#futuresconnected

Back again for your (not) regularly scheduled blog post about video games!

Over the last 10 days I played through the entirety of the new FF7 Remake project game, clocking in at a blistering 75 hours, so be aware that my thoughts here will be influenced by the fact that I played this game like it was a full time job for the last week and change.

I'll be talking about my thoughts here generally, with some discussion of early and mid-game characterization and plot elements, but I'll also be talking about the ending towards the end under a readmore, if you don't want to know the specifics of that.

Overall, my thoughts on the game are that I had a mostly pretty good time for about 70 out of my 75 hours, and the ending left me feeling quite a bit deflated at the very end, but let's talk about the fun stuff first.

To begin with, this is about one of the most "hang out with your friends, these characters" games I've ever played, which is saying something as someone that has played a LOT of Persona games in the last few years. I really liked that aspect of this game! It's kind of in its nature as the middle game in a planned trilogy that takes 20 hours of mid-game and blows it up to 80+ hours of Stuff To Do. I think one of the major strengths of the game is giving you a lot of fun interactions between Cloud and the gang, I came away from this game with a real love for everyone in the party (except Red XIII and Cait Sith, sorry you guys didn't have the juice). Every chance I got to do a side quest with Barrett, Yuffie, Tifa, or Aerith was a good one, and all of the interactions that the party has during the course of the regular plot were very fun as well.

Two big highlights of the characterization for me were how much time and energy this game puts into Tifa and Aerith's relationship with each other. These two have such a clear affection for each other and a mutual love of poking at Cloud every chance they get, it really feels like there's just as much emotional connection between the two of them as there is between each of them and Cloud himself. In my opinion, though FF7 has always been a classic in the "fighting over who's best girl" genre, I left this game thinking that they should all just kiss each other already and get on with their lives. The second big highlight for me characterization wise is Yuffie. Having only played some of the OG FF7, I had no real connection to her character and was really only introduced to her through stuff like Advent Children and Intergrade. I came out of this game really liking her, I felt at the beginning that her silly-girl schtick would get tiring but it really didn't for me and watching her bounce off of Cloud and the others was really entertaining. Plus, her Gold Saucer date later on was incredible, both in getting a peek into her deeper thoughts and also for watching Cloud be a total goober with her, which was just very sweet.

So lets talk some gameplay. For many people, the fact that this game has Open World Video Game design, complete with things to check off on your map and Assassin's Creed towers, is a major turn off, but for me I think that a lot of that stuff was mostly fun and at worst easily skippable. Plus, the fact that I was having a blast with the combat gameplay in this one compared to FF7 Remake made me a lot more motivated to go do combat challenges and world bosses and things of that nature. I felt like there were lots of ways to make your characters specialized in neat ways, and with a couple of exceptions (sorry Red and Cait, again) I really enjoyed the gameplay flow of each character, especially getting Aerith a perfect setup to let her blast multiple 9999 damage Firaga's back to back, that's just good gaming right there. I also generally enjoyed how much of a minigame collection Rebirth is, running into some new bespoke game every hour or so was pretty fun, and I think that the hit-rate on the minigames being fun was pretty high. Thankfully i'm not a masochist who wants to go for the platinum trophy, that would probably change my mind real quick. Overall though, I thought playing this game was a real blast, with a few bosses and encounters that I felt were more annoying than needed.

One quick shoutout before we talk about the ending goes to the music, the sound team for this game put their whole fucking ass into the music in this game, all the rearrangements of original songs were great to listen to, and the fact that so many sidequests, characters, and one off areas had their own bespoke tracks was really incredible. Top Prize goes to Salmon's Theme though:

so with all that said, let's talk the ending: I didn't really like it!

Hi folks! Been a bit since I've posted, been a bit of a whirlwind in my life, but I finished P3R last night and I've been thinking about it pretty much non stop for a few weeks so I want to put some words to paper about it. I mostly want to get my own analysis of the game and its ending out there, none of this will likely be groundbreaking but it is how I feel.

Obviously, spoilers for the whole thing.

To me, Persona 3 is a game that is all about loss and the inevitability of death. The game is not very subtle about this, from the imagery in the opening movies of all the versions of the games, lyrics in the music throughout, and the repeated themes in much of the main plot dialogue in the game. How many times does Pharos/Ryoji tell the player that death comes for us all and that there can be no avoiding it. Even if, for a time you think you've beaten or pushed it back, one thing awaits all people: the end.

Morning folks! Time for another weekly roundup of the games I've been playing recently.

Really, there's two big ones to talk about here, the sci-fi looter shooter Warframe and the new remake of Persona 3.

Last week, a few of my friends expressed interest in trying out Warframe, and with our groups shared history of Destiny 2 playing, its unsurprising that many of us enjoy a good grindy loot game, so its been quite the topic of conversation and daily play for a good four or five of us. It's been fun for me to get back to it, I have a few good hundred hours in the game split across playstation and PC, over a period of five or six years all told. Since i can now merge my account I found myself with a good amount of resources, and I've been burning my way through all the recently released content while helping my friends get settled in as well, which is always just about my favorite thing to do in video games, so I've been having a blast! Not sure how long the wind will carry us on this game, there's quite a few games coming on the horizon that will take up my time, but while I'm here im having a good time.

The other big one is that Persona 3 reload came out a few days ago, and I got to start my streamed playthrough for a friend of mine. I've been looking forward to this because this will be the hat trick of the main persona games that I have streamed for her, which has been a really enjoyable journey, and Persona 3 also happens to be my favorite of the series. I've played through the other 2 versions in the last two years or so, and the plot, characters, themes, and presentation has been a huge hit for me. So far I'm really liking the remake! At first I wasn't quite sold, the new arrangements on songs I'd liked previously aren't quite as good as previous ones, and there was some characterization changes with Yukari that change how her relationships with the party feel early on, but the more time that I spend with the game the more I do really like it. The voice acting in particular is killing it, all the new voices for the old characters really nail how the original actors took it, and all the new voicework for previously unvoiced characters has been stellar all around, especially Yuko and Chihiro. The updates to the battle system and the dungeon grind make the actual gameplay a lot better as well, which was truly the weak point of the game previously. On the whole I'm just psyched to be able to play this game again with some new sauce, and the new sauce is delicious.

Another Sunday, another blog about what I've been playing recently!

Here in the weeks leading up to the RPG-pocalypse that is the period from Feb 2nd-???, before my life is consumed by Persona 3 Reload, FF7 Rebirth, Dragons Dogma 2, and Granblue Fantasy Relink, I've found myself completely in the rabbit hole of Diablo-style ARPGs, a favorite genre of mine that I haven't taken a deep dive into in many years.

I talked some last time about Path of Exile, which at this point I think I'm done playing for the season, but had a real blast with. I dumped like 100 hours in that game over a couple of weeks, made a build stronger and more expensive than anything I had made previously, and got to see a lot of cool stuff in that game that I've never encountered before. I thought for a bit that that would be the end of it, but another one of my friends in an effort to spend his time while sick has gotten really into Last Epoch, another game in this genre which has been in Early Access for a while but will be releasing into a full version in a few weeks. I'd heard about the game over the years as it was in EA, but hadnt really been drawn to it, or knew much about it. However, now I've had a good taste, and wow!! This game really has the sauce to stand and be counted amongst the really good games of this genre so far.

The big things for me with this game is that it has a lot of the depth of skill customization that you find in something like Grim Dawn or Diablo 3, without the bloat and brain-genius complexity of Path of Exile. Being able to load up my characters passive trees and skill trees and see that I have a lot of options that would often meaningfully change the role of that skill in my kit, while still being easy enough to understand (i.e searching for "fire damage" and taking anything that makes my fire damage better) that I've cruised through the main game fairly easily just sightreading and not following any guides. So the gameplay is great, and the endgame system of the Monoliths takes good bits of PoE's map system and the rifts of Diablo 3 to make something that is complex enough to tickle the brain while still being easy enough to just load up and blast guys. Really really impressed with the game so far! Plus it doesnt hurt that you can actually have a really fun Necromancer build in this game, something that games like Diablo 4 are just completely missing. Very excited to see how the game develops!

I really do want to get back to my Like a Dragon Quest soon, but that might be for the month of February since I will be streaming Persona to a friend of mine, I'll need something else to take up my own personal time.

FGC Corner

Been a minute since I updated the FGC corner, here's the latest!

As much as I've loved playing Narmaya in Granblue Rising, I've come up against the fact that she really is a good deal more complex to play than any character I've played before, and while I do love the playstyle and combos that she offers, I think that for now I'm going back to my first love, Siegfried, a guy with a ton of armor and a big sword he swings around (AKA the most me-coded character that has existed in a fighting game). I've been having a great time playing him, and in fact having some more success with him as well. I also watched a lot of the coverage for Frosty Faustings this weekend, which is a large anime fighter tournament that happens in Chicago every year. Watching that just made me so so excited to go to Combo Breaker in May, I think that me and a friend of mine might be the kind of people who make or print some signs to hold up to the stream cameras for silly good times, but also just the idea of being in that space and taking in all the emotions and hype of the crowd is so exciting, I dont think I've really done something like this before! So please look forward to all the pictures, videos, and stories I will have from that event, but in the meantime I gotta get my grind on.

Hello gamers, I'm back with another weekly wrap up! Busy couple weeks for me, messing around with a few different things.

The big one is that Like A Dragon Quest continues apace. This is how im gonna refer to my plans to play through the Yakuza series, since that is how the series is named in Japan and going forward outside Japan as well, and I think its a good pun on the title and Dragon Quest, the games that the recent RPG forays of the series are taking direct inspiration from.

To that end, this week I played through pretty much all of Yakuza 3. This game sees Kiryu leaving Kamurocho behind to start and run an orphanage in Okinawa where he hopes to live a peaceful life away from trouble. As you may expect, this does not go well. He gets a good two years of being a dad to Haruka and the others before some mess with the Tojo clan forces him back into action. Overall I really liked the game, I think that the story is really good, a ton of great characters to bounce around and some good side stories, plus the combat was pretty enjoyable for being the oldest one of these games that I am going to play. I think where the game really shines is in the surprisingly large amount of time the game spends on Kiryu just doing dad stuff: helping make dinner, going shopping, helping the orphans settle disputes and doing a lot of parenting along the way. It's bittersweet to see all of this in the game however, knowing that the series continues for long after this and Kiryu doesn't quite get the peace he deserves. Definitely one of the better games in this series that I've played.

I also played through Yakuza 4 in the time since my last blog post, and my thoughts on that one are a bit less positive. This game sees the player take control of four different characters (including Kiryu) over the course of the game, and while I generally like all the characters well enough and enjoyed how they played, I felt like giving each character a whole bunch of ways to spend time and upgrade their abilities was a bit annoying once I realized I was only going to be playing as them for 6 or so hours a piece. I also didn't care as much for the overarching plot in this one, it was nice to see how the ripples of the previous games' events impacted other people, but I felt that over time the conspiracy plot and who was backstabbing who got more silly than anything else, especially coming off the heels of the third game, which had a stronger emotional core and more interesting plot twists overall. Probably the worst one of these that I've yet played, but it was only about 30 hours and was still prettty decent.

I dabbled a little with Escape from Tarkov, a big new patch for the shooter came out recently and I wanted to dip my toe in and see how I felt. The game is very fun, but is definitely the kind of game you would want to play seriously for a few weeks, and right now I've got other things distracting my attention, mainly a rekindled love affair with Path of Exile.

Path of Exile is, simply put, a game for freaks. And I have been a freak for over 1000 hours in that game easily. But its not often you get to witness someone else turn into that kind of freak as well! A few weeks ago my friend Wes told me that he had been tasked by another friend (due to them winning a fantasy football league) that he had to play through at least act 5 of PoE (halfway through the base game, maybe a 10th of the whole experience) and I took it upon myself to be his guide through the crazy experience that is path of exile.

If you're not familiar, this is a game in the genre of Diablo Style Action RPGs, and over the ten years that I have been playing PoE it has developed (devolved?) into a game where your player characters zip across the screen at incredible speeds mowing down hundreds of monsters and producing enough calculations and particle effects to humble even the strongest of computers. Again, this is a game for freaks. From the start, I taught Wes how to play the game like I play it, with an eye towards the end and no time to think too hard about the first half of the game. Hour by hour, I taught him about gem links, movement skills, third-party build planning tools, currency, trading, the whole 9 yards. And the most gratifying experience has been hearing him slowly turn into a true-blooded PoE sicko, cackling as he jumps around the screen blowing up everything in his path. Being on this journey with him all the way to the endgame maps has been so much fun, and honestly reminded me of my own love for the game. I am so excited to be able to play more of this game in the future, I've got the bug for it again.

Happy new year everybody! Hope you all enjoyed your Holiday Week!

I had the week off from work, and set a goal for myself to beat Yakuza Kiwami 2. It took me most of the week, even though my final playtime only came in around 32 hours, it somehow felt much longer. Big thoughts up top is that that game is an absolute blast, easily my fave of the series that I've played so far, and I think it does a lot of interesting things with its position as "remake sequel to a remake sequel to a prequel". I want to dig into that a little bit more, so bear with me here.

Now that I've played all three, its interesting to look at how Yakuza 0, Kiwami, and Kiwami 2 essentially form a trilogy that let RGG Studios look back at the story and characters that they built over the years and give the whole thing a new foundation. For me, I think that the clearest way that they accomplish this is with Majima. Goro Majima is a side character and recurring boss from the first couple of games in the series that grew a solid fanbase over time because who doesn't love a fucked up Joker man (I know I do), becoming popular enough to warrant RGG making him one of the protagonists and playable characters in 0. Here the players get a chance to meet Majima before he goes completely Joker-mode and get a better understanding of what kind of person he is beyond his later obsession with Kiryu and general mob boss-ness. His relationship with Makoto, a woman that the whole plot of 0 essentially hinges on, was something that I felt was really compelling, and his internal conflict between getting back into the Yakuza (killing Makoto) and helping this woman escape her situation and find a good life was something that had me holding my breath the whole time.

I bring this aspect up specifically, because the fact that RGG took the prequel story they made and built a ton of new connections to that into their remade first and second game stories is something pretty unique in the world of video games. Kiwami 2 is full of payoffs for this, from the very fun reprise of the cabaret club management game in Sotenbori and appearances from old Majima substory characters, to my personal favorite scene in the game where Majima reconnects with Makoto and both of them are able to get some closure on the mess they went through 20 years prior. These games usually don't get me too bad, but I was crying that whole time!

All that being said, this game was also intensely silly in ways that I loved, so here's a collection of good screenshots from times where Kiryu voice acted in a Yaoi game, runs into an impostor, and struggles to put together coherent sentences when various hot girls are on screen:

That's the Yakuza Update, I have also installed Yakuza 3 and played a couple hours of that, seeing Kiryu in full tropical dad mode is lovely, though I know that sadly will not last. Another exciting thing that happened this week is that I got the opportunity to help a friend of mine learn how to play Path of Exile!

For those who don't know, Path of Exile is a Diablo-style isometric loot-based RPG that was made for absolute freaks when it comes to character progression, player economy simulation, and pure visual clutter and chaos. It's by all accounts an insane game that you need to be a little insane to enjoy. I also have nearly 1000 hours of game time over the ten years its been out. When my friend Wes told me that he was going to play through at least the first five acts due to some end-of-year fantasy draft obligations, I offered my services as a guide and with a couple hours of instructive gameplay and conversation we managed to get his character build up and running, much to his delight. PoE is a game that is incredible easy to bounce off of if you don't know how the game is "supposed" to be played, or how to make a character that works, but I think at this point I've got him on the hook for at least a full Act 1-10 playthrough, and maybe a touch beyond that. I've never had the chance to play this game with a friend before, its been a lot of fun so far! And seeing someone experience the pure dopamine joys of filling the screen with bullshit that kills hordes of monster while zipping around at high speed has been a true joy.

What's up gamers, this week flew by and now its time for the Sunday roundup!

Over the week I finished Yakuza Kiwami, and moved on to the start of Kiwami 2, which remakes the second game in the series in the style of the sixth game, marking a big shift in visual quality and gameplay style. Once I realized how close I was to finishing Kiwami, I wanted to go ahead and blaze through the end without worrying too much about the side content (sorry Pocket Circuit) to keep my momentum up through the series before the JRPG explosion that's going to happen from late Jan-March of next year. Overall I had a good time with Kiwami, the main story is all classic crime movie drama throughout, and I really enjoyed seeing Kiryu and Haruka meeting each other for the first time and seeing Kiryu truly being "not the step-dad, but the dad who stepped up".

I was getting a bit tired of the gameplay by the end, especially how it seemed to me that the best way to approach any one-on-one fight was just to sit in Rush style and dodge around people endlessly till you could hit them, so with the bit of Kiwami 2 that I played this week I was very glad to see that that game was going to play very differently from the first. The more visceral style of the combat, the more free-flowing combo routes, and higher focus on equipment are all pretty interesting so far, though we'll see how I feel once I run into a few more bosses. I also really love the character progression system of Kiwami 2 so far, its really tickling the rpg gremlin part of my brain that loves to build up different colored skill trees. I enjoy how the different exp types encourage you to go do a bunch of different activities in the game, and using the completion list to give you big chunks of related exp vs. a currency to buy bonuses like it was in 0/Kiwami 1. I haven't played too much of this game, but since I've got the week off for Christmas and New Years, I'm going to try and really sink my teeth in over the next 10 days or so.

Something else I've been playing a lot of recently that didn't make the cut for the last recap is Arknights, a gacha-based Tower Defense game that I've been playing on my phone, tablet, and PC. One of my good friends has played this game for a while and always posts the cool and silly character designs from that game, and I had been looking for something else fun to do on my phone during those boring days where I'm working in the office, so Arknights it was. I have a somewhat latent love for tower defense games that doesnt get a chance to shine too often, and this game has been reminding me a lot of what I like about the genre. So much of this game is a kind of puzzle game: can the roster of characters I have access to do what the level is asking of me? How could I better position my units to hold enemies in a certain location? etc. etc.

I am also, unfortunately, a chores enjoyer when it comes to video games which means that a long-term character progression system like you see in a lot of games of this type is actually pretty appealing to me. I love to level up my little guys and see them get new skills,abilities, outfits, and so on, its fun!

Last but not least though, the thing that has really captured my attention this week is Granblue Fantasy Versus: Rising, which I talked some about last week but has only gotten more into my brain this week. I think this game is really fun! I've had a blast so far learning how to play the game, the combo routes that this game has for most characters feel extremely "cool" to do, and are easier to pull of than they might seem, which allows someone who is *ok* at fighting games like me to feel a good sense of accomplishment from pulling them off. I think that the way the game incentivizes you to use the "Skill" button to shortcut your special moves is also really great, it's made me have to develop new muscle memory but also means that doing combos and pressure in this game just feels a lot different from other games I've played, and how it feels in this one is just good.

I've even been playing a new character! Which is wild considering how they put Siegfried, the man with big armor and a bigger sword (AKA the most me-coded character ive seen in a fighting game yet) in the game, and yet I've been drawn to someone else completely:

This week I've been learning how to play Narmaya, who feels like someone who really likes Vergil from Devil May Cry designed her. This is for sure one of the hardest FG characters I've ever tried to play, but I'm really feeling the burn of figuring it out. Her whole thing is swapping between two stances with different special moves and normal attacks, which makes her very busy to play but allows for some absolutely sick maneuvers in the corner. Truly the only thing I dont like about her is that she's an anime-big-sister type, and all of the Draph in this game have the fattest tits imaginable, but I'm willing to put up with a little waifu-ness because she's just so cool and so much fun to play!

I will certainly be playing more of her, so please look forward to updates in future FGC Corner posts.

That's really all for this week, glad to be moving through the Yakuza series some more, glad to be having such a blast with Granblue, and looking forward to more of both during the Holidays!

Happy Sunday everyone, and welcome to my inaugural journal entry in this project! Lets get into it.

First up! Over the last few weeks I have been playing through Yakuza Kiwami, the 2016 remake of 2005's Yakuza by Ryu Ga Gotoku Studios. I am still very much new to this franchise, but by the nature of being in and around many internet spaces that talk about Japanese games, I have come to know Kazama Kiryu (the main character of most of these games) as if he were a friend of my own.

I played the 7th game in the series, Like A Dragon, back when it came out in 2020, having played at that point half of Yakuza 0 in 2018 and enjoying my time with it even if I fell off and only just recently went back to it. I loved my time with Like a Dragon, and felt that despite a lot of the growing pains of that franchise moving from action-based to turn-based gameplay, RGG really had something on their hands with their new protagonist and game structure. However, I sure was missing a LOT of context, half-remembering playthroughs of Yakuza 4 watched on Youtube and the half-explained recaps of the other games that game provided. With that, I am endeavoring to make my way through this series before I play the upcoming Infinite Wealth. I have absolutely no aspirations to do it all before that game comes out, I think trying to shove six relatively similar games into a few months would be a fools errand, but I am setting a goal for myself to try and get through them all in the next year.

So after finally finishing my 5-year (on and off) playthrough of Yakuza 0 recently, I kept the momentum up and immediately booted up Kiwami. Without knowing much of what has been changed or updated from its original incarnation, my main thoughts at this point are that I am enjoying the combat in the game more than I expected, but I find that this game has a bit less of the heart of 0, at least as far as the substories are concerned. I feel that there were more memorable side characters and side plots in that game than in this one, while the main plot is still full of that same deeply dramatic goodness that I found in 0 and Like A Dragon.

However there are still some heavy hitters to be found in the side cast! The one that has been sticking in my mind strongly is the story of Rina, one of the cabaret club girls that Kiryu can "date" in this game. Rina comes out the gate swinging by letting Kiryu know that the main reason she took the job of cabaret hostess is because she's gay and gets to spend all her time surrounded by cute girls, while Kiryu (friend to all) is a bit confused but ultimately enjoys helping her sort out the joys and frustrations that she experiences as she tries her best to put herself out there and date some ladies.

Her story really gets to the heart of what I have enjoyed about these games so much, and what makes Kiryu such a fun character to play. For as much time as he spends in the criminal underworld avoiding death at every turn, he's just as happy to make a new connection and do his best to help them get (or keep) their life on track as best he can. (Its also very funny that despite the above screenshot, you do get a gravure video of her as a reward at the end anyway, video games!)

My main other thoughts on this game are that I'm enjoying finding Majima around the city and beating him up, and the character progression feels pretty good once you get the ball rolling on new Heat Moves, more health and meter, and all that good stuff. I think I still feel that the combat in these games is distinctly OK, especially when I've played plenty of other combat-based RPGs that felt much tighter, more intuitive, and satisfying to pull off. However, seeing Kiryu absolutely beat the shit out of someone in a new way when you get a new Heat Move is always going to be fun, that ain't going away.

I'm a bit over halfway done with the main plot of the game, sitting in chapter 8 of 12 or so, and I'm certainly not going to try and go for full completion, but I plan to hit up the Pocket Circuit and do more of those quests, as well as getting more of the Dragon Style moves back from Majima's old mentor in West Park, so please look forward to my continuing adventures in this game.

FGC Corner!

I'll be wrapping up each week with a brief look at how things are going in my journey to be a competent player of Fighting games.

As we speak I am a Plat 3 Cammy in Street Fighter 6, the result of months of hard work and daily play, and I can see the path ahead of me to keep up that grind. The goal is to get to Diamond and eventually Master Ranks, and attend my first National Major at Combo Breaker 2024.

But for now there's a new guy on the scene, and his name is Siegfried.

This guy has everything I want, which is mostly heavy armor and a big-ass sword to swing around! I've been greatly enjoying Granblue Fantasy Versus Rising, and can already feel that this is gonna be a game i'm gonna devote some serious time to. I'm gonna start by learning Siegfried here, and also want to spend some time learning Cagliostro and Narmaya, two other characters that are in new archetypes for me. It's a real saucy game, and I can't wait to see how it develops!