wow, raphael, what a lovely house you have

Mega Man Ecch

I decided to ruin my weekend by playing Mega Man X7, and yeah, it was terrible. I was kind of fascinated by the decline of the Mega Man X series, and the videos I've watched about it never quite seemed to give me the full picture. Reviewers and analysts can give me a lot of technical and critical explanations, but at the end of the day, they're just really bad games. At best, they're boring, and at worst they're really frustrating from a UI standpoint.

The word "broken" gets thrown around a lot, but that almost gives X6 and X7 too much credit. "Broken" sounds kind of cool or funny, like "Big Rigs". X6 and X7 are just tired and annoying. This is what happens when you've done thirteen iterations of a game and no one cares anymore. What sucks the most about X6 and X7 is that both games put a lot of emphasis on replay value without making the first playthrough compelling enough to make you want to try it again. Like you're supposed to go back through all the other stages and find new items and stuff, and then have fun using those items on the same levels you beat before, but the levels suck, so why would anyone bother?

One video I watched made the point that you can't call these the "worst games ever", because they're not "Superman 64" levels of bad. This is true, and I suppose that's what I find so frustrating about X6 and X7. They're reviled, but they're not so terrible that there's any juicy details about their failure. I went out of my way to play these things just to see what their deal was, and I don't have much to show for it.

The thing is, I really don't enjoy the good Mega Man X games either. X4 is supposed to be one of the best ones, and I found it annoying. The big problem with these games is their over-reliance on story. They keep putting cutscenes and voice acting and long, unskippable dialogue boxes in these games, like this is Resident Evil and not a bunch of bug-eyed cartoon robots shooting at each other. I've played seven of these things and I still don't understand what the fuck is going on, or what Sigma wants, or why I'm supposed to care about any of the characters when their allegiances can literally be changed by flipping a switch. All the dialogue is stuff like "According to this data, if the DNA from the Reploid Virus interacts with the Maverick Virus, it could infect all Reploids who used to be Mavericks with a new type of virus, called the Virus Reploid DNA Maverick Virus."

I feel like somewhere I heard there was a fan theory that Sigma is basically the remnants of Dr. Wily digitized intelligence. Like, Zero was established to be Dr. Wily's ultimate creation, making him an evil version of X. But then Sigma tracked him down and tried to turn him good, only to get infected with bad guy juice or something, so that's why Zero is good and Sigma is bad in the games. So maybe the evil influence within Sigma is just Dr. Wily living on as a computer program. Which sounds kind of compelling, until you realize this would mean it all boils down to Dr. Wily being the final boss of all the games, which got old in 1992. It also undermines all of the cutscenes and handwringing in the X games, because "Dr. Wily is a jerk and we have to stop him" is a pretty elementary. All of these games are just repeating Mega Man 1 and trying to turn it into some elaborate moral dilemma. No, Dr. Wily is a jerk and we have to stop him. He decorates his castle with skulls. This isn't complicated.

At least the worst is over, and I have X8 to look "forward" to. People seem to look back generously on this one, mainly for offering the series a hint of redemption before it ended once and for all. From my perspective though, I mostly remember seeing X8 at Wal-Mart in 2004 and thinking "They're still making these things?"

Conker's Bad Fur Day (N64)

First time?: Yes.

CBFD has been on my backlog for like ten years and a couple days ago I was like "fuck it. Why not now?"

I knew certain things about the game already, like the blood, poop, and swearing. I also knew how the game ended, though that honestly just made me more interested to play it to see how that came about.

First impressions, I'll be honest, weren't good. The controls took a while to get used to. They weren't as tight as something like Super Mario 64, nor do you have quite as many ways to manipulate your momentum as something like Banjo-Kazooie. It feels weighty and slippery, and fall damage seems to happen at much shorter heights than you'd think. It doesn't help that your main attack, the frying pan, is fairly slow with less range than it looks.

Fortunately, the game isn't really about the platforming so much. There's platforming segments, but really the game feels more like a linear puzzle-adventure that happens to use platforming mechanics simply as your means of navigating around the world. Instead of the progression being locked behind collectibles like some other platformers of the time, I would say Conker is a more story-driven platformer. Events that happen in the game's plot are the main thing that drive progression.

The game's tone and humor are the main selling points of the game, and as the M-rating suggests, there's a lot of toilet humor, black comedy, and swearing. Often, there'd be a joke that felt too mean-spirited to laugh at, or something particularly cruel that you had to do to progress. Also, the gross-out humor got to be a little much (there are TWO whole levels made of poop). At the same time, the dialogue is almost entirely improv, and there were a few moments that I thought were actually funny.

The visuals and soundtrack are both gorgeous. Given that this was one of the latest N64 games, Rare had gotten quite good at making levels look detailed and aesthetically pleasing. And the soundtrack by Robin Beanland is fantastic; the overworld theme is infectious and I was actually taken aback by how beautiful the Uga Buga theme was and how hard Rock Solid goes.

Final thoughts before going into spoilers: I think the game really won me over by the end and I think the last three or four chapters are were the game is at its strongest. It's definitely an interesting game, and I think even if the subject matter doesn't interest you, it's worth experiencing at least once. Fortunately, the game is so story-driven that you could get 90% of the experience from a cutscene compilation on YouTube (95% if you watch a Let's Play).

Spoilers below the cut.

The last three levels are what sold me on the game, and where I feel like the game used its Mature rating to something actually mature.

The Count Batula level is dripping with spooky atmosphere, the zombies are actually genuinely scary to fight (well, at first. Once you get to the point where you don't actually have to kill them and you realize you can always outrun them…).

The War level is also genuinely unsettling, in a very different way. The whole thing is an homage to Saving Private Ryan, but played mostly straight, showing the horrors of war in the context of cute fuzzy animals. The difficulty of this chapter, frustrating as it can be, just helps sell the idea of fighting for your life behind enemy lines. I finished this chapter right before bed and it actually made me uneasy trying to fall asleep. It's going to stick with me, I think.

Side note; I love Rodent so much. He's adorable and I was so happy when he survived.

And also, gotta talk about the downer ending. For all the asinine things that happen in this game, having Conker lose the one person he cares about most, have the opportunity to bring her back, and getting so caught up in a power trip that he forgets to do so and now has to live with his regret for the rest of his life despite getting everything he's ever wanted. I love a good phyrric victory ending and somehow this goofy game about an alcoholic squirrel sells it for me.

To recap: I went into the game not even sure if I wanted to finish it but came out of the experience really liking it. I'm glad I finally decided to play it. I don't know if I'll play it again.

May I request a review of general coolness and awesome of the horses we saw during the event?

Right, Maria Nearl event!

I liked the event quite a lot, though I do feel like it dropped the ball at the end. That aside, I had a lot of fun the entire time!

First of all, the cast was wonderful. Maria is explicitly not a powerful or skilled fighter to any degree that matters in the frame of strength the story takes place in, being definitely more skilled than the average person and even the average nameless knight, but being woefully outclassed by practically anyone that has a name in the Major. A humble mechanic with a heart drenched in justice, Maria doesn’t even like to fight, and adheres to a knightly ideal and a duty she must fulfill instead to justify her participation in these commercialized bloodsports, which carries the narrative. She is joined by a lovable cast of rambunctious family and family friends, who serve as her mentors and support: Her aunt, who is more akin to an older sister-slash-maternal figure, Zofia, who we are immediately shown is so close to Maria that the moment Maria made a big decision (the participation in the Major) without confirming with Zofia first, she immediately chastised her, wondering why she did not consult with her beforehand. Aunt Zofia is her aunt only due to technicality, as she’s a lady-in-waiting (or, in other words, belongs to a branch family of the Nearl clan, and is actually only 5 years older than Maria) and, more importantly, a decorated, retired competition knight who earned enough in her career that she can live comfortably for the rest of her life, ironically far outstripping the main Nearl house in terms of wealth. There’s also Kowal, an old Ursus mechanic, engineer and smith who mentors Maria in the ways of the wrench, willing to pass his workshop to Maria with her as his successor any day of the week, who himself also used to be a squire to V, an old, retired knight of old who served as Grandpa Nearl’s peerless sharpshooter and who trained Zofia back in the day. Finally, we have Old Marcin, owner of the cast’s favorite hangout, a little bar where he and Maria mediate the infinite squabbles, fights, and arguments that Kowal, V, and occasionally Zofia spark between one another. The event does a great work of introducing the dynamic between these five characters as something extremely domestic and comfortable: You can tell these five are tight and that they have spent a long time together. It’s just another day in their low profile lives when, suddenly, Maria dons Margaret’s old armor and decides to take arms for the main Nearl house, which is currently on the brink of ruin and about to lose its knighthood and nobility titles.

And this decision, and everything this decision means, informs everything that happens afterwards: Zofia tells Maria that if she’s worried about being left homeless, then that’s just foolishness, since Zofia is absolutely 100% ok with Maria moving in with her. She’s loaded. They can live comfortably for the rest of their lives without a concern. Kowal, likewise, insists that Maria is a good enough mechanic that she can earn a living by doing that. But, see, it’s not about a livelihood for Maria, it’s about preserving that for which Margaret and Grandpa Nearl fought and stood for, it’s never about the wealth, it’s about the name, the principle, not the glory, the weight of ideals that blood was shed to nourish and maintain. Maria is not even sure if she’s doing the right thing, but she’s got to do something. Why? Look no further than Uncle Mlynar. A bitter man, a corporate slave, spitting bile at her niece and apologies at his bosses. And the fact that it is very clear that this guy can kick some serious ass -- we never see him without his trusty blade hanging on his hip and, at the end, tells Margaret to square the hell up -- makes it all the sadder: In any other context, Mlynar might be a knight’s knight, hell, Margaret herself says she respects him still, but the Mlynar we see now is an unimportant cog in the capitalist system, just another grunt apologizing to his phone every time his lips part, who gets in hot water just by making small talk because, whoops, your workload accumulated again, better get chop chopping. Mlynar is a very telling character, because he represents everything Maria resents about the current state of the Nearl family: Disgraced, meaningless, existing as an extension of other bigger conglomerates. He is what she wishes to never become, and what the Nearl house cannot be any longer, if she has any saying on the matter.

Maria is not a good fighter. This is important and delightful, because she wins not due to aptitude, strength, or experience, she instead uses her knowledge as a mechanic, her “pegasian sight” (what Grandpa uses to refer to Maria’s incredibly powerful investigative faculties, being able to analyze situations and catch even the smallest details quickly) and the sheer heft of her brass pair of metaphorical horse balls to pull through with clutch victory after clutch victory. Zofia trying to cram as much fundamentals as she can on Maria in as little time as possible so she can survive also helps a lot.

Maria’s victories earn her the possibility of sponsorships, which would, superficially, fix her problems: The main Nearl house would retain status, she’d get a Title, and she would not have to fight anymore. But, see, this is not the point of Maria’s fight. One might say “Maria should’ve just taken the sponsorships”, but that’s not the point of Maria’s fight. She is pushing back against this highly commercialized view on “knighthood”, just like Margaret before her did. Margaret had a clear intent and her passions made her act mostly in anger, as she makes no secret: She hates Kazimierz for what it has become. Maria’s intent is less clear, even to herself, but she’s very much aiming for the same thing, but instead of Margaret’s anger, Maria has her determination. To have taken any sponsorship would have superficially kept the Nearl house afloat, but Maria is not looking to keep the house alone afloat, she’s looking to keep the house and the ideals in which it was built afloat. It goes beyond mere status.

In a world as bleak as Arknights’ and specially Kazimierz, Maria is no doubt naive to the point of frustration... But it is that which we call naive that makes a knight’s knight: Chivalry forged from ideals, sacrifice’s blunt borne from beliefs. The easy way out would’ve ultimately doomed her story, hence why she did not just move in with Zofia, hence why she did not just succeed Kowal and accept his workshop, hence why did not accept a sponsorship: It never was about that.

The very first event of the game, Grani’s Treasure, takes place in Kazimierz as well, but in the isolated outskirts, and we see hard-working, honest people, inhabitants of a nice little scenic hamlet. Now, we see what Kazimierz really looks like: A sprawling megalopolis of neon and concrete where the system shamelessly feeds on whoever sticks out their neck. The contrast couldn’t be harsher, and any hell is upheld by its demons: Czarny was a fascinating character, in that he very clearly held a lot of influence and power... And was extremely replaceable. The moment he messed up badly enough, he was instantly replaced by just whoever the hell picked up the phone next. It’s chilling. One puppet performed poorly? Irrelevant, there’s an endless supply who’ll take his place, provided enough fear and funds. Fear and money. The two currencies of Kazimierz. When a shadow council can just appoint you as the next Spokesman just on basis of you having picked up a phone without any real background check beyond “the previous Spokesman likely intended for this next sack of meat to pick up his phone in case he messed up”, well, congratulations, you’ve crafted a terrifying capitalist hellscape. No wonder Margaret hates Kazimierz so much, given the rot brewing in its underbelly and upper echelons.

And to all this, I have to say: It’s lovely. I loved the world building, implicit and explicit, I loved the cast, I love the themes explored and how characters were used to juxtapose these.

I feel it kinda drops the ball at the end by just... Not having a conclusion? It just sort of ends, which is very weird because events tend to be good at concluding themselves. I assumed we’d get some post-Challenge stages cutscenes to tie everything up like in the past but... No, not really, it didn’t happen. Margaret swoops in, the sisters perform the Ultimate Kamehameha on the Sarkazian Knights, and then it sort of ends one brief talk later. It needed a bigger epilogue, for sure. But this doesn’t ruin the event or anything, just a bit of a weak ending, everything else is still delightful and I loved it very much.

So yeah! The horses sure were wonderful!

I finished A Realm Reborn last night and am finally advancing into Heavensward soon, but first I will write a brief review of some story points (especially latter ones). Spoilers for the vanilla game below.

I heard that A Realm Reborn is basically average and the story only really “gets good” from Heavensward on, and especially in Shadowbringers and Endwalker. It is too early for me to judge these other expansions, but the assessment of ARR sounds accurate to me.

It was not a bad story, and it included some things that were interesting at least from a worldbuilding perspective (such as the primal summonings and the concept of tempering). As an introduction to the game’s world it works fine.

However, as a story it feels very much like it’s just serving the standard JRPG fare. 

The primary antagonists are an evil Roman-ish empire and a sect of evil hooded wizards. This is serviceable but nothing special, and considering the powers available to said wizards I definitely got the feeling that they could be doing significantly more to hinder me than they actually did, which felt off.

After all, these characters are able to teleport and also functionally immortal until near the end of the story. Even if they can’t attack me or my base directly they have many options that they just don’t seem to take advantage of.

My main frustration, however, comes from instances of cutscene incompetence (one of my least favorite tropes) across a few questlines.

One egregious example was during the thaumaturge questline, where a character gets corrupted by a demon in a jar right in front of me. My character just stands there and watches as the character slowly makes his way to the whispering jar I was meant to destroy and opens it.

However, there was an even worse example of this near the end of the main quest, where several cutscenes play out in sequence.

I am talking about the event where you are framed for the poisoning of a city-state’s ruler while she was meeting with you in private to discuss her coming abdication. All so that the oligarchs (who have bought up all the guards) can take over. Once the deed is done, one of them arrives with the guard and accuses me. There are many things wrong with this setup.

First, I was the ruler’s guest at her own palace so obviously it is not my role to bring or serve the drinks around here. Servants are the obvious suspects in these situations for a reason.

During the meeting that is going on nearby at the same time, the evidence they present is a mostly empty poison vial the quest has you pick up before this event, but this is not very credible evidence considering they could have just as easily planted it on me after the fact and have much more of a motive to want her dead than I would.

To the game’s credit, not a single person in the entire world seems to actually believe this accusation, and they really should not considering how dumb it is. However, this whole thing is kind of frustrating for a few reasons such as:

1- The protagonist is idle the whole time.

This is one of the most significant events that has happened in the game so far and your character mostly just stands there for the bulk of it. You not only let the oligarch and his half dozen regular dudes capture you, but when you are brought to the gathering to have your “crime” exposed you don’t have any option to defend yourself or point out any of the issues with the accusation even though all sorts of established allies who could help with your defense are right there.

Immediately after this, a major character goes apeshit and starts attacking the schemers. However, even after being unbound your character does nothing to contribute to the battle, and neither do any of your other allies. You are just told to escape and clear your name.

The person behind this whole plot is right there. My character does not even need a weapon to squish him, and given that his whole army is motivated only by his money and knows that my character is at this point a god-killing war hero who defeated an ancient superweapon that was basically a walking nuke they probably would not realistically fight to the death for him like they seem to do (even after one of the people who was bribing them is cut down in front of everyone).

The protagonist of a story simply should not just remain as passive as a background character during events like this.

2- The party splits up for no good reason.

During the escape from the city, your allies gradually split away to presumably slow down your pursuers.

This did not strike me as the best of ideas. You don’t even need to consider the concept of defeat in detail to figure out that staying together for a combined effort might be a safer idea. Better yet, why are we not just teleporting out? That is also something we can do.

This makes the “sacrifices” (I don’t believe for a second that they actually died) to buy me time feel overly engineered, especially considering that the protagonist is still not really doing anything but running.

I have 55 Monk levels. Even if my weapon was taken away when the cutscene forced me to surrender I am easily at the point where I should be able to fight off an arbitrary number of mooks with just punches and kicks, especially with support from a full party of experienced badasses.

3- Am I an outlaw or am I not?

As mentioned previously, no one in the entire game seems to actually believe that I did a little regicide and I can still walk around the city as if nothing happened. Gameplay-wise this is a good thing because being cut off from one of the major settlements in the game for an extended period of time would be extremely inconvenient, but it still kind of undercuts not only the cutscene sequences where I was told to “escape and clear my name” but also the whole plot to frame me in the first place.

It feels off that the main quest treats me like I should be escaping to Ishgard and following the main quest there to bring the true assassins to justice but considering that I don’t seem to actually be wanted by the law anywhere I just end up feeling like I could probably just attack them directly or rally the population against them or something. 

This whole escape feels unnecessary considering how useless the propaganda was and how many options I still feel I have to turn it all around, especially considering I’m friends with all the powerful people in the other city states.

Overall, playing through this sequence just makes me think about how these events might have played out in the less railroady single-player RPGs I am more used to.

(turns out the uni thing I had to take care of today ended up not happening because of the usual bureaucracies SO,,, doing the 30 day challenge to destress)

Team Ico 30 Day Challenge // Day 1 : Which game is your favorite and why?

My favorite game so far is Shadow of the Colossus without a doubt, though I have a very strong connection with Ico as well, as it was the first one I played.

I feel that to explain why I love it, I have to backtrack to the time it released and tell you the story of how I came across it. Leaving it under the cut because it's super long and I don't wanna put a wall of text on your dashboard, but I SWEAR it's funny!

When shadow released, I was around 10/11 years old, and though I played videogames on a regular basis, being a kid my interests were mostly cute and funny stuff like Crash Bandicoot, Ratchet and Clank, Spyro, etc, etc. You get the deal. It finally releases, and this game is all over the place. It's on gamestop, it's on the cover of gaming magazines, it's everywhere. My brother was beyond excited and somehow managed to convince me to be excited for it too, and we get our hands on the game. Now's the time to mention english isn't my first language, games back then were rarely localized, and us being kids, we didn't even read the description all the way through. I actually think my brother accidentally skipped the intro cutscene because I have zero memory of ever watching it then.

Imagine my shock when I start up the game and there are minimal instructions in a language I know like 3 words in, a dead girl, barren land with no enemies despite there being a weird "monster" on the cover and zero visual cues as to what to do next. I tried all the buttons. I checked the menu for a missions tab. I tried to find anything that would tell me what to do next (yes, I tried the sword. I thought you had to use the light beams to kill something!!!). The only thing I ended up doing was climbing the shrine (I used to call it a "castle") because it was the only thing I could do, and I was 100% convinced that whatever had to be done, had to be atop the shrine because everything else was empty. Needless to say I fell down every single time before I could reach the top because I had no stamina. I DETESTED IT. But, for some reason (or anger. probably anger), I played it almost every single day because it was getting on my nerves how I just couldn't figure that strange game out. It had me right on that instant but I didn’t even realize it.

One day, my dad got so tired of seeing me and my brother aimlessly riding Agro around, he took the controller from us and started playing it himself. I got bored watching him and went to do something else, 5 minutes later I hear screaming from the living room, turns out my dad reached the tutorial area that nor me or my brother bothered to check before, and that's when we realized there WAS something there after all. Then Valus shows up and my dad just says "THERE ARE GIANTS IN THIS GAME???" (I don't think he ever bothered to look at the cover lol). It was like having a collective epiphany. He hands us the controller and after a few tries taking turns we manage to take down the goddamn thing, then the black "tendrils" pierce Wander and we're taken back to the shrine. Me and my brother looked at each other and we went like "that's game over, we did something wrong". I gave up on it and didn't play it until years later in my teens, but I loved Ico growing up (I didn't know they were from the same dev team back then!). Some weeks later I bought the Playstation Magazine and they had an entire section dedicated to the game where they explained how to take down each colossi. I felt really dumb but at that point I was so frustrated that I didn't bother to pick it back up, but I'm sure my brother did at some point.

I finally played it again out of curiosity that never really died down at around 17, after going through all of our old stuff stored away and finding it. I did some research first and spoiled the entire thing for myself while reading about it online, but by then I was finally fluent in english and a lot more experienced, so I was able to clear it with no issue. And I loved it. Throughout my teens I got obsessed with anime and manga, so for years I only played games in that vein, but it was as if correctly replaying shadow had filled a void in my heart I didn't even know I had. It made me get back into the PS classics, and writing, which I hadn't done since I was like 14, and made me see every single piece of media I came in contact with from then on in a completely different light, all because no game or song or movie had ever played into my emotions like that. I had never seen something that broke your heart and mended it immediately after, it reminded me almost of the way your parents scold and teach you a lesson but they do it in a loving way. And in my little writer heart I felt envious. SO ENVIOUS. Because how could someone come up with a story like that and execute it so perfectly? I wanted to do that to people. I wanted to create something that made people feel like it changed them after being in touch with it.

In hindsight, I'm glad I didn't play it all at that age because I just didn't have enough emotional maturity, or age, even, to understand the themes or why it looked the way it looked. I remember seeing the black blood spill all over the place for the first time freaked me out, it reminded me of something closer to horror and gore than of dark fairytales. I know the experience could have been different if I hadn’t spoiled the plot to myself, and that it would have probably hit me a million times harder than it did, but if the story itself hadn’t sparked my interest in the first place, I could have never even touched it again, so I’m even grateful for that as well. I wouldn’t change a thing because that was the way I was supposed to come across it. Around that time I finally found out ico was from the same devs and of course, it all made sense. Then, a new game was on the way, and I ended up staying to see what would come next. No regrets, and I plan on staying for much longer.

Long story short and apologies for the long read: Shadow is my favorite because I hated it, but it’s so good that I ended up loving it.

Ok I gotta ask this now since I just saw your post. How would you have written ddd and kh3 to make it a tighter more impactful plot? (Also would love to know how you would write narusaku or any other naruto ship

[please comment below. This took so much time and it would suck if no one read this😭💀]

I can already tell this will go beyond the line limit so buckle up everyone. We’re only focusing on KH right now. Let’s start with DDD

Dream Drop Distance

Let’s get the major change out of the way, Kairi is on this adventure. Why? Because there’s two previous games where they express how she wants to actively help and KH2 has lines of her saying she refused to be left behind anymore. This works out just fine for Yen Sid, since this test is supposed to be a relatively safe. Sora and Riku are officially taking their mark of mastery exam but for Kairi, this serves as a hands on learning course. Going the sleeping worlds together for them to learn proper keyblade wielding sounds perfectly fine. All three get out on the island, fight Ursula in the tutorial, and then Xehanort starts his shenanigans just like in the game. Here’s the difference! Sora and Kairi are still together, while Riku still accidentally dives into Sora’s dreams.

Immediately the trio would know something isn’t quite right but the only option is press on start figuring things out while completing their task from Yen Sid. This is where gameplay is now a bit different. You play as Sora with one dream eater and Kairi as your support characters while Riku plays the same. The drop system is still the same everything. Sora and Kairi go through worlds together and get to interact. At the beginning Kairi doesn’t know much but gains abilities/confidence as you progress. Sora ends up serving as a mentor for her and guides her through the troubles of going on your first adventure. It’s a good way to put Sora in a more mature role. He’s forced to keep his wits about in order to keep Kairi safe because he doesn’t know the organization is actually after him.

We get a couple of scenes of Kairi getting better and helping Sora through the worlds which still play out the same basically. Bad guys show up and say mysterious things before leaving and the two deal with Disney problems. Riku’s doesn’t change at all because. Things only start to get really different after Symphony of Sorcery. Young Xehanort shows up at the very end of it and goes after Kairi to bait Sora into rushing to save her. Sora ends up getting hurt in the process and Young Xehanort kidnaps him here and immediately leaves before Kairi can do anything. She’s now angry at herself for not being able to apply what Sora had taught her when it truly mattered. She couldn’t protect him or herself. Kairi almost wants to give up but meow-wow lifts her spirits and she finds the resolve to fight before. Sora would never give up, especially when it came to saving his loved ones. Kairi is now a playable character and able to do all the commands that aren’t character exclusive. His dream eaters stick around and become her party members.

You go through The World That Never Was as her back in KH2 attire, fighting her way through it and she’s the one that gets told how the organization has been tracking them and all the other plot things; including why they want Sora. Kairi ends up being the one to have to fight Xemnas and even though she’s outclassed, she’s gonna give him all she’s got. On Riku’s side he sees all the weird dream imagery in Sora’s head since he’s in Sora’s dreams with the added glimpse of Kairi trying her best against Xemnas; motivating him even further to hurry up and make it to her. He still confronts Ansem and makes peace with himself. Riku finally makes it out of Sora’s dreams but retains his dream eater powers like in the game and rushes to help Kairi. He makes it half way through the fight and Kairi tells Riku to back her up. The two of them fight together with you still playing as Kairi and manage to push him back. Riku is extremely surprised by her progress and both of them go together to save Sora because he knows telling her to stay back is not an option. Riku and Kairi both fight Young Xehanort together.

Everything is mostly the same after that in terms of plot and everything that happens in the cutscenes. Including Axel showing up. Riku convinces Kairi to stay when he jumps back into Sora’s dreams, telling her someone has to make sure everything goes fine in the real world and that person has to be her. Riku comes back out after is boss fight and those cutscenes and he sees those two slackers having a tea party. Yen Sid commends all three for their bravery, especially Kairi. He also apologizes. Riku gets named a master, Sora doesn’t. Sora thankd his friends and told Kairi he was proud of her before he left to go thank the dream eaters. Even though she did well, Kairi knew without Riku, the dream eaters, or Sora, she wouldn’t have lasted as long as she did. She wanted to be strong enough to protect herself and others. So Kairi asked Yen Sid if she could have further training. Yen Sid told her and Lea about the dimension where they could train and they both accepted. Riku asked what he should do now and then the 0.2 conversation happens off screen. Boom, DDD rolls it’s credits.

Kingdom Hearts 3 [internal screaming]

Okay! So I gotta tackle this one a little different. First of all, let’s live in a world where ReMind came apart of KH3 (as it should’ve) now let’s put the cutscene between Luxord and Xigbar where it belongs at the beginning of the game, and then let’s put the cutscenes of MoM/ the organization discussing the members somewhere in in middle of the game. Like after Monsters Inc. Because that information had no reason to be hidden. It reveals nothing, but explains how people are back which is important. This knowledge doesn’t even spoil the Luxu reveal!

Second, I have to explain my two major problems that really hurt this game for me. Plot pacing and only setting things up halfway or not at all. So I’m going to tell you what changes narritive and gameplay wise I would’ve changed. Then I’ll go through the game including those changes.

Sora getting his power robbed consequence will be in every world and weigh on him.

The time characters get rescued/revealed

Ventus and Roxas’s heart influence

Isa’s plan

Aqua’s trauma

Xion, Vexen, and Demyx appearances.

Multiple playable characters.

Kairi and Lea contributions.

Also if I don’t mention something then assume it happened just like in the game.

Okay, let’s get started at Olympus. Everything is the same except one thing that I will continue to do for the other worlds. Sora will try to be proactive in stopping an Organization member, triggering a 1v1 boss fight. He’ll fight Xigbar and lose so bad that his friends have to save him. This puts in perspective that Sora really has lost his powers and is frustrated about it. This will do two things. One of them is make him slowly get more upset when someone brings up him failing the exam, being a half pint, or not being able to do things on his own. I’ll come back to the second thing later. Sora is order to continue to gain the power of waking while leaving finding Aqua to Mickey and Riku.

Twilight Town is also basically the same. However, the Demon Tide really roughs him up. Ansem and Xemnas bring up how they hope Roxas didn’t get this weak as well just to anger him. Sora wants to put them in their place but is convinced not to by Donald and Goofy. Now he’s doubting himself internally a little. Also Merlin shows up now instead of later. The trio bump into him and He tells Sora that Lea and Kairi actually are almost done training because they trained in a place where time didn’t matter. The moment they went in should’ve technically they came out but I’m being generous. Sora is shocked to realize his short time at Olympus might’ve equaled months of training for Kairi or even longer.

Toy Box is the same with the addition of fighting Young Xehanort and losing to him before a gigas piloted by his friends intervene. We still get the comment about putting hearts into vessels of their pleasing. When the world is over Kairi calls to tell him she’s finishing training and wants to see him back at Yen Sid’s tower.

Kairi and Lea are both really jazzed about how strong they’ve gotten and ready to help. Before they do, Kairi asks for a friendly spar against Sora. While he does win, he is amazed by how strong she’s gotten. Kairi comments on how she’s still lacking the real battle experience and skill he’s gain over time and he actually starts to feel better, until she asks if she could go to a world with him to get it. He wouldn’t mind it if wasn’t for one thing, he’s worried he might not be enough to save her if she needs help. Not with all his strength gone. He keeps this to himself and Kairi and Lea end up tagging along to Kingdom of Corona. On this world you get the option to be Sora with Rapunzel Flynn has mandatory party members and the choice to choose Kairi and Lea or Donald and Goofy; Or you can play as Kairi which automatically makes the party during gameplay Flynn, Rapunzel, Sora, and Lea. This works out fine because half this world has Rapunzel and Flynn leave your party so the other two characters can fill in during those sections.

So the Disney plot in this world doesn’t have to change one bit. The changes that happen all occur with all the Kingdom hearts characters. For example, Marluxia now meets Sora, Lea, Kairi, Donald and Goofy when he first reveals himself. We get sassy and rude dialogue between Marluxia and Lea about being alive and who’s actually the traitor this time around. Lea can also fill Sora in on CoM since no one does it. What makes this scene important is the moment Marluxia directs his attention towards Kairi, she starts getting really nervous and Namine’s voice comes out unexpectedly, telling him to stay back. It’s Namine who’s actually nervous, terrified even. Sora might not have the memories, but the entire exchange is enough for his heart to remember the intense desire to protect Namine from Marluxia. Sora and Lea get in between the two. Marluxia only looks at everyone and can’t help but get a little nostalgic. “The more things change, the more they stay the same. Except for one...” he says that vague response referring to how Lea and Rikuplica switching sides, then he leaves.

The next major change is Soar and Kairi spend time at the festival together and share a moment during the lantern scene. It’s at this time Sora expresses the doubt he has to protect her and the others with his current strength. Kairi tells Sora that he can do anything he puts his mind to and to never lose that smile of his. She tells him how they will protect each other and that his heart will never steer him wrong. This touching moment is ruined when Donald screams off camera. The Nobodies shown up. Everyone quickly jumps into action when another hooded figure appears. Sora goes off to pursue them triggering Lea to follow him. Sora is evenly matched with the figure back and then hood falls off. It’s Xion. Immediately seeing her causes an intense reaction from Roxas’s heart that screws up Sora in the fight and he his taken out by her. Xion planned to take him but Lea intervenes, causing both of them to get a painful reaction to each other. Marluxia shows up to retrieve Xion, who was sent there for a test run and leaves Axel in pain because Kairi caught up to protect both of them despite the fear from earlier. All he can see is Namine finally taking a real stand against him before finally going. Sora wakes up that morning on the outskirts of the kingdom where he sees Flynn riding Maximus with Lea still out of commission. Donald and Goofy looked after him while Kairi helped resuce Flynn. He tells Sora about what’s happened to Rapunzel and they all go rushing to the tower, except for Kairi who’s understandably tired, and chooses to look after Lea since he’s also still recovering. The rest of the world stays the same.

Sora and the gang try collecting their thoughts and info while in the gummi ship. So many things were happening so fast. Sora tried to apologize to Lea and Kairi but they told him there was no need. They end up going to Yen Sid again for answers to things like the new seven princesses. While there, Donald ends up taking another jab at Sora for still not having the power of waking. Sora actually gets fed up this time around, frustrated with himself mainly. He yells how he’s doing the best he can and it’s not like Donald is being of any real help either. Sora claims that he can do this on his own and takes off to the Gummi Ship before anyone could really get a word in.

Monster Inc ends up being the next world he finds himself in but not by choice. Sora had been so worked up he had forgotten the ship ran on smiles and crash landed to the nearest world. That’s not all, Kairi had actually manage to sneak aboard by surprise. Now he felt bad about endangering her but didn’t get to apologize before Kairi bonked him on the head. She reminded Sora about their conversation on the pier and expressed how determined she was to knock Sora out of his funk. They’d be stranded here otherwise. Through all of that it slipped their minds that they were monsters now and decide to look around. One thing that immediately stirred something within Kairi’s memories was the unversed which convinced them that this place was now definitely worth looking around. The plot points of this world are pretty much the same. As you go through the factory making Boo laugh. Sora is also gaining his cheerfulness back and opening up more to Kairi about how down this situation had gotten him. He was happy she was here to cheer him up. Vanitas shows up and still gets thrown through doors. Sora wonders about his desire to save Aqua so quickly stems from the possibility of Ventus’s heart sleeping in his. Kairi tells Sora about how Namine’s heart reacted to Marluxia which only made his thought more valid. He tells Kairi how he really thinks he can save her and Kairi agrees, but tells Sora it would be easier with more people. He needed to make up with Donald and to some extent, Goofy. As if on que the gummi phone rings with Chip and Dale telling Sora that they’ve lost trace of Riku and Mickey in the Realm of Darkness. What’s worse is Donald and Goofy acted rashly at the news and took Yen Sid’s star shard, sending them to who knows where. It was possible that they actually got sent to the Realm of Darkness! Sora calls Ienzo to ask if he knows a way there but he only knows about the corridors of darkness.

Kairi tells Sora that he really is connected to Ventus then maybe he can open a gate. Even if he can’t, Sora’s connection with his friends might do something. He just has to do what he did to get to Olympus. Sora opened a gate that brought him and Kairi back to Destiny Islands where they found Donald and Goofy. More importantly, an unfimiliar keyblade. Sora uses it to create a door and heads off. The others try to follow him but he tells them that they need to stay behind just in case. He also apologizes for his outburst which prompts Donald and Goofy to apologize for not seeing how much the teasing was getting to him. Kairi tells him to be safe and Sora smiles truthfully. He just has to believe in himself like she said. He can do this. Sora goes through the door.

Sora drops right in the middle of the Riku vs Aqua fight and things play out normally until the halfway point where the darkness in her becomes almost too much for Sora. Just like with Vanitas, Ventus’s heart starts to react to seeing Aqua in such a state. Suddenly Sora summons Master’s Defender again and holds it back handed. Aqua is left shocked, she can only see the friend she promised to wake up. With a heavy heart she manages to ask for help and Sora nods. You play the remainder of the fight with attacks and even a command style used by Ventus. He’s calling the shots now. You beat Aqua and she gets saved. Everyone’s happy, everyone’s crying.

Aqua takes Sora, Donald, Goofy, and Kairi to go wake up Ven while Riku and Mickey rest up. Sora gets more strange feelings at the sight of Castle Oblivion. He can’t help but think of Namine, as well as fuzzy memories of Marluxia and a few other people but he keeps it to himself. Aqua remakes the Land of Departure and they make their way to Ven. Vanitas shows up and Aqua challenges him alone. Instead of her loosing because she blocked a fireball with her body, We get Aqua losing because she’s still very tired and the PTSD she has from the realm of darkness. Everyone panics. Sora activates the power of waking to wake Ventus (I’ll cry when he thanks Sora) and he saves Aqua. Vanitas leaves.

Everyone regroups at Yen Sid’s tomorrow again. Finally, progress is being made in collecting guardians. Ventus and Aqua need more time to recover and choose to rest. Kairi keeps them company to learn more about them, her past, skills, and also take a break. All this adventure has gotten her really exhausted. Mickey goes looking for Ansem the Wise and Sora manages to convince Riku to tag along with him. Maybe they’ll find Terra? Onward to frozen!

Sora and the gang meet else Elsa and Riku empathizes with not being able to control power and being scared of hurting people close to him. Sora emphasizes with Anna when it comes wanting to help someone important to you but they keep running away and create things that make it harder to reach them. It’s one big moment of reflection and growth in this world. Larxene still shows up and Sora knows her by name surprisingly. The feelings of anger he gives her is all he needs to know that she cannot be allowed to do whatever she pleases. He tries stopping her but fails. He’s not too upset though. His previous accomplishments and encouraging words from Kairi push him forward. Unknowingly, Vexen shows up and has an argument with Larxene. She complains about why he’s heat and he tells her that he heard memories are extremely malleable here (trolls) and he’s come to look into it before leaving Larxene to her own devices. Elsa starts really thinking her powers are nothing but darkness but Riku convinces her otherwise. Elsa thanks him but that moment of weakness creates the boss of this world. Sora and Riku fight it with Snowball while Elsa goes to save Anna. Things work themselves out the same from there. Riku and Sora feel closer than ever and Riku tells Sora he’s a master in his own right which makes Sora’s day. Vexen got valuable data.

Ventus finally felt like his body was used to moving again and was ready to start getting back in the swing of things, but Aqua was still feeling down. The guilt of taking so long and trauma was weighing on her heart. Kairi tried everything to cheer her up but nothing helped. Kairi has no choice but to pull out the big guns. She called Sora. Through lot of persuading, he convinced her to tag along with him and Ventus to go traveling with him to get them up to speed. Part of the agreement was Riku and Kairi go finding more clues about Terra’s whereabouts so they stayed behind. Checking Radiant Garden again seemed like a good idea. Kairi hadn’t been so it would kill two birds with one stone.

Pirates world was next on the list. This time we there’s four organization members! Luxord goes looking for the box and Demyx is forced to help because Isa wants him to prove his worth or why even be around? They’re on the water so he should be decent muscle. Vexen is intrigued by Davy Jones but also dropped Xion off with Luxord to see if his recent research on memory would have her perform better than earlier. Aqua and Ventus marvel at the stars, thinking of Terra. Sora told the two of them about the first adventure he went on to look for his friends. Sora praises both of them by telling him that he was at least half as skilled as they were back then, telling them that they’ll find Terra way faster than he took finding Riku and Kairi. They came across the waterfall fell. Aqua nearly panicked at the thought of being trapped when they woke up in Davy Jones’s locker but Ventus calmed her down. Sora needed to find a way to build her back up. The plot of this world doesn’t change but gameplay does a little. Ven and Aqua will grant the pirates ship most of its abilities by controlling the wind and sea while Sora navigates. More fights by boat grant them more abilities and gets them back into the swing of things. Ventus and Sora team up during the air skirmish against the flying heartless. This invigorates Aqua not just because she wants to protect them, but they looked like they were having some fun. Yeah they were fighting a heartless but they were doing it together and trusted that they had each other’s back. Aqua had missed that feeling, it had been so long since it wasn’t her vs everything. She quickly got her chance to be apart of a team again in the underwater fight. Her nerves weren’t completely calm but Sora taking her hand and being excited about getting the treasure pushed those feelings away. She had friends again, friends that wanted treasure and to sail the seas with her. How could that not be fun. Sora happily let Aqua take the lead and supported her alongside Ventus.

The crew bumps into Luxord and the black box conversation happens that leads into the race but with the added wager of Luxord willing to tell them about Terra if they win. The race has still has the heartless boats but as well as the water nobodies to personally attack your crew and hinder your abilities. After you win, Luxord still cheats and you have that boss fight. Things change when you board the boat. He still leaves but Demyx and Xion stay behind with some Nobodies to by time. Halfway through the fight, Xion starts clenching her head again and Sora does the same with his chest. Seeing Ventus’s face and feeling Roxas’s presences is just too much. Luxord takes the opportunity of the chaos to nab is companions and attack the ship. Fortunately Aqua was able to protect everyone. Vexen orders Demyx to take Xion back and that he might as well not come back either. Demyx really doesn’t want to face Isa since he was basically told not to comeback without anything useful. So he drops Xion off and plans to avoid him altogether.

After the ship is repaired and Phantom Jack leaves, Aqua takes a minute to think. They were about to head into what sounded like a war. Their fun treasure adventure had turned a serious matter. She confessed that she might not be up to the task. This one, or even the keyblade war. Ventus pulled out his wayfinder and told her even if she decides not to go, she’ll always be fighting beside him as long as he had this. He believed Terra was still fighting and got his strength from them. Aqua pulled out her wayfinder and simply held it to her chest. He wasn’t wrong. All that time in the darkness and a piece of her never felt truly alone as long as she held this. Their unbreakable connection to her friends was something Aqua would never doubt. To top it all off, Sora had remembered he still had Kairi’s good luck charm from before the exams. He said he couldn’t count how many times this simple thing had driven him to keep going. Aqua joined them on the boat. It was only after seeing the other pirates did her resolve really hit its peak. All of them were ready to face staggering odds to fight for what mattered most to them, despite the fear. Aqua was sure of it now, she’d stand with her friends when the fated day came. Aqua raised her keyblade a creates the whirlpool for the Kraken fight. For the first time since she arrived, she looked at Sora and completely immersed herself in the moment. She calls him captain, and says she’s ready whenever he is. He couldn’t be more thrilled and Ventus was happy to see Aqua ready to go. The rest of the world plays out the same all the way until the very end. I would personally add a scene though of three sailing alone for just a little longer. Sora can’t help but think about how this was his dream with Riku and Kairi once. He wondered if is the only one who even rememberers or cares about a thing like this. Suddenly another ship Sails by them. They get ready to fight until they sea a papou fruit flag. Riku and Kairi unexpectedly reveal themselves on it with smiles on their faces. Apparently the gummi phone had really included all of information Jimmy had written. Riku explained that he just knew without question Sora would come here of all places to try and cheer someone up. Riku and Kairi told Aqua they hadn’t found much info on Terra but they did find her armor and keyblade thanks to Kairi’s foggy memory of certain places and Ienzo’s participantion in those lab areas. They all were about to continue their journey but since they were here, something had to be settled. Sora wanted another race to decide who would be captain. Riku laughed and told him they both have ships and that didn’t matter. However, he vaguely mentioned another reason to race, the real reason Sora tried so hard that day on the island. Riku pointed at the symbol on his flag and Sora immediately pouted. He grabbed the wheel of the ship and told Kairi to countdown for the race. No one knew what they were racing for except them and a giggling Kairi, who had a pretty good idea on what it was about. She says go and then the cutscene ends.

Big Hero Six is exactly the same except Sora sees Riku Replica and is pretty sure he’s from castle oblivion. Vexen uses the knowledge Rikuplica favs him about making Baymax filled with suffering so he can fix Xion to her absolute peak. When he’s done, Isa informs him that a Demyx has ran off and orders Vexen to go bring him back. Which is actually code for “good job, now escape while you still can.” Vexen informs him that it would take an extremely strong connection for Xion to have any “unfortunate” memories of the past to resurface. Things play out normally until Zexion meets Ansem the wise. What happens this time? He tells Sora and friends that he’s back with Vexen. (That’s kinda important.)

Everyone rests up for the final battle. The Sora and Kair scene on destiny islands is now longer. Kairi asks if Sora is feeling like his old self again. Sora tells her that he is thanks to her never giving up on her. Both of them get quiet for a moment before Sora speaks again. He does confess that he’s still worried a bit. Every word he went to had one thing or another that ended up being too much for him alone, and couldn’t help but feel like it would’ve been different if he truly regained all of his power. Kairi tells him that he isn’t alone but he shakes his head because she’s missing the point. Sora wasn’t scared of the organization overwhelming him, but he was terrified of that he’d try protecting someone and fail. He admitted he was scared of losing her. Kairi admitted that tomorrow scared her too. Every adventure they went on together was filled with so many enemies and left her exhausted by the end of it. Now she was joining the war. Kairi felt more than a little unprepared despite all the prep she tried squeezing in. Sora tried asking if by any chance at all that she could wait here one more time and she refused outright. No matter how nervous she was about the whole thing, Kairi told Sora that she would never wait again. That they will protect each other no matter what. And for added luck, she hands him a papou fruit. Sora was shocked. Kairi simply smiled and placed it in his hand before grabbing another one. Sora pulled out her good luck charm to give it back but she said it’s basically his at this point. The two smiled gently and finally shared the fruit. You get OathKeeper

Keyblade war time! Woo! This is by far the easiest to put into words. Riku and Kairi are your party members for the 10,000 enemy battle because it’s a literal crime that the Destiny trio didn’t work together. You get past that and Terranort still bodies half the team. Aqua’s resolve starts the crumble as she races to Ven, he isn’t moving at all. Sora is left in a state of disbelief as Goofy and Mickey try getting Donald up, and Kairi checking on Axel. In no time at all, his fear seams to be coming true. They need to regroup. Unfortunately the demon tide appears and blocks the exit. Riku gathers the remaining forces to try and fend it off but seeing Ven taken out by Terra really shook Aqua. We see the shadows turn into Anti-Aquas as the real Aqua starts to slowy panic. She doesn’t even hear the others screaming her name, telling her to look out before Mickey and Goofy try saving her, but they’re all swept up. Now it’s the Destiny Trio vs the Demon Tide in a fight the player is forced to fight, but can’t win. No music plays, just the sound of the fight and the sight of the organization watching from above. Eventually Kairi slips up due to the overwhelming odds. Sora quickly tries to outrun the Demon Tide coming towards her but can’t. Sora screams for Riku’s help but turns to see nothing but his friends hand reaching for him before being swept away. He can’t hold it in anymore, Sora drops to his knees and screams. He wouldn’t have made it this far without all of them, but now they’re gone. Sora drops his keyblade, then is swept away.

He arrives in the final world and gets his task from chirithy. In the beginning he feels so defeated, then encounters Namine. Instead of her telling him that Kairi is keeping him together, Namine says that she can feel everyone connected to him doing their part. Sora has done so much to try and keep everybody safe and spent all this time with them during their adventure that it’s only natural that they would believe in him. Now Sora feels a twinge of guilt, he gave up way too soon. No way he can let that slide. He was going to make it up to them for this second chance. Sora tells Namine about all of these flooding emotions he’s had involving her and everyone else in castle oblivion. Namine is genuinely shocked. Despite the chains being broken, Sora retained the key events. He didn’t look at her like he did back in The World That Never Was. Sora had been talking to her like an old friend he hadn’t seen in years. Sora told Namine that he was going to save everyone, including her. He promised that they were going to get her a body and she had to wait just a bit longer. Namine believed him and said she will try to get in contact with Terra. For a moment it felt like Sora could actually see Namine smile at him instead of just being a star. Sora smiled back and told her thank you, for everything. He ran off to do his job. Namine simply watched and tried not to cry. Their promise really found a way for them to meet again in a way she would’ve never dreamed of. Instead of it fading away. You get oblivion.

Before Sora really starts piecing himself together, he encounters the mystery star, and then an extra star. This extra star follows him around and surprises Sora when it reveals himself to be Roxas. He tells Sora he should’ve expected this since Sora was barely hanging on himself! Sora sheepishly apologizes but Roxas isn’t too bothered by it because he knows it’s temporary. What bothers him is Xion. He tells Sora who she is and the reason he feels hurt when they’re around each other is because of Xion’s connection to himself. Roxas asks Sora to face Xion and embrace that hurt so they can save her. Sora agrees but wonders if he can handle it. So far all fights against her didn’t go well. Roxas tells him not to worry. All he needs Sora to do his try his hardest and Roxas will make up the difference. Sora has no doubt Roxas will and thanks him before heading off. Roxas continues to follow you just so you have someone to talk to. Sora puts himself together and opens a gate to go find the others. Chirihy tells Sora that for future reference not to use the power of waking like he’s about to and explains how incredibly dangerous it is. Sora nods and leaves.

Sora beats up The Lich like usual and Young Xehanort calls him dumb. Everyone gets rescued from the cusp of death, now thoroughly frustrated by how sloppy they were. They’re going full throttle this time.(Oblivion obtained!) The team runs towards the fight again. Aqua and Ven are ready for Terranort but Lingering Will beats them to the punch, taking Terranort away as they fight. The Demon Tide arrives again with heartless and you fight it with the Destiny Trio. The fight has custom team attacks and even a trinity limit. You win and it turns into the hurricane again. Union X keyblades show up. (It’s so cool.) Ventus puts his hand on his heart. He feels oddly happy. All the scenes leading up to the boss rush are the same.

Sora and Riku vs Xigbar and Dark Riku goes off without a hitch. Nothing changes with Xigbar but Dark Riku is different. The original Riku Replica takes over the vessel. It’s clear the other’s could use the help and Vexen is on the good guy’s side so they can make more, is his reasoning. The original Riku goes off to chase Ansem while Rikuplica stays with Sora. He tells Sora it’s nice to see him again and Sora couldn’t agree more. The two of them don’t even have to speak to know exactly where to go next. They rush over to help Mickey, swiftly beating Luxord and freeing him so he can go after Xemnas. Suddenly the war feels like an old grudge match. Sora and Rikuplica vs Larxene and Marluxia. The heroes point their weapons at their foes and tell them this one is for Namine. Marluxia is actually happy Sora finally remembers him. It makes this fight all the sweeter. The fight ends with the heroes win, but at a price. Larxene and Rikuplica had struck each other down at the same time. Sora rushes to his friend who was starting to fade. Rikuplica told him not to feel bad about it. He planned on giving up this vessel after the fight anyway. The only reason he took it was to make sure those two wouldn’t hurt Namine and to fight by Sora’s side again at least once. Rikuplica tells Sora to take care of her before fading away, leaving the vessel. Sora finally remembers Castle Oblivion in its entirety. He simply clenches his fist and accepts the hurt before pressing on.

Ventus and Aqua catch up to Vanitas and Terranort. Aqua demands to know what happened to the armor that appeared earlier and Terranort simply laughs. Enraged, Aqua summons Master’s defender and rushes in to fight. Ventus follows her lead and Sora joins in a few minutes later. While that’s happening, Riku rushes through the maze towards Ansem until he hears a familiar voice. It leads him to dark chains that suspend and crush Lingering Will until he cuts them. The armor is cracked but still functioning. He thanks Riku and starts heading off before Riku stops him. Riku hadn’t told Ven and Aqua but he found something else at Radiant Garden. He pulls out Terra’s wayfinder and gives it to the armor. Riku tells him to go protect what matters and heads off. Things aren’t going to well back at the battle. Terranort manages to break Ven’s keyblade and Vanitas rushes in after Aqua as she tries to save Ven. Sora is quick enough to try and take the hit for both of them but Lingering Will swoops in again to save them. They’re all stunned to see him. Terra thanks Sora for looking after his friends but he can take it from here. Sora nods and manages to escape the battle. Terra tries to convince Ven and Aqua to leave too but they flat out ignore him. They pull out their wayfinders and each one starts to glow. Aqua tells Terra from this point forward they fight as a team. She tosses Ven Master’s Defender and summons her original keyblade. Her and Ventus bring out their armor and stand beside Terra. Now the real fight begins. The fight gives you the same team attacks from the Mirage Arena and each character gets their original command style that transforms into their character exclusive one from bbs. Wingblade, Ghost Drive, and Rockbreaker; while Terranort uses Dark impulse and Vanitas loses his mask and fights like he does in the final phase against Ventus. Vanitas is the first to fall. He nearly beat a Ventus until the boy gained a boost of strength from seemingly nowhere, his swords of light turning into starlight keyblades and striking down Vanitas. He simply laughs, giving Ventus no answer to his many questions about Vanitas. The entire wayfinder trio is know souly focused on Terranort. Refusing to give up, the man summons the chains again and captures them. He goes after Aqua first who almost managed to break free. The others scream her and The Guardian rises from the shadows to save her. It breaks the chains and rips off the bandages. Ven quickly uses the keyblade to wrap Terranort in chains while Lingering Will holds his body down for The Gaurdian to fire his heart out. A massive beam of light shoots up before fading and only leaving the armor. Ven and Aqua are speechless until the armor lifts its helmet to reveal Terra underneath in tears. Ven and Aqua throw their helmets off too and ran into their friends arms. All three of them hugging and crying.

Sora runs right into the middle of Saix and Xion fighting Axel and Kairi. Instinctively he screams out Xion’s name and everything goes quiet. Axel is confused by the name until she finally takes off the hood to reveal the white hair and yellow eyes. His memory starts to reform bit by bit and he grabs his head. Sora and Kairi’s chest both feel heavy but for the first time, Xion doesn’t react. Because of all the experiments, the only thing she has is broken memories and the suffering from them. You begin fighting her alone but to no effect. Sora rememberers Roxas’s words and lets in the pain. Xion comes at him again but stops at the sound of her name, this time with Roxas’s voice coming out of Sora. Xion’s head gets a little fuzzy but it doesn’t break the rampage. Kairi and Axel manage to endure the pain as well and stand with Roxas/Sora. If one voice isn’t enough then they’ll all try calling to her as they knock some sense in into her. Sora/Roxas summons Two Become One. The three are ready. It’s now or never. After an intense 3v2 fight, Xion starts to mentally down in the middle of combat. Then the standard cutscene happens where Xemnas shows up. The only difference being Axel’s keyblade doesn’t break. Xemnas grabs Kairi with his lightning instead of her wrist and leaves. Sora tries running after her best Saix gets in the way until the Seasalt trio pushes him back. Roxas tells Sora to go after Kairi and leave this fight to them. Sora runs off and you basically play the Remind fight but with no Xemnas. It ends the same though.

The battle against the Nort court is the same. Kairi getting shattered is the same, as well as getting into Scala. Xion tells Sora she can still feel Kairi and for him to remember her words. The thirteen armors and Xehanort boss are all the same as well. The only difference I added was a clash that sent both Sora and Xehanort flying backwards. Sora gets up first and has the chance to end it but realizes the good luck charm had fallen to the ground in front of him. Sora picks it up and all the pent up anger frustration he has from Xehanort ruining his and his and friends lives gets put on a leash. Sora remembers Kairi’s words about never losing his smile. He can’t help but get emotional and once again asks Xehanort what was the point of any of this. Xehanort gives his speech about balance and the entire scene and plays out like normal. Next major change is the end. Riku and Mickey convince Sora to not use the Power of Waking right off the bat, fearing the consequences. Sora listens to their idea to see Yen Sid but even he isn’t sure how to get Kairi back but they’ll do their best to find her. Sora leaves to get some air outside. Riku can’t help but follow him outside minutes later and finds Sora looking at his keyblade. He calls out Sora’s name and the boy turns around and does a smile similar to when he released his heart in Hollow Bastion. Riku knows Sora better than he knows himself. He doesn’t even try to stop Sora, but tells him to be careful. Sora puffs out his chest and says he’ll be back with Kairi in no time at all. Sora asks Riku to tell the others thanks and not to worry before opening up a gate and walking through. The ending sequence plays out the same and then the credits roll.

ReMind is a bonus episode after getting the secret reports and nothing in it changes because it’s perfectly fine. The only added thing we get is Sora giving back the lucky charm before he fades away, telling Kairi to be sure and bring it back to him. Limit cut and secret episodes are DLC or more extra stuff but yeah, I’m done.

In Summary:Kingdom Hearts 3, but the characters interact with each other and are allowed to feel multiple emotions at a time for extended periods of time. I know I sound like I’m punching down on this game but I genuinely do love this franchise since forever and I have strong feelings about almost everything to do with it. Which is why I’m bummed that KH3 is like my least favorite kingdom hearts game. It has good things in it but falls short on so many scenes and opportunities. This soft rewrite was literally me taking 92% of what the game already had in it and rearranging it to create various new situations that inevitably end the same way it does in the actual game. So yeah I give this game a 7/13 I’m still buying every game though 💀 (I’m not getting into any of my ideas of how kh3 could’ve gone before we knew too much about it. Now that’s a rewrite!)

Can We Discuss the Crafting System?

First of all, I want to give a big shoutout to @sorceressferaly on this system. We talked about in back in February for our interview how she wanted to make this system happen and I am so happy that she got this opportunity and how it turned out. I promise this won’t all be gushing, but I am so happy to got to have this project.

Second, it’s release week for the Jorvik Divined deck. Go follow @jorvegiancollective everywhere. The deck reveal is today. Go check it out!

Ok, let’s another disclaimer out of the way. After about my first 5-ish hours of playing the update, my game bugged out and I haven’t really been able to collect more materials for two-ish days now. This seems to be happening a number of folks. I have at least been chatting with Leila on feedback and bugs already, and I’m sure the team is otherwise aware, so I imagine it will be fixed by next Wednesday once they pinpoint the issue. But this means my experience with the crafting system is only from about a day or so of playing and relying on my stash of materials to get me through until the nodes’ spawn rates are fixed.

That out of the way, let’s dive into the positive. I love the simplicity of this system. It’s easy to get into and I think the tutorialization of the system was handled really well. I personally think the level requirement is a little high (even if level 10 isn’t too hard to get to), I think it would have been better to have this first onboarding crafting system open at level 5 if you’re a Star Rider after you do Farah’s quest so new crafting recipes and methods can be unlocked as level rewards at better intervals, but overall I think it’s fine. I also think that there should be material nodes in Moorland. I imagine it’s to limit free players from clogging up their inventories with supplies, but there are already nodes in Fort Pinta, so that’ll happen anyway. I think the same should be true for higher level areas, as a reward for unlocking more places, having more nodes (where it fits) so higher level players can gather supplies more effectively.

I had three nitpicks about interface though. One, is that I think a grid crafting list more like the shops would be better for recipes, particularly for the “items” crafting where the list is pretty long (and easy to expand on). The font can be kind small and having pictures would help with folks with reading impairments. Two, there needs to be a crafting in bulk option, particularly for the “items” crafting. I know Leila mentioned looking at AC:NH for inspiration on crafting for this, and the biggest complaint on that system is no crafting in bulk. Particularly as I’m unlocking higher level recipes and the number of cloths I need is going up (RIP my flax supply), I see this being a huge quality of life ask, particularly when you have to use separate benches for different recipes. I don’t have an issue with having separate crafting benches (this actually sets up the system for other “disciplines” of crafting really well) but it should streamline the process between those benches as much as possible. Which leads to three, the cutscene should only play the initial time you craft an item and it shouldn’t kick you out of the work bench. These really go into the streamlining note of have to wait and then reopen the menu each time you want to craft something instead of simplifying the process for the player.

That said, I do think this is a really strong system. I played for about 5 hours straight until I got hit with the spawn bugs and didn’t get bored until the latter end of it (which was mostly just from “I’ve been trying to grind flax for the past 3 hours”). It was a pretty chill relaxing time and I see this as a great addition to training loops and stream activities. I have concerns on the longevity of it, particularly when we start looking at people and their frustrations with Soul Riding three months out, so I hope this system gets continued support with new recipes, particularly over these next couple of months to avoid burnout like with Soul Riding. It really needs continuous support to make sure it remains a staple in the gameplay loop until there’s a wide enough catalog and that having new recipes tied with map unlocks would be a big deal.

It also has me waiting for my current ticket to clear with SSO so I can submit my Pi upgrade idea and the Hidden Star wishing well idea because this system makes those seem a little more possible. There’s a catalog now of my posts if you want to read those.

But I think the thing I’m most excited about is how this system could expand and how it could provide really good level rewards in unlocking other crafting “disciplines” when unlocking new areas or levels. Think of unlocking tailoring from Daxton in Silverglade to get classic riding equipment or blacksmithing from Conrad to learn metalworking or cooking from Olivia in New Hill. All of these could have their own recipes and ingredients that would probably need an inventory overhaul to avoid item clog, but it would add so much to do in every part of the map. Not to mention a huge variety of options for recipes and dailies.

And I don’t think it just needs to be directly crafting that this system can support. One of the big changes this system did was adding items you can collect and keep even when you log off. We’ve seen that before with the original Kalter quests and with archeology, which says to me that those systems could be seeing updates. But also, it could mean expansions to dailies. I’ve suggested before expanding the Rescue Ranch with tonics and medicines. Now you can go out and actually make those. What about going and repairing trail markers for the Rangers or bringing them supplies for the animals they’re nursing to return to the wild? My entire Pi idea is viable now without needing to pick up dailies directly.

The point is, this system is bigger than just crafting directly because of how it changes item collection. Now collections can be open-ended. It reminds me of Leila’s suggestions in our interview on how she would redo fishing, by setting up points where you can just fish and collect all kinds of things to turn in for certain rewards on certain days. With this kind of system in the game, dailies as a whole can be a lot more living world and a lot less “click the icon for money.” And I know there are bugs right now and it’s so early stage, but this is an amazing tool that I think will be the foundation of a much more immersive design philosophy with SSO.

And don’t get me starting on how this finally makes trading player viable, but we’ll get the SSO economist a break before we add that in.

Continuing Thoughts on Age of Calamity: I am about 19 hours in at this point and oh man are things going down. Just wanted to record some of my thoughts, theories, reactions, etc... before I get to the last four missions of the story because I’m just thinking about this non-stop and want to share.

Spoilers below the read more, so don’t read if you plan on playing the game. It is a lot more fun to experience in the game than reading it, so just you know, don’t read it.

THE NEW BOTW CHAMPIONS ARE HERE, THE OG CHAMPIONS ARE ALIVE! 

-After the siege of the castle mission that ends with the king's death at the hands of the guardians off screen and the menu music changing to the awesome dark theme and the prompt on the screen saying that Mipha, Daruk, Revali, and Urbosa are trapped in the Divine Beasts, I legitimately cried a little bit. Like I was mostly tearing up because of the bit with Zelda and her father and Link dragging her away, but with the context of BOTW and the Divine Beasts and the Champions having been killed in battle with the Calamity Blights, I was like holy crap, they killed them, they're trapped because they died, but then I started the next chapter and decided to do Urbosa and Revali's first and then it starts and they're both still alive and then we see that Teba and Riju come through and like I lost my shit. I was like WHAT!? IS!? HAPPENING?! I thought that it was a really cool way to get more characters to play as (because this is a Warriors game so the vast array of characters to play as is a selling point) and a cool way to keep the OG Champions from being dead which is depressing. So I got Urbosa and Revali back and then realized what this meant for the other mission, that Mipha would be saved by giant grown Sidon and it was just as cute and sweet as I thought it was going to be. And then them working together on the Divine Beast and teaming up and you can see how much Sidon missed his sister and looks up to her, despite the fact that he is literally ginormous and she is a tiny little thing. It made me tear up. The other champion relationships don't really hit that hard because none of them actually met each other before, but it was pretty funny the bit with Teba and Revali when Revali is once again being an asshole to Link and Teba is just like.... WTF? This is the Rito champion, he's like kind of a di- and Urbosa is like yes, we know. Moving on. Because like damn, they really turned Revali's dick factor way up in this game. Like seriously, bird, can you like chill?

-Anyways, another thing that got me going literally insane was the bit in Hyrule field with Astor and Sooga and Kohga when Astor was like...pulling soul power or something from the Yiga soldiers and like turned it into Hollow Link and when I saw that I was like losing my mind. I don't know why it got me so hyped up, but it did and I'm very excited to battle it out with this dark Link character.

-I just finished the battle at Akkala citadel, which was a pretty cool fight, and going to go into the next battle, something about thunder, so obviously another Divine Beast lead in with Divine Beast support trying to fight off Guardians and monsters and stuff. From the placement, it appears like it'll be near Hateno, and will be involving Urbosa and Vah Nahboris. I don't really care for the Divine Beast levels. They are frustrating to control and the camera movements are annoying and the targeting system just is frustrating. The level with Vah Rudania fighting off the guardians was so annoying, just trying to target the guardians and move around and then I just kept getting stuck on the walls and stuff and the movements are so slow, and it was just like, I don't really care for this at all, thanks... I much prefer the on the ground, quick fighting. Obviously, Link is the most intuitive and easiest to use, he's the highest level, and he's the main fighting character, so he's my favorite to use. I really want to unlock the Hyrule Warriors armor set, so I'm going to have to do a ton of quests and stuff which is a lot, but it will make me keep playing the game for a while, which is good since the game cost sixty dollars. It's fun to play though, so I feel like it's worth it. -Regarding the timeline pieces, I'm really conflicted about the backstory elements that we're getting, and I realize that the moment the eggo was introduced, it set this timeline off into a completely different direction, but it brings up questions for me about the original timeline. We don't really know exactly when the Hyrule Warriors timeline starts out and how far from the Calamity attack it was in the past. I would assume that it wasn't too far in the past, most like like less than a year, maybe less than six months? It's difficult to tell because we don't get a whole lot of context. We are given the information that in this game, the Calamity attack on the castle happens at the same time as in the original timeline, on Zelda's 17th birthday, maybe a little sooner, since in the OG, she's coming down from Lanayru with Link and in this one, I think she's leaving the castle to go to Lanayru when the attack happens. But when did everything else happen? How long has Link had the Master sword and been the chosen knight? He's been following Zelda in this timeline since eggo was introduced, but he was still "just a knight" at that point, even if he was a really good and talented one. But wouldn't that mean that he activates his power in Korok forest like barely anytime before the Calamity attack? I mean I guess in the OG timeline, we can kind of get hints that Link hasn't been chosen for a super long time, since Zelda questions him about how confident he is with the Master Sword and can he hear the voice, and is a bit more antagonistic with him, so he probably hadn't been doing that for a super long time either, but it does feel like he's had it longer in the OG timeline memories compared to here when he gets the Master sword and then like two missions later Ganon is popping up at the castle. I mean, it wouldn't make sense really to drag things out a super long time, so I understand that having a bunch of extra cut scenes and missions that aren't super plot relevant would be kind of weird, especially with this Astor dude's involvement, he would want to push things along. But the Ganon attack still happens the same time as the OG timeline, so all of these things happen within the same amount of time. I don't remember in the OG timeline if we ever got any details about how Link awakened his power. I do like how they did it in this version, how it was like a parallel to how Zelda awakened her power protecting Link, which gave me all the Zelink feels, but I just want canon backstory for the OG timeline, you know? We know that this timeline isn't canon for the OG timeline because of eggo being involved, so we can only really pull character elements from this timeline rather than specific plot elements. I also wondered about Impa since she is there kind of escorting Zelda in most of the missions, but was only in BOTW as an old lady, which is fine because they likely hadn't have developed that into the story at that point, but I also think maybe since Link in AOC hasn't become the chosen knight until later, he wasn't seen as capable or trustworthy enough to be her sole escort knight and wanted to keep Impa around for additional protection or something. I don't know, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but whatever. I'm also trying to remember... when did the Champions get their champion clothes? Does Link have the blue tunic on in all the memories? I'm pretty sure that one of the first memories is that depressing one where Zelda is like knighting Link or something in the gazebo thing in front of the castle, but I can't remember the order... It's just all so confusing and I'm sure I'm deeply overthinking everything and that they're kind of just like retconning elements, but like what does it all mean? I mean maybe... maybe... since Zelda remembers the eggo in her like baby dream memory in that one cut scene, maybe that means eggo was also sent way back in time to the beginning of her life, so this timeline is deeply changed from the beginning of her life, so while the initial difference weren't super evident, just some small things, once they got to later in the timeline and all the Master sword/Champion stuff, it really just like threw everything in the air. I don't know why it bothers me so much, I think it's just me Zelink heart wanting Link and Zelda to have more time together when it's not just crazy monster fighting sad Zelda all the time like in the AOC cutscenes. In BOTW, we get these soft little memories of Zelda and Link researching in the field and riding horses and stuff and like yes the ever present concern about Zelda's power and Ganon is there in the memories still, but it feels more intimate and slow and down to earth. I think it's also because in several of the memories, it's just them two, and in AOC, there hasn't really been any memories with just the two of them together, so it has a different feel to it. I liked in BOTW, the stories in Zelda's diary about talking to Link about his destiny and why he doesn't talk and how he feels the weight of this title and it keeps him silent and it gave Link this interesting depth and emotion that you couldn't really see without that, and then in the AOC, there are some little moments where you see Link having a scrap of emotion, tiny smiles he gives to Zelda, serious face, confused, happy to eat stuff, but most of his moments are the little grunts and blank stares that he gives. Like seriously? Zelda's father just died, she feels like it's all her fault and Link's response is a tiny smile and a "huh". Like yes, there are dynamics with them, she's a princess, he's a knight, he's protective of her and doesn't push her boundaries or whatever, but like just hug please. I loved that memory in the forest in BOTW where she just collapses into his chest and he holds her and we see this pained expression on his face and it's like yes please give me more not lobotomized Link. Like I know this sounds like complaining, because it is, and like I do understand they want Link to kind of be this blank slate, character insert type of character, but give him something please! 

-I'm hoping we get some good content in these last few mission cut scenes. I'm getting down to the last few missions, only four left, and looking at the chapter titles, which is the only spoilers that I have allowed myself, I'm like, okay, what is going to happen next. And like I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that we win and the bad BOTW timeline ending is subverted and Ganon has to go night night, but like who knows, maybe they'll surprise me, but probably not. This is supposed to be a game that you keep playing after you finish the main story, so like killing off a bunch of playable characters and having it end in destruction would be probably not so smart...

-Okay, that's all my current thoughts. I'll be playing more tonight and we'll see if I finish the story tonight, or maybe I'll have to stop myself and take a breather before blasting through the remaining missions. I finished I think three missions(?) last night, and I had a break for dinner, but like I don't work tomorrow, so like, I could probably blast through the last ones, but I'd also still need to do some additional quest stuff in between for level up purposes since I just go through rupees like crazy. Oh my gosh, that reminds me... it is so dang annoying when you get one of those like quest find item marker things that lights up when you have all the items and you're like sweet I'll complete this and as you're pressing the button, out of habit, without super paying attention, you realize it's going to cost like 2,000 rupees or something and it's like... not again! I can't tell you how many times I have done this and it's so annoying. Like warn me if I have to pay rupees, I don't want to use my brain, game! Lol yes, it's my fault, I'm not really mad.

-Okay, the end. For now. TLDR: This game is fun and unexpected, but it is also not BOTW, so don't go into this expecting BOTW mechanics or gameplay. But hey, smashing through tons of enemies is also kind of satisfying too. Also, like the new enemies are wild. Elemental Moblins, Hinoxs, Lynels, Guardians(!), the use of the Elemental weapons is a cool mechanic, and it's cool having some cinematic fight moments, even if it might get repetitive after playing the game for a while, but you also can use a ton of different characters, so there's variety there, I just have yet to leave my boy because he's the easiest to blast through anything and everything, though Impa is pretty cool too, even if most of my moves with her are random button smashes since I don't really have a good grip on how her moves work. At least with Link it's pretty obvious and I've gotten better about actually having some sort of strategy with how he works, the other characters I haven't played enough to have any sort of knowledge on how they work. Also Zelda's moves are not fun to play at all, sorry, but they're just annoying and useless. Also Daruk is bad at fighting Hinoxes. Okay, now, the end.

This post is way too long so ignore it and just keep scrolling

Alright. Having played both Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces, I can now say, based on my own experiences... that Sonic Forces is a smoldering garbage heap.

First off, let me get this out of the way: the character creation system is... okay. In the screenshot above, you can see My Original Character,  Blonic  Eiko the Cat. You have several different anthropomorphic animal species to choose from, each of which has their own species-specific ability. Birds can double-jump, cats hold on to a few rings even after taking heavy damage, that kind of thing. There’s a selection of three head types for each species, about a dozen eyes, and can set two skin/fur/scale/feather colors. Not bad.

For the game’s main selling point, though, it feels a little weak... especially in comparison to the last game I played, South Park: The Fractured But Whole. In addition to your character’s physical appearance, which meshes perfectly with the South Park style, you can set your character’s gender (male/female/non-binary/multi-gender), whether they’re cis or trans, both their race and ethnicity, their sexual preferences, religion, all sorts of stuff that are pointless in the context of the game but let you make your character whatever you want them to be. I’m not saying that all games should have this, but I did just play that game, so I can’t help but compare Sonic Forces to it since the character creator is meant to be one of the game’s big gimmick.

Anyway. In addition to your character’s body, you also get to dress them up with outfits you unlock as you play. I guess this is a cool concept, with you getting between three and twelve costume pieces every level depending on how well you do and whether anything you did in a level completed a special objective... but it’s annoying constantly being pelted with costumes you’ll never wear. I was a mixture of fortunate and unfortunate in the fact that clothes I like (a tactical outfit in black and olive green) were unlocked within the first couple levels, so I could wear an outfit I like throughout the game... but it also meant that I never had any reason to change out for new gear or experiment with costumes that would only be less appealing to me.

There’s also the jarring fact that with clothing on, your character looks completely out of place. Most of the other characters in the game wear nothing but white gloves and sneakers, and seeing you alongside them just makes them look naked. I’ve spent way too long talking about customization. Moving on...

...You can also customize your avatar’s weapon, which I guess is the power of the Wisp aliens from Sonic Colors stored in a gun? There are probably advantages to all of them, but you spend less than half of the game playing as your avatar, every enemy in the game dies in one hit, and the fire weapon I started with can clear a screen of enemies in literally two seconds... so I never really bothered with them. You also occasionally find Wisps locked in capsules, but the game never actually gives you a real tutorial for them. It’s possible that it was explained in a hint marker, but it’s possible to take a route through a level or jump at just the wrong moment that you miss the marker and can’t go back to see what it said. I eventually figured it out in level twenty-five, which is right at the end of the game... and that level also happens to be a great example of why I don’t like this game.

I know that as a still frame this is kinda incomprehensible, but what you’re looking at is a little vertical shaft kind of thing. There have been shafts like this elsewhere in the game, but they’ve always been things you either just dropped down through or rode an elevator in or had platforms to jump on. Here?

This game apparently has a wall-jumping mechanic, which only appears here, in the twenty-fifth of thirty levels. I’m completely fine with video games using mechanics sparingly or even basing levels around a gimmick that never appears again... but this is the only time in the game that this happens, and the mechanic isn’t even implemented very well. If you’re too close to the wall it will sometimes fail to activate, if you press the jump button again too soon you won’t cling to the wall, and sometimes your series of jumps will have you end up jumping over the wall to the left instead of going right... which is an issue considering that for the second half of the level, you have to do this while trying to outrun a giant instant death laser. Assuming you can even get to that point.

I can’t tell you how long I was stuck here. To the left is a checkpoint, and all you can do is collect what looks like an electric Wisp in a capsule, then... wait to the blue death laser to kill you and put you back at the check point. The dark red boxes are breakable, and you’re clearly meant to either get down through this shaft to continue... but there’s no obvious way to do this. I thought that you were supposed to use the electric Wisp somehow, but I guess you can only do that if you have the right Wisp weapon equipped, as the game only seems to care when I collect capsules with fire Wisps in them.

I was eventually forced to watch a video of someone playing this level, and they just kind of... broke through all the boxes at once. After further research, I discovered that if you press the Crouch button (which I’ve never pressed up to this point and forgot existed) while in the air, you’ll do a stomp move that the game never bothered to teach me.

Once you’re past that, the next section is incredibly difficult... I figured out how to use the encapsulated fire Wisps (it’s the “Wisp Special” button that I’d previously been unable to figure out the function of) to skip over the obstacles, but if you don’t time/aim it properly, you’re back down in the area where you have to deal with the wall jumps that occasionally send you careening backwards.

I know that I’m just complaining about one difficult end-game level, but the entire game is like this. It’s all either gameplay mechanics the game doesn’t explain properly that are prone to failing, or levels that are way too short and simplistic. I haven’t even touched on the jumping mechanics... Want to know how many times I died replaying that level to get those screenshots?

A couple of those are from the laser section, but it’s mostly falling into bottomless pits because you’re pretty strongly locked into your jump trajectory when playing as Your Own Character, and the platform placement in that level sucks. It’s not as big of a deal when playing as Sonic; I think Classic Sonic has free control in the air, and you only play as him in two or three levels, while Modern Sonic’s levels are so completely filled with enemies and jump pads that you can just spam the jump button to string homing attacks through anything that isn’t a speed section. Places where the gameplay becomes frustrating aren’t as common as in other games I’ve played recently (L.A. Noire comes to mind), but that’s because the majority of the levels are ridiculously simplistic and easy, and when you reach the end without anything really happening you’re just like...

Which brings me, finally, to the worst part of the game: the story. This is among the worst video game writing I have ever seen... and as someone who does a lot of art for indie, amateur, and fan games, I’ve seen a lot of scripts from “idea guys” who’ve never taken any kind of literature or creative writing classes.

The basic premise of the story sounds interesting, and seems like a huge departure from the normal Sonic formula: Dr. Eggman and his new associate Infinite use the powers of all the major antagonists from past games to kill Sonic and take over the world. The remaining characters of the Sonic universe form a resistance movement (the forces in Sonic Forces) to fight back, and half a year later Your Own Character joins up after their home city is destroyed.

Damn, man! That’s pretty dark! Unfortunately, it completely fails to deliver. Unsurprisingly, Sonic isn’t dead... but he HAS been held prisoner and tortured for the last six months. Despite that, he’s in high spirits and joking with his captors... yeah I dunno, just bad writing ...and manages to escape when the resistance attacks the base and temporarily disables the power grid. Why Sonic was in a Laser Prison and wearing Laser Handcuffs that require uninterrupted power to operate is just more bad writing, as is the fact that he was being held on a space station and you’re never shown how the resistance got up there.

More importantly, it’s never explained how the resistance discovered that Sonic was still alive. There are other captives in the same area, so THEY would know he’s alive, but there’s never any indication that one of them managed to escape. Speaking of which, they’re all still imprisoned after Sonic breaks free, and I think the space station ends up destroyed... so those guys are probably all dead. That reminds me of another point: most of the levels just end at a random arbitrary point. You ostensibly have a goal that you’re trying to reach, but the goal markers are always, like, in the middle of a hallway, which looks no different from anywhere else, and there’s no cutscene showing what happens what the characters do after reaching their goal... the level just kinda ends.

Most of the game’s dialogue and exposition is in the form of radio conversations that occur on the map screen, which I can’t help but admit makes sense: media too often forces characters to be in the same place for scenes to occur, when logically they would’ve just spoken on the phone. The issue I have with this is that it really does make up the bulk of the game’s dialogue, and none of the conversations are ever that interesting. Honestly, more than anything it reminds me of the kind of story you’d see in a free-to-play mobile game... except there isn’t really any kind of story being told, just information being relayed. There isn’t any kind of character development, since the game expects you to already know who everyone is and what their paper-thin personalities are.

After Eggman spends six months taking over Literally The Entire World, and the resistance apparently does very little to stop this, Your Own Character joins up and things start happening instantly. They rescue Sonic, then Classic Sonic appears out of nowhere to save Tails from Chaos, the creature from Sonic Adventure. I guess they included him (Classic Sonic, that is; after this cutscene, Chaos is never seen again) to trick people into thinking that this game would be similar to the much more popular Sonic Generations. I think the plot of that game involved time travel, accounting for the two Sonics, but here they’ve retconned him as “the Sonic from another universe”.

Speaking of time travel and alternate dimensions, Silver and Blaze are in this game... I’m no big Sonic fan (in fact, Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces, both of which I played this week, were the first Sonic games I’ve ever beaten), but them being part of the resistance is kinda inexplicable. To my knowledge, Blaze is from an alternate dimension, but in Sonic ‘06 was somehow Silver’s partner or something in the post-apocalyptic future. In the end, I think Sonic saving the day included the elimination of the timeline in which Silver existed... so I’m not really sure what’s up with Silver and Blaze being in this game. Are they now retconned to just being normal people who live in the same place as everyone else?

I’m also really confused on how this game fits in with the rest of the series. Infinite’s power is to create autonomous physical virtual reality projections, and he uses it to create his own versions of the Chaos, Zavok, Metal Sonic, and Shadow... so in addition to being in continuity with Sonic Generations and Sonic Colors (the game the Wisps are from), you also have to include the Sonic Adventure games and Sonic Lost World. Again, I’m no expert on Sonic, but... I’m pretty sure at least a few of these games feature planets populated with humans, and not the hordes of bipedal animals that make up the only characters in this game. Is there just no official continuity at this point?

As an aside... every character you see in scenes like this are made with the character creator, but for some reason they’ve limited themselves to a very small number of models instead of just using a bunch of different random colors and other features. See that bluish-purple dog at the front? If you look closely, you can see five or six identical dogs in the background, all doing the same animation where they raise their guns up in the air.

I’ve gotten REALLY off-topic, which is basically a war crime with how long this post is already. Anyway, as I was saying before I derailed myself, once Your Own Character joins the resistance things happen super fast. Sonic is alive, Classic Sonic appears out of nowhere and punches the Chaos clone (which is subsequently never seen again, despite Infinite being able to create an infinite number of them), and Eggman for whatever reason reveals that his ultimate plan will be complete in just three days. I’m not really clear on what this plan is, but it involves a virtual reality projection of the sun... I don’t know, Majora’s Mask-ing the planet and killing everyone, maybe? Again, bad writing.

Sonic faces off against Infinite and, despite the player winning the boss fight, gets his $#!+ kicked in... and that’s when Infinite says, and this is an actual, verbatim quote, “You’re not even worth the effort to finish off”. I think I might actively hate the writers of this game. I feel like I should probably also mention that the boss fight takes place on the back of a giant snake that’s just kinda floating there, suspended in mid-air, above a forest that is also a casino?

It’s at this point that Infinite drops a prototype version of the Phantom Ruby, which is what gives him his powers. How did he fail to notice that he’d dropped something the size of a softball? How was he even carrying it? WHY was he carrying it, when the finished perfected ruby was already embedded in his chest and he’d been using it for over six months? If you expect these questions to have answers, well, that bold text in the last paragraph must’ve caught your eye and you’re just now at this point starting to read the post. Hello, welcome! The writing in this game is absolutely abysmal!

Your Own Character picks up the prototype ruby and holds onto it for the next three days... well, except for when they drop it while Infinite is looking right at them after a boss fight, and he doesn’t notice ...and at the end of the game, uses it to somehow get rid of the virtual reality sun. How do they know that the ruby is and how to use it? No idea. How do they get rid of the sun? Happens off-screen. Then, further confusing matters vis-a-vis whether the prototype ruby is invisible to bad guys, Eggman acts as if he saw it... despite it breaking and disappearing before he arrives. Weird.

Alright, backtracking a bit, I need to touch on the stupidest plot point in the game: the Phantom Zone. Well, I think it’s called Null Space or something, Eggman calls it “a little something the Phantom Ruby cooked up”, whatever that means... but it’s basically the Phantom Zone. A pocket dimension that supposedly contains literally nothing. Eggman opens up a portal into it, Your Own Character tries to save Sonic from it, and they’re both pulled in... man, that’s a scary concept, isn’t it? Being trapped in an empty void?

If a regular prison held Sonic for six months, and he only got out with help from the outside, then I can’t even imagine how long this will-- haha just kidding it’s twenty seconds this game was written by chimps.

Apparently “completely empty” means “filled with blocks you can run on”, and Sonic manages to get out... by double-boosting. There are a handful of levels where you play as both Sonic and Your Own Character at the same time (the “you’re next to me and I’m next to you” in the Hoobastank song you hear in that video), allowing you to use the Wisp weapons while also using Sonic’s super speed. You’ll also be prompted to “double boost” at set points, which consists of the characters jumping in the air, fist-bumping, and then... holding hands and somehow running even faster, I guess? I’m not at all clear on how this works, or how it broke them out of Null Space.

I’d be totally okay (bored, but okay) with the prototype ruby being responsible for them escaping, but that’s not how it’s presented: they’re meant to have escaped through the power of friendship and running really, really fast. I mean, I can come up with a reason it works, gimme a minute... uh... virtual reality... pocket dimension... gotta go fast.... gotta go faster faster faster faster faster... aha! Maybe it’s an empty, infinite void because it’s being created as you move through it, but the double boost allows them to move faster than it can be created, allowing them to break free? Yeah, that’s dumb but plausible in-universe. Too bad the writers made literally no attempt to explain it.

After that, it’s time for the big showdown with Infinite, the game’s hot new antagonist. Who is he, why does he hate Sonic, why is he working with Eggman? What kind of awesome boss battle will you have against him? Not explained, not explained, not explained, and it’s just a slight variation of the boss fight you have with Metal Sonic earlier in the game. You DO get an explanation of who he is if you play Episode Shadow, free DLC consisting of three levels that you played in the base game that serves as a kind of prequel. All of your juicy Infinite-related questions are answered: he’s a nameless mercenary who went all emo because Sonic beat him up. Oh. Well. That’s... lame.

This post is already over three thousand words, so I’ll wrap it up. After your boring rehashed boss battle with Infinite, he just kinda... runs away, never to be seen again, and you have to contend with Eggman and his giant robots. It’s not very interesting. Once the day is saved, you get this completely inane exchange between the characters, which in most games would be the worst bit of writing... here, it might be in the top five. Knuckles says that the fight is over, everyone can go home, there’s no longer a need for the resistance... but then Amy (or someone) says, “no, we’re just getting started!”, and Knuckles nods in agreement as if she didn’t just directly contradict him. As if two characters doing this isn’t bad enough, Tails then does the exact same thing all by himself, saying something like, “we won, the resistance is done, now we have to come together to save the world!” I think he also says something about just one person not being able to change the world, which I’m pretty sure runs contrary to a “one person CAN make a difference!” message the game had been going for earlier.

And... that’s about it. I have nothing more to say. This game is bad, anyone who defends it is lying to themselves, and it’s entirely possible that I’ve spent more time writing this unfocused rambling post than I did actually playing the game. I’m not a Sonic hater; the playground politics surrounding video games in the early nineties didn’t exist where I grew up, so to me Sonic has always just kinda been that series with the interesting music that I had no particular interest in playing. As I mentioned, I played through Sonic Mania at the same time as I was playing Forces, and loved it. It’s a bit on the hard side for someone who’s never played a Sonic game, but aside from a few annoying bits in Hydrocity and Oil Ocean, it’s a blast all the way through. That’s a great game... and Sonic Forces, in my opinion, is decidedly not.

Back in 2017 I made a post about the Metascore for Sonic Forces, and received backlash for it. I decided to wait until as many critics as possible had reviewed the game, and... never really felt like doing the update, so didn’t get around to it until now. So, how much of a difference does a year make in the review score?

Oh wow, it’s like I knew what I was talking about or something. Well, kinda. At the time I said that Sonic Forces didn’t seem like a bad game, based on what I’d seen of it. Having played the game for myself... I think my opinion is known.

Kingdom Hearts III - Some Thoughts

I am coming to KH3 as a pretty big KH fan. I have followed Nomura's Wild Ride for a long time - multiple clears on KH1, then Chain of Memories KH2, KH2FM+, and BbS all comfortably under my belt. I tried 358/2 Days but it never clicked for me, got frustrated with Dream Drop Distance, and have never played the mobile game (but it looks like everyone is going to be checking it out, so maybe SE got what they wanted!); I am not a speed runner or everything, but have comfortably finished the games on their hardest difficulties and beaten most of the secret bosses (I actually still need to go back to KH2FM+ and finish the Data fights, but I have that save file on PS3, which is kind of a pain to go back to now. ANYWAY)

Going to try to go through gameplay first, then story stuff, so the major spoilers should be backloaded? 

One of my better notes is that KH3 plays more like a KH2 than KH2. I stand behind this now, another 10 hours later; KH2 is much more refined and takes the battle system in subtly more interesting directions than 3 does. To beat the hardest fights in KH2 (and also BbS) I sometimes found myself taking combo extensions off and working my way back in the abilities to find which ones were leaving me open to new attack chains from these harder fights. KH3 does not have this. Turn everything on and level a bit and you will get through fine; I need to start running through the gates but from what I have seen this is going to pretty much be the case all around, and that is disappointing from a series that has given high-level combat a puzzle box in the past.

For someone who lost their strength and abilities, Sora is pretty powerful even early on. Formchanges are really good and probably the one thing I think this game handles better than past titles - KH2s forms often felt random in terms of triggering and not always very useful until they were leveled up. 

That leads me to the attractions: they aren't really possible to use in a really strategic way other than giving you time where it is hard for enemies to hit you to let your MP recharge. I often used my formchange animations in the same way; free hits from an animation that leaves Sora in an invincible state. These are a big part of why the game feels so easy. (Kupo coins also make the game feel really really easy, but when you can just hit retry on the battle anyway, I don't think it really is actually easier.)

Outside of combat, I don't know how much really needs to be deeply looked at in a wrap-up post anyway: the gummi ship design is disappointingly regressive, but a good source of extra stuff to do; the secret emblems could have been really cool but end up being frustrating and a bad gate to the secret movie; the worlds are mostly really well-built and designed but some are way too long (Arendelle, for example, has a ton of variation in feel and how the player is guided but it is wasted when you are spending so long looking at the same color palette) and some are so disappointingly short - in particular, it is fun to run around in San Fransokyo but it is so small and really should have had a little more to it or been moved back in the game so that you feel more like you accomplished something heading into the game putting you on the track to the ending. Still, though, the worlds are far above what they have been in the past, to the point where I noted the Map Directors name in the credits (shoutouts to Yoh Miyazaki!)

One more thing I think I can get away with without being an explicit story spoiler is after 0.2 and KH3 I never, ever want to fight a Demon Tower again.

Alright, story spoilers follow.

Last warning.

Kairi is completely fucking wasted. I could write at least five paragraphs about how frustrating all the other keyblade wielders not really being a part of the majority of the game is but Kairi's story still being the same as it has been forever despite her being empowered with a Keyblade is just infuriating. Someone slap Nomura for this shit. It is glaringly bad in the face of almost everything else.

KH3 is as poorly paced as any of the previous games, but it is more frustrating here for some reason. A lot of this has to do with how much of this act of the overall KH story being in previous games - Dream Drop Distance and BbS 0.2 really are the first big chunk of KH3, which is extra comical because KH3 opens claiming itself as KH2.9. But really, the player and Sora do not achieve anything until the journey through the Disney worlds is over; the only real reason to have the recovery of these other characters start occurring in the final moments of the game is to stack emotion on top of emotion to ensure the reaction they want from the player. But these moments are going to be stacked with gravity wherever they fall in the game. If Kairi and Axel were to join up with Sora, Donald, and Goofy midway to tackle a considerable enemy or something, it would push the player more while giving them some reward halfway. Ultimately you get sick of the carrot on the stick only being at the very end of this journey.

Speaking of DDD and 0.2, the 2.9 portion of this - and those moments being split into their own games - feel like Nomura way overcorrecting from criticism of the KH2 opening being too long and somewhat boring. It *was* too long and kinda boring but that let Roxas build as a real mystery and something intriguing; KH3 forgoes that, putting those mysteries in other places, so that it can focus on a bombastic opening that draws players in from a gameplay sense. And it works! Olympus is really cool! But it is just one of several long pieces of nothing in terms of the overall story.

Similarly, stacking all of the real boss fights in the endgame kind of cheapens them as characters with regards to 3. I know the fight against Xemnas, Ansem, and Young Xehanort is cool as fuck because I have played the games to know that but if you are just coming to 3, these guys showed up to tease you a couple times and said some vaguely threatening shit in cutscenes. Not giving active confrontation to these enemies earlier on torpedoes the emotional resonance of the fights later, instead of adding to them which could have been the idea behind holding them all back.

So much of what happens in the end is not just predictable but the game straight up tells you it is coming. And any conclusion in this vein will feel like that, so it seems like I am grading it on a curve when I tell you that I did ultimately like the game and how it carried itself despite the above. But if it pulls too many twists on you, it would feel like it is moving the goalposts away from you but both you and the game know it has to go down.

It feels like I am being a little more negative than I mean so let me dive into something real quick that I absolutely enjoyed: the emphasis on Sora, Donald, and Goofy as a team and that being the way you spend the majority of your time in the KH universe. It feels like Nomura and his team read my exact criticism of old KH games for always having a final battle that is so laden with new mechanics and loss of abilities; having Donald and Goofy along when you go to Scala ad Caelum and for the majority of the final run of battles really makes it feel like you have come all this way together and that Sora draws strength from that (which buoys that as a theme as well.)

Finally (for now, I may revisit my notes later) so much of what happens before the credits roll feels kind of crappy. If you have played BbS, you kind of know Xehanort hasn't always been irredeemable shit, but having Eraqus show up and essentially forgive him, and having Xehanort hand Sora the x-blade, put positive feelings on a character that absolutely doesn't deserve it. He has murdered for his goals and had others do the same, throughout fucking time. He is a shithead and him getting to stand up and somewhat willingly hand power over after his defeat knocks the wind out of Sora as the powerful figure he is and should be at this point of his journey. Make no mistake: at the end of KH3, Sora is by far the most powerful character we have seen in Kingdom Hearts. He takes down a Xehanort over multiple forms who has the x-blade and has opened Kingdom Hearts; he reassembles his own consciousness and heart and body which is something nobody should be able to do, according to Chirithy. Xehanort does acknowledge this, but it still plays at deference to Xehanort instead of glorifying Sora and his success.

I know I said finally but secret ending stuff too:

I hope you like long stories is A HILARIOUS LINE in a KH ending. Looking forward to learning why Riku and Sora are in the Shibuya from The World Ends With You and why on earth the dude from Verum Rex and YET ANOTHER PERSON IN THAT COAT are there like what the fuck. Is this the only way Nomura can get to make another TWEWY because *I am okay with this*

I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: Birthright Part 1

Prologue

Opening Chapters

Chapters 6-11, in which Hoshido’s military is extremely disorganized and only regroups because the mere idea of Ryoma is just that awesome.

Chapter 6

Not much to say here. Corrin tells Xander they’re siding with Hoshido against Garon and implores him to do the same, Xander accuses them of being brainwashed and, after repeated refusals, tries to kill Corrin. Following this is a chapter that will probably be finished during the first enemy phase unless Ryoma gets really unlucky. I suppose it makes sense that this is the shortest of the three versions of Chapter 6 as Corrin went to the border already with the Hoshidans. While it’s kind of neat that all the Hoshidan royals are playable on this map as a bit of a preview, note that this is the fourth of just seven chapters in which Ryoma has appeared as a unit prior to his formal recruitment. We get it already, the guy’s an OP powerhouse and a clear favorite of the writers.

This is also where I should probably bring up My Castle, but I don’t have much to say here as it was never a feature I particularly enjoyed. Other FEs have addressed the concept of a base for your army integrated into gameplay far better than this. Genealogy and the Tellius games and others may not let you perv on your units taking a bath or disgust them with your horrendous cooking, but what does that really add to the experience? I know, I know, a bunch of small and scattered stat boosts....

Chapter 7

Oh, silly banter in the middle of an attack while surrounded by wounded and dying soldiers. Never change, FE. But seriously, even if he’s just Cordelia with a dick whose semen produces more Cordelias let’s take the time to appreciate that Subaki is the series’s first playable male pegasus knight. Fates’s take on classes is actually very egalitarian, a fact that often gets lost in its sea of fanservice and subtle story-enforced misogyny and everything about <insert character whose gender/sexuality-related presentation offends you most>. Moving on.

I’m still not entirely clear what happens to the Hoshidan army between this chapter and the preceding one. They really appear to just break ranks and scatter: Corrin and co. go fool around in the astral plane with Lilith, Ryoma and Takumi lead some of their forces toward Izumo (why?), no one cares about Hinoka, and Sakura retreats here to Fort Jinya to tend to the wounded at a makeshift military hospital. It makes sense that the Hoshidan army wouldn’t have the strictest organization thanks to their years of protection under Mikoto’s barrier, but the problem is the game never tells us that and we’re left to infer these things based on the events of the next few chapters.

The Nohrians meanwhile are still on the offensive, but they screwed up by sending Silas’s unit to attack the fort. Silas has an unhealthy attachment to Corrin that frankly rivals Camilla’s, and his abrupt defection here because he wants to hang out with his partially amnesiac BFF undoubtedly bodes ill for anyone associated with him when news of it reaches Nohr. I guess it’s cute in my case that Silas’s obsession with Corrin knows no gender, but the guy probably steals underwear to sniff. Saizo is entirely justified in being suspicious of him.

Paralogue 1

Oh yeah, I forgot all about this chapter. Mozu’s just not as memorably meme-worthy as Donnel, and recruiting her is less frustrating since you’re not forced to make her poke things in her joining chapter. It does make the Faceless seem like more of a threat to Hoshido, although as a consequence playing through this paralogue in Conquest always feels a little weird. This plus the first Castle Invasion were mostly for EXP and support farming. For anyone wondering, I’m going to be keeping most of my characters in their default class sets since I don’t feel like grinding skills or anything elaborate like that. Also, I’m playing on Normal, so I’ve got a lot of latitude in how I play which is how I prefer FE anyway.

Chapter 8

Hinoka sums up my feelings on her and her retainers. Azama’s got some amusing lines and if I knew more about Buddhism his...interesting take on philosophy would probably be even funnier, but that’s about it. And yeah, Hinoka really just does pop onto the scene with no explanation except that she’s also trailing her brothers and I guess everyone really did forget about her. Sucks to be a late development addition.

Iago tosses the conflict ball to ensure the party’s trip to the Wind Tribe village is a rough one, though since Fuga was set on testing Corrin’s worth by sending a bunch of his tribesmen to get slaughtered by their army anyway I wonder why he even bothered. This is a rare case of a desert map that isn’t a frustrating pain in the ass, because it’s small and there are Dragon Veins to reduce the amount of sand. I also like how even on the lowest difficulty of the easiest route the game is already throwing a boss at you with some annoying skills. Fuga’s motivations may be silly, but at least he leaves us with the memory of a good chapter, some cryptic foreshadowing for the Yato, and a shota wind mage who unfortunately continues in the tradition of Ricken stepping away from their archetypical dynamic after Tellius made it just a little too close to explicitly gay.

Chapter 9

Izana, huh...Izana is...

Let’s talk about Zola!

Zola is one of the rare Fates villains who isn’t (always) exactly what he looks like. On first glance he’s just a typical simpering syncophant with a fitting talent for illusions, but he actually comes with a bit of a character arc in Birthright which I have to say I wasn’t expecting. It was almost as unexpected as Leo’s unexplained appearance at the end of this chapter to kick off said arc by leaving Zola exiled. One big problem I have with Fates is how characters have a tendency to teleport around off-screen as the plot demands it, distance between locations or basic geography be damned, but it’s marginally more forgivable here since Leo is shown later in this route to know how to perform literal teleportation.

I believe this is also one of the only times in Birthright where Hinoka gets to do something that affects the plot, so good on her for acting suspicious of fake!Izana. She’ll go right back to being overshadowed by her brothers - including being overshadowed at being overshadowed - soon enough.

Izumo’s role as the designated neutral nation is delved into more thoroughly in Conquest, weirdly enough. Here Corrin and co. get left only with a vague directive to head toward the Bottomless Canyon and some of Azura’s song lyrics. That’s kind of a good thing, because I’ve got nothing on Izana now. I get that he’s an amusing surprise the first time around, but...who wrote him like that?

Chapter 10

Allow me to divert for a moment from the Takumi angst to pick some very large nits with the geography of this game. In the previous chapter Corrin learned that Ryoma and Takumi had been pushed to the Bottomless Canyon, which is nowhere near their location - but hold onto that thought. The canyon is clearly northwest of Izumo, yet the party goes south to Mokushu allegedly in an effort to reach them there. Fates has a bad time in general with giving a good impression of where its events are taking place, partly because the scale of the map is odd and not helped by it being a topographic rather than a political map like in every other FE, partly because there are times like this where the information presented appears to be simply wrong. What’s worse, the major plot development surrounding Takumi’s possession in Birthright does not, at least so far as I recall, necessitate that he have been possessed by Anankos or anyone else connected to the Bottomless Canyon. I’ll certainly be revisiting this when the time comes.

But...whatever. In spite of everyone getting lost except Ryoma (because of course) this is actually a good chapter, with a cramped map filled with environmental hazards to add challenge. The treachery of Mokushu spans all three routes and is one of those set pieces that benefits from development in each of them. Kotaro’s connection to the, er, Christmas ninjas (and elsewhere, Shura) isn’t developed here unless you choose to have them engage him in combat, but that just saves stuff for the other routes. 

Chapter 11

Pictured: easily one of the most forgettable playable characters in this game. It’s a shame too, because she’s the only default kinshi knight and her bits of dialogue and few supports offer hints of an interesting backstory that would speak to gender roles in Hoshido. Alas, she’s merely a Corrinsexual.

This chapter itself is filler, but mechanically it’s good filler. Your new OP archer royal gets plenty of targets for his bow, there are some promoted generics to spice things up, and the Dragon Veins can either help or hinder you depending on how you use them. I don’t care for the antagonist fake-out between the opening and closing cutscenes and the chapter proper - where did possessed!Sumeragi the mysterious swordsman go while you were fighting the fliers? - but that’s a minor quibble. Corrin already beat that guy.

A larger problem is with Takumi’s development, or rather lack thereof. As I said last time the events of the opening chapters explain his initial hostility to Corrin (and Azura) quite well, and Mikoto’s death only reinforces that feeling. Why then does that hostility vanish so quickly in Birthright? Just one chapter after recruitment and he’s already turned his characteristic prickliness onto Zola instead, and I don’t recall it appearing much again except in the context of possession. It’s only the route the ends with Takumi as the final boss that allows him space for his feelings to develop organically (albeit in a negative direction), possibly because Conquest is the only one in which he’s not beholden to love Corrin like all playable characters in Avatar-centered games.

Next time: Birthright Chapter 12 - 18

sonic forces review

EDIT: added day after thoughts under read more

Hey nyall! Time to review forces!

First, a broad, spoiler free, review. Under the cut will be a more in depth review containing spoilers for both, the main game AND episode shadow.

Please note that this is from the perspective of someone with adhd. I can’t tell how some of the things that peeved me would affect neurotypicals.

General info:

There is an easy and a hard mode. (hard mode is just normal mode “for ppl who played sonic before”) It took me 7 hours and 44 minutes to complete the entire game including episode shadow. Granted, I took quite a few breaks for breathers and shitpostingly liveblogging me playing the game on a discord server + I think I’m just bad at the game.

There are over 30 levels to play, of which a few did repeat and you just play with a different character, but it was still fun!

The hub map got increasingly confusing and hard to navigate and i really hate it now that i completed it because there’s too much happening at once on the screen.

Game play:

There was a Classic Sonic, Modern Sonic and Custom Character type game play.

I personally do not enjoy Classic Sonic game play but it was very well playable once I remembered I could use the arrow key pad instead of the left joystick.

Modern Sonic was often too fast in platforming sections and the absence of drift made sharp curves in 3D areas hard to handle, mainly when you activated boost (as the game intends you to). But it was very fun and refreshing to be able to boost again.

The Custom Character could use different wispons to do progress in the game. This is probably what has the most replay factor, as you can go back to levels using different wispons to clear new paths that you were previously unable to go through. The wispon use can be kinda sloppy at times, but once you get used to it it can be very fun.

The tag team game play was sloppy. It was never clear which character you are playing as right now (until later I realized you are playing both at the very same time ? I think? i am still confused).

Visuals:

The lighting in the cutscenes and levels often comes short and can even ruin the atmosphere at times. A lack of detail in some scenes undermines this. 

The characters are not as expressive as they could be, but there are some iconic expressions to spot throughout the game.

Sometimes camera angles shift weirdly or zoom out too much (some times the character even blends in with the stage and you don’t see it at all anymore when you are in movement) and you lose track of your character and most probably fall off the stage or get hurt. Sometimes there is also a little too much going on in the background.

On the contrary, the game had also tried to pull quite a few visually stunning shots and lighting in both levels and cutscenes.

It is overall still better than previous games because it has more heart and life in it and I hold it dear.

Overall feelings about the game:

The game had mostly been very fun! There was a lot of variety between stages and the wispons gave the gameplay a very fresh kick.

Some stages were frustrating because the character was too fast/very hardly visible for the platforming and I ended up dying a lot in the same spot. 

Not to say too much about the story, but Classic Sonic was pure fanservice and was not important to the plot whatsoever and the game would’ve done very well without him.

Character development was pretty absent.

The pacing of the game in general was very sloppy and almost even uncomfortably fast (rushed) and bland.

Most of the levels were very short to a point where you’d expect there to be multiple acts of it because you refuse to accept that this was already the end of it.

The story had some strong points, though, and the music was absolutely phenomenal, like always, BUT the music was not as recognizable as it was in previous games. I played the final boss only a very few hours ago and i cannot remember the tune to it at all.

The game had a lot of potential but it was executed rather sloppily than exceptionally.

All in all this game gets a 7/10 for effort from me.

because im very generous and i still had fun and was hyped and enjoyed it despite all the annoying parts. I mean i am also 06fucker69

Longer and more in depth review including spoilers under the cut

!!!! WARNING SPOILERS START HERE !!!!

I will try to stay in chronological order, but that is the first thing that is kinda peeving me in this game. 

(warning i quickly grew tired and couldn't write anymore but i forced myself to finish)

The time skips and flashbacks are inconsistent and have a harsh transition. For example the 6 months between Sonic’s defeat and the recruitment of the Rookie is just white text on a black screen that isn’t even narrated. Sometimes the time between perspectives is very disorted and you forget about Classic and Tails while you are busy with another mission that is forced upon you thanks to the linear 1 perspective story.

I would’ve had a 3 perspective story, with 3 story modes. Each story mode would explore the same story from the different perspectives like in SADX, SA2, heroes and Sonic the hedgehog 2006. (mostly 06 though)

The stages were perfectly arranged and build to be incorporated into a 3 perspective story. Classic might have had more time for character development and relevance. Also more, mostly consistent, time with him would make us more attached and feel actual emotions about his parting in the very end.

The idea of having Mania connect with forces like that and have a “reason” for Classic to appear is good, but Classic just arrives and is there. For not reason at all besides the sake of being there in order to please 2d/classic enthusiast fans. Great concept in theory, sloppily executed though.

Modern Sonic

The game play was very sloppy as Sonic just could fall off the stage and you just had a very huge lack of control of his speed. Mostly when you were in boost in a place that intended you to boost. The absence of drift was very unnerving.

The thing about Sonic being imprisonment was just. so..... unrealistically done. Sonic just came out of the cage and he’s been doing just fine. But he’s gotta be down, because couldn’t run. He absolutely hates being stuck in a place and it’s been SIX FUCKING MONTHS. The bars are also so far apart he can just slip out. Also Sonic can easily break out of prison.

This was not the first time he was imprisoned. In SA2 he had a far greater emotional response, and he broke out the moment he knew what he had to do to make things right. (He volunteered to be imprisoned in SA2, in forces he was forced in prison.)

This is not just out of character for him, but also very lazy writing. The time skip between was badly done, in a black screen with text. No context as to why Silver is suddenly here (if you didn’t read the comic you have no idea whats going on) or how the resistance formed.

Everyone thinks Sonic died, Knuckles is very upset and admits he cant get used to him being gone; and suddenly he gets the news that Sonic is fine and it doesn't trigger any emotional response in him. Or anyone really much besides Amy; who had refused to believe he died in the first place.

He just immediately goes on a mission and fights Infinite.

Tag Team

It was a very good idea to incorporate this mechanic and was mainly well done and fun; the double and triple boost was a nice lil kick off to regular gameplay.

As mentioned was it never clear who you are playing right now and it didn’t warn you about swiches. It could’ve been done better with the heroes mechanics of swicharound. There were more than enough characters to have multiple teams that could be playable.

Avatar

The custimization options aren’t spectacular, but that was not to be expected. I was positively surprised to have the option to chose between 3 voices. 

Villains

Chaos is. Just there. He wasn't even a boss. He was just there for the shock value/fan service.

The Metal Sonic fight was okay.

Zavok was annoying but okay and reasonable.

Shadow wasn’t even a bossfight he was also just shock-factor. He joined the team but was of very little value. (Except for DLC, will talk abt later.)

Infinite has 4 boss fights. And in the end he just vanishes. He’s basically still existent? I think? what happened? Are we just going to accept this?

The final boss was lame and not memorable at all. At least nega wisp phase 2 was iconic.

Infinite

Infinite is a very interesting character with much potential, which they sadly didn't really use much at all except for him being extra. He didn't show off much of his personality and we couldn't learn to appreciate/hate him. 

The game doesn't mention much about his origin, so you will have to read the online comic in the social medias to understand. This might be good marketing to get consumers to consume media on different platforms, but it does not make much sense for newcomers who know nothing about Sonic and don’t follow the social medias to begin with.

Someone who just picked up the game and it’s their first Sonic game.... They won't understand shit.

I want to see more of him. He got so much potential to grow and ultimately redeem himself. Maybe in a future game? Or in the comics at least.

Episode Shadow

The 3 levels were well. One time it was a sonic level but with shadow and some lil things changed. The other was a custom character level but with shadow. The other was just generic 2d platforming with cubes. None of these were long or new. It was fun, sure, but it wasn't exciting.

I was kinda peeved that even though infinite was revealed, we still didnt get to see his face.

Visuals

Lighting harsh, sometimes interesting, but not completely fleshed out/good/atmospheric. 

There are scenes/levels that have stunning visuals (the sonic level in space and the scene with the sun.) even when its not perfect.

Just. The characters sometimes float above the ground and the lighting is very white and harsh and not atmospheric. (The colors are meessed up and too bright. The characters look like they have a completely different light source from the environment)

EDIT: A DAY AFTER ADDITIONS

okay so a day after, replaying some stages, I still think the game is very fun.

There are quite a few things that are peeving me still. I just remembered the whole null space thing, which is totally wasted potential. You could’ve had a few levels in that space with fucky gravity and weird cube shit going, but you just had to double boost out and that was it.

Many tricks the villain packs out are treated as something they can oercome easily and they just. Win “because they always do”.

I want to see the heroes doubt themselves and have character development. The only character that does have character development at all is the custom character. Infinite arguably does undergo some development too; in episode shadow.

There is a lot of potentials for DLCs and I hope they release them and have more characters playable.

Jump King Review

With enough perseverence comes a solid platformer

I just happened to have bought this game developed by Nexile, after seeing the footage of the game. Initially, I thought this might be another one of those brutal platformers that have existed since Super Meat Boy popularised the difficult platform game genre that have been around ever since. Yet despite seeing footage of the game that I might not enjoy overall, I decided to give it a try and I absolutely enjoyed it through the end. Here is my take on Jump King.

Story: There isn't a lot to say about the game's story. An armoured knight(who bears a striking resemblance to Shovel and King knight from Shovel Knight) is destined to get a babe at the top of the tower. Heck, even the title of the game states that there is a smoking hot babe at the top! That is all there is to it and for a game like this, it does not need further work.

There is not much of dialogue in the game. The only ones that come in mind is the first character and a few others but that is about it. Most of them simply mock at the knight for attempting to get the babe while some others remain quite and do mostly nothing, such as a bird who keeps flying up upon touching it.

While the plot is simple and gets to the point, the lack of additional cutscenes, especially at the end could have been nice. Regardless, a nice simple plot.

Graphics: The graphics in this game as mentioned earlier are almost identical to that of Shovel Knight. The only exceptions are that the visuals are in 16-bit and that the backgrounds are hand drawn. Regardless, the overall graphics are vibrant with its smooth pixel art. The theme keeps changing gradually making the visuals stand out. The only flaw the game has is not having fullscreen support as of this review, as the sides of the game are still in black bars.

Audio: This is a mixed result. The sound effects are in 8-bit audio while the music has a mix of playing chiptune as well as using modern musical instruments. While this does not exactly mesh well in certain aspects, what is played here is composed well enough especially the fact that the game plays quite songs for the most part which can be a good thing considering the amount of patience required to play the game. Sadly, because of this, nothing sticks out as memorable with the only exception being the title screen and the final level. Overall, a good effort that is done here.

Gameplay: This is the best part of the entire game provided that it is given a chance to be accepted for what it is. The game is simple on paper. You move left and right, and jump on platforms, as your goal as mentioned before, is to get the hot babe at the top of the tower. As you keep jumping from one platform to another, you encounter newer levels which each have their own platforming gimmicks gradually making the game harder.

But in practice, it is a different story. You can only jump either right or left, and cannot control yourself while airborne, especially when jumping straight up, which makes the up jump almost useless. What is even more interesting is that the longer you hold the jump button, the higher your jump will be. You also have to hold the direction where you want to jump as well. You can also bump on walls which can both be useful and annoying at certain times.

This can take a lot of time getting used to as there are platforms that are arranged in manners that make you want to use lower and higher jumps. One correct move and you move to the next platform. One false move however, and the punishment can range from being mild which causes you to land on an earlier platform, to extremely severe which can potentially cause you to fall back all the way to the very start. On top of this, there are neither checkpoints that can handicap you nor are there any items that can make progress any easier. So you are stuck with your determination and patience till the very end.

Despite the challenge sounding brutal, I found the experience rather relaxing even though there are some levels of frustration on occasional situations. For starters, you do not require to accomplish the goal in one sitting as you can save and resume at the point where you stopped. This is a needed element because otherwise, the game would not be possible for nearly every player to make progress let alone beat the game. The save however cannot be exploited as the game constantly saves for every section you come across.

The other thing is that there are no enemies and additional obstacles that hinder the progress. The only obstacles are the platforms themselves which are either small, or placed in tough to reach positions, or being slopes which can slide you all the way down with little to no control(personally, I hate them).

Its just you and jumping platforms and nothing else gets in your way of progress. This makes it relaxing because you are given plenty of time to observe sections and decide which platforms to jump on and how much of distance you want to jump inorder to reach the platform.

The last thing to be mentioned is the level of mastery. You initially will fall down several times or probably hundreds of times. But with patience in understanding the game's mechanics, you eventually will be skilled enough that you will avoid making the mistakes that you have done earlier. While it is still possible that you might often end up falling to the first level, the levels are designed in a manner that make you memorise the platforms throughly so that you are bound to not do the same mistakes again. Once a specific portion of the game is reached, it becomes impossible to fall back all the way down unless you trigger the mistakes that you have done earlier.

While the game is overall solid, there are some flaws. While cirticising the game for its challenge is unfair, it is fair to criticise it for not having shortcuts for the majority of the game, when there are few portions of the game that had shortcuts, which could honestly add more to the reward of the effort for jumping on such paths. Not to mention that it could give an easier experience if a meter was added to determine the required distance to jump instead of doing it by yourself.

The last flaw is its underwhelming content. There are almost no collectibles in the main game as it is just you reaching to the very top and that is all. But to be fair, the game offers two free DLC expansions which have different experiences on their own but other than that, there is not much the game has to offer. Perhaps additional characters could be benefitical in a future DLC.

Overall: 4/5

Conclusion: If you want a challenge that is fair, as long as you have patience and determination, this is a solid platformer. However, if you don't like to deal with extreme levels of punishment or would prefer something more easy to play, then the game is not for you, as you are better off playing other platform games that are far more relaxing than Jump King.

I had patience from the start till the finish and I was overjoyed when I reached that sexy lady on the top of the tower! I might play the new game+ at some point of time.

I do need to have Some words, because I have many thoughts and emotions and I need to talk about the ONE THING about this dang game that I need to talk about.

SPOILERS FOR KINGDOM HEARTS 3 ARE BELOW - I WILL TRY TO KEEP IT VAGUE BUT THERE ARE! SPOILERS! HERE!

THE THING ABOUT THIS GAME IS

first of all, I have done nearly a complete 180 on my initial impression of this game. Yesterday I finished San Fransokyo, and was confused as to why I didn’t get automatically dumped back onto the world map, and assumed that it was because some Plot Things were going to happen so the game wanted to let me save (I was VERY RIGHT about THAT). 

Buuuuuuut I really thought there had to be a whole lot more game left to go? I knew that that was the last of the Disney worlds that I knew of that were in this game, and I knew that oddly, at least going by what the game told me with the world logos showing up at the end, that I wouldn’t be going back for a second visit to any of them. But I assumed? That there still had to be a Lot left from there

and to an extent, yes, there was, but goddamn, when that big big Heartless fight, a bigger badder version of the 1000 Heartless battle, that HAD to be the halfway point of the game, right? 

And I think that’s why I came away last night when I finished the game, feeling kind of disappointed. In a very odd way that I couldn’t put my finger on. The game was so much shorter than I was expecting it to be - which, in retrospect, isn’t really all that true - my final playtime on that first file was about 30 hours (granted, that included lots of pausing and staring at the screen in silence and not-silence during many a cutscene (especially one that happens not long after big big Heartless fight (you know the one))), and for comparison, my 100% Jiminy’s Journal file on KH2 is only 35 hours. So it’s not even that it’s a ridiculously short game, although it certainly felt that way and that might be due in a big way to just how much cutscene there is in that game because holy fuck it is A LOT. I am reasonably sure that KH3 is at least 50% cutscene. 

ANYWAY. So the point is, I finished KH3 at around 3am, and cried a whole lot, and then slept. And then I woke up oddly early this morning, and my weird takeaway from the ending was still there - that vague disappointment that I Could Not figure out - but I went ahead and jumped back in because I hadn’t unlocked the secret ending yet, so that’s what I spent my morning doing (AND HOO BOY)

and now, that I’ve been thinking about this game all day, and have had time to let it all sink in, the further I get from that initial takeaway the less disappointed I am. Like, in terms of comparison, I don’t know that anything can beat KH2 - it is essentially a flawless game as far as I’m concerned, so it would be very hard for this to even come close - and I think that’s where that vague disappointment came from, because as much as I tried to convince myself that I had pretty realistic (read: no) expectations for this game, after 13 years it was kind of impossible not to and BOY THIS POST GOT LONGER THAN I THOUGHT AND I’M NOT EVEN TO THE POINT YET

All of that to say, I. Love. This. Game. I have a few issues with it, mostly pacing-related, but overall, it’s a goddamn solid game, and a goddamn solid conclusion to this monster of a saga that we’ve all come to know (sort of) and love (and also today I discovered that there was some Shit I Did Not Know about KH which is WEIRD AS HELL FOR ME but that’s neither here nor there)

So WHY am I typing this goddamn essay of a ramble, why did I feel that my initial opinion of “HEY IT’S GOOD” is worth shouting into this random void (besides well I kinda want to be able to remember my initial impressions word-for-word when I go back and reminisce about this game’s existence)?

IT IS BECAUSE I AM SALTY AS HELL

ABOUT THIS ONE THING

THIS ONE THING

AND THAT THING

IS

Hey.

Square Enix.

Hey. Kingdom Hearts writers? Nomura? Whoever is responsible for these kinds of things? 

What the FUCK is it going to TAKE for you to treat Kairi as more than a GODDAMNED MACGUFFIN

I’m so FRUSTRATED ABOUT THIS

DDD came out in, what, 2012? And I mean even further back than that we got to see her fight with a Keyblade in goddamn 2006 in KH2! We’ve been teased for over 10 years with the possibility that Kairi will actually become one of the fighters, or at the very least, that she’ll at least get to become an ACTUAL CHARACTER rather than just always being the Thing that Sora Has To Save (because I’m not saying! That she has to be able to fight! To be a good character! I’m just so sick! of the way these games treat her!)

Like, I don’t even really have any kind of strong emotional attachment to Kairi. She’s not one of my favorite characters (which is not to say I don’t like her, I definitely do, there are just a lot of characters that I LOVE very much which kind of outshines her). And I can almost forgive that she’s kind of just going to be the damsel in distress at least once a game because that’s just How It Be.

But this fucking game gives her the WORST TREATMENT in any KH game. By fucking far.

So her and Axel/Lea get to have their off-screen training montage, which, is awesome! Hell yeah! You have no idea how FUCKING PUMPED I was when we first got that trailer with those two! The entire time I saw the first cutscene with them, I spent the whole time just excitedly clapping and yelling “BEST FRIENDS”! Granted, I kind of wish that all didn’t take place Entirely off-screen, but I mean I don’t know where it would have fit so it makes sense anyway.

SO WE HAVE THIS SETUP that these two get to be the last of the seven, which, hell yeah! 

AND THEN,

these two prove to be The Most Useless characters in the game.

And I wish I could phrase that better! Because it sounds like I am throwing my ire at the characters, when OH BOY NO

It’s definitely not quite as pronounced with Axel (which, hm, wonder why (”do you have any idea how popular I am”)) but both of them serve essentially no purpose at all - to put it simply and vaguely, they get benched. 

But Kairi gets it Worst of all. THREE SEPARATE TIMES (maybe more? that’s just off the top of my head) an enemy is attacking her, and she just STANDS THERE

she doesn’t even HAVE A KEYBLADE IN HER HAND

and so THREE SEPARATE TIMES a different character jumps in front of her to take the hit/protect her

And I’m so! Befuddled!! By this!!! We were goddamn led to believe that her and Axel had this great training, that like, yeah, they’re still new at this, so they’re gonna screw up, but they’re at least decently competent! At least enough that we feel confident enough to bring them into this Big Ass Battle! 

So WHY, WHY is Kairi the one that has to draw the Cutscene Plot-Convenient Incompetence stick EVERY SINGLE TIME

HEY THERE ARE SLIGHTLY LESS VAGUE SPOILERS BELOW THIS JUST A WARNING

THOUGH HONESTLY I don’t even know if I can call it a fucking spoiler because it’s just so. unsurprising.

So, well, here we are, Kairi gets kidnapped. Again. Wouldn’t be a KH main title if it didn’t happen at least once yeah? That’s, fine. I guess. Whatever, we need to raise the stakes. What pisses me off is HOW it happens! Because it happens in the exact same goddamn way as KH2, where, 

OH NO the villain has grabbed me by the wrist!

The wrist! My weakness zone!

I am completely unable to break free! Of this inescapable grasp! Of my wrist!

Even while I am literally holding a Keyblade in my hand, and also am surrounded by SEVERAL OTHER PEOPLE THAT COULD MAYBE STEP IN AND HELP!

Alas! My wrist! Remember me as I was!

Like. Come on.

KH2, I could kind of write it off, at least a bit, as a limitation of the graphics/animation/whatever. But GODDAMN the animation and EVERYTHING in this game is SO EXPRESSIVE AND IMPRESSIVE and that is in fact one of my favorite things about this game (like DUDE the convo between Vexen and Demyx is pretty much one of my favorite scenes ever) and holy FUCK this post has gotten out of hand

The point of that is that there’s just no excuse for why the Patented Wrist Grab should work again. Especially since it’s leading into something else that happens near the very end that I’m also kind of salty about? But a bit less in that I at least realized on a rewatch Why it happened and it wasn’t the initial reason I thought. My whole thing is, Boy These Villains are Definitely Very Powerful and that Sucks, and if this is just to be a “hey we can render you completely powerless and destroy you at any time” then why does it ALWAYS have to be Kairi that gets shafted. This game did her a terrible terrible disservice and that’s honestly my biggest (and only actual one that I can think of) issue with KH3. 

And I do sound considerably angrier about this than I actually am. Because like, it is a video game, and I know that writing is not going to be perfect or completely match up with what I want it to be, and that’s fine. I just wish I didn’t have to continue being constantly disappointed with how Kairi’s character is treated (re: not a character at all especially the further we get into these plots).

BUT BOY HOWDY WHAT A FUCKING AWESOME GAME

First thoughts on Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia

Keep in mind this is a first impressions “review”-- I’ve currently played through Act 1 and will be mostly discussing mechanics and how it looks. Keep in mind I have also never played Gaiden and went into this game with as little spoilers as possible. When I talk about plot, I’ll keep it as vague as possible-- still, keep in mind, there are possible spoilers under the read more! If you wish to only read about the mechanics of the game, skip the first two paragraphs where I talk about plot and characters.

First thing I’ll get out of the way is the plot so far. Personally I really like it-- so far, it’s honestly reminded me of the older GBA games I played, where the opening cutscene describes information about the world and the beginning is full of characters talking (it took me ~10 minutes to get to actual combat!). Although the information about the world isn’t as in depth as other games-- it doesn’t open like Sacred Stones, with descriptions of the countries and who rules them-- but it makes sense in the context of the game, which I heavily appreciate! Alm has never been outside the village he lives in, so of course he doesn’t know everything about the outside world; the opening cutscene tells you about the lore of the world, such as the Gods, that Alm would know of since he has been told stories as a child. There’s even times where Alm’s lack of knowledge of the outside world comes into play; there are multiple times where other characters have to tell Alm about famous people and places. It feels almost like I’m learning with Alm rather than I know everything about the world and Alm doesn’t. Another plus that the plot gets is that I’m actually intrigued about what happens next while not feeling lost. I know what’s happening-- but there are still things I don’t know of. For example, what is the mark on Alm’s hand? What is Mycan’s true intentions? Why did Zofia get invaded in the first place? Where is Mila? None of these I have answers for, but it’s not frustrating in a “why won’t this game tell me anything” sort of way. It’s been hinting at the answers to these questions without making it obvious, and it really makes me want to continue playing the story just to find out. 

Next up: The Characters. I’ll start out with saying that I love all of the characters in this game so far. They all have interesting personalities that aren’t bland; they all have palpable flaws as well. Alm may be talented with a sword, but he’s still naive. Lukas may be more experienced than everyone else, but he seems like he trusts a little bit too easily. It makes everyone way more believable that way-- even in the first impressions of the characters, you could grasp what their flaws. Plus, the character interactions are really really good. There’s genuinely funny moments, and a lot of the conversations do feel like two teenagers talking back and forth. The interactions don’t feel forced at all.  However, I do have my criticisms. All of the praising I’ve said falls flat when talking about two characters: Faye and Clair. Unfortunately, their personalities (mostly Faye’s) have been reduced to “has a crush on Alm”. Faye is constantly talking about him, her battle quotes are stuff like “For Alm!”/”Alm, did you see that?”, and in support conversations between Faye and Silque, Faye brushes Silque off because she “wants to talk to Alm”. This is less apparent with Clair (as she does have some personality when talking to other characters), but even then she hits on Alm often, and again, she said in a support conversation “At least seeing Alm would brighten my day”. Hell, in one of /Alm’s/ support conversations, Tobin brings it up that Clair is hitting on him. It’s all very off putting and awful in my opinion. It’s really tiring to see them trying to shoehorn in a possible love triangle when it really makes no sense that everyone but one character who is female on his team is into him (and I wouldn’t be surprised if Celica is into him as well). It’s tiring but not really a deal breaker at the moment. 

Now mechanics. This is probably what most people are interested in knowing; that being said, I’ll both describe mechanics and give some tips that I wish I knew starting right off the bat. First off, the way you get from place to place is very different. You get to pick where to go in a location where you’d like to go inside an area (obviously to some extent) and outside a set location it’s similar to the Sacred Stones where you move the character to a specific spot on the map. For example, in the beginning area, you can choose to go to your grandfather’s house, the town square, or by the town gate. There is also a “Free roaming” aspect in dungeons-- it feels a LOT like Legend of Zelda in my opinion. You control Alm and can cut grass, destroy crates, and destroy pots for money and items. Keep in mind though, when in these dungeons there will be enemies. Running into these enemies will cause a short battle-- it will become turn by turn, so don’t worry. If they catch you off guard (i.e. attack you when your back is turned), the enemy gets to move first. If you run straight into them, you move first. If you run into them from behind, you are set closer to them and get first turn; finally, if you slash at them with your sword, they will start missing HP. Also keep in mind in these dungeons, there are items to find, so definitely explore! Watch out for very powerful enemies, though. Sometimes they will surprise you-- I sure as hell got caught off guard when I ran into an enemy much too powerful for me.  When you choose a location, there will be a few options: Examine, talk, and move. Moving obviously takes you to a different location, and talking is to talk to NPCs or playable characters who are there. Talking is very important-- don’t forget to do it! Not only does the NPC’s word’s worldbuild, but you can miss recruiting characters if you don’t end of talking to them. And things will be different after time, so don’t forget to retread and talk to people again! What’s really cool about this game is that pretty much every line of dialogue is voice acted. I’ve run into one NPC who didn’t have a voice, and I believe it was because he didn’t have anything important to say. The only things that aren’t voice acted so far are examining text and the text on items (obviously) and at Mila’s shrine. The voice acting is also VERY GOOD. I was genuinely surprised at it, especially since even the NPCs have good voice acting!!  Examining is also very very important though, definitely definitely definitely don’t forget to look around. Not only can you get food items this way-- that will heal Fatigue (which I’ll talk about later), regain HP, and can be used as offerings to Mila-- but you can also gain weapons! And weapons are very very important-- you want to get the best you can, since there’s no weapon durability you don’t need to worry about losing them. Not to mention new weapons unlock new skills.

On that note, combat is generally the same as normal Fire Emblem games (turn by turn), but there are a few new things to keep in mind. There is no weapon triangle in this game; don’t forget that (I do it all the time). Probably most importantly, magic takes HP. It’s usually not a lot-- the beginning spells “Fire” and “Recover” cost 1 HP-- but as you get better spells, they cost more. “Thunder” costs 2 HP. By far the most damage that’s been done to a magic character is my Cleric Silque; once she unlocked her “Warp” ability, it took a bit of health to use it. However Clerics automatically come with a spell that, when it hits, they regain HP, so this balances out. Keep in mind that magic is now in two separate categories: black magic and white magic. White magic is anything that heals or is used to “support” (such as warp), while black magic is anything that damages. What’s also a bit of a change is that archers can hit you from close distances-- similar to Takumi’s close counter in Fire Emblem Heroes. However, the archer’s accuracy is lowered in one on one combat, so keep that in mind. Archers can also hit you from 3-5 squares away, so keep that in mind too! As I mentioned before, there are unlockable abilities. As a character progresses and fights more often, they can unlock “acts” that will give them the edge in combat. “Warp” is just one of them, but there are things like “Swap”, “Wrathful Strike”, “Hit and Run”... keep in mind though, these skills also take HP. Again, it’s usually not too much, but it is something to keep in mind while fighting very powerful enemies. These abilities can change-- some are class based, some are weapon based, some are item based, so keep that in mind when distributing items.  Another thing about combat is “Mila’s Turnwheel”. This is basically a mechanic where you can turn back time if you’ve made a mistake-- it can only turn back a certain number of turns, and can only be used a certain amount of times in battle. It’s for if you accidentally moved a character somewhere bad, or maybe a character got killed, you can reset the turn and not have to restart the entire level. I find it useful, and it definitely isn’t making anything too easy, so I wouldn’t worry too much about this. If anything, I’ve been using it mostly for “oops I healed the wrong character”/”Oops I attacked the wrong character”. Also! Just a tip, but when it comes to promoting characters, I would wait for them to be about level 8-10. You can change a villager’s class at level 3, but I would definitely recommend waiting for a bit to get the stat increases. Anything past level 10 I wouldn’t bother; in this game there isn’t really an incentive to go up to level 20 (since it takes a LOT-- once you hit higher levels, the EXP gains are much lower), so I wouldn’t plan to do so. Of course, you can promote as soon as possible without too much problem, I just prefer having the higher stats.  So, I mentioned Fatigue earlier. Basically what Fatigue is is a mechanic where characters get tired turning combat, and their stats suffer from it. It’s not too big of a deal, but if you’re constantly using one character, they will start to suffer. Your whole parties fatigue can be fixed by offering food at a Mila’s Shrine (also where you go to promote your units) and fatigue on a character basis can be fixed by eating food in combat, so it hasn’t negatively effected me yet. Offering food to Mila’s shrine will also usually give you a small tip for the next battle-- such as “you will need archers and mages in the next battle”, and such similar. It sort of reminds me of how in Fire Emblem 7 you can use a psychic to vaguely tell you who to bring into battle and what the battle will be like. These little tips aren’t too important, but keep in mind: support conversations happen in battle like in older titles (the game will tell you when you can have one), and you can grind for EXP in the dungeons with free roaming. I would definitely recommend grinding for EXP. Better to be overleveled than underleveled!

Now! To one of my favourite parts of this game so far-- the way it looks! Not only is the character design very nice (save for... the boob plate armour, @IntSys cut that out), but the environments, sprites, combat animations and cut scenes all look AMAZING. The cut scenes straight up look like they’re from an anime; the style and animation is smooth and visually appealing. How nice it looked genuinely took me by complete surprise. I wasn’t expecting such work to be put into the cut scenes.  The sprites and environments honestly are what I wanted Awakening/Fates to look like. I’ve mentioned to friends before that I thought the in combat sprites looked a bit unpolished in both those games as they had a lot of pixelation around them, but Echoes fixes that minor issue I had. The out of combat sprites are very very cute-- they remind me of the gameboy titles again, with the way they’re designed. And of course, the style in which all the characters are drawn is very nice and fits well within the game. I could gush about the art for a long while, but I’ll keep it to that so I don’t end up rambling too much. What probably makes me the most happy is the in combat animations. I love seeing a character I just moved 3 spaces to attack open their attack by rushing at the enemy, and I love seeing how the characters use their weapons. It isn’t the same every time-- sometimes Alm will slash, sometimes he will jab, etc.-- so it gives me a lot of incentive to not skip the battle animations. Even though the combat is turn by turn, it still flows naturally. Plus the way they use their weapons isn’t unnatural or inaccurate looking. Even the bowmen seem to have some difficulty pulling back their bow-- which makes sense, as it takes a lot of strength to do so! Plus, dodging (Depending on the character) looks great and flows really really well. For example, Grey will dodge an attack by jumping, and his next attack will be him slashing the sword downwards while in the air. I was really surprised to see how much work went into that! (But I’m also a huge nerd when it comes to battles).  That’s all I can think of to mention right now, but if you have questions feel free to ask them! I will answer them to the best of my ability!