so focused and tightly plotted for the first half of the game. I think that after Kefka takes over the story becomes a lot more aimless and unfocused, but that’s also where the game becomes a lot more fun and challenging too. It’s a bit uneven, but after how hard the opera house scene goes I think it’s allowed to trip a little bit.

34. Dragon Age: Origins

A lot more praise is thrown at this series’ sci-fi sibling Mass Effect, probably because that series is a lot more consistent with how good it is across the board (Andromeda notwithstanding), but I’m much more fond of fantasy settings myself and this game delivers a fantastic one in ways its sequels couldn’t quite manage. This is the only game in the series where I genuinely loved every single party member (especially Leliana) and actively tried to get them the happiest endings possible—yes, even the douchebag anti-villain who joins you if you play your cards right), and the plot is just the right level of epic fantasy cheese seasoned with some delicious side quests. If the dwarf plotline wasn’t such a slog and if Varric was in the game, this would be a lot higher on the list, but this game still holds a special place in my heart.

33. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Our first trip into the Asylum really did kill the notion that licensed games had to be the most obnoxious shovelware schlock imaginable by making a Batman game that actually makes you feel like Batman. Sure, the detective part is a bit minimal here compared to the sequels, but the combat is so fun and refreshing that I’m not too bothered by the lack of crime scene investigations. There’s a clear love for the entire mythos here, and best of all a clear love for the animated series—Hamill and Conroy reprise their roles as Joker and Batman respectively, and Arleen Sorkin gives Harley one last ride before her retirement. It’s a real love letter to the Dark Knight, and it spawned one of the most consistently good video game series around, so I’ll forgive it for having the lamest final boss I’ve ever fought just this once.

32. Kingdom Hearts

What I like about the original game is how it struck such a nice balance in its absurd premise, with it never feeling like the Final Fantasy or Disney elements are really overpowering each other. We have the grandiose, convoluted plots of the former and the magic, whimsy, and awesome villains of the latter combining together into one impressive package. Yeah, a lot of the level designs are dogshit (looking at you, Deep Jungle and Monstro), and some of the stunt casting is really bizarre (Lance Bass as Sephiroth?!) but overall this is a game way better than you’d think by hearing that it’s a game where Mickey Mouse and Cloud Strife exist side by side.

31. Super Mario 64

Mamma mia! It is genuinely impossible for me to not feel nostalgic for this game. So many 3D platformers that came out in its wake took what it did and polished it to absurd degrees, but there’s still something so special about diving back into one of the portraits in Peach’s castle and going through those levels again and again. The music and atmosphere of the game add onto it; every time I play it, I feel like a kid again. It’s just such a charming game.

30. MediEvil

If Tim Burton made a Gothic horror fantasy movie, I imagine it would be something like this game. It really uses the limitations of the PS1’s graphics to the fullest extent, with the jagged polygonal looks of the characters enhancing the experience, and it has such a crazy variety of levels and enemies, from a phantom pirate ship to a crystal cave with a dragon to a village of posessed villagers to an ant hill. Sir Daniel Fortesque is one of my favorite video game protagonists around because of his posthumous journey to live up to the legend fabricated around him.

29. God of War III

Every single one of these games just escalates from the previous one. Oh, you fight the hydra in the opening of the first game? How about you fight through Rhodes and then battle the animated colossus that once stood in its port in the second? And how do you top that for the third game? Beat the ever-loving shit out of Poseidon and gouge his eyes out from his POV. And this game only gets more brutal from there! Titans and gods all fall to Kratos in epic and gory boss battles, but honestly even without that I’d put the game on this list for the simple reason that you get to fucking murder Kevin Sorbo as Hercules.

28. EarthBound

Nintendo’s quirkiest RPG makes the cut, mostly on the basis of how weird and charming it is. At this point I’ve essentially memorized everything you need to do in this game, which is good because if it’s your first time you desperately need a guide or you’ll be fucked. There are points where things get a little too grindy (mostly for Poo’s weapons) but it’s genuinely a game whose charms outweigh any negatives there are. Plus, that final boss battle is something else entirely.

27. The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth

Rebirth and all of its DLC updates took everything great about the original game and polished it into absolute perfection, with so many different item combos you could potentially get and so many bosses and endgames you could encounter. No two runs ever really feel the same, and it’s so satisfying to become so overpowered you nuke the screen every time you attack. The fact there’s a thriving modding community to continually generate new and crazier content also adds to why I have a ridiculous number of hours dumped into this game.

26. Resident Evil VII: Biohazard

This is the first Resident Evil game I ever played and, wow, I sure was missing out all those years! This is one of the most tense survival horror experiences I’ve played through, with a creepy family of hillbilly horrors to avoid as I creep through their ramshackle domicile. It’s fun, creepy, and even a little campy, and it has raised my interest in the rest of the series. Hopefully the game with the giant vampire mommy will live up to how good this one is when I finally get around to playing it.

25. Portal 2

Yes, the puzzles are great, but this game really soars due to its writing. The first game was fun and all, but it was mostly just GLaDOS insulting you the whole time with Chell being an entirely silent protagonist. In this game, we get the lovable idiot Wheatley and the greatest mad scientist ever conceived Cave Johnson to listen to as well, and the way GLaDOS bounces off the former and reacts to the latter help make this game a fun and engaging puzzle-solving adventure.

24. Doom

The legendary FPS series got revitalized after years on the edge of relevancy, and its return is one of the most metal games imaginable. Slaughtering your way through the forces of Hell while heavy metal blares in the background? It really doesn’t get much better than this. While I do think Eternal improved the formula and gameplay in a lot of ways (particularly with the addition of an awesome hub level), I find the original to be way more fun and balanced in terms of difficulty. The lack of Marauders is really what gives it the slightest of edges.

23. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Nobody got left behind for this one. Everyone across the series came back, and then they went and added even more to give us the most ambitious crossover of all time. Ridley, Simon Belmont, Sora, Sephiroth, Kazuya, and more all get to duke it out on the best stages of the series as well as some fresh new ones, and every character plays even better and more balanced than they ever have before. While the single player campaign isn’t quite as exciting as Subspace Emissary from Brawl, it still manages to be a pretty epic quest with fun boss battles. This is just the definitive Smash experience in my opinion.

22. Red Dead Redemption

My daughter has affectionately labeled this game “Horse Movie,” and she’s not wrong. This is a true cowboy experience right here, with lots of gunfights and horse wrangling, and it’s all a blast. The story in particular is really well done, and there’s plenty of fun side quests too. Maybe the gunfights get a bit samey after a while, but it’s an enjoyable open world to explore and is filled with oddities and mysteries galore.

21. Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain

The first Metal Gear game to make the list, and easily the most underrated of the bunch. It gets a lot of flak for the missing final episode that would have had Venom fight the young Liquid Snake, and while it does suck that that moment isn’t in the game, the story still feels plenty complete and well-done without it. Venom might be one of the most fascinating characters in the series, and the game has some of the most brutal gutpunches and tearjerking moments in the franchise. Maybe it’s just because I’m predisposed to love Metal Gear, but I loved this game even though I was well aware of what it didn’t have.

20. Final Fantasy VII

Not to be a basic bitch, but this is my favorite Final Fantasy. I mean, the cast is all so cool and fun, the story is great, Sephiroth is an amazing villain, and there’s plenty of obscure and obtuse ways of finding secrets that make a strategy guide practically mandatory if you want the most out of the game. What’s not to love? I think I was mostly surprised by how good the game actually was; it’s always high on lists of the best games ever, and it definitely earns that. The fact that Aerith’s death still made me tear up despite being common knowledge is a testament to just how amazing this Fantasy is.

19. Mother 3

EarthBound coasts by on its fun, lighthearted quirkiness… but what if you took that and applied heaping helpings of darkness and a more solid story? That’s Mother 3, a beautiful tale filled with the same out there humor as its predecessor as well as a lot of more mature and deeper themes than even the original tackled (mind you, Earthbound wasn’t devoid of deeper themes to begin with, so this is saying something). The ending is one of the few times I have openly sobbed while playing a video game. They need to officially release this in the West, because I will buy it day one. Fuck, I’ll pre-order it!

18. Yoshi’s Island

If this game was only one of the most charmingly animated games ever made, that would be enough to earn it at least some respect. But it’s also one of the best platformers in a series that invented the genre, centered around a truly inspired baby-carrying gimmick and featuring all manner of creative boss battles and one of the most earwormy soundtracks ever made. That’s enough to get it a spot on this list, but the fact it solidified Shy Guys as a Mario mainstay and not just a one-shot enemy? That gets it into my top 20.

17. Spyro Reignited Trilogy

It’s kind of cheating since it’s all three games in one package, but it’s my list, I make the rules. I view this as the definitive way to play Spyro; the redesigns are all fantastic (especially Elora) and the fact Tom Kenny is now the lovable purple scamp across all three games is wonderful. They even made the first game more enjoyable and even visually interesting, even though it’s still the weakest link in the series! And as much of a Crash Bandicoot stan as I am, the fact this game allows you to switch between the newly composed arrangements of the songs and the original Copeland tracks is a big W over the Bandicoot remakes only having the new versions of the songs.

16. Metal Gear Rising

This is perhaps the most badass game ever made. The first level has Raiden battling through a war zone and then fighting a RAY singlehandedly, leaping across missiles and slicing it in half while the most fucking awesome metal music blares in the background. The game just decides to get even more insane from there. People have argued against it being canon for years, but these people are stupid. This game is just as insane and politically-charged as the rest of the series, so in my book, it’s fucking canon.

15. Undertale

This game’s time in the spotlight has faded a bit, but that only makes it easier for me to look back on it and say, “Damn, that’s one of the finest games ever made.” It has all the quirkiness of the Mother series with unique combat and a stellar story, a cast of likable characters, and some of the best boss fights I’ve ever been through. Best of all, it’s a game that practically encourages and even rewards you for being nice! I still love it, even after all the discourse and skyrocketing popularity, and nothing will make me budge on that love.

14. Hades

I’m a big fan of Greek mythology, so this is yet another game that would have had to try really hard to make me hate it. Thankfully, all its efforts were put into areas that made me love it instead. While the roguelike gameplay is well done, the writing and story are really the stars here, with fantastic character interactions between desperate god Zagreus, the gods of Olympus, and the various denizens of the underworld really making this game something truly special.

13. Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time

Sometimes this game feels like the designers saw all those articles and reviews comparing the first game to Dark Souls and took it to heart, because some of the levels in this game are absolutely brutal—especially if you’re going for 100% completion. But that same difficulty makes playing through the levels a lot of fun as well; it’s probably the most challenging Crash outing to date. It really polishes and updates the Crash formula for the modern age, and hopefully they expand on this in a future game. If nothing else, it finally lets you play as Dingodile, which is a dream come true.

12. Grand Theft Auto V

It’s wacky. It’s cartoonish. It has a surprisingly good story about three criminals from different walks of life becoming fire-forged friends as they violently work out their emotional issues. There’s just so much to do and so much to see, all sorts of collectibles and side missions, and more black comedy than you can shake a stick at, and all of it is made all the more enjoyable because the main villain protagonists are a likable bunch of nutjobs. Hell, sometimes I just like to hop into a car, put on some tunes, and cruise around until I can cause some mayhem, and the fact that’s just as valid as doing a bunch of story missions really makes me love the game.

11. Silent Hill 2

While the first and third games are good in their own rights, I vastly prefer the psychological horror and the monsters manifesting as living allegories for trauma with heavy and dark symbolism as opposed to the evil cult narrative. Plus, you know, this one has Pyramid Head in it, and his presence makes sense instead of simply being there cuz he’s cool.

10. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney – Trials & Tribulations

The Ace Attorney series is one of my favorites, and I love just about all the games in it and even the ones I don’t love always have one or two solid cases that keep me coming back. But pound for pound my favorite game in the series is the third one, the one that lets you play as Mia Fey, introduces the callous murderer Dahlia Hawthorne, and has you match wits with the coffee-guzzling prosecutor Godot. Even the filler cases are entertaining, with the one where Phoenix has to get to the bottom of a murder involving his evil doppleganger being wildly amusing (which is more than can be said for that circus case in the second game or cases two through three in the fourth).

9. Live A Live

Few games can boast the sheer variety this game has on display, with levels changing up their style to give everything from standard RPG fair to a prolonged timed puzzle to a fighting game pastiche to an incredibly tense survival horror experience. We also have the precursor to Undertale here in a ninja-themed level where you can spare everyone you come across or otherwise brutally murder them. And while the stories remain relatively simple in every time period you visit, it doesn’t stop them from hitting hard when they need to, like with the fantasy RPG deconstruction that is Oersted’s chapter. This game would easily have switched places with the next game if the final level played a bit more to the game’s strengths, but hey, it’s still good enough to be in the top 10.

8. Chrono Trigger

Square’s other time travel story is definitely the superior one even if it’s a traditional JRPG through and through. Of course, that is because it completely and fully takes advantage of its premise, with actions you take in one time period affecting others in turn, not to mention the vast amount of bonus bosses and sidequests there are to keep the multiple playthroughs to acquire all the endings fresh and fun. I’ve sunk so much time into getting all the endings on the DS version, and I’ve never once been bored even after visiting the Middle Ages or the ruined future world a dozen times.

7. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

There are few games that I love revisiting more than this one. This is Metroidvania at its peak, a perfect blend of action, platforming, and RPG elements into one glorious Gothic horror monster mash package. What’s truly fun with this one is the myriad ways there are to bust the game right open. I’m not ashamed to admit I’ve grinded for hours so that I could dual-wield Crissaegrims and trivialize the Dracula and Galamoth battles.

6. Psychonauts 2

The original Psychonauts is fun and quirky, and is only really held back by a pretty sloppy final level. This game, though? This game is damn near perfect. Nearly every level here is fun and memorable, and the ways Raz has to help each person deal with their mental trauma is a lot more nuanced and tasteful than the original game’s fair-for-its-time takes on dealing with mental illness. The minds of Ford’s old crew as well as Ford himself provide some of the best Psychonauts content to date, and really, who can hate a level that ends with Jack Black as a gay psychic rock star viking performing a musical number to obliterate his own insecurities?

5. Kingdom Hearts II

This is where the Kingdom Hearts franchise peaked, and it’s a high note they’ve yet to reach again. Sure, the tutorial prologue level drags on for quite a long while, but once you get to play as Sora again, ooh boy is this basically the perfect meeting of the worlds of Disney and Square. The Disney worlds are a lot more fleshed out and have twice the plot due to midgame return visits, the combat is more exciting with fun little reaction commands to let you pull off crazy maneuvers, and you get to hang out with Tron and the most based of all Disney heroes, Chicken Little. Best of all, the story manages to strike the perfect balance between being complex and silly without disappearing all the way up its own ass like later entries would.

4. Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

In my house, there was a legend that I had beaten this game to completion one hundred times. I’m not entirely sure how accurate that is, but considering how often I replayed this growing up it can’t be too far off. This is one of the most gorgeous platformers around, and Naughty Dog’s final shot at a genre they’d perfected with their Crash Bandicoot games. Even all these years later the visuals are breathtaking; I still am in awe at how you can see the entire world from atop Snowy Mountain. Every day I cry because they decided to turn the series into GTA clones instead of continuing to explore the gorgeous fantasy world they created in this game.

3. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy

The original Crash Bandicoot was the first game I ever played, and the rest of the series were cornerstones of my childhood. Imagine how elated I was when they not only remade the games, but they created the single definitive way to play them! Sure, the soundtrack being redone can be a little hit or miss, but they completely unfucked the brutal difficulty of the first game (and this is even with adding back the ball-bustingly hard “Stormy Ascent” level) and for the most part left the latter two games entirely untouched save a graphical boost and the ability to play as my girl Coco. Playable Coco alone makes this a dream come true.

2. Batman: Arkham City

The Arkham series is one of the most consistently great series, and this is its greatest entry. The titular city is massive, with so many things to do, and the combat and puzzles are polished to perfection. Add in some actual detective work, some truly epic boss battles against iconic Batman villains like Clayface and Mr. Freeze (and also Solomon Grundy, because why the fuck not?), the ability to play as Catwoman, and one of the most shocking and tragic tales the Dark Knight has ever been in, and I’m more than happy to call it my second favorite game ever.

1. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater

Of course, there was no hope Arkham City had at overcoming this game. This is Kojima’s magnum opus, not least because the entire rest of the Metal Gear series revolves around the events that transpire in this story. After the mindfuck that was the second game, it’s nice to return to a more coherent story, one detailing how Big Boss came to be the man that Snake fought in Zanzibar Land. Everything in the series sprang forth because of the actions the characters take here, and each subsequent game just makes this one better and better. Every single boss battle is unique and engaging, and the final battle is one of the most heartbreaking moments in all of gaming. I still cry every single time I get to the ending. It's such an amazing game, with a relatively simple yet still strong and convoluted story populated with a Russian madman with inexplicable lightning powers, a spirit medium's ghost, and a man who controls bees. God bless Hideo Kojima, that absolute madman.

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bahamutgames · 8 months

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ENCHANTED AFTERTHOUGHTS

Game: Enchanted Arms (January 12, 2006)

Console: Xbox 360

Rough day so far. Trying to unwind a little bit by taking care of some non-work related stuff. So I figure this is the perfect time to talk about Enchanted Arms! I beat this game on the first of September, but even 5 days later I can't stop thinking about it. There's something really special about this game and I want to be the one to tell YOU why you should check it out... Although maybe not cause I'll be talking about some spoilers I guess. Oops.

As always, this isn't a review yadda yadda ect ect. I'm just spilling my thoughts about how I felt from playing through it. Not meant to be a guide for if you should play, it's just me talking about video games. Always try ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I talk about here if it interests you at all.

SOME ENCHANTED ARMS SPOILERS AHEAD, IF YOU EVEN CARE U_U

Opening

I'm not 100% sure how I found out about this game. It was on youtube I believe. Either a video for underrated or bad RPGs I genuinely cannot recall lol. But I remember thinking it actually looked really cool! And last year I managed to find a copy for under $10 on ebay and decided, hey why the heck not? And gave it a shot. I made slow progress on it through August but FINALLY managed to wrap it up in September. Like I said earlier, I haven't stopped thinking about it since. It's a janky little game but I think it's a special game too.

Stuff I liked

So, first and foremost. This is an XBOX 360 JRPG. Which is a very odd era for turnbased RPGs to exist in just in general. They tend to be kinda janky and feel a little cheap in some ways? But this just makes them extremely charming in my opinion. They're so few and far in between on 7th generation consoles but ESPECIALLY 360. So I find them all to be extremely charming in spite of their flaws. And this applies to Enchanted Arms as well. All the weirdness and jank just kinda makes it more endearing.

You play as Atsuma, a hot blooded anime-protagonist type guy (who is also an honorary edgy badboy made in a lab! You love to see it.) As he goes on a quest to save his 2 best friends who vanished after a powerful devil golems is freed. He meets new friends and discovers a lot about himself while finding a way to save the world. Kinda basic stuff but the story does manage to do some VERY interesting things. It has a big moral on relying on others, not doing things alone, sticking to what you believe in no matter what, but also some tougher stuff like when helping others just becomes about helping yourself, ect ect. It's a lot of themes I really love and love seeing tackled and I think Enchanted Arms really does a good job with a lot of the ideas! I really loved seeing how the 4 main teammates grow and come to really trust each other. And I thought the whole finale and concept of Infinity was SUPER cool. Infinity was such a freaky and interesting final boss. And while I won't spoil it completely, the way you kill him was very cool.

The characters are certainly a high point in my opinion. Again, I LOVE Atsuma. I'm a huge sucker for protagonists and he has pretty much everything I love. Stupid? Check. Edgy badboy made in a lab? Check. Happy-go-lucky? Check. Has to do some soul searching through the game? Check. Evil fucked up arm that does crazy shit he can't explain? Check check check! But the other characters are good too! I liked Karin is a little annoying but generally I'd say her mean attitude is funny more than it is off putting. Plus the cooking scene was very good. Raigar is cool and I used him a TON during the game. And Yuki is hilarious, she may have been one of the funniest next to Atsuma. And they all have great chemistry, I loved how they tease each other but also help and comfort each other. It's a small party but I think focusing on just 4 teammates really helped the game out in the long run!

Even other things like just the world concept. The lore behind the golem wars is cool, I like the different city concepts and how they're based on real world locations. And even small world building details like how everyone hates Atsuma at school, to the point where there's an afterschool club for hating on him. Or how everyone loves Toya. There's neat concepts like a girl in another city who knows Atsuma, but you don't really know her unless you actually read the tie in comic. There's small world building stuff like that, which you'd expect from an RPG probably. But still! It's neat!

Outside of just the story, the gameplay is really interesting. The overworld is pretty standard walking around dungeons type stuff. But in combat is where it gets really interesting. It's turnbased, but rather than being just regular turnbased combat, it has strategy elements infused into it. So you actually move your characters around a grid, and your attacks only attack certain tiles on the enemy grid (if you've ever played Ikenfell, it's VERY similar to that!) So fights require a little bit more strategy and thinking than just mashing through them. Even basic enemy encounters can topple you if you're not playing smart. While this can make some encounters a total pain, believe me, ultimately I think it benefits the game more than hurts it.

And its not just the combat itself that's unique. The way stats work and characters upgrade is pretty interesting. You have all the usual stats and level ups you'd expect. But where most of your stat increases come from is actually a skill currency you get from battles that you can spend on upgrading stats or learning new moves. It's interesting! And allows you to customize your team how you see fit to match your playstyle! Which is nice! There's some other stuff like friendship points, combos, and overdrive attacks. But I'll be perfectly honest, I never got a grasp on what these were lol. But I think they all play into eachother and helping you build meter for super powerful EX attacks?

And then, something that kinda surprised me about this game. It has a small monster collection aspect to it? As you progress you can find golems to fight in the overworld who will join your team if you beat them, as well as golems you can buy from shops to join you. Golems act as additional teammates who all have their own unique attacks with unique tile layouts they can hit. You can also upgrade them with their skillpoints uniquely. So while they don't learn new skills, they can still be useful and serve to help fill holes in your team composition. For example, I got HUGE use out of the first golem you get in the story, Taigalion, because they can power up 2 teammates without having to waste those teammates turns. Or Eternity, a later game golem, who could use Gravity on some bosses to help me cheese the fights. It's neat!

Outside of all that? I'd say the highlights are the graphics and especially the music! The graphics aren't AMAZING but sometimes I think they can look REALLY good. Particularly in the environments! The Ice Castle, the Marsh, the Woods, even just the overworld field all look INCREDIBLE in my opinion! And relistening to the OST now, it's SO good! I forgot how many good songs were in this. Towards Reconstruction, Day at the Academy, and Reborn are all good ones. And the final boss theme was so haunting. And there's more I could praise about the visuals like the cool menu designs, that equipment shows up on your character (which is always a plus) and how cool all the different golems can look! But I think it might be time to move on!

Stuff I didn't like

Yeah it's not perfect. Starting with smaller stuff, there's a bit to be desired on the characters. Reading the manga that came with the game made me really wish they had opted for a more anime look for the humans than the slightly more realistic approach the game has.

And while I DO like the outfits of the main 4 teammates for the most part. I think Raigar's outfit is a little weird. And Makoto (we'll get to him) and Toya, Atsuma's 2 best friends, are just totally dripless. Toya mostly just cause of his rat tail, a better hair cut to fix it. But Makoto. He wears clogs what more do I gotta say?

Okay I'll go into it really quick cause Makoto is kind of a mess. He's a huge homophobic stereotype, I think having a gay teammates RULES! And having him be in love with another team mate is great. But now like this. He's the one with the blonde hair + exposed midriff on the right on the bottom image if you wanna go peek. But he's like, almost a sexual harasser in some ways and he's ABSOLUTELY played as like "ew gross he's GAY zomg 0_o" Even having a stereotype gay voice and GENUINELY saying "YAAAAAAAAAAAS" super high pitched during some of his attacks which is... So nuts that anyone thought this was a good idea. Spoilers but he returns later in the game with a new disguise that's supposed to be straight but has his chest fully exposed revealing a big scar. You failed this so hard, FromSoftware. Like. How? How did you fuck this up?

ANYWAY! outside of that there's some smaller gripes like the voice acting being not super great. Again a lot of the human designs are kinda meh. Stuff like that. But I think I really need to wrap this up by complaining about some serious gameplay issues I have.

So first off, the golems are totally underused. Once I got 4 teammates I VERY rarely found myself ever pulling out my golems again. Which is a shame cause that's such a big mechanic. While I don't totally mind I think being able to upgrade and customize the golems further would have made me care about them in the second act of the game. But even if I were still using them by that point, I doubt I would have been able to OBTAIN much more. I tried to get every golem I found in the overworld. But partway through the game the fights just become such bullshit. ALWAYS letting the golems go first, then wipe your team with instakill attacks. It's so stupid. So a lot of the golems got left behind in my playthrough anyway.

Then there's the gravity status. This becomes less of an issue later when Karin learns a status ailment curing move. But Gravity is a status ailment that means you can no longer move on the grid. EVER AGAIN. Unless you can cure yourself, status ailments never go away. Meaning if someone gets hit by gravity, even an enemy, they are STUCK until they die. Which is great cause it lets you cheese some fights if you get a boss stuck where they can't hit you. But if that happens to you? You're done! Game over!

But where this game really struggles is with balancing. Some fights are INSANELY easy. Letting you breeze through them with no issues. While some fights are insane slogs that take FOREVER to finish. Some big examples are 1-on-1 fights, which usually devolve into whoever goes first (which is ALWAYS the enemy in these cases) winning so you just have to spam health items. But there are more specific cases of weird balancing too. Such as the Warlord of Earth who randomly deals INSANE damage and takes minimal damage themselves. Dragging the fight out FOREVER. Or the first of 8 (YES 8) final boss phases which can only be hit by Atsuma but also instakills Atsuma? So I had to go grind in the fucking casino for HOURS just to build up the money to buy him enough skill points to raise his health high enough to survive that stupid instakill attack (I did 3000 but people were suggesting 7000 hp. It takes FOREVER to do the casino grind by the way. I won't describe it here but good lord.) And it'll always be just for stupid little reasons that you get totally knee capped during a fight like this. It's frustrating. You wanna save your money for weapons and skills but ultimately you kinda need to spend tons of money on items just to be able to survive tons of bullshit.

Now I will say, for all the bullshit with balancing and just roadblocking you with bullshit. Enchanted Arms does a good job at making sure the enemies play the same game as you. Which is something a lot of games struggle to do. Enemies are all susceptible to status ailments, even most bosses. Enemies ALSO have to manage how many attacks they can do before they must recharge like you do. They're susceptible to the same weaknesses you are. Which is nice. Again a lot of games don't do that. But Enchanted Arms does which makes the game just that tiny bit easier thankfully.

I have some other complaints, like, it's an expensive ass game to clear. Requiring TONS of money to buy everything you need, which leads me to believe the casino is required in a weird way which sucks. Or how there's a weakness system but it kind of makes no sense? (If you're weak to something, it means they're also weak to YOU so it's kind of pointless imo). Or the insane amount of tutorials the game tries to give you which ALL devolve into "go here, press A. Done." It's actually more insane than a Mario & Luigi game lmao. But I think we're done here.

Final Thoughts

As I kept writing more and more things to praise and criticize just kept popping into my brain! There's just SO much to say about Enchanted Arms. I'm kind of shocked. There were times I genuinely wanted to snap the disc in half. But now that all is said and done. I really can't help but look back on the adventure fondly. I still feel like I have more to say. I feel like this game is weirdly influential but no one realizes it cause no one played it. I feel like it's such a good game and deserves more attention (IT WAS REMOVED FROM THE XBOX STORE BOOOOO BRING IT BACK) but at the same time it is a clunky game with a lot of short comings. But I still liked it a lot! I'dunno! It's a game that gave me a lot to think about and I think I'll be thinking about it for a long time coming.

At this point I've played 4 Xbox 360 JRPGs. Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, Enchanted Arms, and Tales of Vesperia (which I played the Definitive Version but still it started as a 360 game lol) and honestly excluding Lost Odyssey which I hated despite popular opinion. They've all been VERY good. Even Lost Odyssey had high points when it wanted to. So I'm honestly kind of tempted to try and track down and play every 360 JRPG I can get my hands on. Again, it's just a fascinating era for a genre I love. We'll see!

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Thank you for reading! This one feels SO messy but my brain is so filled with this game that I really had to write about it and get it out of my head aha. I appreciate you even just skimming through or even just scrolling all the way to the bottom. Look, if you clicked the link, I appreciate it, okay?

I'm having a rough day at the moment, but honestly I'm so fed up and used to "the bullshit" as it were that I'm genuinely struggling to build up the emotions needed to be upset about the constant downpour of nonstop bullshit that keeps happening to me. So I'll just take that as a good sign and just try to ignore it. What happened can be fixed for a fee but like, GOD DAMN why do I ALWAYS have to do such massive clean ups for things just arbitrarily happening to me.

ANYWAY sorry to vent on gaming tumblr. I'm just a little heated like the Hot Blooded Atsuma! Am I right fellow Enchanters? (That's what we Enchanted Arms fans call ourselves.) Well, anyway. As always, you're welcome to follow me on twitter where I talk more about games I'm currently playing and thinking about!

That's all I got for you today! Go out and play a hidden gem!

#2023 #thoughts

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phantoms-lair · 2 months

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Playing with adding Danganronpa inspiration to an Exalted setting for my players

Major spoilers for Danganronpa and Super Dangonronpa 2 beneath cut

So setting is a literal mountain as Hope's Peak, home to a literal god of Hope who freely grants blessings to those who ask.

The person formerly known as Junko thinks this is the perfect place for her to start.

I say the person formerly know as because this whole thing spawned from the thought of 'Junko is absolutely everything a Midnight Caste Abyssal aspires to be and The Lover Clad in a Raiment of Tears would adore her.'

So Junko Enoshima, now The Most Beloved Daughter of Deepest Despair (Abyssal titles, amirite?) infiltrates Hope's Peak, conquering it not through sheer power and force of arms, but to manipulating people and driving them to the same despair she relishes in, making them destroy themselves. (The Lover is SO PROUD)

This maybe goes a little sideways for her when on of the pawns in her newest game of despairs...Exalts? As an Exigent of Hope???? (Yeah, aforementioned God of Hope ran to make an emergency petition for an Exigence flame and even the Unconquered Sun took one look at Junko and was like 'Yeah, we're nipping this in the bud') Junko is not pleased.

But Naegi is FAR from on even footing with her. He has a Terrestrial tier Exaltation he doesn't know the ins and outs of and Junko has a Celestial tier one she's well trained in AND a violent cult. The most he can do at this point is get his classmates and himself out and find help (IE my players)

Pursuing him is a lovely little asset Junko picked up and someone I'm half afraid my players will neve try to find the backstory on - Izuru Kamukura.

So the backstory starts with a young Hinata Hajime 'apprenticed' to a top scholar. The single quotes are because despite how it's supposed to work, said scholar isn't actually teaching Hajime anything and is more using him as an on call assistant/free labor. The Scholar is researching powerful figures of the past and Hajime is obsessed with stories of heroes of old. So when the Scholar receives a package from Sijan and said he's uncovered a way for Hajime to gain the strength of the heroes of old, Hajime doesn't think twice.

He really should have.

This wasn't a magical ritual like Haijime expected, it's the surgical implantation of perfectly preserved brain tissue, muscles, and other parts from aforementioned heroes of old. And a control unit scavenged from the first age because you don't create a weapon that powerful and not be able to control it. But in the process of reanimating all the dead tissue that was now more than 50% of Hajime's body something unexpected happened.

Hajime became a Liminal. One who shouldn't exist, because he's at least somewhat still alive. The Scholar is thrilled by this because this gives him additional control over his creation in the form of being the holder of his thread of life. Not just a powerful creation, but a literal Exalted whose life is tied to his own.

He had big plans, plans that did not survive a chance encounter with Junko. Junko was delighted with just how messed up a living Liminal was and after seizing the control method from the Scholar had him attach his Thread of Life to her, renamed him Izuru Kamukura, and kept him as a secondary enforcer (Murkuro being her primary) and pet.

IF the players look into Izuru's past and learn this, they can destroy the control module, allowing Hajime's psyche to resurface and gain a powerful, if very confused ally, as he has no memory past starting the procedure, which at this point was over a year ago. If they don't, he's just a very challenging boss fight. Which is fine, but oh the rpg potential of acting that out and how the players decide to treat him

#Exalted RPG #Dangonronpa #Danganronpa Spoilers

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todayimgonnaplay · 9 months

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Today I'm gonna play: Tales of Arise

I'm not too familiar with the Tales series. I've heard of Tales of Symphonia and I've played the demo of Tales of Vesperia, but I had a friend suggest this title to me, so I'm giving this a go.

I've reached near the end of the game so far, and I have to say what a blast it's been! From story to gameplay, Arise as a lot to offer.

A lot of the JRPGs I've seen tend to be very tropey, and this one shows it too, but I'm pleasantly surprised by how they subverted it. A young boy that's high spirited would usually be just that, but in this he has to deal with loss of a struggling relationship; a tsundere would typically constantly put their love interest on edge by assaulting them with violence and love, but here we have a woman from a ''superior'' race being the way she is because of a side effect and her people. The entire game revolves around the whole theme of discrimination between races and within races, and I think they've definitely pulled it off well. Everytime I thought "They didn't bring x topic up, is that a plothole? " they actually do, and I really appreciate an rpg that goes in depth to explain everything with their world and characters through gameplay. The last time I experienced this sort of depth was with Final Fantasy X, which is another game that also deals with racism as a subplot. And even with its depth, I felt it was done rather tastefully and not because there simply should be a conflict in the story. I really wonder who wrote the game because I could find no such info online.. Maybe I'll try again once I'm done with the game. However, I do find the villains so far to be somewhat weak, there are 3 that I can think of in the first half of the game that were interesting and gave a feeling of genuine intimidation, but the rest haven't hit as well as them.

Next up is the gameplay. I'm more of a fan of quick, responsive and flashy combat these days when it comes to action. My gold standard is the Kingdom Hearts series because of this. Initial impressions for Arise were just okay, but as the game progressed and you unlock more features, it definitely checks all boxes. I also appreciate that the game respects my time, (as RPGs do require a good level of commitment) where I never had to grind in excess and always stayed in par with my leveling pace. It also helps that there are items you can cook to increase your exp rate. Exploration is fun and rewarding as you find tons of items, and it's not too linear either! However I must say that the second half of the game has been falling off in regards to that. Including fighting the same bosses and backtracking all the way to the beginning for lore purposes, but this also thins out exploration of the few levels that are new near endgame, making them barren and plain. I can understand for budgetary reasons they probably couldn't add more, but a change to the plot could fix this while still maintaining what's been shown, as the game's lore focuses on the relationship between two races and two worlds. One cool addition for the narrative are the skits and overworld/combat dialogue that plays amongst characters. Seeing their chemistry and filling in bits of the plot is a huge plus. It feels like there's actual chemistry within the cast rather than just people that happen to band together because the share similar goals.

Character designs are a hit or miss. The main stars Alphen and Shionne do get lucky and have various wardrobe changes as the game progresses that represent their journey, but the same cannot be said with every character. Dohalim, a party member is one example of a character that gets the short stick. He is the only dark skinned character of the main cast, and is dressed up in what looks to be Egyptian inspired clothing. This looks fine and dandy until I have realized I've seen 0 connection between his attire and his origins and setting, so this leaves me confused. The same goes for Law, another party member who has clothing that resembles what video game characters wear for martial arts. But I've not seen anything that explains why it should look that way, other than because he fights with his fists. For a game that's been subverting tropes in terms of characterization, it hasn't done too well in terms of design. But on the plus side, I do appreciate Kisara's design (another party member) for dressing like an actual knight and not having to skimp out on armor for the sake of fanservice. The game does have outfit and accessory options however, which helps improve their appearances, but depending on the character you can either get great outfits, or very average ones. However I do appreciate the choices of colours and the use of contrast depicting themes and relationships for the characters. Alphen and Shionne contrast each other in way that complements them as the hero and heroine, for instance. And regardless of how they look, I still love them as characters (especially Dohalim and Alphen!) Music goes pretty grand, with orchestral feats all around, so it always sounds epic. You also get vocals for special moments such as openings and credits in Japanese, which are nice enough to hang around in your head. I couldn't hear much variety with it though, with the different landscapes the game offers, making it sound a bit too similar. Sound effect choices are good enough to let the player know if they're low on CP (Cure Points) or they can do a special attack. One big thing I like about the game is the overall navigation. Inputs are quick, shortcuts are (mostly) easy to access with some neat features like switching party members or leaders, and the menu tends to change based on where you are in the game which is a nice touch. Cutscenes can also be progressed through with a button which is probably for those who want to rush the game for any reason, or just want combat.

For a game that has a lot stuffed in but still have some minor gripes with, I think I can safely say that this is a great JRPG, and possibly my favourite fantasy-based anime JRPG. (specific I know, I tend to group my favourites like that). I'm looking forward to finishing it off!

Terms exclusive to the game: Skits - Optional voice cutscenes that the tales games have that revolve around the characters and/or their world Cure Points (CP) - The mana system in this game used for healing and buffs.

#tales of arise #tales of series #game analysis #jrpg games

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kali-writes-meta · 2 years

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I'm the Villainess, so I'm Taming the Final Boss 1-4 Challenges Anime Tropes

Last summer I went to the bookstore to check out the "light novel" medium. I wanted to buy the first novel of a series I hadn't yet watched in anime. Even in a cursory glance at the shelves _I'm the Villainess, so I'm Taming the Final Boss_ stood out as something new and fresh. It looked like a direct challenge to many of the tropes of Japanese pop fiction that I'd seen in 30 years of reading manga and watching anime. Taming the Final Boss challenges the tropes in two ways, by the complexity of its female lead and by being the first genuinely sexy romance.

1) The protagonist

Japan has a very narrow range of strong female role models, to the point where recently older Japanese feminists apologized to young Japanese women for not doing more to provide them with an expanded range of strong role models. In Japanese pop fiction a good woman is allowed to be strong only if she uses her strength to help others. If she uses her strength for personal or selfish reasons she must be a bad woman and she must meet a bad end, even if the "selfish" reason that motivates her is saving her own life.

In shonen anime the classic example of this is Inuyasha. Kagome always fights for others, so she is allowed to have a good end. Kikyo and Kagra all have to at some point fight for the selfish reason of saving their own lives, and thus are morally dubious and die. It's such a waste!

(This is also the reason I refuse to watch anime where the male protagonist fights to prove himself the best at something just to prove himself, because no female protagonist would be allowed do that without being considered bad for being so selfish. The mild exception of being allowed to be the best at a traditionally female occupation doesn't count.)

Shoujo is even worse. The shoujo heroine, in the words of @marithlizard "does not value herself, her survival or her boundaries". The classic example is Tohru from Fruits Basket, who is so utterly self-sacrificing she forces the men around her to grow up in order to protect her -- and even that story showed this approach didn't work with her own extended family who would have happily let her self-destruct.

So where are the role models for women who want to survive and do what they want to do?

That's where the villainess subgenre comes in. In otome romance RPGs, the villainess is a strong, intelligent, highly educated and well connected young woman who exists to get publicly dumped by the prince when he chooses the main character and ignominiously killed off at a later date. But what if you're a former gamer who realizes you've been reborn in the role of this strong, intelligent woman? Are you going to stick around and wait to die, or are you going to do something selfish but ultimately life-saving?

Villainess stories quickly developed two different routes for dealing with this challenge. The first is the Caterina route, (named for the protagonist of _My Next Life as a Villainess _) stop being a villainess. Turn into the most loveable shoujo protagonist that everyone will fall in love with and no one will want to kill you. This route is nice in small doses but hardly subversive.

The second route is to quit the game. Realize that the system is rigged against you, walk away, stop being a villainess, and go discover a better life for yourself somewhere else. That's a totally valid option that I can respect if its your choice.

But what if you want to win the game? What if you want to decide on your own prize and carve out your own path to victory? Can a Japanese pop fiction female character do something so outrageously self-centered and survive?

Aileen Lauren d'Autriche is just such a villainess. At the moment of getting publicly dumped by the prince, she remembers that her current life is an otome game she played to distract herself from the fact that she was dying of childhood leukemia. All that she obtained from her previous life was some vague game knowledge and a burning desire to live this time around. In order to escape her doom of being killed when the final boss demon lord goes postal, she plans to marry the demon lord and keep him from going postal. Said demon lord is also her ex-fiance's older, sexier, hyper-magical, hyper-emo half brother. Shenanigans ensue.

Through it all Aileen never stops being a villainess. She regards both her "villainess" traits and her "heroine" traits as equally valid tools in her tool kit to be used appropriately and shamelessly as needed in order to win on her own terms and create her own happy ending for herself and her chosen lover. In that regard, this heroine of a frothy romcom is one of the most complex female protagonists in Japanese pop fiction.

2) a genuinely sexy romance

Anime has managed to tell many kinds of story well, but romance has always been it's weak spot. It's traditionally either:

a) one person pursuing someone who doesn't really want them, or

b) two people with mutual goals and life experiences deciding to form a partnership.

There's not many cases of two people (or more, though that's trickier) realizing the other is mutually irreplaceable.

Likewise, there's not really a lot of sexy stories. There's cute stories, sleazy stories, and stories with sexy people in them, but a sexy STORY is about two people (or more, though that's trickier) mutually enjoying their growing physical attraction to each other. I gave up on seeing that in Japanese pop fiction over a quarter century ago. The romance protagonists are usually too pure-hearted. But apparently a villainess and a demon lord can fall in mutual lust as well as love.

More please!

#anime #review #i'm the villainess so i'm taming the final boss #akuyaku reijou nanode last boss wo kattemimashita #feminist #feminism #otome

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jellyaibo · 1 year

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last night's dream fucking sucked in many ways but there was this one part that was really cool so i shall talk abt it

in this part of the dream i was talking about an OFFICIAL goikytown rpg in a video, while footage of the game was playing in the bg, in the footage you could see that you played as a humanoid algebralien (like 4 & X! except you were a zero) going thru goikytown and im guessing the gameplay was kinda like undertale in a way? cuz u had the option to just fucking fight the townspeople but yknow...bad ending SO you would just want to befriend everyone and everything would be okayy EXCEPT the person playing this game was fucking evil and killed everyone sooo they went thru the bad route

also the overworld looked like this:

obviously there were houses and other things scattered about but i dont feel like drawing that (also theres zero...i guess now we have a canon design for the zeros cuz my dream gave me a rlly cute one)

anyways back to the gameplay n shit, so zero (after fucking killing almost all of the townspeople) gets approached by loser WHICH THEN TRIGGERS A FUCKING BOSS BATTLE that looked like it was RIPPED right out of a LISA fangame

ooohh scary (i put too much fucking effort into re-creating this shit ok I WANTED IT TO LOOK COOL even tho i did most of this on ms paint)

and the music went SO fucking hard too (dream-me was saying that silvio made the music? so silvio if ur reading this hi thanx for that) it was some dramatic orchestral-rock music that had some melodies from message to loser sprinkled into it. god i wish i could make music i would LOVE for that to be real

anyways back to the battle, i remember there being a part after this where i said that people were losing their minds over the loser battle because there was a 1% chance she would use an attack called "WINNER'S STRIKE" which dealt 99999999 damage on the player, killing them instantly. also she had an attack called smth like "LOSERS FURY" or "SORE LOSER" but i cant remember exactly what it was called/what it did but im sure it was cool

andd i think zero kills loser but i cant remember if that happened. so erm... uh oh sisters!!! that is all i remember

#i woke up all sweaty + i had a pounding headache after this LMAO #it was awful but at least the loser battle was cool #nate dreamposting

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dois-funnyzone · 2 months

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i just finished my second playthrough of octopath traveler 2. probably gonna ramble a bit in response. there will be spoilers perchance. (huge emphasis on ramble because i really am just saying whatever shoots out of my ass)

the epilogue gets me really emotional for some reason. the scene where the travelers part ways, each leaving in the reverse order you recruited them. oouuggh. i am in pain. i know ill be keeping them together for eternity while i attempt to beat galdera in this run, but the reality that these guys all have different ambitions in life and therefore they need to split off eventually to pursue those ambitions makes it a very bittersweet finale. at least there’s the class reunion at the very end, but still OOUUGHH THIS GAME MAKES ME ILL IN THE BEST WAY POSSIBLE

on that note, the fact that there’s a proper ending, a proper sequence where the travelers talk to each other and reminisce on their journey and eventually part ways AT ALL really makes this experience special and a cut above the previous game.

bc it reminded me of just how strange the ending fight aftermath of OT1 was. like after you beat the true final boss of that game, pretty much nothing happens. like you get the ending sequence with kit saying thanks but then the game hands you your prize money and now there’s nothing left to do. the travelers just don’t give a FUCK. there’s also the issue of the travelers from that game never interacting or discussing amongst themselves about the revelations learned in the gate of finis; granted, octopath 2 is not flawless in this regard either (like, agnea witnesses a flashback involving tanzy being fuckin sacrificed to extinguish the flamechurch torch and had absolutely no comment) but it was pretty bad in octopath 1. the whole questline to unlock the true final boss is hidden in a chain of sidequests that quietly unlock after beating everyone’s story, whereas in the sequel, it’s a proper sequence the game tells you about and encourages you to prepare for. so i really appreciate the strides the sequel took to tie the overarching story and links between all of the travelers’ quests more tightly. it really makes me feel like all of the travelers are actually pals who decided to travel together and help each other achieve their many missions and goals, and when that’s all over there’s an actual ENDING. TO THE STORY. the strangeness imo of octopath 1’s final battle is that the journey doesn’t feel over even though it definitely is. you know what i mean?

i also just. ADOREEEE the cast of this game. i did like a few characters in the first game like Tressa, Alfyn, and Therion, but again the fact that they never interact outside of missible (and to be honest forgettable) travel banters and NEVER as a collective unit made it harder for me to get attached to them as a whole. were they even friends with each other lol? who knows. plus i feel like a lot of them were kinda pretty basic rpg archetypes? like i found ophelia to be extremely boring bc she feels like the basic cutout of what a nice healer character should be without many extra wrinkles to her to make me interested (though it has been a while since i’ve played the first game). of course, octopath 2 is no stranger to archetypes (no piece of fiction is tbh) but i just feel like there was more emphasis on making the individual travelers and their stories more interesting. octopath 1 laid the groundwork with the ‘eight characters, eight stories that all secretly connect by the end’ concept (plus the GOOD ASS BATTLE SYSTEM) so the sequel could polish it into a nice, respectable shine. it makes me giddy looking back on the ways octopath 2 improved on the flaws of the first game. because i LOVVED the original octopath, but the sequel captured everything i loved and added more stuff. ITS GOOD. ITS VERY GOOD. ALL OF THE NEW TRAVELERS ARE MY BELOVEDS!!!!!!!!

it’s probably a cliché thing to bring up at this point, but the difference in ways the two games handle their eight-character cast and how they interact with each other is oddly reflective in the respective games’ box art. like, the first octopath had all the characters walking in one direction, their own path, all parallel to each other. whereas in octopath 2’s case, they’re all hangin out!!! isn’t that swell! :D

i also liked the improvement of the boss battles that bookend each traveler’s story in terms of their relevance to the individual stories. namely, i like how all of the travelers have a dialogue break between phases (the bosses have distinct phases now! makes them feel more separated from the ones leading up to them). ppl really liked when ophelia talked to mattais during her fight, or therion talking to darius, and now everyone has a personal one-on-one with their final boss. this couldn’t be done with all of them in octopath 1 since some were unspeaking monsters (though ochette was able to pull that off in this game) or opponents that only appeared so the travelers could solve a specific problem (like tressa and alfyn), so no previous attachment was there. in general i love how all the final bosses had some kind of connection to the travelers, big or small.

ochette feels remorse and sympathy for the darkling since it became corrupted because she didn’t choose it as her companion as a child. castti feeling betrayed by trousseau losing his way and becoming nihilistic and genocidal. or throné losing her marbles after finding out the truth of the blacksnakes, and her palpable RAGE during her fight against claude, the only thing motivating her is seeing him dead and breaking the vicious cycle he birthed. osvald’s is obvious because harvey is a mega-bastard, but when you fully boost as osvald during that fight he screams “HARVEY!!” which is super satisfying (oh, and i absolutely love how this game adds in special lines for certain bosses, adds a more personalized touch to each traveler’s boss encounters~). partitio clawing his way to topple roque’s greed and monopoly on technology he believes could change the world forever. THE FUCKING DANCE OFF BETWEEN AGNEA AND DOLCINEA. OOUUGHGGH THE SONG OF HOPE PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND TOO 😫😫😫😫 MY FAVORITE SONG IN THE OST. temenos also feels a bit of vengeance facing off against kaldena, given she was responsible for the deaths of two people he was very close to. and lastly there’s hikari, who fought and lost much to reach the moment he can finally confront his tyrannical brother.

it’s so scrumptious. not to mention the way each character’s theme is woven into the final boss theme during the second phase. actual galactic brain move on the part of yasunori nishiki and everyone else apart of the creation of this game’s ost. i love how there’s a greater emphasis (and consistency) of each character’s theme, namely in how their battle preludes actually take from their character theme rather than just being something else that uses similar instruments. it’s another thing that was really cool and unique from octopath 1 and now made even better and more impactful in the sequel. i especially love osvald’s theme, every iteration of it. the way it’s combined with ‘journey for the dawn’ is actual peak.

um what else…… i guess i kind of alluded to this earlier but the way the stories intertwine is much stronger in this game which made connecting everything together really satisfying. it helps that this sequence is an actual part of the road to reaching the Ending of the game (the credits! i think the credits rolled in the last game when you beat your protagonist’s story. which is kind of crazy town to me looking back…) rather than unlocked through a chain of sidequests (im still not over that im sorry). the moonshade order’s members exist throughout all of the characters’ stories, whether they’re the puppet masters at the top (oboro, arcannette, and claude) or people that were manipulated into the cause (trousseau and tanzy) or simply loyal followers (petrichor, harvey, and ori). the presence of The Shadow, mentioned in 6/8 stories, laying hints to the overarching evil before this final chapter sequence begins. ooooohgh it’s so cool. i wish i could experience the final chapter for the first time again, i remember being so excited going through it (down to all eight travelers talking to each other at the beginning!!!!!!!). i know the final chapter isn’t perfect since a lot of the information is given through Reading rather than actual cutscenes (and again, tanzy’s involvement with the moonshade order and her death elicits zero reaction from anyone that met her), and tbh it would have been cool if we actually fought some of the other remaining members akin to the battle with arcannette (i know the monster near the toto’haha torch is implied to be petrichor, but she’s the only member that never met any of the travelers, and it would have been cool to confront her outright).

this would be where i put my whole rant about agnea and partitio's stories and their relevance to the grand story, but i made it its own post! you can read it here if you want to consume more of my octopath brainworms.

woooh that’s all i have to say. apologies for the text wall, it will probably get longer when i conjure more thoughts </3

i love this game, it’s very good even though it’s very easy to break the battles in half.

#mayor talk #8path 2 #octopath traveler 2 #octopath 2

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lady-of-luthien · 11 months

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Jedi Survivor is awesome!

So I preordered this game (regular pre-order not pay an extra $20 for cosmetics - c'mon now EA) and started playing it immediately after work on release day. I finished the main storyline three weeks later and have been running around doing side quests. I will definitely play it again - on actual new game plus! (Yes yes I know why that wasn't feasible last game, but still.)

This game is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. I loved being able to do more things. There will be random spoilers, so the rest is under the cut.

Pros:

Gorgeous planets: Koboh has so much variety. The "oh space frontier is like the Wild West frontier" is a little wacky, but they leaned into it so it's a little funny. I loved that we got to go to Jedha. There are so many random conversations I missed because I was focused on the storyline in my first playthrough.

More saber stances! I focused mainly on the double saber, blaster stance, and a little bit on the dual saber. Next playthrough I'm going to use more single saber and cross-guard - I want to see what those play styles feel like.

MERRIN MERRIN MERRIN!

Merrin and Cal on Jedha - taking out that massive drill! So amazing!

So many themes of surviving, of trauma (escape pod from the Lucrehulk), moving on, dealing with grief and anger (Cal's dark deeds was scary), etc.

I was not expecting Master Cordova. I thought he died!

FUCK YOU BODE! I was not expecting that at all (I was hard avoiding spoilers while playing the game).

Cere looked awesome. I was so scared when she fought Vader, I did not want her to die.

I'm also afraid that Cal will have to fight Vader in the third game and then he'll die because NO NO NO.

They continued the hilarious random stormtrooper conversations and extended that with the clone-war era droids.

Rick the Door Technician!

The lead-up to the boss fight with Rayvis was legit more terrifying than the actual fight (I also chickened out and played the fight on Story Mode).

The Cantina music playlist is awesome!

My cantina peeps: Skoova Stev, Moran, Caij, and Mosey are so fun!

Cons:

Dagan Gera's storyline was a bit...incomplete? Felt a little lacking. Why was Tanalorr your home? Why are you so focused on Tanalorr? Was it because of Santari Khri (her lightsaber is amazing)? Did you guys have a thing? It felt like you guys had a thing.

There are some bugs. Since I recently built my PC, I didn't have the same performance issues others had. Did it crash? Yes, but only when I went fast traveling from one end of the planet to the other. Other times, it won't let me customize Cal or quit the game. Fix that, please!

Why does the game require so much storage space? It's insane.

It has RPG-elements with the customization, but I wished it was a bit more RPG-like. For example: the conversation options have consequences (oh well, there's Star Wars Outlaws next year).

I want more planets! Or more expanded planets. There was Coruscant, Koboh (which yes is the main base), Koboh's moon, Jedha, the Nova Garon asteroid, and a tiny bit of Tanalorr.

I want more! Can we have a DLC?

#star wars #jedi survivor #star wars jedi survivor #star wars jedi fallen order #jedi fallen order #i love this game #spoilers #jedi survivor spoilers #star wars jedi survivor spoilers

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ilaiyayaya · 5 months

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:) I really like this game.

Tbf that playtime is wildly inflated because I like keeping games open while I'm not actually playing them, but nonetheless this game is really good and one of the most fun games I've played in a long time. (the actual game I'm talking about btw is Touhou: Artificial Dream in Arcadia but the title is too long and awkward sounding to naturally fit it into a sentence without it sounding weird)

I used to really like Megaten, and then I stopped really liking Megaten, because I realized that I really didn't like 90% of the Megaten games I had played and that in reality I just happened to really like that other 10%. I have not played any kind of SMT game in years, I had pretty much completely lost interest in the series after playing multiple games back to back that I fucking hated and getting disillusioned with a few of the games that I had enjoyed. But now I kinda want to try it again, at the very least SMT 1 and 2, because I never played those to begin with and this game is such a blatant copy of those games in every way, and I mean that in a good way, a very very good way. This is one of the most passionate indie games I have ever seen, it is so incredibly clear that the creator of this game is such a massive fan of both SMT and Touhou, like it just bleeds love, it so accurately captures the essence of what makes SMT enjoyable while still feeling unique. It's super impressive how well this game replicates the style of SMT 1, the pixel art, the music, even down to the design of dungeon layouts, it's all so uniquely SMT despite this not being an SMT game and also being developed by a single person who has never worked on an SMT game in their life.

Unlike with SMT, I know comparably little about Touhou, I've never finished any of the games, and I can only name a handful of characters. Playing this game with so little knowledge of the series it's based in, you would think would be a detriment, but in reality I think it made it a lot more fun, everything came off as new and interesting, and it's a surprisingly good entry-point to Touhou. I think a monster collecting RPG is possibly the best genre to put a series with hundreds of named characters in if you want to really quickly learn and remember most of those characters. Before playing this I could not name a single location within the Touhou universe, but now I know the differences between Hell, Old Hell, the Animal Realm (a location within Hell), and Makai (NOT Hell, but is filled with demons). Even without having a deep knowledge of Touhou myself, it's very obvious that the creator does, as I was playing I did some research into some of the characters that I thought looked interesting, and there is such a variety of allusions to Touhou as a whole, from forgotten mid-bosses from the 1st PC-98 game, to characters that have only appeared in obscure one-off doujin works. It's not a very dialogue heavy game but what is there displays so much personality, a lot of small lines are used really well to convey a lot about certain characters, and even things like movesets and stats sometimes feel like they tell a bit about that character's personality, or play into their visual design.

I almost completely forgot to mention the bullet hell negotiation minigames that are used to capture sleepers, which is odd because it's actually one of favorite parts of the game, I absolutely loved these short little shmup segments. Every single sleeper has their own bullet hell style that's unique to them, and these too say a lot about the characters they're associated with, like for example when you try to catch Yukari, she wants you dead, filling your screen with bullets and lasers, but then a character like Koishi doesn't really throw much at you.

There's so many memorable little moments in this game that I love, and I have little enough concern for cohesive writing that I just kinda wanna talk about a few of them. I really like how they often pair up encounters in areas with characters that are associated with each other, like for example whenever you encounter Joon, she'll always be alongside Shion because they're sisters, and there are a lot of cases of that, and I think that's really neat.

By far the lowest point of the entire game, and the only time I can really say I thoroughly was not enjoying myself was the teleporter maze in the Moon Palace. I don't know why, but every SMT game feels the need to include at least 1 overly long and tedious teleporter maze, the one in this game isn't nearly as bad as anything in actual SMT, but I still spent at least 2 hours mapping out the entire room, and I am comedically bad at navigation in video games, so it got really frustrating.

I know I praised the dialogue quite a bit, and it is generally pretty good, but there are a lot of times where it's humor can be kinda hit or miss. There are a lot of memes in this game, and occasionally they actually are pretty funny and do work, but more often than not they feel kinda forced. Like a decent portion of the achievement names are memes, and those are fine, but like, some of the inclusions in game are really out of place.

When I initially reached the end of the main game I was honestly kind of disappointed, the final boss wasn't really great, the 1st phase was against a clone of yourself and it was really bad, it kinda just felt like an RNG-fest, and the follow up fight against Yukari was fine but it kinda just existed, I don't have much to say about it. The stuff after the final boss however, is fantastic, the entire post-game takes place in Makai and it adds an extra 6 or 7 hours of gameplay with by far the best dungeons in the entire game. I love the aesthetics of Makai, all of the characters that appear in the location, the gimmicks of each of the dungeons, the music, it's all the best the game has to offer. The real peak of the post-game, and really of the game as a whole however, is the final boss against Shinki, it is a long, brutally difficult fight, but it is so satisfying to learn it's patterns and consistently counter every move she makes. The whole gimmick of the fight is that Shinki only has 1 weakness at a time, and that weakness changes every few turns, and on the turn that she changes weakness she also gives herself max buffs in everything, and max debuffs your entire party in everything. She also has 25,000 health, which means that it is a very long fight, my successful attempt took nearly 20 minutes, but that gives you a lot of time to learn and perfect a pattern of moves to make each turn, and after a while you start to notice a sort of cycle occurring between each weakness swap so she becomes more predictable and thus it becomes a much more manageable endurance test. I am not capable of conveying with text how much enjoyment and satisfaction I felt when I started understanding that fight, and especially when I finally beat it. It is now genuinely one of my top gamer moments of all time.

This is actually one of my favorite games now, it's so good.

#touhou artificial dream in arcadia #it's so obvious how much my writing style is influenced by what I'm listening to right now lol #finally I can start my Touhou hyperfixation phase and live for 3 more months >:)#what if reimu and marisa made out hamster dance style #touhou

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lazodiac · 1 year

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So, let’s say you’re an RPG protagonist in a middle-tier PS2 era game, and you’ve been given a choice. You can either sit and be happy with your false happy ending, or you can risk it all and decide to Do Something About This.

This is the scenario Lyner Barsett finds himself in, at the end of Act 2 of Ar Tonelico.

It’s a weird thing for him. He’s spent the entirety of the game going around the world trying to solve the one(1) task his dad asked him to do at the start of the game, and one thing led to another and now he’s helped a cyborg magical girl pop idol put an ancient super virus being (who is also definitely a cyborg magical girl pop idol) to sleep. However, the consequence of this is… a third, only somewhat related cyborg magical girl pop idol was put to permanent sleep (believed to be death) to do so.

This is interesting for a couple reasons.

First and foremost is that hey; this is the first time Lyner actually makes a choice in his entire adventure! He’s given a happy ending and an implied idyllic life and all he has to do is let a character who is sort of important to him (she was his boss, much like his dad, but nice instead of a jerk) stay dead. And if that doesn’t sit right with him… well, it’s time to get up and Do Something About It. There’s something really interesting about that to me, that our hero is finally given some agency and the choice is to… potentially make things worse, because he just doesn’t want someone he knows to die.

It’s got that classic RPG vibe that I do like, and the implicit fact that there IS a choice to have that false happy ending really helps build on that false feeling. As you may have seen in another post, the “false” happy ending is actually pretty solid. Everything is solved and the only sacrifice is one(1) magical singing robot girl, and also all of the actual singing magic is turned off. Feels like a decent trade to save the day; hell FF6 did that and everyone loves that one! But by having it be a Choice, by telling the player “you can choose this, or not”, makes the false happy ending feel that much more unsatisfying, because you know it's not the true ending.

So Lyner chooses that no, this isn’t the way things should go. Aurica, the love interest (in the route we took anyway) is willing to help. Lyner’s her man and damn if she’s not going to help him do whatever. She taught him how to have agency in her life, so she’ll follow him to the ends of the earth. Dear ol’ Dad reveals there is a way to do it, we just gotta find a specific hymn crystal that’ll do it- with the implication that it’ll wake up the ancient virus lady as well but hey that’s a bridge we’ll cross when we get to it.

So, we go to pick up our friends to help us out. Sure it’s been a couple months, but they are our buddies and helped us save the world and junk, so why not right?

Radolf is busy being bishop. He’d love to, but… church, man.

Krusche is busy building an airship for her new employer. She’d love to, but… job, man.

It’s fascinating looking at this. Two of the three non-magical girl characters DO want to help, but not enough to upend their own happy endings. That’s interesting! They also assume Lyner’s “news” is that he and Aurica are getting married, implying they’re busy thinking about the future. And why wouldn’t they right, the world is at peace. They’re in their happy ending. And they don’t even really KNOW Lady Shurelia, the one who sacrificed herself to save the world.

This is… disappointing, for Lyner, so we go and find the final of our party members, Jack, who has been touring the world with Misha, the alternative love interest and second magical girl of the party. Jack is the one most likely to join us; after all, he’s an adventurerer. A wandering gunslinger. He’d absolutely be game for this sort of thing.

The conversation starts similar, Jack having presumptions about the news, and Aurica interrupting his interruption to cutely scream “NOOOO!” to the expected “are you getting married” thing.

Except Jack is confused. He was gonna ask if we had a new ruin to explore.

Then, when we tell Jack our plan, he tells us straight up that he “does not want to bring Shurelia back” and then fucking books it before we can get a word in edgewise.

Huh. That’s unexpected isn’t it. The one most likely to assist with this has literally less than zero desire to help, while the ones who have less reason to help DO want to help… but can’t.

There is something genuinely interesting about all this to me. This feels pretty counter to what I expected of a “let get the gang back together to get a proper golden ending” sort of scenario. Jack’s cageyness as well is pretty compelling- of the party he’s only non-magical girl who’d realistically have a chance to MEET Shurelia, it wouldn’t be impossible for him to WANT to save her, and as a wandering gunslinger type it feels like his kinda jam… and yet he doesn’t. Not only does he doesn’t, he explicitly is AGAINST it.

My read is that he’s made the realization I did above; waking up Shurelia puts us right back where we were at the end of Phase 2. Mir, the virus, very alive and very trying to kill us and not able to be stopped. There’s some, problems if that’s the case, so it could be something else but… who knows.

Either way, this is pretty interesting! I’m curious where this’ll go next! RANDOM SIDE TIDBIT: During this sequence if you revisit the old man who teaches you how to do the game’s crafting mechanic, he just screams “GRATHMELD” at you and nothing else. It’s really funny to me (see below).

#Ar Tonelico #live blogging #lets play?#sorta #RPGs are a land of contrasts

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thefinalboss387 · 1 year

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Bowser Appreciation Post!!

Right, so, I need to talk about why this big dumb turtle dragon is my #1 absolute favorite character of all time. This gets pretty personal - I feel like any discussion about why a character is your favorite ever needs to be personal - but I felt the need to get it out there. If it brings fellow Bowser superfans my way, even better! I require all the friendships!

I’ve always had a love for villain characters, even as a very small child. I’m 35 now, I was born in 1987, so I’m old and have a lot of nostalgia for older stuff. As a child, I loved Lord Zedd from Power Rangers, Jafar from Aladdin, Dr. Claw from Inspector Gadget, Frieza and Cell from Dragon Ball Z... my entire life, if it had a villain, you can bet that villain was probably my favorite character.

My mom was pretty young when she had me. She was a gamer, and had an NES when I was a baby. Some of my earliest memories involve playing old NES games with my mom. So, naturally, as I played the early Mario games, Bowser was my favorite. Yet, as a child, I was terrified of boss battles, which is ironic because now they are usually my favorite part of any video game.

Yet, because it was Bowser, I had to fight him myself. Somewhere in some old family photo album, there exists pictures of me at different (young) ages, smiling in front of a TV screen depicting the final Bowser boss battles in Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario World, and Super Mario 64. It became something of a childhood tradition; I got to the final Bowser boss fight, I had a picture taken to memorialize the occasion.

Back then, there wasn’t much characterization in video games - the characters were little sprites without much life or personality to them. Bowser would pop up, you would fight him, you would win, the end. He was this big, scary, final boss threat... and that’s all he really was. Still, he looked cool, he was a villain, and that was enough for me to love him!

He wasn’t my favorite character, by any means. No, for most of my life, that honor went to Jafar from Aladdin. I watched that movie - the animated 1992 one - so many times as a kid that I can literally recite the entire film from memory. And don’t get me wrong, Jafar is still very high on my list of favorite characters of all time. But what made me boost Bowser up to that number one spot?

Well... As I grew up, so too did Bowser. Each game he appeared in was just another chapter in his long, storied history. We got to see him as a baby in the Yoshi games, we saw him in so many different types of battles and situations, he freakin’ goes Go-Karting and plays Tennis with his enemies, the RPG games gave him a more humorous, silly side to his personality that eventually even started carrying over to the main games. He’s the scary final boss, sure, but... he’s also kind of dumb and lovable?

A few years back, I got a job working with kids. I fell into the job almost by accident, but was immediately taken aback at how much I loved the job. In all my previous customer service jobs, I only ever saw the worst of humanity. Customers complaining and cheating to get any price reduction or refund they possibly could. Managers that didn’t give a shit about their staff, milking them dry and draining every ounce of their souls. Coworkers who constantly backstabbed and shit-talked each other. Greed and money were the bottom line for everyone, no matter who got harmed or inconvenienced along the way. Working with kids showed me the best of humanity - compassion, family, togetherness, empathy, unconditional love, celebrating other peoples’ victories and strengths. Even on my bad days, there is some little moment with the kids to cherish and hold onto.

I take my role as a mentor to these kids very seriously. A lot of what I do at work is talk to them, make them comfortable, get them to open up, talk them through their problems and help them become better people, advocate for them, etc. I care about the kids, and take great pride in what I do. I had a pretty rough, traumatic childhood (fights with Bowser not included in the traumatic parts), and there’s no better way to battle your own inner demons than by helping children beat theirs.

One day, I was playing Mario Kart with the kiddos at work (best job ever). I picked Bowser, as I often do. He is the villain, after all. The kids noticed that I liked Bowser, and they all began debating among themselves which child was which Koopaling to my Bowser. They argued over which of them was my favorite, because the favorite clearly NEEDS to be Bowser Jr. The one with the craziest hair HAD to be Ludwig. The funniest one HAD to be Lemmy. etc etc

It was then that it kind of hit me.... Bowser’s a family man. I mean, I always knew that, of course. Even as early as Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1990, he had the Koopalings as his mini-bosses. He had that adorable Parental Controls video for the Switch, showing how much he cared for Bowser Jr. Even his Yoshi appearances as a baby had Kamek as his caretaker and father figure, a role that continues on even into Bowser’s adult “life”. He has people that care about him and love him, despite how big and scary and one-dimensional he initially seems.

But it was right then, playing Mario Kart with a bunch of kids that I care about and have mentor relationships with, kids that were arguing which Koopaling they were, that I began to identify with Bowser. This scary, intimidating final boss figure has been in my life for longer than I can even remember, I have the childhood pictures to prove it, and he is a dad. Not only that, but a good one.

I’m not even mad about Bowser Jr. being retconned to “his ONLY son”, because to me it means that the Koopalings flocked to him for some other reason, or he took them in and/or adopted them. Regardless of the nature of their relationship, he has several child lieutenants that, for whatever reason, follow and adore him. Like me, Bowser has children in his life that he cares about, and that are not biologically his own.

Once this flood of realization hit me... that was all it took for me to LOVE the Koopa King.

The love was always there, I think. How could it not be?? When he wants to be intimidating, he is freaking terrifying - look no further than Bowser’s Fury. When he takes a break from being the main villain of a game, he’s a lovable, goofy tsundere with too high an opinion of himself. His lava castle aesthetic is so dramatic and extra. His battle music is always amazing.

I just never quite realized the impact he had on my life, or how much he mattered to me, until a bunch of kids started arguing over which Koopaling they were.

Imagine the surprise and humor on my mom’s face when I, a 35-year-old man, told her that the only thing I want for Christmas is a giant Lego set of Bowser.

#Bowser #Bowser Jr #Koopalings #King Koopa #Super Mario

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