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November update: 49/52
Almost there...
48. November 4th | Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order | PS5 | 25h | ☆☆☆(/5)
As a fairly big Star Wars fan, but at the same time someone who really hasn't played a lot of the Star Wars games, I have been trying for the last couple of years to check out at least one every year since a lot of them are also surprisingly acclaimed considering just how frequently they were being released in the past. Played Dark Forces in 2020, Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II last year, and while you would expect me to play Jedi Outcast (which I do own), the one that I was really excited about playing this year was Fallen Order. Not that I can only play one Star Wars game a year really, but time is precious and there are about a million other games I want to play as well while still maintaining a life outside of Gaming™, so I have to prioritize sometimes.
Anyway, this is a very
fine game. Not spectacular, not bad, and usually pretty fun while giving off very Star Wars-y vibes with a very "almost John Williams, but still clearly not" soundtrack, planets that sure do look like they could come from any of the films while still feeling mostly original, and at least sometimes letting you use iconic Jedi powers in a pretty fun and satisfying way. Also surprisingly fun to customize your own hilt for the lightsaber with the various parts spread throughout the game. Story's also mostly fine, though not without some strangeness to it, like the colosseum section than ends about as abruptly as it started and is never mentioned again, and also leading into one of the game's most awkward cutscenes where a character the main protagonist, Cal Kestis (somehow one of the dumbest names in all of Star Wars), has barely interacted with says he's one of the most important people in their life. It is mostly focused on just finding a map to potential padawans, and while it focuses on that and maybe some of Cal's struggles as well, it does work as a maybe pretty basic, but still enjoyable and functional little thing despite seemingly forgetting about its really cool main villain for a pretty large chunk of the story. The strange little detours like this aforementioned colosseum section do, sadly, occur here and there, interrupting the narrative flow and never feeling like they were organically inserted into the plot. Like poorly made filler in an anime or something like that.
Likewise, combat is mostly fine, sometimes even great and maybe it's because I played Bloodborne so recently, but damn if Fallen Order can't feel a bit like a very clunky Soulslike at times. It doesn't have the difficulty like one of those games really, but the melee combat and its focus on parrying and dodging the very hard hitting enemies does certainly feel fairly similar to the FromSoft formula, but not close to being as refined and fun to engage with. Like, when you're just fighting waves of Storm Troopers or maybe a lone larger enemy, it works really well and you really get the opportunity to feel like the coolest Jedi around, throwing people into pits (or each other), reflecting missiles back onto your attacker, pulling enemies towards you or into a blast shot you've slowed down, throwing your lightsaber at several troops at once, just bobbing and weaving while a storm trooper is desperatelly trying to hit you with their weird lightbatons, or getting that perfect parry and then just slashing away. Like, at its peak, Fallen Order feels absolutely amazing, and like the most Star Wars thing to have ever Star Wars'd. Sadly, it doesn't work nearly as well when you have to fight the more animalistic enemies and when there are several of them, as most of the force powers don't work, they telegraph most of their attacks very poorly, a lot of them can't be parried, and they just have too much health for how little damage Cal actually does, with his lightsaber feeling more like a lightbaseball bat (and cutting off limbs is relegated to some of the animals and droids, though I get that it's a ratings thing that they couldn't go further). Cal also really wasn't born to fight more enemies than one at the same time, since the dodging mechanic, while fairly generous, has a very hard time dealing with two attacks coming from two different directions, often making you take damage even when you really shouldn't have. The auto lock-on of the attacks also get a bit screwed up here, where Cal can get a perfect parry on one enemy, lowering its guards, but he starts attacking the enemy beside it instead. Sadly, these types of encounters with a few too many foes do occur very often throughout the game, making what is fundamentally a very good combat system feel pretty unpolished and just not as fun as it could be.
That really is the sum of Fallen Order: it just isn't as fun as it could and probably should be. Traversal and its metroidvania aspects does feel good and unlocking new paths and shortcuts is satisfying, but this also feels unpolished at the end of the day, with its lack of any kind of fast travel making back tracking a real chore at times, and the pretty terrible map really doesn't help when you're looking for how to get to a specific place. Also, as much as the planets look like something from the Star Wars universe, they all feel a bit too lifeless for my tastes. Not every planet or part of a planet can be inhabited by non hostile folks or even people at all, but it feels like wildlife is all there is on every planet you visit outside of a few sections in Kashyyyk where the NPCs just disappear if you ever revisit their locations anyway, and I really wish at least some of the worlds could have felt a bit more alive because they do tend to just feel like video game obstacle courses now that they're so stripped of everything but the bare necessities rather than actual places.
Some bizarre set pieces as well. Feels like there are several times where the game wants you to go "wow, that's so cool", or "wow, this is so beautiful", and they are sort of cool and beautiful when they want to, but they also last for way too long every time, and especially the opening part of Kashyyyk is really weird, making you use an attack the game doesn't tell you that you have to shoot down a ship that otherwise won't go down with regular shots like everything else you've faced before it, instead just floating there for all eternity without doing anything. I honestly thought I'd run into a game breaking bug or something after several minutes of just shooting and nothing happening.
Honestly, the foundations for this game are so great that despite the pretty underbaked final product (which I still got the platinum trophy for, so I still obviously liked it well enough), I'm really interested in Jedi: Survivor where I at least hope Respawn have learned from their mistakes and gotten a bit more comfortable with working within this genre that a lot of my issues here have been ironed out there. Most of all, though, I hope that not basically every clothing option is a different color variant of Cal's awful poncho.
Oh, and before I forget: great photo mode!
Soundtrack highlight:
Cal Kestis
49. November 9th | Bayonetta 3 | Switch | 25h | ☆☆☆☆(/5)
Somehow one of the more controversial games of the year, both for that very strange chain of events with Bayo's voice actress and I guess also the story, which is honestly a surprise to me since I didn't think a single soul on this earth cared about the narrative of any of these games. Yeah, it is bad in this game, maybe even worse than in previous games since they were at least a bit more comprehensible and less repetitive, but, like, Bayonetta has always been a franchise where I just find the pacing of the cutscenes, the absolute nonsense going on, and the exaggerated nature of everything to the point where I'm just completely numb to it all after a certain point make for extremely boring stories to experience. All three games have some very high highs when it comes to just cool moments sprinkled throughout the plot, but it's mostly just cutscenes that think they're both a lot funnier and more interesting than they actually are, with characters that were maybe, sort of fun in the first game since they were featured less, but I just can't pretend to care a single bit about by the third game. That's not to say that I think others are wrong in feeling so negatively about this game's story and especially its ending, it's just that I really don't care enough about the whole to really react to how stupid it definitely is, which I guess might be an even more damning verdict of the writing to some.
It's neither here nor there to me though, because despite being someone who really does care a lot about the writing in the various games I play, I really just play the Bayonettas for their fantastic gameplay, and I'm so happy that it at least delivered there big time. There's still nothing more satisfying than activating witch time and seeing the world slow down around you, and the many different types of weapon also lets you shake up your combat style throughout the game if you so please. I personally got pretty attached to the Alruna and Simoon and didn't experiment that much, but all the others are fun to use and distinct enough from each other that I'd imagine you could ask ten different people what weapon combo they used, and you'd get ten different answers. Also introduced with these weapons is the new demon slave system, which did feel a bit overwhelming at first since you have to control a separate entity from Bayonetta herself while still keeping an eye on her so that enemies won't hit her while she's immobile, but after a short period of getting used to it, I'm not sure I really want to ever play another game in the series without it since it adds so much, both in the ways of combos, but also shielding Bayonetta from harm when needed and just plain looking really cool. Sure, the train demon is awful to control, and absolutely everything in this game that has anything do with Gomorrah is 1/10 bad, but all of the others feel faaaantastic to use, and distinct enough from each other both in combat and as different types of traversal abilities outside of battles.
Then we have maybe another controversy of this game, which is Viola and her gameplay. It is, of course, objectively cool to have a character fighting with just a katana, but she does certainly take time getting used to since she's so unlike Bayonetta's gameplay. Her Witch time is also terrible since it's dependent on the timing of her parries, and that window is just so insanely tight that I could never really get it down consistently, but I also spent enough time trying to learn how she plays to understand that it's a waste of time even trying. Viola isn't Bayonetta, so just forget about that witch time. Still parry when possible of course, but I found that just playing more like I imagine something like Astral Chain does without ever having touched that game, i.e. summon out her demon, Cheshire, and since Viola's movements aren't tied to him like Bayonetta and her demons, just fight alongside him. It honestly felt like I was doing something wrong by ignoring the franchise's biggest USP in the witch time, but it also made using Viola really fun. Some bosses can kill your demons so it's obviously not always viable, but it's as if Platinum actually thought of this because every time you face that kind of foe with Viola, it's usually one with much clearer tells for when they're about to attack and a larger parry window. As for the character herself, I like her more than Loki since I'm a sane human being, but she's mostly just comic relief that the game really is trying to make me care about despite barely letting her do anything. Cool design, though. Really good performance from her voice actress too.
The more gimmicky gameplay sections, like Jeanne's Elevator Action stages or the different times you control demons are fairly hit or miss. I do like most of them outside of Gomorra's Godzilla homage which is just the clunkiest thing in the world, and the rail shooter part where the demon takes up basically all of the screen and I could barely see a single obstacle in my way at some points, but even in those cases, I do really appreciate Platinum going so far as to make all of these sections feel so distinct from both each other and the rest of the game. They really weren't needed, but they're here and most of them also surprisingly polished. Jeanne's stages could maybe be a bit more complex, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy them quite a bit, which is saying something since old school arcade games really isn't something I usually like. The demon gameplay in chapter 12, though? Perfection. Honestly, that entire chapter is probably my favorite section out of any game this year outside of Xenoblade Chronicles 3's chapter 5. Both insane, extremely stupid and genius at the same time, plus featuring probably the best boss fight in the entire game.
I do have to say though, for as much as I enjoyed playing Bayonetta 3 (and I did enjoy it very much), it can feel surprisingly cheap at times. Not like the first game's insanely strict quick time events, but in how a lot of enemies seem very eager to attack from off screen, and how difficult the readability of their movements can be sometimes. I'm not really sure why that is since they all clearly telegraph most attacks (though it is extremely annoying that you get that visual cue of enemies briefly shining before some attacks, but not others, making some a lot harder to dodge than they should). Maybe it's just because every enemy is just a mess of white and turquoise? Whatever the case, it can be an issue at times, making it feel like I took damage without really being at blame for it myself. It's not a huge issue, but it can be very annoying when going for higher medals (which isn't really something I did, but still annoying to know I lost that pure platinum because of something I couldn't ever have foreseen).
Outside of combat, I actually enjoyed the level design. It's certainly less linear than the hallway simulator that is Bayonetta 2 and I get that this wider design with more exploration isn't what a lot of people want in their character action games, but despite really enjoying the combat, I also appreciated how much downtime is given to the player that wants it by exploring the stages, doing some minor platforming challenges and the like. It's not super inspired or revolutionary in any way, but a nice breather from all the hectic action and with a surprising amount of secrets hidden throughout every chapter. They look terrible though. Like, this has to be the only franchise ever where all three games have been released during three different console generations and they all basically look like a 2007 7th generation game, right? Maybe parts of 2 looked better than this, which is pretty damning since this was released on stronger hardware and eight years later, but mostly they're pretty bland looking, pretty 2007 all three of them. Not that highly detailed environments and characters really matter all that much in a game like this where gameplay and gameplay alone is king, but still pretty strange when it's Platinum's flagship franchise.
All in all, though, a fun game. Very ugly and really stupid, but so much fun. Also absolutely not actually 25 hours for most people. It's just that I played the first six-seven chapters on normal and then switched it up to expert, replayed the chapters on that difficulty and also later spent way too much time trying to learn Viola and get decent ranks with her on the optional chapters, and finding all the optional verses in each chapter. It's definitely still longer than the previous two games, but I could have been a lot faster as well. Anyway, hope the wait for the fourth game (not that spin-off coming next year, though I'll probably play that as well) isn't as long as it was with this one!
Also got some real Bloodborne vibes during every Strider fight where I saw the blood moon rise while a large, Lovecraftian monster with long, terribly anti-aliased hair attacked me while the frame rate really couldn't handle what the game was throwing at it.
Soundtrack highlight:
Gh()st
Currently Playing:
Return to Monkey Island (Switch)
Pokémon Scarlet (Switch)
Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion (PS5)
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire (PC)
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