rambles of a manga/game enthusiast

And honestly, this truly is a Touhou puzzle game. It's fun, has great art, has great music, but perhaps most damningly of all, it's hard. So, so, hard.

To give a brief rundown of the game, it's a pretty straightforward concept. Each stage has an end goal and an optional puzzle piece to collect. There are traps/hazards and resources on each stage, with the main gimmick since you're Sekibanki that you can use your head as a bouncy spring. You get a limited number of heads though and you can either choose to use your head as a spring or shoot it as a projectile to destroy blocks/collect/various other things. The puzzle part of the game comes from figuring out how to use your limited resources to get to the end, but because I'm me I wanted to collect the optional item on every stage so that was a big part of it too.

The platformer aspect of the game comes from how difficult it is to platform! There are a lot of traps/hazards and while there's nothing like dodging danmaku and the precision platforming isn't even necessarily overly difficult (with some minor exceptions), it CAN get very challenging.

Now, when you combine these two parts together, you get a very challenging game of figuring out your routing which already is hard, then executing the plan without messing up. The beginning levels aren't too bad but the later levels get very complex and it hurt my brain. A lot.

Of course that wouldn't be enough though. There's also a SPEEDRUNNING aspect of the game where you try to get to the end as fast as possible. I will confess. I gave up. I get exactly one B medal on the very first stage of the game (after retrying multiple times) and decided that I'd just focus on the puzzle aspect. I do think that once you know the routing that you need to do it's probably not thaaaat bad, but it already took me a lot of effort to figure out the routing and to do it flawlessly! Asking me to do it again but faster is a lot!

That's all to say though that this is a very satisfying game to figure out. Getting some of the puzzle pieces felt very rewarding even if I'm pretty sure on some stages I did not get them the intended way. The story's cute, the characters are of course fun and endearing, and I like how each world has a new mechanic added. Each world also isn't very long, and each stage is quite short too.

If there was one complaint I'd have, it's that some puzzle pieces were a little annoyingly hidden. I tried to plan my route from the start of the stage but some puzzle pieces were hidden where you couldn't see them so you'd have to trial and error a bit to actually find them. Also some stages I think were brutally punishing, even if each stage was at max like 5 minutes, one mistake near the end could mean you'd have to restart the entire thing. Thankfully they're not very long stages but yeah, it could get rough.

Again though, not an easy game. At the end of the game they show you a combined total of all the time through each level and I think my combined total was… somewhere between 2-3 hours? But my actual total playtime is closer to 12. Even accounting for a generous 2 afk hours, that's like 7+ hours of failing/retrying.

Now funnily enough, this same person had thought that I had read Mistborn. I have not. This is in fact my first Sanderson novel, and it's funny because I've heard a lot about Sanderson in varying fashions. I've heard great things about him, but I'll always remember what one friend said about him and that he's the "McDonalds of grand fantasy".

Having finished the first arc, in some ways I actually get where they're coming from. But before I continue I just want to say that I DID like the series, otherwise there's no way I would've made my way through practically 6000+ pages of it.

I guess to give some background on where I'm coming from, I was a big Lord of the Rings fan when I was younger, I've read Game of Thrones (well, books 1-5, haven't read the side stuff), read the Kingkiller chronicle (book three anytime now right), and various other grand fantasy books throughout the years (another series that I'm reading on and off is Discworld). A lot of this was in the past though, and what I will say after reading Stormlight Archive is that I realized that… Grand fantasy may not be for me. Or well, some aspects of it to be specific.

Specifically in the way that I realized what I really like about stories and writing is generally the themes and the way the characters evolve throughout the book. So a lot of the time when a series gets very deep into grand setup and politicking and setting up alliances and factions I find myself not that interested. This is not saying that it's not done well or anything, and I still enjoy it to a degree, it's just not the thing that I enjoy the most. The grand set ups, the large expansive lores, the huge world, I acknowledge that it's interesting and I know that people like it, it's just not generally for me.

It's funny because I almost initially wrote that I didn't like world building, but that's not exactly true. I don't know the best way to describe it, but I almost like it when there's attention paid to details that would otherwise not be thought about. For example, and you can call me cringe for bringing up manga into a conversation about books, Shinozaki-kun no Mente Jijou brings up a lot of interesting ideas about their world of magicians that I really like. There's also a manga called Ryuu to Yuusha to Haitatsunin that is written by a historian nerd and it really shows in the world (town?) building of his setting. Maybe it's that I like town building? I don't know honestly, there's just something fun to me about the whimsical nature of exploring the idea of how to calculate taxes or how certain laws or precedents exist for certain things you wouldn't normally think of

Anyways, I'm digressing. Back to the topic on hand.

This is all to say (as usual spoiler warning) a lot of the talk of the greater cosmere and the other worlds, I actually didn't care that much for them. I was much more invested in the main character's journeys that when they would make mentions or explaining about the fate of the cosmere, I just wasn't that invested. Some of the historical world building scenes I wasn't as invested in either. That's not to say it's bad of course! I think the grand scale is cool and absolutely get why people would like it.

Now what I did enjoy and why I kept reading is that I really liked the character's in the series… mostly. I think Sanderson does a really good job of having good character voices despite balancing a bunch of different perspectives. I initially had middling opinions on a lot of the characters, including the main ones like Kaladin, but I did end up growing to like them.

But I have to comment, I think I can understand where my friend was coming from. While I think McDonalds is a very harsh term, in a lot of ways, I think Sanderson is very… solid. Not exceptional or mind blowing, but very solid and foundationally good. I wouldn't call his characters generic necessarily, yet its hard for me to say that anything that happened to them was mindblowing or like a huge "woah" factor for me. They're great though and I still found myself really liking the payoffs!

And I think that's where I had my biggest overall complaint with the series. I obviously cannot speak to Sanderson's other works, but each book felt very almost formulaic with how I felt when reading it. There would be a significant portion of each book where I'm okay, until it finally feels like everything comes to a head and wham! I'm like yeah, this is why I'm reading these books! I wouldn't normally consider this a problem as every book has a pace and I don't mind slower reads, but when it's done for each book where each book is over a 1000 pages it can get a little grating at times.

Where this feels noticeable for me is the way things are paced and the perspectives are spread out. This is another part for where I'm just okay on in grand fantasy. I personally don't really like the constant jumping around between perspectives. I like having a more concentrated focus that keeps the work scoped, as opposed to having this much larger scoped. Again, personal preference.

But it was practically frustrating how frequent it felt like you'd read the story in ABCDEABCDEABCDE fashion. You'd get inches of progress in each section, and the worst offender to me was when during some of these sections it felt like we were replaying character arcs or retreading previously tread over information. There was a very big tendency to do "here's what happened" then later "okay now you can see it happen" and while yes, I think there's value in seeing details, the constant repetition of it and the way it broke up the flow of the story was bothersome for me. One particular painpoint of this for me was Venli's past in book four, where it felt like we were constantly in very serious situations while the tower was occupied then we'd be reading a chapter about the human and listeners meeting again.

Also one particular character's major arc that frustrated me was Shallan's. It felt like it took forever and there was constant moments of Shallan going "I'm scared of my past" and dancing around the topic. I wouldn't have minded it as much if again, it didn't feel like we jumped back and forth and then jumped back to Shallan who would talk again about her mysterious past that she didn't want to remember and then we'd maybe get a snippet of it or jump away only to jump back later.

So I think overall the series could've been edited down to be at least better paced in some aspects. There were some repetitive character arcs that while I kinda "get", it still could feel drab to read through.

Thankfully, the payoffs are generally worth it. I especially found the payoffs in books three to five extremely good, wrapping up major parts of a character's arcs felt extremely satisfying. Each Ideal sworn was a very powerful moment and I enjoyed those a lot. If I had to say my favourite moments… I think Kaladin swearing the fourth ideal where he accepts there are those he cannot protect was very good, and I really liked Dalinar swearing the third Ideal where he accepts responsibility for his actions. His quote that the most important step is not the first, but the next, is really good too. Might be one of my favourite scenes in the series honestly.

As a whole too, I think the character arcs that each character goes through is really well done. I really liked how Kaladin, Dalinar, and Shallan have their own sort of way of coping with the past. Shallan chooses to tell lies to herself. Kaladin gets consumed by it. Dalinar erases his mistakes. And each of them coming to terms with their past mistakes and bearing it in their own way is very powerful. Again, that's probably why I liked the Dalinar scene so much because it felt like a very powerful scene where he refuses to give his pain away like he had in the past. I'd even say that the idea of loss, regret, is a pretty central theme to the entire story. The Heralds if anything are all about regret and loss.

Adolin's was another character arc that I liked, though his was mostly in book five I felt where he realized how his place in the world had shifted. How he didn't have to be this ideal, and that most importantly (the scene I liked the most), sometimes trying your best was good enough.

In general, I think when Sanderson delivers, he delivers very well. To say it in a more modern way, the hype moments and aura are really good! Another part that I really liked in book five was when Taln fought back, despite not getting a detailed description of how he fought, I thought him waking up and the line "And for the first time in over four thousand years, the Bearer of Agonies fought back" went incredibly hard.

On another sort of tangent though, finishing these long books made me think about the importance of endings in media. I think it's rather common for something to be known by how strong the ending is because well, it's the last part that you interact with. A weak ending could even taint the story, or even series. The example I always think of is Mass Effect 3 which I had the opportunity to play again a while ago. Not to get too into the weeds on it but I actually enjoyed that game a lot and remember thinking "why did everyone hate this?" and then I got to the literal last hour of the game and went "oh right this part".

As someone who's read VNs too, I think this is also a common trend amongst some VNs that feel like they drag and drag and drag until the ending bits and then suddenly wow, it's one of the greatest things ever! Not calling out any VN in particular, but I think there's a reason why there's a reputation for "don't worry, it only takes forty hours to get good" exists (which also applies to long RPGs too).

Tying this back to the Stormlight Archive, the last quarter to third of each book I thought was always good. Threads start tying together again, the pacing gets tighter, and the events start wrapping up. Does it necessarily justify what I consider poor pacing in the earlier parts? In general, does the greatest ending you've ever experienced justify weaker earlier parts?

After many years of reading, playing, watching, and in general experiencing media, I'd like to say no. Not that Stormlight Archive was nearly so bad, but there are moments that made me put down the book without really being motivated to continue. Again, every now and then, it's not so bad. But repeat it five times with each book across 1000+ pages each and it gets a little tiresome.

It's like… I can see the structure of the book, and the middle parts feel like they're just there to get to the end. I don't want to get into the weeds about how I felt some plot points felt kinda iffy to me and I wasn't a fan of (particularly some of the contractual/political stuff) since it felt like a tool/vessel just to get to the conclusion.

I do want to say though that this is NOT to say that I think everything should be all gas gas gas. That isn't good pacing either! And I don't like those stories either! I just think build up and set up should be done carefully and with purpose beyond sometimes just for the sake of writing it and getting to a conclusion. It just feels worse the longer something overall is. I also absolutely would never ever want to get like a "digest" version of only the "good" parts, as I think that's horrible. I still think about the time a family friend once told me that they had watched Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul on Tiktok and it was better because it was only the good parts. I don't think I've ever been so hurt in my entire life hearing a sentence like that.

In some cases, I'd actually say that a story being slow and consistent can also be very well paced. One of my favourite, if not my absolute favourite, VN is Seabed, which is a slow read throughout. There is no dramatic reveals, and while there are moments of tension, it's consistent throughout. And I love it, so so so very much. But I won't talk about it here.

To get my complaints out of the way first, I think the combat system is like a very weird attempt at an action game. The dodge is very… out of place in a horror game. At least to me. The emphasis on there even being a dodge plus the slowdown/counter system felt like it would be more suited in an actiony game, not a Silent Hill game. The durability system and the charm system also all felt like an attempt at making it an action game and unfortunately I felt it didn't really do a good job at it. For reference I did play on hard so maybe that affected my perception of some enemies being too tanky, but some enemies were also incredibly annoying to fight. The lack of variance between loops/playthroughs made it tedious to go through certain sections and while I appreciate playing after the patch to make the last section skippable, it was still a chore to go through some earlier areas.

The loops also really took out a lot of the horror elements, and while I liked some additions on the second loop, the later loops not having much made me less interested in the environments and I basically just blasted through it. I honestly think I preferred the old Silent Hill gameplay, but that's just my opinion at least. The durability system was understandable and honestly didn't feel too too restrictive at least. Though the tanky enemies made it really feel like sometimes it took only two enemies to ruin a weapon which was annoying.

Also the optimization was not very good! I had jitters, frame drops, low framerates in certain areas, and it was honestly quite janky. Thankfully it wasn't so bad it was unplayable, but it was a damper for sure.

Anyways, with that taken care of, what I really liked was pretty much everything else. I think the environments deserve a special call out, it felt like there was a lot of attention to detail in certain areas, and I especially liked some "scares". There were a couple of enemies/monsters that appeared when you either entered an area, or looked a certain way, and disappeared otherwise. There were also cool subtle things like the doll being in the room of the looping bedrooms in the Shimizu residence.

And beyond the subtle things, I think there's a lot of cool story telling done with the environments and monsters. For example, I liked how the looping bedrooms could be seen as the progression of time, starting with a single futon, then eventually a couple futon that looped infinitely. The disgusting enemy designs tying back to Hinako's fears of certain things (giving birth, perverted men, the objectification of women as dolls, etc.), and I thought a really nice touch was having her father be one of the regular enemies you saw early on. It added to the fact that to Hinako, her father was essentially one of the monsters that all men become when they were married. In fact, her mom being the only unique enemy in that fight was a nice touch too.

Speaking of non subtle things, when I saw that Ryukishi07 was working on the game, I had my doubts. I have read both Higurashi and Umineko, and to me, they weren't exactly subtle games. In fact I considered both to really be beating your head in with the themes of the game. I personally felt Higurashi (just the original vns) was a better story with better themes overall though. I won't get into the details of my opinions of both, but a common (and very valid complaint in English at least) is that the writing is repetitive and the prose isn't great. I'm actually quite resistant to that sort of thing for better or for worse so it didn't bother me as much but I acknowledge it as a fault. Tying this back to Silent Hill F, I don't think the main themes at least are subtle at all. It's pretty much shoved in your face how Hinako feels about marriage, how she feels about being treated as an object, and how she even perceives the enemies as representations of her fear. I felt that last part was a biiit much, I liked having that being a bit more open to interpretation but I get it.

Throughout the entire game in fact, Hinako and her memories/flashbacks talk about how much she despises the concept of marriage and how it treats women. In fact the big "villain" in multiple endings is essentially Hinako when she's married. There's a lot of imagery and unsubtle messages of how 1960s Japan treated men and women back then, even mental health views in the case of Sakuko.

It's very much not subtle and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Just a thing I find usually quite common with Ryukishi07 works.

Now, the part that while I wouldn't say I dislike, I would say I disagree on is, some of the last loop relevations. Throughout the last loop, and this is also quite characteristic with his other works from what I recall at least, you see the "other" sides of these characters and realize that maybe they weren't so bad all along. Rinko acknowledges that maybe if she was a better person and just confronted Hinako instead of bottling it up all the time they could've gotten along better and Rinko might've even been able to get advice on how to get with Shu. Sakuko acknowledges that people live life at their own pace, and it's unfair of her to restrain Hinako the way she wanted to. I liked these aspects of their character and their character growth, even if it's done through a one page diary entry essentially.

Where I do hold "some" issue is the stuff regarding Hinako's parents. Hinako is undoubtedly abused by her father. Getting a knife thrown at her which absolutely traumatized her is to me a rather unforgiveable sin. There are a few scenes in the last loop that try to explain her father's actions, about how he got in debt, about how he's actually weak but tries to act strong since that's what he was taught, the usual excuses from old Asian parents about why they act the way they did. There's a scene too where Hinako and her mom have a rather heartfelt moment, but to me it felt… not entirely satisfying because in my opinion it still doesn't excuse anything.

Here's what I will say. If Hinako had just come outright and went "whelp, I guess I forgive mom and dad!" I would've actually really disliked this entirely. But, where I will give Ryukishi07 credit (assuming he was responsible for this) is that when Hinako talks to herself, she explains that at least now she understands her father's position. Whether she chooses to forgive him or not is another matter, and I think that's a very fair position to hold. Ultimately, I agree that forgiving someone is a decision that only the victim can make, and it ties nicely into Hinako's overall character arc.

Personally speaking, I don't agree about the familial tie part either though. There's a part where Hinako explains to herself that because they're blood they at least owe it to hear him out, and that "despite not being blood related, mom had the courage to forgive him", and personally I think that's bullshit. Blood or not, I respect people because they deserve to be respected, not just because they're family. That's my personal stance at least.

But again, the whole choice on whether to forgive him (and the fact we never get a definitive answer which I like), ties into how the whole game is about Hinako's frustration that everyone has been deciding things for her. The last loop being about being able to make her own choice, not some choice ordained by someone else and even fighting against their own respective gods was really well done in my opinion. It was a cool sequence, even if the boss fights are a little comically actiony and not even that difficult.

One other interesting interpretation I had though of the last loop is that it being Silent Hill and all, a part of me always thought that maybe everything Hinako was experiencing was just how she wanted to see things. To that degree, the mom scene being something she wanted her mom to say, her dad apologizing being something she wanted her dad to do, gives it a bit of a sadder twist but something that makes sense to me. Hinako desiring her mom to be a stronger woman and not just a pushover, and also desiring her dad to have some reason to be the drunkard piece of shit he is, I think it would make a lot of sense for her.

It's funny because looking at it, and having been an anime watcher, you'd think "hey, a short blonde hair assassin and a long black haired assassin, isn't this just Lycoris Recoil?" More than that, one of the girls was named Chisato (though it was the long black haired one in Baby Assassins). They also have "quirky" personalities, with one being rather anti social and the other one being more talkative and outgoing.

I think at first glance, the series is basically like a dark humor/drama movie with action scenes sprinkled throughout. The action scenes aren't realistic at all and for the kind of movie it is I think it's perfectly fine. There's a lot of ridiculous gun-fu moments and sequences but honestly, I thought it was pretty well choreographed. They're fun to watch, dynamic, and there's some really fun scenes in them too. But yeah, if you're the type of person to go "well that'd NEVER happen in real life", there's a lot of that in this too lol.

Though to me, what really sold the series to me was the relationship between Chisato and Mahiro. I honestly much prefer the dynamic here over the one in Lycoris Recoil, and the actors do a really good job of selling the characters. They're fun, have great banter, and overall just a great relationship.

The most surprising thing to me, and honestly the main reason why I did this write up is that the TV show was surprisingly touching to me. The movies leaned more towards fun, but the TV show was (in my opinion) more drama focused. Part of it is just the lack of long fight scenes like the movies, but the other part is I was surprised by how… almost social commentary it was.

It was pretty amusing to me to see how they used the industry of being an assassin and applied real world concepts to it. (spoilers ahead) Whether it be even just the talk of AI replacing assassins through drones, and how heartless it is too. There's a scene where a character talks about how unfair it is that despite working and supporting another character for years, they just ended up being replaced by an AI. In fact, that entire arc had a lot of scenes that were relatable I think to people who just work at a company. Being abused by superiors, being yelled at for things not your fault, I think they did a good job at while showing it as a "comedy", still portraying rather sad things that the characters had to go through. I also confess that I felt great satisfaction in watching the old guy who was clearly beyond his prime but basically carried himself on reputation and ended up just taking an easy way out get what he deserved.

The next little arc/episode with Chisato's family home was also quite relatable. In fact, while I wouldn't normally consider myself like Mahiro (I'm not that physically fit for one), I heavily heavily heavily heavily related to her talking to Chisato's family. Everything from being hesitant and not knowing how to greet people to thinking "survived one conversation", everything felt incredibly relatable. And plus, talking to their parents about their job was also funny. When her dad brought up AI and replacing them, it was a bit more "relieving" in their sense because of you know, AI replacing a dangerous job, but I've been in that position more than once talking to someone about AI replacing jobs.

And the last arc was probably my favourite arc for a multitude of reasons. There's a lot of commentary about well, working culture as a whole. Whether it's from Mahiro's side and showing how the Guild (company) doesn't care about workers and won't hesitate to cut them once they're a liability, or Chisato's side showing how the "friends" you make at the office can be just as toxic the next second. There's a lot of relatable scenes that despite being a movie about assassins, it's surprisingly applicable.

What's great about the series is that in combination with these serious scenes, they also use comedy to keep things light. It's a delicate balance and in my opinion at least I think they do a good job with it. Light enough to keep the series the same kind of series it was, but serious enough to still show these situations, even as over exaggerated as it is.

But of course, the star of the entire franchise for me is the relationship between the main two characters. I love the banter between the two. They have a lot of minor dialogue and random conversations that would probably be considered fluff, but I really think it adds a lot to their relationship as a whole. Simple callbacks as well in the TV show brought a smile to my face, whether its the way Mahiro asking Chisato to pick her up, the cake they ate, or even in the TV show itself doing callbacks to earlier conversations… it's all good! And yes, as a yuri enjoyer I do especially love their relationship.

My favourite part of the game is probably how perfectly they nailed that 90s aesthetic of retro games. Everything from the way the game booted up, the retro esque FMVs, the environments, music, UI, you could easily convince someone this was a real game from that time period. I think they did an absolutely stellar job at nailing it, and I also really liked the real recordings they used too! The story was simple and straightforward but in a good way. I think the actors did a really good job conveying everything, and their deliveries were fantastic!

I also really liked them including a behind the scenes document, I thought it was pretty nifty! There were some interesting tidbits that I thought were interesting to learn about, like how they had to make all the videos gifs to play in the solitaire engine they used.

Now, if I had to levy some complaints, and I acknowledge this is likely a combination of a skill and personal issue, but I found that some of the solitaire levels tended to be a littttle too variant for me to like, and there was probably a few too many solitaire levels for me personally.

I found that the frequency of solitaire levels a bit too much, especially when it felt like there was a level for essentially every action. I would've preferred it personally if they had kept the solitaire sections for the more "intensive" actions instead of just "oh you walked down the hall". Granted, given that the game and one of the studio's whole thing is based on solitaire, I think it's understandable but this is just a me thing. It does sound funny that I would like there to be less game in my game, but given that I like VNs, it's probably not too surprising.

Overall I found the actual game part to be usually fair, except for some enemies that I felt required you to have a combo setup (aka they had high armor). I found those enemies to be a little tedious to fight, especially when you had to make sure you had ways to either pierce their armor or build up a long combo chain to do any damage at all. The upgrades and joker system was pretty good though.

With that being said, I played 9 because my friend said it was good and I also liked Leon and it looked kind of fun so here I am! Something else to note is that I am absolutely and positively a very easily scared person. Like, get startled easily, spooked easily, constantly paranoid, the whole works. I still enjoy some scary things despite this (I've finished silent hill 1-3, and I do like some horror movies!), but most of the time I need some friends watching me which they were gracious enough to do so. Though I'm sure them watching me get scared all the time was funny for them too.

And this game was definitely spooky. Grace's segments were way better than I expected them to be, both in terms of gameplay as well as atmosphere. There was a constant sense of dread and pressure and I especially really liked how the zombies functioned. The routines and understanding how the enemies worked to get around them was really well done, and I liked how the changes were subtle (patrols shifting) to keep you on your toes but not be so unfair at the same time. Resource management was pretty good too since it felt like you had to balance between using your crafting materials for saves (which I was so desperate to do constantly) and making ammo/useful weapons.

I was also actually a big fan of Grace's character. I feel like this is probably a point of discussion that I have succeeded in avoiding any and all discourse about, but I thought Capcom did a really good job of making Grace be just well, a girl. My favourite moments were when I would scream/swear and Grace would do the same basically right after. I felt in tune with her and her anxiety going through the game.

The segment with her in the basement was especially tense. One of my favourite moments is during the fight with Marie there's a hole in the ceiling. I remember talking out loud to my friends (to help myself) about how I know they put it there to trick you into thinking that she would come out of there, only for her to come out somewhere later. And of course, she did. I felt both vindicated but I was still scared because I'm terrified easily lol.

Now the other crazy thing is, I also actually really enjoyed Leon's segments too! I found the gunplay and the waves of enemies to be quite enjoyable, and they offered a nice reprieve from the crazy tense Grace segments of the game. The repairable axe was fun, I liked how (most of) the guns felt, and doing all the melee actions and axe stuff was a blast.

I really enjoyed the return to Racoon City, the return of the set pieces and exploring the areas was actually quite cool. I thought the levels and enemy placements were well done too where they didn't feel crazy, but at the same time I was never on an overabundance of ammo. Admittedly if I probably used the parry more I would've saved more and kept the melee stuff going I probably would've been doing better.

The boss fights were fun, and I'm glad they leaned back into some of the campiness, without being too dumb about it.

However, where the segments do fall a little short for me is that while they definitely improved some aspects from RE4make, I think overall as a pure combat/gameplay perspective RE4make was more fun. The amount of weapons and the simplicity of the upgrades weren't as exciting for me, and the inventory space was pretty much never an issue for me. I have to admit that some of my favourite parts of RE4 was managing my inventory as I was going along so I was a little disappointed that I didn't have to do so in Leon's segments here (though I had to do it a lot in Grace's).

The HUNK fight also felt… a little too nostalgia baity? for me to enjoy. It felt a little strange and out of place, and it felt more like they just wanted another Krauser fight from RE4 but it didn't feel as slick or fun for me.

Also overall the story of the game was well, about what I expected from an RE game. It wasn't as terrible as I expected but it was also a little crazy with how it felt like they tried to wrap up as much as possible. When I learned about the Spencer redemption I thought it would be way more insane, but this felt a little more reasonable. The whole Elpis thing was pretty funny though with how everyone thought it was some crazy shit despite it being a hope thing.

Well approximately 120 hours later and 7 months after the fact, I can definitively say yes, it was a fun game to pick up. And I'm only done one route. And I haven't done the post game epilogue chapters yet.

This is a very, very, very, packed game. I'm not a Touhou expert by any means, having only played some of the shmups and other fan games (though I've read a lot of the manga and enjoy a lot of yuri ships) so I wasn't familiar with the original version of the game which to my understanding was actually four games. And the content absolutely matches. Not only are there a plethora of maps and units, there's also an EXTREMELY large OST (more expensive than the game I might add, and for good reason since there's like 234 songs), there's also a lot of story, dialogue, and some very impressive animations. I was honestly shocked by how much there was in the game.

The gameplay itself was also more complex than I expected, though I confess that I played on hard and while I wouldn't say I ignored all the mechanics, I definitely got away with being a little lax on some things. When I checked the steam guide and saw all the different modifiers showing how damage was calculated I thought damn. Had I played on lunatic I might've had to take more care but playing on hard I was mostly content with just playing my favourite characters and pairing them together (by ship of course).

So to get that part out of the way first, I found that the gameplay was fun, though quite different from the usual kinds of SRPGs that I play, not that I play many. But usually I find myself more concerned with the map/terrain and how to position units. In FMW, I found that positioning units wasn't as important, in the sense that because most units could well fly, there wasn't the usual same kind of map restrictions you would find in other SRPGs. To me it felt like the tactics aspect was replaced more with understanding how to build units and how to use the skills effectively to counter the units deployed against you. Also to be fully clear, I've never played a Super Robot Wars game before which is what this gameplay is based off to my understanding.

Moving units around the map, selecting attacks, picking your defensive options, and balancing your resources combined with the skills (spirits) is where the strategy aspect comes in and I found it to be relatively simple on that front. And by that I mean on the surface it's pretty straightforward. You use the skills that make sure you hit, make sure you don't get hit, sometimes use the skills to do extra damage or get around the enemy defense, etc. The complexities and creativity comes from how you build units and there's a plethora of ways to do that in terms of skills you unlock for them as well as just in general how you pair units together (once that gets unlocked).

Generally speaking I'm not usually into that aspect of strategy, usually preferring it when builds are simple and straightforward and my on the map decision making is what mattered. But I am a simple man, and because I liked a lot of the characters, I actually found it quite fun. Finding pairs that worked together (cough cough all my ships) and figuring out how to use the units in conjunction was fun to do! Seeing damage number go up was also quite satisfying, and whenever I had a big turn it always felt suuuuper good.

Bosses when using spellcards also forced me to modify the way I used my units which I thought was cool (or frustrating depending on the spellcard lol). True in tone with Touhou, a lot of the spell cards were very pretty to look at even if some of them made me go "oh shit".

Now, gameplay mechanics aside, where I found the game REALLY shined and the reason why I kept playing and playing was I really really adored all the love the developers poured into the game. There's a LOT of content even just from the gameplay, whether it being the characters using their spell cards as attacks, or all the animations they have. Seriously, I was shocked by how many animations there were since there was one for each attack. And bosses had their own animations too! A lot of them were a blast to watch and enjoy, and I confess that a significant portion of my gameplay time was probably just from watching the attack animations.

But even more than that, there were so many battle lines! There were generic ones of course, but often times characters would have unique battle lines against bosses both before you start combat , to also the actual attack line they say before they used their attack. It's a very small detail, literally one or two lines, but when you consider how many characters there are, I was amazed by the amount of effort that was put in.

Also! For a yuri shipper like myself, there were lines between pairs of characters too! Even more than that, when you paired up units, there were pair names which I thought was a really nice touch. It adds nothing to the gameplay, but it added a lot to how much I enjoyed seeing the different combination of units and what pair names the developers gave them.

So considering how many lines of dialogue there are over how long the game is over how many battles over how many characters, I really respect the effort the developers went to.

And yet, there's more! In addition to all those little details, there's a lot of bigger details with the very detailed glossary and character entries too. It's jampacked with a lot of notes and lore, both in setting and official Touhou setting, and as someone who wasn't the biggest expert on Touhou lore past some of my favourite characters, I found it really interesting and felt like I learned a lot about the series.

Even MORE than that, each SONG they made has a little entry talking about the original song, the inspirations, and just general little tidbits. And again, for 234 songs that's insane! I loved reading the notes they added for the songs and I thought it was really neat they did that. There's a clear show of passion from everyone involved with the game and I absolutely loved that about it.

Plus, I haven't even talked about the actual story and writing. It's a relatively straightforward story that goes through the events of some of the earlier Touhou windows games, while referencing the old PC98 games as well. Having only played through 6-10, it was cool to see the events unfold with a bit of an original twist. They did a good job at connecting the events of the incidents more seamless and I liked the original bits they added.

The original incident central to the game also felt very Touhou-esque which I thought was great. I liked the new characters they added and thought they were pretty charming and fun. Their designs were cute and most importantly, the way they interacted with the main cast was really fun to read.

Speaking of, to me where the games writing shined the most is all the character interactions. I loved, loved, loved when the characters were talking with each other. So many scenes were fun, or even touching, and I think it's a testament to how much the writers really liked the setting and characters that they were able to do so much.

In particular, and partial recency bias here, but a lot of the later chapters were really well written. The Yukari and Yuyuko dynamic I really loved how they did it in the game, and the chapter with the Primsriver sisters I confess almost made me cry.

I can go on and pick out little scenes and dialogues that I really enjoyed or found heartwarming (one last little shoutout to Dai and the rest of the fairy gang, I thought that scene was fantastic too) but there's honestly just so many. I found myself loving these characters even more.

While the story by the writers own admission is a bit cheesy and cliched at times, it serves as a good reminder that cliches aren't inherently bad. It's always about execution. And my ass certainly jumped for joy the entire last four hours I spent on the final level because of how hyped I got. Spoilers but when the entire cast comes in together to talk about the trials they went through to get here, AND a new orchestral version of the title theme plays, AND everyone gets super powered up, how can I not get hyped???? I loved the music note as well saying how they played the normal title theme throughout each arc literally just for this moment, and it was absolutely 10000000% worth it.

Just from a general perspective, the controls are without a doubt extremely clunky. But I actually found that it added quite a bit to the atmosphere of the game, the way you move through areas and the way the environments are designed give that sort of claustrophobic feeling. This is definitely felt the most in the earlier parts of the game where you're in the forest and exploring babylon, the limited and stiff controls add a lot. Coming from Killer7, it's interesting to see how the two sort of compare in this aspect as Killer7 also had extremely awkward controls too (in my opinion).

Of course, where the visual novel truly shines is the writing. For lack of a better term, it's an extremely unique experience. This could be a testament to the localizers as well because in a lot of ways its hard for me to describe how the writing feels. It's like… somehow through all the insanity and ridiculousness of what's being said on screen, it somehow makes coherent sense in its own crazy twisted way. That's probably the best way I can describe how playing through a Suda51 game makes me feel. There's crazy moments like when Sumio talks about "yes, I can SMELL him" that are like "??? Suda what the FUCK are you talking about" only to then go "wait, he's deaf so that could've explained how his sense of smell was enhanced". Of course that could be crazy talk but it's stuff like that that makes Suda games so fun to go through for me.

The only part of the game as a whole that kind of took me out of it was case 2, spectrum where it felt like it was kinda… misplaced? While I understood the idea of it for the themes of the game (Koichi's purity and how despite his purity, it caused an accident to happen), it definitely felt weirdly paced and out of nowhere especially with the intro case and case 1.

My favourite case of the game though is probably case 3, Parade. It's where (from what I remember at least) the whole "Kill the past" theme really starts coming up with Sumio, and I really liked the whole structure and framing of the case too. The tie back to the fairytale analogy that Sumio makes at the beginning in addition to the tragedy that follows and the actions the Mikumo boys had to do was really good in my opinion. The presentation also really shrines, with the whole chapter being in black and white until the very end where color returns. I think you can even make a point about how the case is presented as black and white, until you learn all the facts (once you learn the history of the Zaibatsu), and only then when you go to confront Sumio and have all the facts in hand can you see the case in a new light that isn't just black and white.

I'm sure a lot of people also really liked the setting which is quite interesting but for me it will always be about the themes and characters. In addition to the theme about killing the past, there was also the theme around purity and the pursuit of perfection. Case 2 brings it up first but it's really made clear when they reveal the purpose and motive behind the 24 wards as well as the shelter children project, how the government was essentially "pruning" the bad apples and attempting to raise only good ones. These actions are what leads to the events of the Silver Case, and the horrible tragedies that unfold as well. The act of pursuing that pureness causes tragedy, and even when they produce what they consider "pure" (kamui and ayame), those "pure" things were also terrible disasters.

There's also the conversation between Tokio and the bartender (my homie) about how imperfection is needed for humans. I liked that conversation a lot.

Of course there's some other themes that were brought up, one that I found particularly funny/interesting was how they placed a heavy emphasis on how they had to execute Kamui in the right way. He was a crime virus that spread through the media, which I think anyone in the modern age can recognize as true. Even the whole intro scene to that transmitter with the interviews about people's beliefs in Kamui is still relevant today. Could even argue that light from death note was just a Kamui rip off…

I'm also a fan of the general killing the past so that you can move on to your own future. Tokio going "fuck off" to the ghosts was sick and I aspire to have that energy.

Well, the time has come, and the first episode had an advanced airing! I am very, very, pleased to say that it is practically everything that I could have hoped it was.

Now, all this being said, this is not some "blow your mind away" show, but it's just a very comfy show to watch with good food, as well as a cute cast of characters. I've loved the manga since I first read it a few years ago (it's been a while) and as is obvious by my blog's banner, Suzume is one of my favourite characters! She's incredibly cute and endearing, and as a fellow food lover, I love seeing her eat things!

My biggest fear with the anime was that the quality wouldn't be great, and while it's not the highest budget production, I was very pleased with how faithful it is to the source material! I loved being able to go "hey I know that line/panel from the manga!" which there were many, many, many times. Here's just a few examples of the manga vs the anime!

I think anyone's first impression when seeing the game is how stylish and interesting the setting is. You're a skateboarder in hell, eating moons for your soul. That, is a baller premise and definitely encouraged me to pick up the game. The second impression upon booting up the game is how fantastic the music is. Skating through hell to the OST is great and really adds to the game. Who would've thought that a chill soundtrack would fit so well with hell?

Skating in this game also feels really, really good. Granted, I'm not a skate game enthusiast (having really only played some of the tony hawk games) so I can't compare it to many others, but it feels fun to slide around in and tricks are satisfying to perform. The controls for performing tricks is simple but there's a lot of variation you can do which is fun to figure out. I liked that you technically have all your tricks from the start and that tutorials only really teach you the controls. It was fun for me to think "wait how did I do that?" and mash around a bunch haha.

My favourite gameplay segments are when you're skating through all the halls and teleporting from one part to the next. The music combined with the fast changing levels is really fun and made it just a joy to go through.

I do have a few other gameplay critiques though. Mainly, the tricks/combos while fun, feels like there was room to add more. By the end of the game I kind of eventually settled into doing the same combos and the arenas while let you do some cool grinds, I think it would've been really cool to have some larger ramps to let you get more air and add some more tricks like holds. Also, some boss fights felt a little too… unvaried and I think it would be more fun if bosses had more gimmicks.

Another complaint I had with the presentation may be a personal eye issue, but I noticed that sometimes the subtitles were incredibly hard to read because they overlayed white with another white light. That's more of a minor one, but I think just adding a little background could help make it legible.

The main premise of the game is about cheating with cards, which as a non card player in real life, it seemed pretty novel for a card game. The art style is also pretty unique and the presentation's really good so I picked it up as I usually do on sales and delayed playing it for a lengthy period of time.

Now, there's a few things that are… hm, I wouldn't necessarily call them turn offs, but for a large majority of the game, I think calling it a card game rather misleading. A good way to put it is that it is fundamentally a series of mario party styled minigames, at least for a large majority of the game.

What I mean by this is that the mechanics by which you cheat are mostly handled by quick time events and minigame styled "identify X and signal it with Y". Of course, it's pretty understandable considering the game is trying to translate sleight of hand tricks to controller.

That's not to say all the mechanics are like that, and some of them are actually quite complicated and involved. Especially near the end when you learn more advanced shuffling techniques and those are the techniques I would consider to be more in line with actual cheating that I think were cleverly implemented (though as to how "realistic" they are I couldn't comment).

However one thing that I found a bit of a letdown is that it never really "feels" like you're playing a card game. Sure, you're manipulating the cards while shuffling, dealing, playing your own cards, but you never actually see the cards played out outside a few small animations of players throwing down cards. Hell, I don't even know what game they were actually playing, they just vaguely refer to it as playing cards.

Now, I totally get the reasoning for why this is the case. Beyond the fact that the focus is just on cheating itself, there are some techniques where sure you can have an advantage from cheating but it doesn't necessarily guarantee you the win and it would be frustrating to pull off the cheating trick only for it to fail anyways. I felt like there was room for a bit more presentation regarding the actual card game themselves that would've made the end result of the cheating feel more rewarding.

What did surprise me the most though was I actually found the cast of characters to be quite charming and fun. The setting and story aren't overly complicated but they were interesting enough to keep me wanting to play until the end. The dialogue was witty too!

The reason why I got interested in this game is that for some reason I found myself on a climbing game kick? Not that I would even call it that since the only other climbing game I played was Peaks of Yore, but I actually have really liked climbing in games in general. Mostly because I find it fun to reach new heights and looking down from high up (though I'm too scared to climb IRL).

Of course though, Cairn is a very, very, very, different kind of climbing game. Peaks of Yore is almost like an arcade game with how you can zoom through maps but Cairn requires you to be a lot more cautious. That is also in addition to the survival mechanics which require you to also think about while embarking on climbs.

You also control your limbs one by one, which is an interesting way to sort of mimic climbing? No idea how realistic it is (in terms of the actual climbing) but it definitely prevents some of the crazy stuff I could do in Peaks of Yore.

What was cool about it is that how it felt like the developers put a lot of emphasis on making the climbing aspects feel natural. And by that I mean the auto limb selection made you feel like even though you weren't "climbing" that much, you actually ended up climbing a lot. It's an almost zen like experience planning out your climbing path and executing it. The survival mechanics I felt were also never so intrusive that it felt like I had to really struggle with them, except for the very end of the game.

Now, there were some things I had complaints about with the climbing aspects. It boils down to a few things, namely how placing limbs worked. You are encouraged to find cracks/holds/good spots to rest your limbs on which makes sense. But due to the camera angles, this was sometimes incredibly annoying when Aava would block the view. Sometimes the limb also wouldn't grab the hold/crack I expect it to grab which would cause me to have to try to constantly place it in the right spot.

This is in combination with sometimes it felt like the weight distribution system felt very off. There were many locations where I felt that I had a strong hold, legs on a crack, arms on a crack, sufficiently spread out, but the character would shake and eventually drop. I could only assume that one of the cracks that I had thought was stable was not. This was rather rare though, I found that for the most part the game does a good job indicating when you were in a stable/unstable position (combined with common sense).

There were also a few animation bugs where Aava's legs would freak out and clip into the wall, which fine, given the freeform structure of climbing I could accept. What was annoying though was sometimes when you think you were above a flat stable surface and decided to jump off, Aava would just leap off the entire cliff. This happened a few times, which was frustrating to lose progress due to something that felt like should not have happened. I found that the auto climb for ledge system also sometimes didn't function, leading me to have to practically spider climb onto the flat surface before Aava would detect that yes, I am on a flat surface she can stand on.

But overall, the gameplay was good. It was fun, strangely addicting, and smooth. The story I thought was… good? I would hesitate to say bad, but there were also aspects of it that I didn't enjoy.

For starters, I think the themes of the game were very good. I thought they did a good job showing the struggles/pursuit of someone who wanted to focus whole heartedly on their one goal, in this case, Aava with climbing the mountain. I liked how you're not exactly supposed to like her, she dismisses the people who supported her and she really is just focused on accomplishing her one goal. She ignores her sponsors, her girlfriend, and she pursues her goal relentlessly. Despite the infrequent dialogue, they did a good job conveying that with how she progresses through the mountain.

Where I did find some annoyances was how the game would sometimes force you into cutscenes and interrupt the flow of climbs. At the start I thought they did a good job with messages playing on the climbot allowing you to progress while listening. But later on, they start forcing you into these cutscenes that really took me out of the climbing flow. I wish the conversations were better integrated so that it didn't require a full blown cutscene instead.

Spoilers for the ending ahead!

I also felt the ending was a little bit of a miss for me. The climb into the stars is "cool", but I would've much preferred a more bittersweet ending. An ending where Aava just quietly lies there would've in my opinion, played better into the themes of how she focused so much on her goal that was ultimately meaningless. Nobody will know that she made it, and only she will know for her own self satisfaction.

First, to get the bad out of the way, yes, the gameplay was… Let's just say that it's been a while since I played a game with what felt like the potential to be extremely cool. I really, REALLY, liked the idea of the gameplay system. You get to plan out your turns, visualize cool combos, and see them execute? Sounds really cool!

Unfortunately, that wasn't exactly the case. There's a couple of glaring flaws with the combat system. The very first thing that became apparent is that after you plan out your turn, you enter a downtime that can sometimes be excruciatingly long. It doesn't start out too bad, but when you realize that it can be upwards of like 5 seconds, it adds up and is extremely frustrating to deal with.

The other problem is that to balance the fact that in theory you can just juggle the enemy forever is that they added the concept of missing. What's the problem with missing? Well, if you miss, then the rest of your combo is basically guaranteed to do nothing. Missing is also increasingly frustrating as the higher level enemies are, the easier it is to miss and do effectively nothing on your turn.

Enemies can also guard which force you to use a guard break move or also just sit there waiting for the guard to go down. Counter moves are a cool idea if it wasn't for the fact that I previously mentioned, you can just miss and end up doing nothing.

This is also compounded by the fact that there is a LOT of enemies. Thankfully you can dodge them by walking around them, but doing so makes you lose exp. The other problem is that the enemy variety barely changes throughout the game. So for majority of the game you are facing effectively just a few different types of enemies. Some dungeons were also INCREDIBLY painful to navigate, namely one in particular that was just a maze of long narrow corridors that had many enemies you were forced to fight.

It's a shame because almost everything else I think is really, really cool about the game's gameplay system. Encounters start with enemies where they are, there's no transition or anything. The way you plan out moves is displayed in the top right in a timeline similar to a music sheet fitting the themes of the game. And perhaps my favourite part, the song that plays in the dungeon plays an instrumental version until you enter combat in which case a vocal version seamlessly plays. That's really cool! It is just a shame that the actual experience of doing combat is unfortunately not very fun!

Though then again, the real highlight of the game is the characters. My perspective if from the Overdose version which includes the Musician route, which in my opinion is pretty crucial to a lot of the characters. Playing without that route is… interesting to me to say the least lol. A lot of the characters feel like they would lose their depth and I think without it I would've had a much lesser opinion on the game over all.

Now that being said, the story itself is relatively straightforward. It's a standard escapism plot and I think from the getgo of the game it's pretty clear to see what direction the game is heading to.

What makes it interesting are the characters. I particularly liked that the main cast of characters are quite mysterious at first, and that throughout the game and their episodes you slowly start to figure out their true identities. It makes a lot of sense since they initially entered Mobius to avoid reality, so they wouldn't be forthright about it anyways.

The most surprising thing to me about the cast of characters though (beyond some of their true identities) is how openly… hostile/terrible they are. And by that, I mean from a moral standpoint. In the second dungeon of the game Mifue throws so many fat insults some of them I haven't even heard of before. And I've been on the internet for a while now. I was honestly taken aback by how rapid fire she was and how unapologetic she was.

Of course, learning about her trauma explains where that hatred comes from. What I was actually more worried about was that the game seemed to take a fairly negative stance towards Sweet-P, in a way that was not only just fatphobic but transphobic as well lol. But playing through Sweet-P's character episodes, I was surprised to see how the game approached the topic of being overweight and general body image. It was a lot more than I expected given that start.

In fact, most of the Musicians I found to be quite charming and interesting. The main cast on the other hand I could argue are a lot "worse" as people lol. Some of their traumas and pasts are interesting and relatable, but I found the Musicians and their reasons for trying to stay in Mobius to be more understandable.

If there was one real miss of a character it would be Eiji in my opinion. His resolution feels the most… mediocre? In the sense that he kind of bows out of stage and there doesn't feel like proper resolution between him and the rest of the cast.

Now for a bit of background, I've played all the souls game including Bloodborne and Sekiro. I wouldn't exactly call myself a souls veteran, but I have played them all so I'm familiar with them though I haven't played that many souls likes. One that I did play however was Code Vein, which I thought was very very very average.

This game to me was a bit more interesting than Code Vein simply because I think the setting and NPCs were more fun to interact with. It helped that there was an actual main character, and questlines were similar to souls like progression where you interact with them in several locations before progressing. Now I will say that I found the questlines a lot more straightforward, which if you're familiar with souls questlines isn't that big of a surprise. For the most part there's not a lot of backtracking, and each bonfire equivalent is teleportable to so even if you need to go back it's not too difficult.

One thing that I thought was nice about the level design (at least early on) was that the maps felt pretty connected. In the sense that while there were some level transitions between the big areas, there was a nice use of shortcuts and "loops" that made the areas feel tighter and more connected. It was nice to see how different paths connected back to the beginning and it was something that I felt was usually lacking from other games in this genre. Additionally, exploration/path splits helped each area not feel very linear (again, with the exception of areas closer to the end of the game).

Now as is usually the case with souls likes, I feel like they all try to stand out in some way. AI Limit does a few different things that I found… interesting. The first is their "mana" equivalent. There is a bar that fills up the more you deal damage and reduces the more you take damage. This bar is a resource that you can use either for spells, or weapon art equivalents (special moves to each weapon), or the higher you keep it, the more damage your weapon does in general. There's also some other equipment that benefits from the sync rate (the level the bar is filled with).

I liked the idea of the system, though I found that I ended up opting to only use the bar for damage. The reason is that weapon arts usually drained a large portion of the bar for some amount of damage, and spells felt similar. Though granted, I didn't spec into this so I won't fault the game for that. That's just how I usually play these games. I did like how it at least let the player use their abilities because they could actually get it back.

But to me the most interesting decision they made is that normally in these games, there is a stamina meter. In AI limit, there is no stamina bar. This means you can freely attack/swing/dodge/run as many or as much as you want. I think the idea is to keep the player always on the move and not have to worry about a stamina resource, but I felt this was actually a detriment for a few reasons. It introduced a new kind of balancing issue with (I'll just borrow the term from souls) poise. If an enemy had no poise, there was no threat because you could just spam an attack without fear of them retaliating. Now, some enemies DID have poise, and it led to weird situations where I honestly never understood when an enemy actually broke poise or not. Bosses also had weird poise meters where it felt like sometimes I would be able to break it, other times not.

This was my biggest issue with the core of the game. Poise felt weirdly inconsistent, and the infinite stamina led to weird combos/situations where I could just freely wail on a boss until they died.

The other issue I had was that weapon variety was very very low. They had the idea to make each weapon unique with their unique weapon art, but the base movesets for a lot of them were very similar. R2s also didn't have proper follow ups, and while switching weapon attacks were cool, I found myself rarely ever needing to use them.

The parry system implementation I have similar gripes with most modern parry implementations. I'll say that it's nice that it feels like at least it's not a "win all" button, but it did feel like some bosses you pretty much had to parry in order to get a true punishable opening, most notably a lot of the other Bladers.

Now, this experience is HEAVILY contrasted with the fact that very recently I just finished an archipelago run of Dark Souls 1, which is my personal favourite souls game. For context, archipelago is sort of like a multiplayer randomizer where items are between other people's worlds. It's pretty fun and I've done a few runs with friends.

Playing through DS1 made me realize how much the sort of genre of souls likes has changed since its conception. It felt even more real coming from something like AI Limit and going straight to DS1 because there were a lot of times playing where I thought "oh right, not every enemy needs an instant reaction or you need to perfectly memorize the boss pattern". A lot of enemies in DS1 were slower, more deliberate, and the weapons also had a satisfying weight behind them too. Your attacks could be slower because bosses had longer openings and/or more telegraphed attacks.

Not to say that "oh I'm so good at souls" but it made me wonder how Dark Souls 1 really got that reputation of "this game is so hard!!!!". It's a punishing game for sure, but most of the game is in my opinion, rather balanced and fair. The later you go the harder some bosses get of course, and healing/attack windows are smaller, but even then bosses never felt like I had to instantly react and understand their moveset.

Of course, there are some exceptions. Bed of Chaos is still terrible, and Lost Izalith as a whole still sucks. But I loved the world design in DS1, I loved walking around and seeing all the different areas, I loved how interconnected each part felt, how you could see different parts of the world from other parts, (most) bosses felt fun to fight too!

Full disclosure, I read it in Japanese and my Japanese is definitely not the greatest. So I can't fully comment on prose or anything like that, but mostly just broad strokes lol. Additionally, there's pretty much no way for me to talk about the game without going into spoilers so that's your warning!

Going into Manosaba, I honestly wasn't exactly sure what I expected, other than knowing it was a death game, and that people really liked it. I have read Danganronpa and I'm sure this will be compared to it constantly by people, but I enjoyed this a lot more than Danganronpa.

The main reason why? Manosaba doesn't actually feel like a death game, rather, it's really a character story that has a death game backdrop. If there was one broad "critique" I have of Manosaba is that the mysteries and trials are all relatively straightforward, and sometimes not even in the sense that the mysteries themselves are simple, but in the sense that with the way the story structure is setup some things have to happen.

Death games to me usually feel like they have to have a lot of shock value, at least from the ones I've played and read. My "general" feel of them is that because the importance is on those kinds of story beats, a lot of the characters sort of end up feeling one dimensional, partially because in a story where characters are expected to die, it's hard to set up many complex characters. This is where I think Manosaba does a pretty good job.

The first case and initial introduction to the cast really makes it feel like one of those stories. Everyone has a very strong personality, the main character feels like one of those goodie two shoes, and the first trial has a brutish end accompanied by one of those crazy psycho moments from the perpetrator.

The second case though is quite different though, and the mystery itself isn't as much of the focus as much as its the characters and the struggles they go through. Despite seeing the trauma of the perpetrator from the first case, I think it's really from the second case onwards when the character stories start getting interesting. Miria's "trick" was a much more brutal reveal to me than the case itself, and it was a sucker punch.

And of course, the third case (which is my personal favourite) was a way way way bigger sucker punch. I think this was when I really started to like the VN, not only because I found Sherry and Hanna's dynamic really good, but case 3 with them was fantastic. Understanding everything from before the case occurs (Sherry's desperation to find a way out, the broom ride with Sherry and Hanna, the bad end between them, etc.) and at first not understanding why Sherry would kill Hanna, only to then realize the true tragedy of the case was really really well done. I am also definitely not biased because Sherry and Hanna is my favourite pairing.

I also liked the fourth case for how the ending is setup. I really liked how the case essentially turns against Ema and she ends up being marked as culprit, even accompanied with the usual puppet theatres that show a killer confessing their crimes. Though I felt the rest of the case was a little unmemorable.

The fifth case itself I felt was also a little rough from what I remember, until of course the ending.

I usually joke with my friends that "haha the real game starts here" and with Manosaba I had a sneaking suspicion that there was going to be a loop or some part 2 of some sorts (thanks CG gallery for showing how many CGs there are). The ending of the first half, essentially the prologue, was good. I especially liked the reveal with Yuki being the narrator, and while I'd have to reread to confirm, I think this corresponds to why we always see Ema's sprite (which is not always true in the second half, and also why the narration doesn't have ぼく). It's a really cool reveal imo, and the rewind transition into revealing the REAL (second) main character being Hiro was also well done. This combined with the title screen change really made it feel like a part two to a game (but also thank god that it wasn't sequel bait because I would've been pissed).

Now unfortunately, the second half of the game is where I have the most issues, primarily while I think the pacing from the first half of the game is really good, the second half has quite a few pacing issues. This is also where some aspects of it being a death game doesn't exactly work out in its favor.

That being said, I understand and in some ways I think this loop does a lot of cool things for it being a death game. Primarily, the characters that died earlier in the first half now have a chance to shine in this half. It allows for different character interactions, and with a new character perspective, the coolest part is how Hiro approaches the story differently from Ema.

Ema had three options in her trials which are usually pretty typical, support, point out a contradiction, ask for more info. But I love how Hiro can just straight up lie. I think it's a really cool aspect of her character that she's willing to lie to get to a conclusion, and it's interesting to see how other characters react to her lies. Her disdain for everyone (Ema especially) is really fun to read especially when contrasting with how Ema wanted to get along with everyone. One particular highlight for me is how she treats Reia who tries to help her. If Reia was only a character in the first half of the game, I would've thought her to be okay at best. But her sections in the second half of the game were really fun and made me really enjoy her scenes.

Ultimately the second half really did a good job at helping a lot of the more underdeveloped characters from the first half. I left liking most characters from the game, though I have just an okay opinion on one (sorry Alisa).

Unfortunately going back to the pacing problems, the big problem is that its very obvious that the writers knew that doing all the investigations again would be tedious (which they were right for). So instead of an investigation phase, Hiro gets locked up because she is voted as most suspicious and its a new mechanic introduced. Now, this is extremely funny because it happens for every case in the second half. Each case Hiro finds some way to be the most suspicious one and I found that really funny.

In addition to this, from a meta perspective we understand that cases will usually have the backstory of the murderer and sometimes victim revealed/talked about. This leads to well, some pretty easy guesses. There are no duplicate murderers, and by the last case there was only one character who didn't get their backstory revealed. So it was not very surprising that they were the murderer.

Again, I do think Manosaba is a character story first, not a death/mystery game so this didn't bother me too much, but it is an unfortunate side effect of what they were going for even if it was understandable.

This is ALSO combined with that I found two cases to be… okay at best, and honestly not that good. Cases 2-2 and 2-3 were rather lackluster both in setup and resolution, and while I enjoyed the character stuff, going through the trials felt more like a chore than anything. That being said, Case 2-1 was really good (margo bias), and Case 2-4 was also really good (Sherry Hanna bias, again.)

Case 2-5 was extremely good too, if only because I really liked how it felt like a "sum up" of all the cases you've gone through before. Exploring and pointing out every character's trauma was like a fun road trip (for us) down memory lane, and was kind of a nice way to remember what everyone had gone through. This combined with being able to use others' magic during the trial was a nice touch.

The last case of the game I felt was unfortunately just okay. There are fun moments and I do like everyone bonding to take down the big bad Yuki, but I felt that the case was a little too straightforward and while needed to serve as a proper conclusion for the story, I liked 2-5 much more.

Every other aspect of the game I thought was also really incredible. The art is FANTASTIC, and almost every CG is worth being a wallpaper (sorry I can't use the death of my favourite characters as wallpapers). This combined with the great character sprites and backgrounds made me really wish you could hide the text boxes in game!!! I don't know why you can't!!! I will be looking for the artbook though for sure.

The OST is fantastic too and I really liked how they used a mix of vocal and non vocal tracks. When vocals in the songs we listened to for so long kicked in near the end of the game, it was great. I also really liked how they switched between Ema's and Hiro's themes during the last trial where the perspective would swap, I thought it was a nice touch.

But honestly the part that REALLY blew me away was the VAs. I was shocked to hear that most of the VAs were relatively new, at least to voice acting. They did an outstanding job, and some lines were really enhanced by their performance. One group of lines in particular (yes it's Sherihan related) during case 2-4 when Sherry tells Hanna it's ok, it really killed me to hear Sherry's usually energetic voice be so lethargic and… sad. This is combined with the fact that we know that usually Sherry is not someone who necessarily "understands" human emotions, but seeing how much she cares for Hanna…

I don't think it's a surprise but my favourite characters from the visual novel are undoubtedly Sherry and Hanna. Their interactions are always so much fun and I loved their dynamic in both halves. I do love all of the cast though! It's incredibly hard for me to pick a top 5, but if I had to, I'd probably say Hiro, Miria, and then Reia.

To clarify, I really liked this game. Loved it in fact. I picked it up initially because honestly? I liked the idea of climbing. I was actually a bit disappointed with what Peak was because it was too… free form? Peaks of Yore was what I wanted in a climbing game, where you had to climb based on holds and steadily progress through a level.

It was relaxing and soothing! I enjoyed climbing the little hills as they steadily got bigger and bigger. The NPCs were fun and enjoyable and the little interactions were always great!

That is… at first. What was a relaxing game slowly turned into a very challenging game. At times I was definitely frustrated. But as a testament to the game's design, none of my frustrations were ever about buggy mechanics (with one slight exception) or things that felt designed to "haha got you!" in a malicious way. Every jump, hold, and peak always felt doable.

To me the greatest part of this game was how each time I conquered a difficult mountain, there was always another one after it that challenged me. And as a result, I never felt bored with the game. Of course to confess though I did drop the game after one particularly bad failure but I knew I'd come back, and come back I did. Finishing the game and especially the last climb was exhilarating. It is up there on one of the most satisfying feelings I've had when gaming, up there with my XCOM iron man runs.

Movement also feels great! Once you get a hang of the movement systems it feels like you can fly through maps. Learning how to conquer new peaks then coming back to old peaks and applying new movement tricks that you learned feels great. It's funny how easy every early climb feels once you climbed the later ones.

Again though, I would be lying if I didn't curse the game or cursed the developers with each fall. Every time though it was something I did wrong. And each time I climbed back up and tried it again, it humbled me. When I failed at a jump multiple times I learned that sometimes I had to come at it in a different way.