#since i started replaying the first trilogy

[codgod]

i’m so out of touch with mcyt at the moment that i didn’t even register wild life as the name of a new traffic season i was like oh cool they’re going on a safari <3 good for them

[witchern]

i’m about to start “priority: earth” aka the very last section of mass effect 3 and if i spend the entire time weeping like a bitch then that’s between me and god

[thankskenpenders]

Sonic Superstars!

Superstars is out! And guess what? It's good! It's a worthy new entry in the series, and I mostly like it. Mostly. Except for the handful of parts I don't. As usual, allow me to share my thoughts.

(For the record, I got the PS5 version of Superstars. I can't speak for how it plays on older hardware like the Switch, or how the weird Steam version that seems to make you log in with Epic runs. But I encountered zero performance issues, personally.)

General thoughts

The thing is, aside from two notable flaws I'll discuss in greater detail below, I can sum up my feelings on most of Superstars quickly. You see, it's... a Sonic game. This will either be a blessing or a curse depending on who you ask. It's not a bold new take on the series that'll blow you away, but they also didn't fuck it up. There's no catch this time! There's something refreshing about that straightforwardness, given how rare it is to get a regular-ass New Sonic Game from Sega. It's just a new classic-style game where you can play as Amy, set on a new island with all new zones, and Fang is in it! This might be damning with faint praise, but that's what it says on the tin, and they did a good job overall.

(It also has co-op. That's nice. I didn't play it in co-op.)

It plays exactly how it should. At no point did anything feel Wrong. The graphics might not have the absolute highest fidelity, but I think the character models look really nice, and the levels look appropriately good with vibrant color palettes. A couple zones like Sky Temple gave me Klonoa vibes, which I like. One zone is an absolutely incredible homage that I won't spoil. The story here is minimal (as expected), but there are a few good moments of telling the story through the gameplay, particularly one very cute sequence with Trip. I did find a couple stage gimmicks moderately annoying (Speed Jungle 2 and Press Factory 2, looking at you), but like... I could say the same thing about Mania, and also damn near every other Sonic game ever made. There's always That One Level. Superstars may not raise the series to new heights, but it generally executes well on the standard beats of the series. It's an easy recommendation for all fans of 2D Sonic.

Really, aside from the two big flaws (we'll get to them), this game's greatest crimes are simply not being quite as good as Mania, and also coming out the same week as the more creative and polished Super Mario Bros. Wonder. If we hadn't gotten Mania, I would easily be calling this my favorite 2D Sonic game since... what, the Advance trilogy 20 years ago? I like the Rush games, but if you asked me to replay one or the other, I might have a better time with Superstars. And, yes, it beats the hell out of Sonic 4. It's not even close. Anyone who says this game is exactly like Sonic 4 is just being a hater.

...I guess I would say that $60 is a bit steep for this, but you know it'll be on sale for a more appropriate $30-$40 in a few months. This isn't a Nintendo game we're talking about here.

Nice little tweaks

Superstars also features a number of welcome quality-of-life updates over Mania, bringing it more in line with the design ethos of modern platformers.

You have infinite lives! No more getting a game over on the final boss and having to redo the whole final zone - or, god forbid, the entire game

Time overs are gone! It'll warn you before you go over ten minutes, but I have no idea why because it doesn't kill you anymore

The game features a hub from which you can easily replay previous levels, rather than needing to beat the game or put in a cheat code to unlock the level select

This means you can easily go back and hunt for any special stage rings you missed. However, as a tradeoff, it seems like you can only get one Emerald per zone now, rather than being able to get Super Sonic by the end of the first or second zone

You can swap characters between levels! No more having to start a whole 'nother save file to play as Tails

And those characters even have optional little movement tutorial rooms available from the hub, which is great for new players who may not know about things like the Drop Dash

And, finally, checkpoints now feature arrows pointing in the direction you were supposed to be going, in case you forget upon respawning

Of course, while you might not be getting game overs, Superstars certainly compensated with some bosses that kicked my ass.

Bosses

Here's what I would consider notable flaw #1.

I have mixed feelings on the bosses in Superstars. I don't think many of them are poorly designed - in fact, a lot of them are good, and offer fun moments of spectacle. But for a 2D Sonic game, they're REALLY long and drawn out, and by the late game this was starting to get draining.

Bosses tend to be the type where you have to dodge their attack patterns for a while until you get the chance to hit them exactly once, MAYBE twice. A few bosses seem to have quicker options if you abuse your post-hit invulnerability or play as a character with a double jump, but many will either be completely invincible or run away to the background for long periods of time, making it impossible to damage them outside of the allotted windows. And even if it seems like you'll be able to get in a second hit, many bosses turn invincible and skip ahead to the next attack pattern as soon as they take the first hit. Again, most of these fights aren't BAD, but because of this behavior they sometimes take almost as long to beat as the entire levels preceding them. This didn't bother me much early in the game, but against the more challenging bosses towards the end that kept killing me several minutes into a long fight, it got tiring. The final boss of Story Mode probably took me like an hour.

While this certainly isn't an uncommon style of boss design, part of me suspects they did this for the sake of co-op players. For one, playing in co-op means that you don't necessarily have to start the entire fight over if one person dies, so I assume the length is less of an issue. But in particular, true classic-style Sonic bosses that you can just hit repeatedly with good timing would go down in a few seconds against a team of four players. Likewise, the swarm of clones from the "Avatar" Emerald power would probably obliterate every Genesis era boss with one button press. So I get why every boss needs all these invulnerability periods, but still. I at least wish they'd made some of those attack patterns shorter and given you more frequent opportunities to deal damage.

Emeralds and their powers

Speaking of the new Chaos Emerald powers: they're neat, I guess? They're fine. I didn't use them much. Actually, I kept forgetting I even had them - although the game will play a noise and show an icon in the corner of the screen to remind you any time you reach a spot where a specific power is useful. Avatar, the first power you get, is at least good for getting a couple free hits in on the trickier bosses. Yellow's ability to slow time is obviously good, but, again, I always forgot I even had it and made it through just fine without it. I was also pleased to realize that the swimming power is useful for the water levels and not just for climbing up waterfalls.

Oh, and the new grappling-based special stages kind of suck, but they're not the worst, and I'll at least give them credit for trying something new. (Motion Sickness Zone from Sonic 1 does return as a bonus minigame, but I only did it once lmao.)

Battle Mode

I haven't played Battle Mode. Couldn't tell you if it's good or not. It did, however, give us official designs for Metal Tails and Metal Amy after all these years, and also it let me make this:

...Okay, enough beating around the bush. Let's talk about the thing that REALLY drags down the experience.

The soundtrack...

(This lengthy section on the music will feature some light spoilers for things like zone names and themes.)

Now, don't get me wrong. There are some bangers in here that I've been listening to on loop. But this is one of the most inconsistent soundtracks I've ever heard, and I'm not sure I've ever played another game where the music has such a sharp dip in quality in the back half.

As anyone following this blog knows, prior to release I was a little obsessed with trying to gauge what the soundtrack would be like. "Jun Senoue" and "new Classic Sonic game" naturally evokes the memory of Sonic 4, but from the start we knew Tee Lopes was involved as well, and almost all of the music previewed before released leans more towards the sound of Sonic Mania than anything else. I was hopeful! I was excited! Jun deserved another chance at doing another classic Sonic OST, and Tee is one of my favorite game composers of all time between his Sonic material and other works like the TMNT: Shredder's Revenge OST. I frequently thought back to this Sonic 4 remix medley by Jun and Tee as a reminder that these two could really be the dream team, bringing out the best in each other's work.

Sure enough, the front half of the game is largely dominated by the Mania sound, whether it's a track by Tee himself or one by an in-house Sega artist that's compatible with his style. Pinball Carnival Act 1 by Rintaro Soma (an up-and-coming composer who wrote a bunch of the Cyber Space themes in Frontiers) takes obvious inspiration from Mania's Studiopolis Act 1, to the point that I was shocked when Sega posted the track and revealed it wasn't written by Tee. Act 2, however, forges more of its own sound by leaning into the act's spooky haunted carnival theme. And despite being the music lead, the only level theme that I know for sure was written by Senoue in the front half of the game (Bridge Island Act 1) was actually arranged by Tee Lopes to give it more of that Mania sound. Hell, the level clear jingle is literally just the one from Mania. A few level themes by other composers don't quite match that style, but they fit in well enough.

But there are early signs that this sound won't be consistent throughout the game. Our first warning of things to come is the boss music:

When early copies started floating around and the soundtrack leaked, many, many people hoped that this was merely a placeholder, like the literal Sonic 4 Episode II music used in the earliest previews of Speed Jungle, and that it'd get replaced with a day one patch. Oh, those poor, innocent fools...

Even if you don't mind the poor production with the returning Sonic 4 faux-Genesis sound, this is a very simplistic thirteen second snippet of music that then plays a second time in a higher key before it loops. This wouldn't be the end of the world if the bosses were as short as the ones in the Genesis games, of course, but they're not! This theme is used for a ton of lengthy fights throughout the game, including an EXTREMELY long and tedious autoscroller boss at the end of Golden Capital Act 2. Maybe I would've enjoyed the bosses in this game more if they were paired with some earworms that'd get me hyped up and sell how cool and exciting the fights are supposed to be, but grating songs like this just made the minutes spent fighting those bosses feel like an eternity.

Still, boss music (and menu music) aside, all of the level themes in the front half of the game ranged from decent to great, with the peak easily being the phenomenal Lagoon City Act 2 by Tee Lopes. And then... I got to the back half of the game. And the Mania style completely disappeared, replaced largely with the dreaded Sonic 4 sound. That isn't the style for EVERY song in the back half, but even the ones that try something different tend to be weaker than the material from the first six zones, with less engaging melodies and less intricate arrangement. Many sound straight up unfinished, leaning on extremely basic synth patches with no personality. And there isn't a single track from Tee in the back half. He just disappears from the project altogether.

What this means is that we go from this absolute banger by Tee Lopes in zone 6, which elevates what's otherwise a bog standard desert level to a thrilling adventure:

To... this, in zone 7:

It's EXTREMELY jarring!

The thing is, this is actually one of the better tracks in this style. I have to assume this is by Senoue, because you can totally hear a good Adventure or Heroes era Senoue track in there once you get past the crude synth replication of the Genesis era Sonic sound. Senoue is still a great composer, as you can hear clear as day with Bridge Island, but he's working with a restrictive sound palette that doesn't play to his strengths at all. If only he'd bust out that damn guitar, or at least pick some better synths.

(And no matter what people will tell you, no, this is not an accurate recreation of what the Genesis's YM2612 chip really sounded like, nor is it representative of what it CAN sound like at its best. Go back to the Streets of Rage 2 or Ristar soundtracks if you need a reminder.)

While I can at least see what the Press Factory tracks were aiming for, some other faux-FM synth tracks are just really bland. They don't have anything interesting going on, and they also don't seem particularly tailor made for the levels they accompany. They're just attempts to mimic what Sonic 1-3 sounded like on a very literal level. Take, for instance, the Golden Capital Act 1 theme, AKA "we've got Sky Sanctuary at home." While the better level themes in this game enhance the mood or even completely carry the vibes of a level, the weaker tracks can really suck all the air out of the room and make a level feel like more of a slog.

What kills me is that there are, in fact, a couple examples of how to do throwbacks to classic Sega FM synth music well on this very soundtrack! They're just not the Sonic 4 type tracks. I love the Frozen Base Act 2 theme, presumably composed by legendary Sega composer Hiroshi "HIRO" Kawaguchi, who's responsible for all-time classic arcade soundtracks like Fantasy Zone, Out Run, Hang-On, After Burner, and more, as well as the hacking and pinball themes from Frontiers. Maybe to an untrained ear this doesn't sound all that different, but it has a catchier tune, better instruments, and stronger production overall. I'm also a fan of the track for Sky Temple, which isn't perfect, but it blends a few Genesis-esque instruments like the Sonic 1+2 snare with other instruments for a richer sound. If the whole soundtrack sounded more like these examples, I'd definitely be complaining less.

I really just have to wonder... how did this happen? How did this end up being so inconsistent? Many fans on social media are jumping to the conclusion that Senoue is just extremely stubborn and refuses to ditch the style from Sonic 4. I can't deny this possibility, but some things just don't add up. The almost complete lack of "retro" style music in the promotional material. The fact that the style just suddenly shifts halfway through the game, then disappears for the final zone, as if that's not the note they want to end on. The complete lack of any tracks by Tee Lopes in the back half. The focus on the Mania-style tracks in the bonus "mini soundtrack." And most perplexing of all, the fact that three of the first tracks you hear in the game were Senoue compositions that were given extra attention with arrangements from Tee Lopes.

This is pure speculation on my part, but it almost seems like they straight up ran out of time.

Perhaps Jun wanted more of his tracks to get full arrangements from Tee, or for Tee to contribute more songs, but things were down to the wire and they chose to leave in some of the raw Sonic 4 style demos. The soundtrack being crunched out in a matter of months at the end of development would certainly explain why Speed Jungle had to be demoed without its music a mere four months ago. It'd also explain why a game that's only a few hours long needs NINETEEN composers listed in the credits. And also the fact that multiple zones just have completely different, unrelated music by different artists across their acts. Did they need multiple artists working on different acts simultaneously, completely independent from each other with no time to cross reference each others' work, due to extreme time constraints? I'd buy it.

Ah well. It's not the end of the world. I've heard worse Sonic music. But I'll always think of what could have been...

At least the final battle with Eggman at the end of Story Mode has a pretty kickass boss theme, which ALMOST makes up for how bad most of the preceding boss music is (and the fact that that very difficult fight doesn't have a checkpoint between phases and took me like an hour to beat lmao). It even seems like it might be written by longtime Phantasy Star Online composer and recurring Sonic contributor Hideaki Kobayashi. That's the guy who wrote NONAGRESSION!!!!!!!

The postgame

Speaking of beating Eggman! It turns out Superstars has a good deal of postgame content, as merely beating the last zone with all the Chaos Emeralds doesn't take you to the true final boss. In order to do that, you'll need to do something else.

Before we hit the big spoiler warning, I'm going to give any future players who are still reading a warning. If you value your sanity... don't force yourself to do all the postgame stuff. Don't make the mistakes I did. It's not worth it, and it may very well knock your personal score for the game down a couple points.

----------------------------------------------------------------

SPOILERS FOR THE STORY, UNLOCKABLES, AND THE POSTGAME BELOW THIS POINT

YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

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The bonus scenario

Sonic Superstars has a big surprise in store for anyone who beats the main story. For the first time since... what, Silver? In 2006? We finally have a brand new playable character in a new Sonic platformer! (I wouldn't count the player avatar in Forces as a full-fledged New Character.) Yes, after the credits roll, you unlock Trip as the super-secret fifth playable character. I was really excited to see this. Trip is cute, even if her masked appearance from early in the game is perhaps a more unique design than a Sonic-ified lizard girl who can only vaguely look like a real sungazer lizard. She IS the first new Sonic character Ohshima has designed since the '90s, though, so she gets points for that - and she gets even more points for literally turning into a dragon when she goes Super. We love a girl who can turn into a dragon, don't we folks? And her playstyle is fun, too, with a double jump and the ability to roll along walls and ceilings.

But Trip isn't just playable. Like Knuckles before her, she gets an entire alternate story mode of her own, which somewhat remixes the level layouts, generally makes things more challenging, and swaps out Eggman for Egg Robo. I was so excited to see this! It really felt like the game had so much more in store for me than I'd anticipated.

...Then I spent probably around three hours attempting to beat the new final battle with Fang at the end of Trip's Story. And it made me regret doing Trip's Story at all.

Once you learn the patterns, a lot of them are actually piss easy. But the difficulty comes down to a few misguided factors:

The fight is LOOOONG. On a successful attempt the whole thing will probably take the average player about, like... seven or eight minutes? Maybe longer? This is where I really started to get pissed at the game for making me wait through these stupid attack patterns before I could attempt to hit the boss once.

The fight is divided between two phases, one with Fang in a vehicle and another with him in a giant robot, with no checkpoint between them. Dying to one of Fang's bullshit attacks on the second phase means having to redo the ~5 minute first phase all over again. And, worst of all...

Fang has multiple projectile attacks that are guaranteed instant kills, even if you have rings.

Also there's a stupid desperation headbutt attack that can really easily catch you off guard and kill you, but I only got that far in the fight once.

It's the instant kills that got me. If those fucking immobilizing net attacks just made you drop your rings, or you could at least wiggle out of them by mashing buttons (EDIT: apparently you CAN do this but you literally have to button mash so rapidly that it's a crapshoot whether or not you'll physically be able to do it), it would have been totally doable! Kinda fun, even! Slow, but pretty cool in terms of spectacle. But nope! Three hours! Three hours on this! This is, without a doubt, the hardest boss I have ever faced in any Sonic game, period, and one of the hardest bosses I've ever seen in ANY game. All because of one attack pattern where making a tiny mistake means starting over.

The glitches didn't help, either. Something about the way the circular boss arena was set up in both stories' final battles seems to make the floor intangible sometimes for non-player objects. Occasionally my dropped rings, enemies I was supposed to knock towards Fang, or one of Fang's insta-kill projectiles would just fall through the floor randomly. This definitely wasn't my main problem, but it helped drive home the idea that this fight just wasn't worth my time.

After three hours of attempts, I gave up. I just went and looked up the ending of Trip's story, as well as the contents of the Final Story, on YouTube. Turns out I made the right call, because boy, that true final boss looks like dogshit. It's just a very dull fight against a big generic cartoon dragon. Apparently this is the thing Eggman was looking for. It appears and is defeated with little fanfare. I think I liked it better when I assumed the scary dragon being foreshadowed was just Super Trip.

...Also, hey, what's up with The End being very conspicuously visible in the background of the last zone?? I know it's just a cheeky cameo, but, like... isn't it supposed to be sealed away in Cyber Space right now? Should I be taking this literally? Does this have lore implications? This is one hell of a way to remind people that the timeline's been reunified, I guess

Closing thoughts

I really hate to part ways with Superstars on a sour note like this, because like I said up top, I mostly enjoyed my time with it! It's really just a small handful of particularly frustrating bosses and the inconsistent soundtrack that drag it down. Other than that, it's solid as a rock. Maybe wait for sales if you're not dying to play it, but it's definitely worth playing for any Sonic fan. Just... skip the true ending. I would have stepped away MUCH happier with this game if I'd done that.

I wanna try to end this on a more positive note but I'm tired, so, uhhhh... look, you can unlock a Metal Nights skin for your Battle Mode bot!!

Anyway back to jamming to about half the soundtrack on loop while pretending the other half doesn't exist, and looking forward to the continued Fang Renaissance with his upcoming IDW miniseries

[sage-nebula]

I've been thinking a lot lately about how the sequel trilogy (I'm not calling it "the Apollo Justice trilogy" because it's not) is a mess, and how I would go about fixing it if I had a time machine, leadership power at Capcom, and free rein to do whatever I wanted while there. And while I do plan on replaying the sequel trilogy in the future, and no doubt will get more ideas then, here are my preliminary thoughts for now:

— Phoenix should NOT have become playable again. I understand reinstating his badge because disbarring him was a very low blow (and we're not going to talk about the writing surrounding none of his friends being there for him because woof), but making him playable so that he stole the spotlight was a HUGE mistake, not to mention completely undermined the mastermind he was supposed to be now. He should have just had his own cases going on in the background, while Apollo did his own as the player character. That would have been far better.

— Athena should have been saved for a new trilogy, where she would be the sole player lawyer. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Athena. But it's because I love her that I'm suggesting this. I hate how Capcom treats her as a forgettable assistant who didn't get a full case of her own in SoJ and is usually replaced by Blackquill on the merch. I don't think that would happen if she was the star of her own trilogy of games. And it could help us untangle some of the mess, too.

— So for the Apollo trilogy, the first game (AJAA) could stay pretty much the same. Keep that as is.

Then for the second game . . . I have the fewest ideas here, except I think we should keep the part of DD with Apollo's time at the orphanage and Clay's murder. And in fact, we could even have Athena CAMEO here as the defendant (since Apollo suspecting her doesn't have the impact without their established bond), only to disappear after the case and then come back two games later as the newest lawyer and protagonist. I think that would be pretty cool! However, we do need to save Blackquill, Metis, and the space center for Athena's trilogy, so Clay should be employed somewhere else with a different dream. (Sorry Clay.)

Since we're saving Blackquill, I'm not sure who the prosecutor for game two could be. Unless we wanted to do something where Clay was the prosecutor for most of the game, but then he gets murdered in the last case, so Klavier has to come back (a la Edgeworth) to prosecute his murder in his place.

Trucy would remain Apollo's assistant, and more Gramarye backstory should be sprinkled into this game. Also, Phoenix should pass the magatama onto Trucy in this game (and specifically Trucy since she's his adopted daughter) so that we can get ready for Kristoph in game three.

Also pt 2, Ema remains the detective.

The third game is the one I have more ideas about. This is the one where all of the Gramarye mysteries get wrapped up, Apollo and Trucy's parentage is revealed, and Kristoph's black psyche locks get broken. How, I'm not exactly sure! But this game should be a showstopper banger with the first two games leading up to it. We had the start of the plot in AJAA and then things went off the rails.

You'll notice that I'm cutting all of the Khura'in stuff out, and there's a reason for that. I think it makes Apollo's backstory way too convoluted to give him an entire second family in a foreign country (where he was raised until he was shipped off to be an orphan) when he has a mysterious family right here in the Gramaryes to contend with. Plus, we know Athena WAS out of the country for most of her adolescence after her mother's murder; it makes far more sense to reassign the Khura'in stuff to her.

So! None of that for Apollo.

Instead, he deals with Gramaryes and Gavins; the weight of generational and familial drama and trauma; of shady mentors; and figuring out a.) what the truth is, b.) what his method for finding it will be, and c.) what kind of lawyer he'll ultimately be. More of a Kristoph, or a Phoenix, or neither?

And for that reason, I think the prosecutor of the final game in the Apollo Justice trilogy should be Eustace Winner!

Firstly, because I think the Apollo vs Eustace dynamic would be hysterical. But also because Eustace would be 26 by the time this took place, and so will have grown a lot as a person and a prosecutor. And he dealt and struggled with a lot of the same issues Apollo will grapple with. I think he'd be the best fit as a prosecutor for Apollo to bounce off in that final case—he could offer insight that perhaps others couldn't.

Trucy is still the assistant, and I didn't mention this before, but since Phoenix gave the magatama to her I think we should switch to playing as her during psyche-lock sessions. So yes, I think SHE should be the one to break Kristoph's. First Phoenix fucked Kristoph over, now his daughter makes him face his trauma. It's only (w)right 😌

Ema is still the detective, but she mentions at the end of the game that she's getting ready to retake the forensics exam.

And that's what I've got for Apollo's trilogy! I have to go do something now, so I'll come back in a bit with my thoughts for Athena's.

[swaps55]

When did Sam and Kaidan start to form as an item for you - had you played the trilogy through a few times?

Oooh, this is a fun question. You ask AMAZING questions. <3

I've been playing Mass Effect since 2007, so I'd done most of the romances well before I ever really put pen to paper. My original OTP was actually Shepard/Liara, in large part because 1. I love Liara, 2. I played primarily dudeshep, and 3. I spent years replaying ME1/2 on console before ME3 came out, so Kaidan wasn't available to me as a romance.

Sam himself is an evolution of my 'original' Liaramance Shepard (who never got a first name) from Exordium, my ME1 long fic. They share a lot in common, including an abhorrent taste in coffee, but more significantly, they both met Kaidan Alenko in a shitty Arcturus bar at ass o'clock in the morning a few months after Torfan, and bonded over pancakes.

(The mshenko subtext is actually all over Exordium, probably in part because I am very demisexual and didn't know it at the time, and Kaidan and E!Shep were extremely close.)

When I started writing mshenko it was not with any particular Shepard in mind; I stuck to one-shots and kept it fairly generic. But if you were to go back and read my non-Opus mshenko stories, you'd see glimmers of Sam, a proto-Sam if you will, peeking through most of them. I frequently wrote a vanguard who fidgeted with the gravity well and couldn't sit still.

I started brainstorming what became Opus in 2019, not long after I'd resigned myself to the thought that I'd run out of Mass Effect stories to tell. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I could go on for days about all the pieces and influences that ultimately shaped Sam, but the bones of what became Sam and Kaidan already existed with Exordium way back in 2013: a ruthless Shepard who had a long history with Kaidan before they ever set foot on the Normandy, who relied on Kaidan to keep his moral compass pointed in the right direction.

[nellasbookplanet]

I know I'm about a decade late but I've been replaying the Mass Effect trilogy for the first time since I was a teenager and I'm going absolutely bonkers trying to figure out if the endings are actively and stupidly working against the core themes of all three games, or if they actually thematically work but in the bleakest way imaginable.

All three endings are the embodiment of what we've been fighting literally from the start. In ME1 Saren thinks the Reapers cannot be defeated and so strives for Synthesis, thinking it will save us but not realizing he's already been indoctrinated and has basically willingly turned himself into a husk by the end. In ME2 & 3 the Illusive Man thinks destroying the Reapers would be a waste and that we should instead control both their technology and them as a species, ignoring that this is not only a heinous thing to do but also incredibly arrogant, seeing as anyone poking at Reaper technology gets indoctrinated. Both Synthesis and Control are actively argued against by the very narrative. That in combination with Destroy being the only ending in which Shepard survives, it’s no wonder many fans seem to consider it the only "true" ending (and it’s also not very surprising the indoctrination theory got so popular).

But Destroy comes with its own issues. Aside from the ethical implications of only being able to win by committing genocide against your own allies (synthetics in general, geth and EDI in particular), like with the other two it seems to be actively argued against throughout the narrative.

You are the strongest at the end by striving for cooperation throughout the games, showing time and again that destruction isn't necessary. You save the krogan from extinction, stop the geth and the quarians from wiping each other out. From Javik we find out that the strength of this cycle compared to his is the diversity and cooperation between alien species; from the Leviathan DLC as well as the history of the geth and of EDI we find that synthetics are only violent by mirroring their creators, and can be peaceful just as much as organics. And yet here is an ending arguing for completely wiping out all synthetics.

Assuming the writers were not actually trying to work against their own themes, this makes all three endings incredibly bleak. With the constant emphasis on making hard choices throughout the trilogy, is the point that there is no way to achieve a truly "good" ending? That you'll have to compromize your morals or your allies or both to stop extinction? That Saren or the Illusive Man's solutions could have worked had they not been corrupted, similarly to how synthetic implants (a step toward synthesis) did not automatically corrupt Shepard (with Kai Leng as a foil of cybernetic implants instead leading to indoctrination), or reaper code upgrades didn’t automatically corrupt EDI or the geth?

But if so, why are all endings presented as... happy? Why is Synthesis lifted as the epitome of evolution and peace while never touching the sacrifice of agency in the name of survival? Why does Control lift the "power in control" and "wisdom of harnessing the strength of your enemy" while ignoring the ethical implications of basically indoctrinating and enslaving the reapers in turn? Why does neither of these endings lift the risk of them turning sour the way they did for Saren and the Illusive Man? Why does Destory lift victory and rebuilding while ignoring the literal genocide that took place to allow for it? None of these are presented as bittersweet endings in which morals had to be sacrificed in the name of survival and a better future, but they also work against the themes in such an obvious way that I refuse to believe the writers didn’t notice. There must be more to it.

[secretagentspydetectiveninja]

(Alright, going to stop procrastinating and finally make this post.) After playing through the new trilogy in French to see what was different, here are some things about the French localisation of Spirit of Justice I thought you should know:

First of all, I usually like the French and English versions of the games equally. This marks the first time I've actually enjoyed the French version... more than the English one?? Especially Turnabout Revolution? Don't get me wrong, I already loved it in English, but I think the next time I replay it I'll actively choose French. Idk man it just hits different when a bunch of French people are talking about revolution and overthrowing the tyrannical regime etc

Oh yes, speaking of which, yes, the "Japanifornia" parts of the game take place in Paris, France, as usual. No, I have no idea how Kurain village can be next to the mountains and also the sea while also being in the vicinity of Paris. I also don't know why the entire population of a small country in the Himalayas are fluent in French and use it on a daily basis. But seriously, the main characters mention SO OFTEN that they're French and from France, like, all the fricking time. Remember the incredibly Japanese rakugo case? Imagine that taking place in France.

The Khura'inese pun names are hysterical in French. An example that English speakers can get too: the first culprit's name in French is Sterh'uey Tu'heiven. I'm not making this up. That's his name.

RAYFA'S FRENCH VOICE ACTUALLY SOUNDS LIKE A TEENAGER INSTEAD OF A 30 YEAR OLD, THANK THE HOLY MOTHER

Unfortunately the Holy Mother giveth, but she also taketh away, and they gave Nahyuta a crunchy old man voice that doesn't suit his ethereal appearance at all...

Athena has now added German and Italian to her random English and Spanish phrases from the prev game. I mean... it made sense before, since she was meant to have lived in the USA in this version, but now I guess she just does it for fun? Who knows

French Roger Retinz uses €50 notes (euros) to fan himself instead of dollar bills

Inga's full name is "Inga Karkhuul Kel Nomh Bowkhou Tro'lon Pohm'peu Eh'Duhr Apronh Ons'ai Khura'in III" ("quel nom beaucoup trop long, pompeux et dur à prononcer")

Nahyuta's nickname in French is just "Yuta"

Ema and Apollo now use informal pronouns for each other, so do Ema and Trucy now, Maya starts using informal pronouns for Apollo from almost the first moment she meets him (though he uses formal pronouns for her lmao), and yes Dhurke and Apollo use informal pronouns with each other the whole time, even when things are awkward at the start. Rayfa and her mother always use formal pronouns for each other, which is a little depressing.

AS FOR NAHYUTA AND APOLLO... HOHOHO. Obviously they're both using "vous" (formal) in court, but in the scene afterwards Apollo switches to "tu" (informal) when he asks Nahyuta if he remembers him. Later in Turnabout Revolution, Apollo has gone back to vous but he's at least saying "Nahyuta" rather than "Prosecutor Sahdmadhi" or whatever (I think that happened in the English version too). Then during the final trial, after that one insanely angsty scene, Apollo starts using tu again and even (internally) uses the nickname Yuta once! Nahyuta eventually starts referring to him as Apollo and starts using tu after finally openly acknowledging Apollo as his family aaauuuuuugh ;o;

(Listen Apollo usually always tries to be formal and professional in court so this is a big deal!!! It's a big deal to me at least!!!!!!!!!)

In the English version there were a few times our good ol' American Apollo had a sort of "haha I'm just a foreigner I don't know anything here" vibe which... no you're not lol. The French version didn't have that (or at least toned it down a lot) and made him feel less like a tourist and more like an immigrant returning to his old home country with complex feelings, which he is. It makes it more personal that he's the one to bring about the revolution imo -- he's not some random foreigner swooping in to save the day, this is his home and his family, he belongs here. (As an immigrant myself I find aspects of him relatable and will defend his Khura'inese backstory to the death DON'T TEST ME)

The "what's crack-a-lackin' homie" line in all its glory:

[morphogenetic]

Mediaposting 2024, #6: Dai Gyakuten Saiban 2/The Great Ace Attorney Resolve

Completed: April 21st, 2024 (/i still have to watch the DLC episodes that didn't get released with the official loc, I guess but I'm not playing it any more so ?? lol)

Time spent: 49.5 hours (will be like 50.5 after the DLC stuff)

Rating: 9/10 (more objectively. but a very biased 9.5 in my heart.)

ohhhhh my god alright where do i even start with this. i guess i also have to talk about dgs1 a little bit in this review/mini completion log but I will TRY and keep it to just 2. [editor's note: somehow succeeded with this! lfg]

first, to get the non-spoiler parts of this out of the way:

please for the love of god play this fucking game if you've played the original AA trilogy but not the DGS duology. i can not stress this enough. i would not recommend playing them as your FIRST aa games because a) they will set your bar way too high (and too low simultaneously bc wow dgs1 still has whack as hell pacing) b) there are a few details, especially in this particular game, that will evoke no reaction in you if you haven't played at least the main three games but WILL cause you to start gnawing on drywood if you have Knowledge Of The Future

the whole dgs duology - and specifically as a duology, bc 2 makes no sense without 1 but 1 by itself is not on this level - is absolutely in my top 3/4 AA games now. i admittedly have not replayed the original trilogy in quite a while, buuuuuut T&T/AAI2/DGS1+2 are my new top 3. not necessarily in that order, give me a bit to think about it lol.

im going to be thinking about this game for the rest of my life probably. i can see why my best friend wanted me to play it for uh. seven years. because yeah it really is that good.

i want to cosplay four different designs from it. i have not wanted to cosplay anything new (to me) since neo twewy came out three years ago. take that as you will.

music still slaps. obviously. my favorite new song is absolutely partners (IYKYK) but agh. the new theme(s) that characters get are all so fucking good. clenches fist. the leitmotifs

definitely becomes relevant in retrospect in a few places where capcom obviously cut the hell out of the budget but they saved it for where it matters so i dont care. im also uh. very used to low budget VNs so frankly even 3D models are better than I'm used to LMFAO. i also you know. didn't realize that they did that until after the fact. so. they hid it well

if you havent played this go and play it (after playing the original AA trilogy). please for the love of god im on my hands and knees.

everything below the cut (i.e. below this point) has blatant unfiltered spoilers. you have been warned.

okay so welcome you've presumably played all of dgs2 if you're reading this. i have THOUGHTS. a lot of these will come off as critical/negative but i need to strongly emphasize that these are the only reasons that this game is not a 10/10 for me and otherwise i'm in love with it. it is fucking CLOSE. i am not talking a lot about the things i really love because that is.............................a lot of the game for me and we'd be here all day. the critiques are much more limited in number. but. you know.

dgs2 absolutely has much, Much better pacing than dgs1 does overall. it does not take 3 cases to get past a bunch of tutorial cases. this is a good thing. however..............the first two cases are still very slow. i won't call them pure filler, because a) reminding us about yuujin was a very good idea, b) they contribute to the Themes of the game. and im glad hosonaga was there again and (of all of the side characters we could have had) seeing souseki was good. i like them. but they really didn't need to be there to fulfill the themes of the game. case 2 in particular feels like a filler case, which I do not love given how tight the rest of the plot feels. if anything i feel like they should have done an interim flashback case without susato, as much as I adore susato, because as-is it's canon that ryuu had 3 cases in the span of a week. which feels INSANE

speaking of better pacing: im so glad dgs2 remembered that AA games can take investigation breaks between courtroom shit because running through ALL of the trial after ALL of the investigation in 1-5 was. let's say. taxing. the 'finding their footing' aspect of the first game

i do kind of wish we got One more case with the masked apprentice where susato wasn't there at all for the entire case. if only because then the delay between ryuu Thinking It and susato Knowing it would be even more painful. but i do really appreciate that they don't try to make it a woah big reveal as much as a painful "i know who you are but you don't." really adds a certain je nai se quois or however the fuck you spell that. idr. its 1 am when im typing this

also hey asougi can we fucking unpack how susato (the girl you were raised with to some extent, probably not like your sister but your weird younger cousin) called your name and you didn't remember who you were but you DID remember when you saw a wax reconstruction of your dead dad. can we fucking talk about that for a minute. can w

speaking of asougi. my god. they did such a good job with him. i think i wouldn't have cared nearly as much about him if all we had was the dgs1 stuff but his extreme motivation for the truth almost turning him into a violent attack dog is. aaaaaaaaaah. god. and the parallels between him and his father's followers (read: the von karmas) that one has from playing the mainline AA games. truly brainworm material

speaking of this: i can absolutely tell they did NOT think about writing the professor stuff with this game until they added in the masked apprentice - before he got turned into asougi - even though the reaper was obviously something that was planned. i do not care personally about this, because game dev is weird as hell and it REALLY works with asougi and van zieks' character arcs. in the same way that i don't think [SPOILER CHARACTER] from vlr would have been as good without the knowledge of 999, i think if barok had been foiled against a new character it wouldn't have worked as well. all that said. it sure is obvious they didn't know what they were doing. this makes me even more impressed that that they got it to work at all

the same is true of everything with the hound of the baskervilles but im really glad that they took it in the direction that they did.

also man it is so obvious that they probably wanted to have this be a proper trilogy like the original trilogy but then budget happened. because 2-3 through 2-5 all slap but they feel so fucking weird next to 2-1 and 2-2. like i dont feel that theres anything missing per se but a little more time for character growth would have been nice. hell even adding in an extra case (and/or editing 2-2....)

the only writing thing, aside from. 2-2 being like that. and the other weird pacing issues..that extensively is off to me is the whole assassin trading plot. i do think it is Very stupid and that they clearly wrote themselves into a corner with 1-5 on how to deal with it because they just...proceed to not deal with it until 2-4 and 2-5. however. even with that said. i actually kind of like that it is so stupid. because stronghart definitely feels SO obsessed with his version of justice that he wouldn't think through the potential downsides of having two free-roaming assassins running around and maybe coming to get his ass. obvious flaw that would not occur to him because of his insane ass behavior

its still dumb. but it's ace attorney dumb. so i can excuse it a little bit

stronghart being a damon gant expy was funny but goddamnit was it predictable. making him be so obssessed with justice that he talks to ryuu about it for 4 hours was funny as hell though and absolutely adds to him as a character. still dont like him that much Personally but hes definitely a character

his breakdown was peak. by the way. top 3 breakdowns in the series

jigoku being like that kills me. also. the way he just let genshin

g. genshin impact (sorry)

i dont care that sherlock's bullshit was a deus ex machina bc honestly.....electricity was real at that point. its fine

also. holy shit i love ryuunosuke in this game even more. 'i'm not doing this for you, kazuma. i'm doing it for the truth.' BANGER!!!!!!!!!!!! his growth across these two games is really good but especially in this one he shines so brightly

however..........this game made the glaring lack of ryuu's parents even more obvious. its not like i Need it or anything but considering how he very literally refers to yuujin/susato/sherlock/iris as his family in 2-4.....where are your parents!!!! what was your childhood like!!!!!! I HAVE SO MANY QUESTIONS THAT I WISH COULD BE ANSWERED!!!!!!!!!

and asougi. i could write an essay on asougi alone i think. but i adore how both he and ryuu are like 'you've changed' at each other and neither of them are wrong but then by the end they're like 'wow you're the same as before.' theyre so fucking gay. anyway

and sherlock (WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU WHY DO YOU LIE FOR FUN LIKE THIS????????)

and yuujin (partners ~ game is afoot starts playing and i start crying). obsessed with how they only had to write the dynamic for a single case and you can believe all of it because they can just go. lol. ACD canon. anyway

and susato

and, most surprisingly of all for me.....fucking barok van zieks. i would not call myself a Fan of him in the way i am a Fan of asougi and ryuu, but i am obsessed with him. he did so many things wrong but realizes he genuinely fucked up and wants to atone for it. he gets genuinely upset in prison when he can't join the red-headed league. he's a professional alcoholic. he has bats in his office (???). what is wrong with him. (i know the answer is 'literally everything that could be wrong with a person.' but still

i love every single character in this game (or i hate them but because they were written to be hated)??? how did they manage this again. dgs1 helps so much here because the character growth.

argh. the character parallels with everyone realizing their parent / mentor figure was fucked up and/or hiding shit from them in some way. thinking emoji rotating in a circle goes here

wow that magically became way less critical as i was writing it. i thought it was going to be a lot stronger of a critique. its still weird pacing stuff basically that bothers me but i have very minor complaints that im forgetting aside from this

UHHHHHHHHHHHHHH YEAH HI GUYS IM BRAIN ROTTING NOW FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! SORRY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! this has had almost the same brain impact on me (as evidenced by the 1 million words about it) as raging loop i think and thats never a good sign since i still think about raging loop at least once a week despite the fact that i played it 3 goddamn years ago

[oodlyenough]

paul.....

i've just started French training again and figured this would be a good way to practice, although it remains to be seen if my comprehension and memory of the english are good enough to play through trials. when the AJ trilogy came out i spent some time whining about how i wish the first trilogy let me select cases. i guess it turns out you can, at least once you've cleared all the games, because starting a new game en français let me skip to whatever i wanted.

i chose turnabout sisters because i've not played it since 2020 and only sort-of remember the broad strokes. i remember mia's death being very shocking, but on replay jeeze it's sad. poor maya and phoenix too

[thecurioustale]

My Incredible Expanding List of "High Priority" Creative Works to Read / Watch / Play / Etc. 😰

(No spoilers of any kind in this outburst.)

My To-Read / To-Watch / To-Listen list is where media go to die the long and quiet death of entropy and ice. 😓

Some people, it's like they can read a book a week, or watch a movie a day, or get through a whole TV series every month, or whatever. Not just for a short season, but regularly and indefinitely. It's an integrated part of their lifestyle.

Inconceivable!!

For me it is wildly hard to get around to starting media that I genuinely do want to get to. The reason why is a topic for another day, but I just want to marvel publicly with you at the absurdity of my Current Efforts. All of the following are assigned High Priority:

My sister got me a Nintendo Switch for my birthday this year, and included with it both of the new mainline Zelda games (Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom) as well as Pokémon Legends: Arceus. The Pokémon game is my latest Actually Doing It effort; I actually began playing it last week. I told myself that I would absolutely play at least one of these games because I can't have my sister getting me a present that expensive and then me not doing anything with it. And I will say that I am enjoying the game as much as I could have hoped! It's a very pleasant escapist fantasy with very low mental overhead, which my stressed-out, brain-fog-addled self sorely needs.

I would also like to replay the original Life Is Strange (Season 1) ahead of the upcoming sequel with Max Caulfield in it, as well as the prequel and the other two mainline Life Is Strange games. And I bought the entire Life Is Strange comic as it was coming out, and want to read it all the way through when the actual game is fresh in my memory.

Now that I have a Switch I want to get and play Metroid Dread, because I've been avoiding spoilers for it all this time and I would like to stop doing that, and I would also really like to have a new Metroid gameplay experience.

I asked my friend and number one fan Fip for a recommendation of suggested reading to learn more about Incan and pre-Incan Quechua-speaking peoples so that I could better characterize aspects of Cherry's character in Galaxy Federal. She recommended The Saga of the Borderlands. I've bought a used copy of the first book, The Days of the Deer, and it is literally the top book on my Pile of Books by my bed. I've even committed to trying to read the two other books in the trilogy in Spanish (since there is no English translation) if I enjoy the first one.

Fip herself has a number of works that I have been itching to read for quite some time, both out of artistic solidarity as a fellow artist and also because I'm just genuinely interested in what kinds of things a person who likes my work would create with their work.

I have long wanted to read Almost Nowhere ever since another online friend of mine, nostalgebraist, finished writing it, but I told myself that I would read his earlier work Floornight first and so they're both on my List. I'm actually kind of afraid to read these because his work The Northern Caves was heavily inspiring for me with regard to the Galaxy Federal Inaugural Novel and my fear is that I'm going to read these other works and discover heavy serendipitous overlap, just because I think he and I sometimes tend to have quite similar ideas (albeit thinking about them differently).

Another friend's mom recommended a book to me that my dad recommended like 20 years ago, The Map that Changed the World. This is another book that I've already bought, again used, and it is sitting right under The Days of the Deer in the Pile beside my bed. (And is the only other unread book in said Pile; the others are The Lord of the Rings, which I managed to finally reread a number of months ago, and my own book Tokens of Zeal: Words from a Vanished Age.) I am really looking forward to pleasantly surprising my friend's mom with word that I've read this book, and it would be a nice homage to Dad to finally read it as well.

I've been trying to complete my "Grand Tour of the Virus Comix Online Empire"—i.e., all the online works by Winston Rowntree—for like three years now. As part of this tour I've been sending him detailed notes, but it's been so long since my peopleWatching watchthrough that I'm going to have to rewatch it to compose notes. (I didn't think to start sending him notes until I got to the old Captain Estar webcomic.) I "rushed" my Captain Estar notes when I learned that he was doing a rebooted novelization of the same premise, which became Shirley Estar Goes to Heaven and which I highly recommend you read. There's a new peopleWatching season coming out in a year or two so now I want to expedite that, but I also have to go through all of Subnormality (the best webcomic of all time) and various other works of his.

This is all just the stuff at the highest level of priority for me to get to. There are, like, three more tiers below this—all of them longer. And I'm prolly gonna be playing Pokémon Arceus for months, because I am taking my sweet time with it. (I don't get to play video games nearly as often as I would like to, and this one is a really cathartic end-of-day treat, which is proving especially helpful because of the health problems that are making it difficult for me to get to sleep sometimes.) Oh lord and I haven't even touched on any YouTube videos or music works! 😰

And then, of course, there is my own creative work also pressing for my time.

I just find it maddening and ludicrous and comical and tragic all at once that I am so slow at both consuming and creating work.

I am molasses in January. 😭😭😭 How do y'all do it?!!

Actually, I don't know if I would truly want to consume a high amount of choice media on the regular. I know this sounds melodramatic, but, whenever some consumer activity competes for my extremely limited leisure time, I'm like "I have to finish writing as many of my books as possible before I die," and I really mean it. And I also have a kind of tainted image of people who spend all their time consuming media due to the fact that my abusive mom spent most of her time watching TV and reading books when I was a kid. That worked its way into me as a worldview that "You have to do more than just consume; you have to do something with the energy that comes from digesting the things you consume." Which I realize isn't objectively true...but it also kinda totally aesthetically is true, at least if you're an artist or have the soul of an artist, which I grant most people are not and do not.

[motionpicturedemise]

myth's game writeup of 2023

i waited until the new year to finish this in case i managed to beat a game during december. i did not. ANYWAY.

this will contain new games as well as games i only got around to in 2023. light on spoilers but be warned

Octopath Traveler II (2023)

as far as i remember, this was the first new game I played this year, and god did it deliver. I've been a fan of octopath since the first one came out on switch in 2018, counting it as my favorite game of all time, so to have a sequel after all this time was thrilling. it did almost everything octopath 1 did and better. new path actions, day/night system, branching stories, fucking boats?? incredible.

my biggest gripe has to be the new hidden classes. I started with throne so getting inventor 10 minutes after my chapter one did definitely fuck up the progression a little bit. I think I preferred ot1 hidden classes. while the dungeons were underwhelming, the boss battles really make you fight for these secret techniques, something absent in 3 out of the 4 hidden classes of octopath 2.

overall: 4/5 BP.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed (2023)

xenoblade 3 as the end of the klaus trilogy really didn't sit well with me, for reasons that don't belong on my review of its dlc, but future redeemed fixed nearly every problem i had with base xc3 — both story and gameplay wise. it ties every xenoblade game and even some of gears and saga into a neat little 40 hour bow, and is truly a love letter to the entire series. I can only think of one problem I still have with it. the fucking menu music.

where do i even fucking start with this one really. relatively speaking, I'm a new xenoblade fan, having started xc1 in march 2022 during a harrowing experience with adhd meds, and since then it had kinda consumed me. I finished it in about a week, went on to watch xenoblade 2 because I had heard the gameplay wasn't great, and got my hands on xenoblade 3 day of release.

overall: 5 dance apples.

Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (2023)

as someone who was not immune to the hype surrounding botw, I had high hopes for the sequel. hopes that were painfully, slowly, fed into a trash compactor over my playthrough. this is another game I got on release day, lining up outside gamestop in the heat, and lets not forget that it's the only first-party switch game with a price tag of seventy bucks.

the game plays like a tech demo. I have a lot of love in my heart for it. the story was better that botw, the world was more expansive than botw, but the problem here is that everything it does is directly compared to breath of the wild. it doesn't get enough time to shine, because we're in the exact same world as 6 years ago, but instead of pinkish black malice we have blackish pink gloom. i much prefer the runes to the zonai abilities, and the sense of wonder that permeated breath of the wild is replaced by a sense of nostalgia that just doesn't appeal to me much.

all of this isn't to say it's a bad game. I think it's a great game, honestly, but a great game that wasn't meant for me. I've seen the insane shit people do with ultrahand, but it just... isn't my style.

overall: 441/1000 korok seeds

Pikmin 4 (2023)

it's pikmin. i dont have much to say about it. it was a lot of fun, loved that part where i bulborbed all over those guys. im not a gameplay reviewer, at heart i mostly talk about story, and a game like pikmin doesn't have much for me to comment on. good fun. lived up to expectations. probably wouldn't replay.

overall: 7500 sparklium

Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood (2017)

oh, stormblood... the rage you still fill my veins with. I'm not going to spend too long on this one because I have better things to do with my life than shit on an expansion everyone already hates, but let me make it clear I actually do have reasons for disliking it.

having ala mhigo built up since the very start of a realm reborn, only to have half of the ala mhigo expansion take place halfway across the star, was very disappointing. the monotony of the three areas in gyr abania compared to the three far east areas was very disappointing. the treatment of the people of the steppe and honestly that entire segment in the main story quest was very disappointing. hien, as a character, in his entirety, was very disappointing.

I will say it had strong parts. the 61-70 quests for several jobs were the strongest in their entire story (see: dark knight). the dungeons started to get more interesting. it gave us the quest Child Labor, which is hilarious and I'll never be finishing it because I want it there forever.

overall: 1/3 WHM Lillies.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers (2019)

ffxiv immediately got better the second 4.0 was over. even the patch quests instantly shot up in quality. it's not even funny. the lead up to shadowbringers was the most fun I had had with the game since a realm reborn, and all of the first was heartbreaking to go through even though I was spoiled on That Character's Identity.

the duty trust system (is that what it was called?) made dungeons much more fun. getting to go through hell with alphinaud alisaie and thancred made everything 10x better, even if it was a lot slower. the story, again, heartbreaking — ryne's arc in particular felt like being stabbed by thousands of little needles while trying to play. in the best way, of course. and amaurot... amaurot. getting to quote our favorite knight in there was my 8th umbral calamity.

shadowbringers also marks when a lot of your job's functionality is really unlocked, so doing the level 80 raid series was genuinely a ton of fun. and again the thousands of little needles. i cried at least 7 times during the main story.

overall: 85/100 kenki gauge.

Katana Zero (2019)

possibly my favorite game this year. the protagonist, zero (or as i like to call him, katana from zero,) ticked all the boxes for a character I'd be absolutely obsessed with. true enough, i fell in love. the fast-paced gameplay, the diegesis of gameplay elements which would typically go unquestioned, and the care that seeps through every dialogue choice all solidify katana zero as one of my favorite game experiences ever. I'll leave it at this, because I encourage everyone to at least give it a try.

overall: Yes, that should work.

Fire Emblem Engage (2023)

this is one of the few 2023 releases on this list that I didn't get on launch, because at the time I had relatively little interest in fire emblem as a series. then I made a lot of friends who enjoy it, and in october, bestie sen decided to buy it for me as an early birthday present. everyone say thank you sen.

considering this is my first fire emblem game, i have absolutely no deeper insight into how it matches up compared to the others, and plenty of people more eloquent than me have already talked about that. what I do know is that the gameplay was surprisingly fun as my first tactical rpg, and the story was passable. all the characters were appealing in one way or another, and I'm still mad I had to choose between marrying kagetsu or fogado. they're both my husbands at heart.

overall: I didn't internalize enough of this game to come up with a clever rating.

Fire Emblem Engage: Fell Xenologue (2023)

I was expecting the dlc to continue the main story, so I put it off until I had finished the base game. in hindsight, I regret it, because I'd love to have brought the winds and twins with me to fight their evil versions and alternate universe dad. the story was... alright. I really liked all the small battle interactions between fell characters and our party members which they would've known. I instantly recognized fogado in chapter 1 because I am in love with him by the way.

overall: i dont know. 1¾ dragonstones

with 2024 upon us, I'll probably be writing reviews for games as I play them. I'm trying to use tumblr more as a social platform instead of just reblogging. we'll see how that plays out. if you like any of these games (yes, even tears of the kingdom) please talk to me about them! that's all for now. look out for my mangled thoughts on SANABI and Nier: Automata next :)

[rosewood-multifandom-writer]

Weapon Review Metal Gear Rising Revengence Edition:

This is officially part 2.5 of the Metal Gear Rising Review series. I was originally gonna have it be a trilogy, but I HAD to review the weapons in the game because there are THAT many.

Biggest rule, I am excluding Sub-Weapons like Grenades, Rocket Launchers and in Blade Wolf’s case, throwing knives. Those are purely used to get yourself out of a jam. The main focus is on the main weapons. I am also NOT putting the design of the weapon into consideration, I’m only focusing on how effective they are in the game, right down to their pros and cons.

I will also give Devil May Cry 5 the same treatment since I also completed that game (though I gotta replay it because I’m a bit rusty).

First, Raiden’s Main Weapons, since he is the main character. First, his High Frequency Blade he started out with. It’s a simple default weapon of Raiden’s, and just like the other two blades I will get into in a bit, the High Frequency Blade has the ability to absorb energy from enemies with each swing. The sword will be at its best when you upgrade it. Same with the other two.

Next, the HF Muramusa Blade (my favorite). This is a sword Raiden obtains at the end of the story. This same sword is used in Jetstream Sam’s storyline, where Sam does his signature quick draw attack. Raiden uses the Muramusa Blade the same way he does his own HF Blade before Armstrong broke it. In terms of power (for reference, I upgraded all three swords to a 4 in strength for my own comparison’s sake and because I need to stack up on BP) the Muramusa Blade lives up to its name (the Japanese name means, “the murdering sword”), as I was able to slice through stronger enemies like the Gekko.

Lastly, FOXHOUND’s Sword. This is the most expensive main weapon in the game, at 20000BP. I kind of exceeded that and I was able to get it without feeling like I blew up all of my BP. In-game point price aside, this sword is OP. Like the first time I used it in the chapter where I fight Sundowner, I was mind blown from how it INSTANTLY slices up enemies just like FOXHOUND’s original blade. I was not using Blade Mode or Ripper Mode at all. Honestly, if you want to use a powerful sword for the stronger enemies, boss fights and you just want to slice up enemies without having to expend your Fuel Cells, use the FOXHOUND Blade.

And now, the Unique Weapons which are the three weapons from the Winds of Destruction that you unlock after beating them all for the first time.

Starting with Monsoon’s Sais. Initially, I thought this was the worst weapon in the game, but it turns out it’s useful against airborne enemies. Especially the helicopter UGs. It made me really change my mind on this weapon.

Next up is Sundowner’s Pincers. Just like with most powerful weapons in a Hack-and-Slash, Sundowner’s weapon is slow, yet effective in its job. Keep in mind when you charge up attacks, you are leaving yourself vulnerable, but the end result is instantly slicing an enemy in half. This weapon is at its best if you know what you’re doing and if you’re better at pulling off cooler combos than me (which is probably the majority of other gamers on here, lol).

Lastly, Mistral’s Pole Arm aka L’Etranger. There are so many fun combos to do with her weapon and I used this the most when I first played it and when I started playing Metal Gear Rising more often. With two specific combos where you can constantly keep it going and going, I sometimes do not stop, that was how much fun I was having with Mistral’s weapon. I mean… she is my favorite out of the Winds of Destruction for a reason.

Special mention goes to Blade Wolf’s Chainsaw attachment when he was still Prototype LQ84i (before he got an upgrade by Doktor). His chainsaw function as I was expecting it to be for heavier attacks. Not much else to say here, Blade Wolf is just as fun to play as Raiden or Sam.

I would’ve reviewed the wooden sword if it wasn’t a JP exclusive weapon.

Personal Favorite Weapons:

These are my top 3 weapons:

1. FOXHOUND Blade (really good for boss fights)

2. L’Etranger (I had the most fun with this unique weapon)

3. High Frequency Muramusa Blade (Because I have a bias for Katanas and Samurai swords and it’s my favorite color)

Honestly, I would’ve done the same weapon review treatment with Resident Evil 4 Remake, but, if Capcom wasn’t greedy, I would’ve done so.

[ot3]

hi! longtime follower and i enjoy your aa comic and your narumitsu takes on twitter. i was replaying rfta was thinking about the timeline for their relationship and was wondering about like. where they would actually end up together and when exactly phoenix and edgeworth respectively figured out what their feelings for each other were?

first of all thank you!!!

oh man this is suuuch a difficult question for me and one i honestly don't really have a solid answer for. i could see it going a ton of different ways all equally believable which is part of why i am able to get so much mileage out of this ship...

in general though, i think that definitely nothing happens until post-aa3 at the earliest. considering how rarely theyre in the same place and how hectic it is during the events of the trilogy, there just isnt enough time for anything. but i think in terms of processing feelings towards each other bttt i a really big turning point. like i think edgeworth's kneejerk emotional response to thinking phoenix is straight up dead is sort of the first step in helping him realize that he wants phoenix in his life and that's something he should prioritize. in turn i think edgeworth showing up like that and being willing to help phoenix do something crazy is the first thing that really lets phoenix know that maybe his obsession with edgeworth isnt as one sided as he may have thought up until that point, especially considering their uneasy reunion in farewell my turnabout.

i think phoenix has wanted to make out with edgeworth at least since seeing his photo in the newspaper because hes a lunatic with terrible taste in men but i think he sees that as kind of just attraction/a puppy crush and doesnt take it too seriously until he and edgeworth get the chance to start spending time together outside of cases but then almost as soon as that does start happening he is down so obscenely bad. meanwhile i think edgeworth needs to go through several years of therapy before he is even capable of considering romantic or sexual entanglements in the abstract. he doesn't even really know how to have friends yet he's taking things one step at a time. we're going to get through 'having a non-business dinner and not making an excuse to leave halfway through' before anything else. but then once he sort of gets past those barriers he's able to re-asses and settle on okay. hmm. it seems im psychosexually obsessed with my best friend.

[sage-nebula]

My current tier list of the Ace Attorney games. In case it's hard to see which is which (+ also for screen readers):

S Tier: PWAA A Tier: AAI2, DD, JFA B Tier: AJAA, AAI C Tier: T&T D Tier: SoJ Haven't Played Yet: TGAA 1+2 No: PLvsPW

I really need to replay the sequel trilogy, because I know for a fact I only played DD and SoJ once each when they first released (and so much more time has elapsed since then than I realized, oof), and while I feel like I started an AJAA replay awhile ago, I can't remember when that was + I think I stopped on the fourth case for some reason. (Not because of the video recording of the concert, lol. I honestly think there was another reason. My memory is really fuzzy though, so I'm just not sure what that reason was. But I don't think it had anything to do with the game, I think it was a real life reason.)

Anyway, once I replay those games I'll be able to place them more firmly on this tier list. This is just where my feelings about them are at right now -- that I loved DD despite whatever flaws it has, I'm pretty sure I was really vibing with AJAA a lot on my replay before I stopped, and the only life preservers that saved SoJ from getting an F tier created for it were "The Magical Turnabout" and Rayfa. :) But we'll see how I feel when I get around to replaying them.

And then of course, the TGAA duology will be played at some point as well. I'm just not in as much of a hurry to get to that because I don't know those characters (yet) beyond the very brief interactions I had with the characters in the first case of the first TGAA, so I'm less motivated. But I'll get there eventually.

And I think I pushed Layton and his game into the harbor or something idk idk who he is.

[akihikosanada]

my aa5 thoughts could be summarized by saying i'm a fan of turnabout academy, athena and blackquill rock, apollo's joker era outfit fucks and that l'belle's theme song is too cunty to be real

i feel like they wanted bobby fulbright to be a combination of both gumshoe ("useless" detective who helps the protags) and matt engarde (guy who looks harmless but plot twist! he is evil and ruined everyone's lives) except they failed on both accounts

i mean part of the gumshoe thing is because he never appeared before so they couldn't build up on him helping the protags, even gumshoe by the end of aa1 is already quite helpful with phoenix and maya, mainly because he wants to help edgeworth but later cases like 2-2 and 2-4 show he wants to help them even with edgeworth out of the picture. obviously bobby never got this because he appeared for the first time in this game and in the one case he cooperates beyond basic stuff it's so he can later frame athena anyways so. also just the fact that he is always tasing blackquill only shows he was never to be trusted like????? if we see him through gumshoe lenses. interesting to note that bobby wearing a white suit that looks brand new (+ expensive shoes) makes him look less approachable than gumshoe with his old tattered coat. the sunglasses don't help either so if they really wanted him to be "gumshoe but evil" they did a bad job because he never seems trustworthy

then re engarde the "reveal" was laughably lame in aa5 with zero foreshadowing. i already knew about it and yet there was nothing in his actions that made him suspicious other than him seeming more helpful during 5-4 idk. meanwhile in 2-4 on a replay it's like. fairly obvious matt's the culprit almost from the moment you meet him but unless you suspect him from the start it's very easy to believe in him because that is also what phoenix is doing and there's also how he always believes his clients to be innocent (+ until engarde all his clients were innocent so you probably believe so too even with all the evidence stacked against him + every single character saying he is guilty). then matt drops him façade the whole case changes!!! it's no longer about helping your client but rather doing everything to save maya without having engarde be declared innocent. with bobby it's embarrassingly done at the last minute (in the final part of the trial no less) so despite him being an international spy or whatever he never feels like a threat compared to the literal actor. i mean by this point athena and blackquill were already declared innocent so there aren't any real stakes in the game other than finding out The Truth yk. also taking him down isn't even cathartic??? breakdowns have had a total downgrade in quality since phoenix's trilogy but that's a discussion for another day. the guy just rips his masks off and then gets shot by a random sniper only because they told him he's scared. taking down engarde is so much more gratifying after all the help phoenix had to take him down + it's one of phoenix's top bitch moments. a lot of people chimed in against the phantom too but it isn't cathartic whatsoever and again. you or the other characters aren't even who end up taking him down

in conclusion there will neverrrr be a case as good as farewell, my turnabout and next time they should just not make the plot twist guy so hateable to me i'm already wishing him to be dead from the very moment he appears

[professor-abeloved]

It Loves Within (a review of goodbyes, gratitude, and gay screaming)

i read somewhere that an aspect of the horror genre is pain. and if you're a fan of the it lives anthology, pain is inevitable.

the pain of choosing who has to take jane's place, a game that (doesn't) end(s) in sacrifice, betrayal, and anguish. the pain of losing one's parents, finding family anew (in both blood and found) - only to potentially lose it all.

the pain of an impossible choice: do you end this, once and for all, to save everyone - only to never see them again when you finally return home? do you remain in this world, with gaping wounds patched by temporary bandages, for the life you've never thought you had the chance to live? or do you try try try to bridge it all together, pushing for a world full of potential, a reality still out of reach, but still worth fighting for all the same?

every ending of It Lives Within is tragic in its own way, a bittersweet balm to the trauma-filled fuckaganza of a journey of these characters we know and love.

i'm never going to stop saying thank you to everyone at the @itlivesproject team for making the choice to create and collaborate on this masterpiece. the pain of pixelberry cancelling sequels (er, trilogies) broke my heart, but this fan game is more than a dream come true.

(the rest of this is kind of a rambling review under the cut)

looking back, i'm actually glad that they cancelled it - because i wouldn't trade every second i played ILW for anything. (and my girlfriend knows i've spent numerous all-nighters just playing and/or talking about ILW <3. i tell my therapist it started with abel's first diamond scene--and okay getting side-tracked).

first off, i want to mention all the variants. the It Lives series were unique and notorious for having different branches and endings that carried through to the next book, something which isn't very common in mobile visual novels. since ILW had not one, but two books to reference... hoo boy. coding, writing, making art + sprites for, testing, editing, and hell even just thinking of the different variables and how they impact a third book is such a herculean feat and i applaud everyone on the team for all the blood, sweat, and tears poured into this endeavor.

the gameplay itself was super fun!! i think it hit the right balance of action with timed choices and puzzles (i now want my own crown paperweight), implementing that Nerve Score system that the It Lives series is known for. not only did one have to keep in mind their Nerve, but also their choices between Blood and Shadow that would seal the fate of everyone in this Pixelberry Cinematic Universe (hello, horror Julian HSSgame). it was fun as fuck, i really liked and appreciate the decision of 3 different main endings <3

because the plot was a downright banger. every twist and turn had me on the edge of my seat and frantically screenshotting everything (somehow i've gotten to 20k screenshots, but at least 98% is ILW. the other 2% are random crap and also Choices, lol). it was cool to theorize and guess correctly on some things and still be utterly shocked at the brilliant execution. i can't list every single thing that made me gasp, but the crumbs of foreshadowing are incredible. not just saying this as a tester, but the replay value is nuts. (also the different personalites of sarcastic, genuine, and aggressive are so good).

having character relationships as a core stat was also an organic, lovely choice. i adore how everyone started off at various points (joss at 0 and amalia at 75 iirc?) and could develop differently and sometimes independently of nerve (abel being easy to befriend but having tough nerve to raise because he's going through Some Shit, while jocelyn was more closed off yet had easier nerve to raise). it really colors the ways the main 4 interact with rowan, and i love how even the romance variants played a part in it. from jealousy-laden glances to the famed Union Walk Out, this game was a breath of fresh air to the usual 'i accidentally have 1 flirt point with this LI and somehow they're in love with me' vibe of current mobile VNs. (mattyass is an outlier and doesn't count <3)

speaking of characters!! holy shit they slayed and served, giving closure to our favs from the first book and then some (being pro connor green wasn't in my 2023 bingo card, but it happened! i like that funky lil dude), giving the cast of the second book vital yet natural roles, while letting the new cast shine in their own right.

the It Lives cast is vastly beloved for a reason, and the ILP Team not only nailed every single one of the canon characters, but they breathed new life into them (literally in the case of RF!noah/devon). i'm beyond words to express how amazing it was to not only have my blorbos back, but to be able to see a beautiful devonoah romance and flirt with dan pierce after years of pining and get married to andy kang?!?! the gift just keeps on giving. (i'm just biased in mentioning them because devon, noah, andy, and dan are my ILITW biasline but i'm so happy to have seen stacy, lucas, ava, lily again <3333)

i also adore the ILB crew to bits!! i had the impression they were barely gonna be featured (and valid), but the way the showed up!! the way harper was important and could kick ass while injured??? slay.

and the way everyone interacted in ch19 was some avengers assemble beautiful dream. i don't think i'll ever be that happy again in my life, fr <33

and onto the stars of the show...

it's been an honor to spend time with each and every one of the main crew. jocelyn was someone i was hyped to see, ever since her cameo in the ILB end credits scene. redemption arcs are tricky and while i admittedly felt the initial trepidation... the execution of her development blew me away. it is fantastic and realistic (getting to encourage her to be better or to leave her alone was also a cool mechanic. i love how it's in firm yet empathic encouragement that she works to better herself.). she grew into such a fierce, gruff protector with a heart of gold and fists of fury. i love her so much. her nightmare sequence facing her shadow past self is one of my favorite's. arcs of self-forgiveness vs self-flagellation hit hard, and it moves me to tears to see how far joss has come <33 her route having either a slow burn vibe or a fwb tinge was also an excellent choice !! i enjoyed fwb route (she's so sweet and considerate, putting a blanket over us with a frown lmao) and i can't want to replay for sb + to write fics with her <3

now onto lincoln, my fav mlm cowboy son. i was initially jealous because i thought my girlfriend would be into him + i thought abel and he were exes, but i came around in ch13, iirc. i connect with his arc of wanting to prove your worth to your parents very painfully, and it means a lot to see him know that others' approval will never define him. i'm also happy to see him process his pain and give others a chance - give himself a chance to apologize and let abel in again. he's also fun to torture write for in fics, and somehow he's soulmates with my most complex ILW MC, wan, despite me son-zoning him real bad, so that's just amazing characterization. excited to write more <3

amalia my beloved <33 the brains, brawn, beauty of rowan's rogue monster hunting operations. i love her and her route so much. childhood best friends to lovers always slaps (i mean, cmon thats most of the ILITW ships), and the way it was executed for amalia is chef's kiss. the angst of your best friend not being the person you thought they were was an excellent spin on the trope. but the love she has for you and the love you have for her is something all on your own?? perfection <33 also her dreams of wanting to make a difference, especially what happened with her family is a very relevant experience today, are so inspiring <3 i'm so excited to replay her route with a different mc and also to write her as well <3

AIJDBFHDFJDOK abel aifhsohifOSDHDSIGH okay that's it.

JK abel, my love, my light, my stars. professor dorklord. the reason i've changed my url after these long years. i love him and his sexy sweater vest of sin so much. my favorite scene of all time is when pretending to have a lover's spat with abel in amalia's university AISHFIOG. he's funny, sweet, and charming. i'd listen to his nerdy rambles all night long - and yes, partially an innuendo, and partially that i like nerds who ramble about things. i love how he can be too rational (yet always with a heart <3) yet also so selfless, and i love how he can choose himself and his happiness at the end instead of living with ghosts <3 i love you abel, baby, i'm coming back for youuu in every route, in every wip <3

to ro, my trans-coded, queer-coded power entity <3 i was so happy that MC had powers (not from a suit we had to spend diamonds on), and wow they executed this trope so well. rowan is so well written with 3 different personality types, it's wonderful. y'know, i used to make MCs for every choices book (until i got lazy lol) and i can't believe i have at least 4 MCs again <3 the creativity this game sparks in me i swear to the power. i'll see you soon: ronaldo, genuinely sweet and genuinely terrifying baby boy. wan, my sweet snarky selfless drag queen. amor, you tough dorky tcg-playing sweetheart. reg my flirty failgirl (gender neutral), beanie baby charmer.

shoutout to daddy mattyass for being the GOAT choices antagonist/secret LI. you know i have so much to say about him, but it's almost 2 am and also 90% of my ilw meta is about him anyways <3 love to hate him, hate to love him!! he lives rent free in my mind <33 (but fr, such a compelling character and no one else would've been as satisfying to deal with in the finale. i miss the king of delusion pathetic meow meow <3)

also loving luis, sunny, elena, jessica, milf mayor green, babygirl adrian kim, girlboss marianthe. every npc, every pixel and line of code and text and just everything, every thread that makes up the tapestry of this beautiful, priceless experience.

it lives on, it loves on.

pain is inevitable. it hurts because it's over, it hurts because i love this game with every fibre of my being... but love doesn't really die, does it? it lives on in a different form. the game will always be there. if anything, the fandom is alive with the love that's put into the project, the love that reaches us no matter where we are - even from the fictional town of Westchester to the Power dimension and beyond.