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June update: 27/52
Not the most interesting month honestly.
24. June 4th | Final Fantasy 2 (Pixel Remaster) | PC | 19h 20m | Replay | ☆☆½(/5)
I always root for Final Fantasy II for some reason. I have played some of it on Famicom, PS1, beaten it on GBA, PSP and now PC, and before I start a new playthrough (and this is probably the last one I'll do to be honest. I don't really have the time or wish to replay mediocre games now that I'm not a literal child anymore), I always hope to find something special within FF2 that will make me appreciate it more because there are a lot of really good or at least interesting concepts within this little game. I feel like it's important here to really stress that I said "concept" here, because they're really not very good in practice.
A lot of people don't like the level up system in this game, and I sort of agree with them. Not the complaint that you have to hit yourself to level up HP or whatever, but by the fact that it, at least in this pixel remaster, feels very random what stat is upgraded when, and very inconsistent with when they actually upgrade something, making a lot of battles feel pretty pointless when you don't have a clear experience bar to fill up or something like that. This is a pretty big issue since FF2 has maybe the worst encounter rate in this entire series, and dungeons with trap rooms just made to make you fight even more. I like a good turn-based RPG as much as the next guy, but I need a better reason to fight a million fights than that I
might get a minor stat improvement after some of them. I'm sure there is a system to it and you do get good stats eventually no matter what, but there are just too many fights for too little reward. Also every guest party member sucks, but it is what it is. Not like you have them long enough for it to really matter anyway. As far as I understand Square also messed things up in this game by having enemies that previously could inflict statuses on you with normal attacks always doing so with each hit in this game, making enemies like Coeurl with their chance of inflicting instant death when hitting with a normal attack extremely dangerous.
Maybe it is the constant fighting, but it's not like the rest of the game is all that fun either. There's so much time spent just wandering between the first town and the eastern part of the starting continent, beating a few dungeons that have a bit more thought put into them than the ones in the first game, but still plagued by the encounter rate and the aforementioned trap rooms where several times there're just a few doors in front on you where it's pure trial and error if you take the right one or not. Not like it really matters since all the trap rooms amount to is at least one fight against an enemy, but these occurences add up pretty quickly. I do like the final dungeon where the map designer suddenly realized that it would be fun to not have these trap rooms, but still sort of a maze like structure and alternate paths which lead to treasure, but that's about the one highlight there.
While I do want to praise Square for having put a cohesive story about a rebellion fighting back against an evil empire and carrying out missions to thwart them, I really wish the game didn't suddenly slow down to a complete halt for the search for Ultima. There's so much travelling across the entire world, fighting another thousand enemies, getting through some inoffensive, but still fairly bad dungeons before you're even allowed to get to the tower where the spell is held, and when you finally do get it, it's completely useless unless you spend way too much time leveling it up and it's never mentioned again after you've gotten it. FF2 isn't a long game even with this completely pointless sidetrack, but it sure is more annoying with it in there, but it's also but mainly because the game just isn't fun to play. Like, I can accept filler in a game that's fun to play, but more Final Fantasy II is not a good thing. I really wish it was, because I like how focused and low key the story is and how unique its level up system is (even if I'm not a big fan of it in practice), but I will never enjoy the act of actually playing it. The absolute beginning is sort of fun, but it all starts going downhill after fighting Borghen and never really recovers until the final dungeon, which ends on a pathetically easy final boss. Also not really sure what the point with the key word system was considering how the phrases are so extremely situational, but I get that they wanted to try out something new and it's not like they make the experience worse anyway.
I really have tried my best with trying to enjoy FF2, but it just wasn't meant to be between us. At least it has a great soundtrack that I can listen to without having to actually play the game.
Soundtrack highlight:
Pandaemonium
25. June 17th | Yakuza: Dead Souls | PS3 | 77h 11m | ☆☆½(/5)
I really am hoping to one day get to Like a Dragon, but I want to beat all of the previous games (released in the west) before I finally get to that, and so I find myself here with Yakuza: Dead Souls. Wasn't expecting to ever play this at all, but stumbled upon a cheap copy earlier this year, which... I don't know how to feel about it. I mean, I guess I'm glad to have been able to play it (and the fact that I happened to have my PS3 already hooked up to my TV), but it's also the worst Yakuza game I've played. Even the worst in the series honestly isn't that bad, but despite being about zombies in Kamurocho and giving Ryuji both his life back and a gun arm, the whole thing feels a bit bland.
The main form of gameplay is surprisingly fine. Gunplay in the Yakuza games has never been good, but they've at least revamped it a bit here, making it feel more like an actual, but very janky, third person shooter rather than pressing triangle and hoping for the best. Here you mash R1 instead and trust that the auto aim is good enough, though you can also manually aim and sometimes even have to. I do honestly like that the game just has dedicated battle zones instead of the random encounters, making it a lot less annoying to travel through the safe areas of Kamurocho than in previous games. Just too bad that the game seems to wall off areas specifically so that you have to run the max distance no matter where you're headed, but I can honestly live with it when it means I can run wherever I want to without being interrupted by street thugs, or I'm in the zombie zones where I can just ignore the enemies running at me to get where I want anyway. I of course killed them anyway since this game really can't handle that many zombies on screen at once, dropping to single digit framerate when that's the case. When you're playing down in Kamurocho's roguelike tunnels, the subterranea, that doesn't seem to matter much though, and the fps just seem to drop when the game feels like it. The subterannea, by the way? Probably the most boring thing ever introduced in any of these games. Just floor after floor of the exact same gray textures for way too long without any real difficulty no matter which difficulty you're playing on. Does become more annoying the longer you play the game, though, since it starts being filled with stronger types of enemies, several of whom that are surprisingly good at avoiding your shots even when manually aiming. Did I still do the endless subterranea for the trophy at getting to the 50th floor? Yes, but I'm a deeply disturbed person who needs to get 100% and the platinum trophy in every Yakuza game I play.
I think my biggest issue with Dead Souls, though, is that outside of its wacky concept, there just isnt' much there. Sure, you have the same mini-games as Yakuza 4 (which, sadly, for me meant doing the completion requirements for pool yet again) and those are all fine, but take out the recycled content and you have functional, but also extremely repetitive gameplay (somehow even more than the usual Yakuza game), the weakest set of substories in the series, tied with Yakuza Kiwami where half of them seemed to be about scammers. There's also absolutely no good story reason for either Akiyama or Majima to be playable here. Akiyama does more in other people's chapters than his own, and Majima is just there so the developers could add in a pretty weak joke at the end. They're both sort of just there, and that's the feeling I get for most of the story as well. You could tear apart every single Yakuza story if you really wanted to, but those at least presented a more interesting plot, with better stakes, some insane moments where you forget how to think critically other than "that's rad!", and a good amount of well earned pathos thanks to what's usually some pretty good characterisations. In Dead Souls there's really nothing of that. You'd think there'd at least be some pretty crazy things happening in a non-canon game with this premise, but it takes such a safe route the entire way through that by the end when I finally met the main villain and fought the final boss, I just felt like there was nothing there. I did not care about what was going on, which is rare since even in Yakuza 5, where I rarely could keep up with the plot, I still got swept up in the story by the end. This is just an uninterested shrug at the most for the entire duration of the game. Sure, the premise is fun at the beginning of the game, but when you start realizing that this is just off-brand House of the Dead sprinkled with [generic zombie film], and that there really isn't much of interest going on, it becomes a pretty boring experience with gunplay that while perfectly fine is still worse than most games on the market at that time.
Also have to wonder who thought that Ryuji's first chapter that 1) never seemed to end, 2) had that terrible rescue mission, 3) ended on that even more terrible forklift section was a good idea.
Soundtrack highlight:
Ryuji's Battle Theme
26. June 19th | A Way Out | PS4 | 6h | ☆☆☆½(/5)
You know, I actually remember way back when Josef Fares used to make movies. I don't really think he was ever lauded as some grand auteur or anything, but they did do well domestically and he did make a pretty big name for himself. Never really though he'd start directing video games instead, but I guess it's a crazy world. What's even crazier is that I just looked up his many nominations and awards, both for movies and games, on IMDB, and the first time he ever got a nomination for best script was for A Way Out. This might be one of the most baffling things I've ever seen, because this is honestly one of the dumbest scripts I've ever experienced in a video game.
Don't get me wrong; I really enjoyed the game and the sheer stupidity of it certainly had a part in that, but it's insane to me how this very talented man who released his first movie at 23 and then went on to make (and write) four other movies over the next ten years, then made his first game with Brothers: A Tale of two Sons (which I haven't played, but people seem to really enjoy it?), and then comes out with A Way Out where barely a single line of dialogue feels natural, and the main plot just speeds ahead without any sort of logic in sight. It's honestly impressive how stupid it all is, but it is very charming nonetheless and does lead to some fun gameplay segments.
And it is very fun to play. A Way Out doesn't really do anything great, and most of the optional mini-games spread throughout the game feel more than a little janky, but I do like that they're there, letting these two hardened criminals play an arcade game before jumping out of an airplane to land in Mexico™ and kill a... what is Harvey? Just a random criminal? Maybe it doesn't matter. Either way it's a lot of fun to really break the serious crime thriller with these stupid little side activities. Yes Vincent, it is a good idea to see how long you can balance on two wheels in a wheelchair when you're actually supposed to be by your wife's side as she's giving birth to your first baby. And yes Leo, you should try to get triple bullseye on the dart board before trying to reconcile with your son who hates you. It's very dumb, but it certainly gives the game a unique flavor.
This stupidity also just makes it an even better multiplayer game than it could have been if it had taken itself more seriously. Just the fact that you can(and have to) do so many things completely separate from each other is cool enough, but being able to sit there with your partner and just ridicule the game together, lauging at how the police stops chasing Leo and Vincent when they escape on a very slow row boat just makes the experience all the more precious. Despite how dumb it actually is when you stop and think about it for a second, I also think this very cooperative and immersive multiplayer really makes the end twist that much stronger, even if it ends on a set piece that the game couldn't handle all that well. Almost wish it could have ended at that completely out of nowhere side scrolling beat em up section in the hospital just for how bizarre it was. But I could say that about a lot of sections where the game suddenly switches genre, since it very much likes doing it as often as it can. That's not a complaint, by the way. I'm honestly really surprised by just how many different gameplay mechanics they managed to cram into this game, and how almost all of them are surprisingly a lot of fun. If you're someone who likes variety in your games, A Way Out is definitely for you. Just don't expect any of it to be particularly great.
Probably nothing anyone not Swedish would ever think about, but isn't it a bit strange that Josef Fares would cast his Swedish-Lebanese brother, Fares Fares, as an Italian-American in this game? He's certainly not bad as Leo, but he's also very much not an American and you can definitely hear it throughout the game. Not that it really matters, I guess. Should I have ended this little A Way Out write-up on a more interesting note? Probably, but that's just the way it goes sometimes.
Soundtrack highlight:
River
27. June 27th | Judgment | PS4 | 20h | Replay | ☆☆☆½(/5)
Wow, here's a game that certainly lost a bit of its charm on a replay (probably didn't help that I played way too much Dead Souls the same month either),
almost exactly two years after I beat it the first time. Thought I'd just quickly play through Judgment on Legend for the platinum trophy, and while there are a lot of things I really enjoy about the game, there are some things with it that really annoyed me as well. I do still stand by most of what I wrote back in 2020, like how Yagami's more acrobatic combat style is a nice change of pace from Kiru's bigger focues on brute strength, and it looks very good. I do, however, feel the need to add that, at least when playing on legend, Yagami's quick step is almost useless, with enemies still hitting you and the most safe way to avoid attacks is I-frames from the wall jumping, which never really felt good to pull off. I don't know, the combat can feel very good at times, and the EX Boost is fun to use when you just want to pummel your enemies (or avoid getting mortal wounds from bosses), but give me more traditional Yakuza combat any day over this. I've heard it's better in Lost Judgment, so looking forward to play that some day.
Gameplay outside of the combat is either the usual Yakuza fare, which is mostly fun with some tedium here and there (though the hostesses have been replaced with the much better girlfriend missions), or the new detective mechanics which usually aren't all that. I enjoy the different lockpicking mini-games, but the chases are just there and the tailing missions are mind numbingly boring, especially since the citizens of Kamurocho are the most paranoid people in the world, constantly looking behind their backs and somehow also always knowing that Yagami is tailing them and not just, you know, walking down the same street. They're also way too scripted, making them even worse to play if you were to ever fail at one (which is definitely possible on the last mandatory one where the person you're tailing keeps trying to tricki you into walking out of hiding spots). Maybe it sounded good on paper, but absolutely awful in practice.
I still really love the story, however, and think the main plot and mystery is some of the best writing that RGGS has ever put into any of their games, with very few of the trademark moments of nonsense that their games otherwise have, and despite juggling a lot of balls at the same time, I never really felt that it became convoluted to the Yakuza 5 point where it becomes almost impossible to follow what's going on after a certain point. Also an absolutely fantastic cast of new characters, with Yagami being a fun main character and Kaito the most precious sidekick you could ever ask for, plus the entire law firm and surprisingly interesting Yakuza. Some of the fun is lost, of course, by me knowing who the murderer is, but it's still a really memorable journey with some fun twists and turns, plus the absolutely amazing multiphase battle against the Cane Man which really isn't integral to the story, but seriously one of my favourite long battles in any RGGS game. Final chapter (and boss) has to be one of the best finales to any of these games, both thanks to how well it builds toward it, but also in the very efficient way in which it really shows how Yagami and his weird crew have really grown close to each other over the course of the game.
It's just too bad that the pacing of this entire game is so bad. Not just because there are several mandatory side cases placed at the least opportune times in the story, but also because the Keihin Gang makes this game an absolute nightmare to play at times. Way too often do you get a text saying that the Keihin Gang is in town, which just means that the encounter rate is raised by about 1000%, and if you don't have a stealth extract or want to pull out your drone to despawn enemies constantly, it becomes a pure nightmare to run around Kamurocho unless you let time pass and they leave (at which point the game tries to guilt trip you), or you defeat their leaders a few times. I don't think I've ever felt the pacing of a game to be off because of a gameplay mechanic, but this really does make the game a slog to play, and I just groaned each time I got that text about them being in town again. Even when you complete their storyline, they still return over and over again! Yakuza 5 had a bad encounter rate, but the Keihin gang is even worse than that. Even if you run away after they've spotted you, you still can't to anything until they've stopped chasing you so even if you don't fight them you have to just wait for too long before being able to return to continuing with the story. Not sure how this didn't annoy me more the first time, but I absolutely hated getting those Keihin texts on this replay, and I certainly got a lot of them over the entire playthrough.
Still, the story is good enough to keep you invested and while the gameplay can feel a bit stiff, it still has that satisfying Yakuza feel where you get to feel really cool with yourself while knocking down five thugs at once, plus some really nice heat actions. It's dropped in my personal ranking over these games, but that doesn't mean I don't recommend it if you like the Yakuza games and want something just a bit different. It also has a super boss that's so insane that the game starts running worse than Yakuza: Dead Souls while fighting him. That has to count for something, right? Some of the absolute best boss themes in the series as well.
Soundtrack highlight:
Rake Your Inside
Currently playing:
Xenoblade Chronicles 3 (Switch)
