2023: Mania Renewal

I had intended when I began the year to divvy up my blogs more, to write a blog for every month perhaps. That didn't happen! Instead, I rather neglected the blog, busy as I was with other things in life. I also found the length creep to be somewhat wearisome, why continue writing such overly long blogs? No, I'd rather just keep the scope in check this time.

That also means no funny screenshots with captions. We all love them, but damn they take forever to do and kinda make me put writing these things off in the first place. Use your imaginations! Fantasy, become reality!

As I am only now coming back to this blog after letting it lie around for some months, I'll add some comments in brackets to reflect whether my opinions have changed since then.

Renewal

Before I get into all the media talk, I should talk a bit about what a rollercoaster 2023 has been so far. When 2022 came to an end, I already had a lot more stuff going on than I did at the end of 2021, being that I had a boyfriend by then, and come 2022 my intention was to get a new job as well. And... I got it! I'm actually writing this as I am on for two weeks and a half, a break between my old job and my new job. It's exciting! It really is like, my dream job. It still feels unreal! 

And aside from that, things have been going well with my boyfriend, I adore him as much as ever. I am participating in a TTRPG now and things are getting spicy in that as well... It feels like my life has a lot more direction than it did before. This really feels like a year of forward momentum, a sudden acceleration after the years of lull I had prior. I hope to keep this momentum going throughout the rest of the year!

So yeah, things are going well for Mania! Whoo!

PC Problems

Annoying! Very annoying! My PC problems continued quite a way into 2023, leaving me stranded without my main PC for a while. I still thankfully had the excellent people on my Discord servers, my dad's PC and my mobile phone to work with, but I could actually feel how the experience just made my days feel worse. 

Eventually my PC did get fixed, thankfully, and I even got a new keyboard for free out of it and at no charge since I still had warranty. So things did get better then! It's worked well since, so let's hope it won't break again. I'm not sure what even did break, but I think it was the processor? So now I have an i5 instead of an i3. My PC does seem a bit quicker for it.

It does make me question my dependence on my PC, but honestly, that's just normal given my hobbies and interests. Most of the things I want to do, are best done with my PC. Thus, I become dependant on it. And honestly, I don't think that's a problem. I don't think that makes me an addict, I never lose track of time or like my bodily needs or experience withdrawal, I just prefer to spend my time doing things that are best done with a PC. 

[It's weird looking back at this as I am editing this, cuz I would honestly have forgotten to put this here had I written all this now. Hm. There are also a lot of things that really are only viable because I have a PC, or such technology, like the TTRPG I do every Sunday.]

Floppy Knights

So, the first game I got around to playing was a game from my list at the end of 2022: Floppy Knights! This game came on my radar due to its artstyle, it shares it fully from Dicey Dungeons. This is rather interesting, since it puts the game in the category of having a style that's entirely the same as another game, but still feels very unique since it's a style very uncommon in games still. I think that speaks to Marlowe Dobbe's distinct atstyle!

As for the actual gameplay, it's somewhat of a hybrid of many styles. The core gameplay itself is a turn-based tactical game where you summon units, order them to move, order them to attack and use special modifiers. The actual way this is implemented is through a deckbuilder with an energy system, where every turn you draw 5 cards form the deck and get 5 energy to play cards. These cards determine your possible actions, having summon cards, movement cards, attack cards and miscellaneous cards.

So, this in a sense combines games such as Slay the Spire, Card Hunter, Telepath Tactics into one mix. It's important to note that the game's not a roguelike, however! The deckbuilding is more like a Yu-Gi-Oh! RPG, where you start with a basic deck and earn new deck leaders and cards as you progress through the game, augmenting your deck to fit the battle.

The core gameplay is functional, sensible and stable. It rewards clever strategizing both in your deckbuilding and your moment-to-moment decision making. The game's deceptively tricky, sometimes seeming easy until one errant mistake makes you lose the game. It also features very little output RNG, the cards you're dealt are randomly shuffled, but the actual effects of cards are 99% deterministic.

So yeah, the gameplay works, and it's compelling. I enjoyed getting into the game and figuring out what works! There's the main campaign, which has a goofy but fun plot, and there's sidequests and optional puzzles that feature some more brutal battles, puzzle-like battles and battles with gimmicky prebuilt decks and tougher level design.

But then the moment comes when you do figure the game out. When you've assembled the best deck. And then playing more of the game becomes a bit of a chore, because you keep doing the same things over, and over, and over. This happened to me when I unlocked the third deck type, which has by far the best deck leaders and support. At that point it's easy to build the best deck, and just keep using the optimal strategy over and over. And then it becomes somewhat boring, because winning is a foregone conclusion. It's going through the motions, clicking buttons. Maybe add a new powerful card to the deck, but it still plays the same. And that just shouldn't happen in a game like this, but neither the deckbuilding, the moment to moment gameplay or the level designs accommodate to prevent that.

I still enjoyed my time with the game, I just wish it could keep that early rush of excitement.

[Hey, yeah, this actually lines up well with my feelings now. It's a good game, it just doesn't really last all the way into the endgame.]

Crash N.Sane Trilogy

This was not on my end of 2022 list, but these games were on sale, and I did like the Spyro remaster...

Well, it's quite different from Spyro! Both are 3D mascot platformers, but while Spyro is an open-ended collectathon, the Crash games are much more closed and linear. My only play experience with the series before this was Crash Bash, though that game's quite different anyhow, being more of a party game. I was somewhat familiar with Crash regardless, though.

But I wasn't ready for how difficult the game actually is! While the games are very generous with handing out extra lives, it's also very easy to lose them. It also has a lives system, yes! I hate those! Really detracts from the game, that.

My experience with the first game in the trilogy was trying. You can really tell it's a remake of a first instalment, much more so than with Spyro. The game is full of annoying sequences, unfair bits and just generally worse game design compared to the second. You can tell the developers looked back after making this and decided some things need fixing.

I think the worst offender is the way bonus gems are earned! Every level has crates, smash them all and you earn a gem. Simple, right? No. In most levels you can't reach the bonus gem unless you have the special coloured gem from some other level. Ok, so that requires some backtracking. But the problem there is that to earn those special coloured gems, you have to beat that level, and break all crates, and not lose a single life. What?! I'm sorry, but... No. I tried, but that sounds genuinely awful. No way.

So instead I just barely got any gems at all, because to get them I need to perfect other levels. And, like, the NO DEATHS thing only counts for the coloured gems! Those are harder to get than the things you unlock by getting them... So instead, now every level ends with the game tallying how much content I missed. Charming.

Thankfully, Crash 2 is immediately much better! The level design is less cramped, more varied and has less annoying and tedious sequences. The coloured gem system got revamped and is much better now. The bosses are generally better, too, though they're still often that style of "avoid the attacks until you can strike" sort of boss that's rather boring, but less than in Crash 1. It's genuinely Crash 1 but better.

So yeah, that's where I am right now, I'm about like 70% done with Crash 2 now. Looking forward to Crash 3.

And now here is Mania, who has finished Crash 2! I really was enjoying the game! And then I wasn't!! I had like a surplus of 40 lives stocked up, but then the final world just consumed them all. The Jetpack levels just felt horrible to control, I didn't like the obstacles in the sidescroller stages and the lights out level was just obnoxious for some reason. And the final boss was pathetically easy, like impossible to die to easy! Weird!

I think I also neglected to mention that death routes and levels with backtracking are awful!

Then I played the third game, Crash Bandicoot: Warped. Only then did everything suddenly click. The game picks off right where the second ends, expanding the scope of the levels from N. Sanity Island to the Time Twister, in which you play historical-themes levels, like a stereotypical WW1 dogfight, Vague Arabia, the Great Wall of China's construction, medieval, future, etc. It's a good gimmick!

The two things that really make this game shine are the improved level design and upgrades. The level design feels much tighter in this game than it did in the second, and especially the first. There's less unfair BS, there's less having to backtrack, the camera in general works better, there's less annoying sequences. I think the reason for this is the addition of Time Trials, which probably forced the devs to speedrun their levels and tweak them to work well for them, meaning the levels just flow much more nicely. They added Time Trials to Crash 1 and Crash 2 in this remake too, but it's obvious the levels are NOT made for them, and it shows.

Secondly, every time you beat a boss you get a new unlock. The first one is just more range on your bodyslam, kinda boring. The second one is an instant staple and creamer in any platformer worth their salt: The double jump! That little bit of extra air time and air control just feels GOOD. Then the third one has the greater spin, which basically lets you extend your basic attack on the ground and in the air, the latter of which also greatly extends your horizontal movement in the air, as the move lets you somewhat hover. The final upgrade is the BAZOOKA. Yes, a BAZOOKA. You read that right. A BAZOOKA. It shoots fruit. You can just whip it out and shoot it at enemies to defeat them, crates to destroy them, or more fruit to collect it. It does pretty much everything. Sound OP? It is! It is gloriously OP. And balanced by the simple fact that using it won't make Time Trials any easier.

The third game also has the best boss fights in the Trilogy by a long shot! 

[It's funny I wrote this in multiple sequences. I still stand by my appraisal that the third game was the best of the bunch!]

Crash 4: It's About Time

It was interesting to go from playing Crash 3 to playing Crash 4 with a hiatus of only a single day, rather than over a dozen years. This game was clearly made by a different team than the one who did the Remastered Trilogy, and it shows. So, how'd it do?

Well, the third game is still my favourite. But I would say this is my second favourite of the four. The game itself works fine, but there's various frustrating factors and needless bits of padding that really drag it down.

But for starters, what really struck me is how much nicer the controls are, Crash truly feels like he controls the best out of the games I'd played. The weight, the gravity, the distance, they all feel quite right. The game also has a clear indicator of where you are while in the air, rather than the obscure shadow effect of the Trilogy.

The game also looks nice! They went for a different style from the Trilogy, but it still works. It's got a much cartoonier style than the games before it, the characters have personality and charm and good overall animation, it's colourful and vibrant, the locations are diverse and inspired much like Warped's were, traveling through both space and time. I particularly liked the SN@XX Dimension, for example. The game has some areas where it clearly knows what it's doing.

There's more playable characters than before too, with Tanya from Crash 1 joining the fray, alongside no-longer-a-villain daddy Dingodile and still-a-villain Neo Cortex. Of these characters I enjoyed Dingodile the most, his gameplay style felt very accessible and satisfying. Tanya's had too much reliance on predetermined grappling hook points for my liking. And Cortex falls somewhere in the middle, having a more puzzle-style of platforming. He's probably the easiest of them, but I kept messing up the controls for him.

As for Crash and Coco, they keep the moveset from the third game, but lose the OP additional powers. No bazooka, no airspins for extra airtime, but they did thankfully keep the doublejump. A lot of levels have gimmicks that change their controls, some returning from the Trilogy, some acting as temporary mask powers. These are fine overall, they get some mileage out of the character's abilities here. They also do a better job explaining and tutorializing all these moves compared to the older games.

But cracks begin to show. There's the plot for one, or rather, the fact that I'm even talking about it. The prior games just stuck to an intro and outro with occasional moments of a giant head talking at Crash about this and that, but Crash 4 goes for a more cinematic approach, and it doesn't work. There's this running arc with Tawna coming from an AU, and it's really sudden. They barely establish her as a part of the team and then Coco gets SUPER SAD when she leaves the team, like why? They introduce a female N. Tropy which is a really cool idea and then they don't explain it or do much with it and you beat the N. Tropies easily and quickly and it's Neo Cortex. Again. The story just didn't do it for me, and they clearly put more emphasis on it this time than before. A wasted effort.

Another hurdle is the incessant padding. So much padding! Every level has an alternate version of itself that mirrors the level and applies some wacky filter effects but doesn't meaningfully change the gameplay or layout of anything, and many of the levels where you play as a secondary character have you replaying an old stage during the second half. So you could end up playing the same level FOUR times, and that's not including all the collectibles... It's way excessive!

I also found the levels in general overly long and surprisingly more difficult than Crash 3 by a long shot. Everything feels like it goes on too long.

Boss battles were great though, but as an overall package it's just not as consistently good as Crash 3 was.

[Yeah, this is all fair. Good system, but overly ambitious levels and plot.]

Eden's Last Sunrise

Eden's Last Sunrise is the latest in somewhat of a series of unrelated Tactical RPGs I've been playing over the years, followed most recently by Fae Tactics, Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark and Telepath Tactics: Liberated Edition. Eden's Last Sunrise definitely takes strongly after Final Fantasy Tactics in particular.

The core concept of Eden's Last Sunrise revolves around its setting, the titular Eden, which saw a part of its population, the Spacefarers, migrate to colonize space while the remaining population, the Dwellers, undergo technological regression and become more and more dependant on the planet's Forces, inexplicable magical energies that don't follow the laws of reality. The factions grow more distant as the Spacefarers maintain a non-interventionist policy and the Dwellers start to view the Spacefarers as traitors to Eden's Forces.

Until suddenly, the Spacefarers discover that a cosmic anomaly is going to wipe out all organic life and they have about half a year left to come up with a solution. This causes them to attempt to re-establish contact with Eden with an offer to join the Spacefarers in their plan for survival: Mass digitalization into a new form of electronic life.

As you can imagine, the Dwellers aren't very fond of the idea and some even view the Spacefarers as attempting to instigate a war over Eden's territory. Meanwhile, the Spacefarers are also heavily divided on whether it might not be better to use the Forces as a protective shield instead of the cockamamie digital conciousness idea.

It's an interesting idea for a narrative, and immediately upon starting the game you make an integral choice, do you play as the Dweller ambassadors, or the Spacefarer ambassadors? The choice decides your starting party and the course of the overall plot. The Dwellers learn more about Eden's culture and factions, whereas the Spacefarers start off knowing about the anomaly and their own factions.

A second branch happens after 10 weeks of gameplay, when the faction heads of either the Dwellers or the Spacefarers come to a head (matching the group you picked to start off as) and you can either pick to stick to the digitalization plan, or deviate from the plan entirely. As such, the game has 4 main routes leading to distinct endings, although the two digitalization routes have more commonalities than the extremist routes, which are very divergent.

Regardless of the route taken, the game always follows the same basic structure: The game takes place over 28 weeks of 5 days each, the first day being used up for assigning dispatch missions to your party members, a system also used in the FFT series and Fell Seal, followed by 3 days in which the player is free to engage in battles, training sessions for units and socialization scenes with units. Then the fifth day is a cultural day of stillness in which you get a variety of random events which provide one of several possible bonuses. At set points in the story, once every few weeks, you participate in a major operation, which are where the meat of the story take place. These start off as pretty basic and similar between the four routes, but they diverge more and more, with each route after week 10 having unique major operations.

This is really where the game is the most interesting, and I think also where it falters. While there are four different routes, I do not think it was really worth it for me to lay through all of them. I happened to pick the Spacefarer route first, and then picked to side against the mass digitization idea, therefore going with the protective shield plan. This actually led to a very interesting plot where I basically made everybody else my opponents and my party members kept questioning the morality and ethics of my choices. The route put me at odds with other potential playable characters and even Eden's president and the handler assigned to our project all get to vent about how horrible we're being. It's great. It also has by far the best route-exclusive party members in Kara and Skint, the former of which is absolutely deranged with her social experiments whereas the latter is a big huggable softboi scary red lizardman. Excellent.

The two 'middle routes' which involve the digitization scheme feel less interesting relative to the protective shield route, making you fight against Kara's invasion plan while also facing opposition from Eden's religious fanatics. It's fine, but it feels like a much more standard and pedestrian plot. Kind of the safe and bland middle ground.

The extremist option on the Eden-dweller route should have been the counterpart for Kara's route, but honestly it's awful to play that route after having done the Spacefarer route, knowing that the route-exclusive Zeko is just being an intolerable old git who is wrong about everything. He's just insufferable, and the plot also just completely contorts the character of the spacefarers to have sufficient fuel for conflict. It's weird!

In general the game's plot works much better if you don't pick the Spacefarer side to begin with, as it kind of gives away a midgame twist right off the bat, a twist that makes the Dweller plots just seem largely unimportant or wholly deranged.

There's also the SEEECRET fifth route, which is unlocked by doing at least one full Spacefarer and Dweller run. It's kind of what one might dread a final route could be, a route in which through convoluted means the cast suddenly reach an all too convenient agreement, all decide to overcome their differences and work together, earning themselves an unearned ticket out of this whole mess in a way that just leaves questions. It's the sort of ending that would need a lot of time and build-up, and more payoff, all of which the game just didn't really have. It's a pity, and I'm seemingly not the only person to bring this up, judging by the game's reviews.

Oh, there's gameplay too, right?! Yes. Uh, it's fine. It's definitely most inspired by Final Fantasy Tactics, and much like those games the optimal strategy turns out to be using big-AoE high-damage attackers with the backup of a healer if need be. None of the combat truly feels hard past the game's earliest points, the game has an unusual insistence of making things very fair, in which you're never outnumbered and often outnumber the enemy. This makes repeat runs in particular quite easy. It's never quite rocket tag level of gameplay where everything KOs everything else in one shot, but some classes are definitely just better than others, and a lot of the cool strategy stuff just makes way for doing big damage real quick instead.

Eden's a fine game overall, I definitely like the character writing for the whole cast bar Zeko and Alicia, and the gameplay does work, but it does not stick the landing in terms of plot, and the many battles in the game will inevitably start to feel very samey.

Walthros

Ah, you didn't think there wouldn't be an OHRRPGCE game in here, did you? Did you?! Of course there would be! And a fine game we have this time, another banger hit from the maker of the Kaiju Big Battel I loved so much, it's Walthros Renewal!

Walthros really takes the things I loved about that game and exemplifies them even more. I adore the strange setting the game takes place in, it's filled with all sorts of animal species, but unlike your typical furry game the aesthetic here is much less conventionally pretty. It's less uwu wolf men and spicy fox ladies but it's fish, and slugs and geese and dinosaurs and Garfieldian cats and such. 

The aesthetic style of the game is incredibly distinct, I do not think I've ever seen a game with character sprites as big as those in Walthros! It makes the characters looks expressive and gives them all very differentiated silhouettes. Which of course fits their diverse range of personalities, too!

Another aspect I really adore is the tone of the game, a tone that effortlessly comes across as casual and chill in a very effective and endearing manner, whilst also being earnestly goofy, not afraid to get real or heavy and always positively confident and shameless. And I really like that level of authorial intent and integrity, so many games would have taken the setting and premise of Walthros and gone full "Haha isn't that WACKY?!" mode with it, but Walthros is serious about being silly, it doesn't compromise itself and just strides forward from one banger scene to another. 

The plot of the game starts pretty simple, the protagonist Bob, ever a goofball and somewhat of a leaf in the brook, comes across a strange object during a mining excavation. This seems to be linked with the recent appearance of some grand structures that fell from the sky, technological temples of some sort, with corrupting influences on the surroundings. Bob and some of his colleagues go check it out, and Bob seemingly becomes possessed by a sudden burst of knowledge when he makes contact with some of the technology.

What follows is Bob going from town to town, meeting new characters, party members and doing sidequests. Conquering more temples. It's rather like a typical JRPG in that regard, but the distinction is really in how much the tone carries through, every village is densely populated with NPCs and the sidequests are all satisfyingly written. This even extends to your own party members and Bob's circle of friends, who each also have optional sidequests to explore their character deeper.

Of course, while the plot begins with mostly levity, there is gravitas behind it as well. Early on it's established that there's some sort of storied past behind these temples, and in the third temple Bob himself starts to have his doubts in his capacity to lead, which cues a perspective shift to a whole other trio of heroes, and then when they do converge things fracture even more as they all get sent through time and space on a journey self-discovery and such. It's interesting stuff, and the game never lingers too long on a single segment. 

There is of course an overarching plot, and a villain. I found the villain and his motivation interesting, which is why I was somewhat disappointed the game ended on a rather unceremonious note, even when I did get the extended ending. Things wrap up just a bit too quickly for my tastes, with only a brief epilogue for all characters before a brief post-plot wrap-up and small emotional moment. I figure the game was so close to being done that the desire to have it out there released just trumped the need to keep adding more to the ending.

I also felt that some party members got more character depth than others. Particularly Roland and Mariella. Roland joins about midway into the game, but he seems to have everything together and as such doesn't really undergo much change, he's already where he wants to be and as such doesn't really get much screentime or drama. Meanwhile Mariella does have those things going for her, but simply joins so late that there's little time to explore her character.

Despite that, I admire the sheer diversity of the cast, and how the game just effortlessly and elegantly throws bundles of LGBTA representation around. It's a testament to how it's absolutely possible to do this sort of thing, to have LGBTA characters where it's both relevant to their character without having to necessarily be a Parable About Being LGBTA. Well, maybe except for Bob's mom. Bob's mom is quite the character, whew.

So yeah, I love this game. I love the vibe it gives me. The aesthetic. The writing. The humour. 

Oh, the gameplay? It's like Kaiju Big Battel, it's rather typical turn based JRPG combat. It's pretty easy, even on the hardest difficulty, so long as you know how to play well and do the side content to stay well-equipped. It's fine. It's probably not why anybody would go out of their way to get the game. The game still makes puns with some attack actions.

And yes, there is a sequel to CUBE RPG! Now in the form of Grant's sidequest: HAMBURGERS WORLD. It's amazing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y38FuZBYc2c

Pizza Tower

Ok, seriously, what's there left to be said about Pizza Tower at this point? The retro-inspired manic platformer has all the makings of 2023's Q1 Indie Darling, and for good reason. It cleverly combines gameplay elements from multiple beloved games, such as Wario Land 4, the Sonic series, and more, mashes them up and improves on its inspirations, it has a killer aesthetic between its wonderful OST, bizarre 90s Nickelodeon artstyle and butter smooth animation, and it just feels like a joy to play.

It's manic, it's frantic, it's got some edge and it never takes itself too seriously. The protagonist, Peppino Spaghetti, has an utter lack of any sort of chill and is the unyielding driving force with a diverse and well-planned moveset to go through the game's regular stages and boss battles, killing any enemy that stands in his way and collecting Toppins and secrets along the way.

It has a 99% approval rating and a Peppillion reviews on Steam for a reason. It's a fucking good game, that's all there really is to it. I can see myself picking this up again at some point and trying to get more secrets and scores and such, I had a blast getting a P-rank on the first boss.

I'm honestly hard-pressed to think of any critiques here. Anything I might not like would be quite minor and subjective, like not every secret being as intuitive to find as it could be, but even then they're usually marked in some way, so... It's just a solid, good game. A very rousing debut title.

Resident Evil 4: Remake

Ah, Resident Evil 4 is a game near and dear to my heart. The original is a game I know like the back of my hand, a game I have played easily over a dozen times over my life. That game is something special. So the remake had some tough shoes to fill, a legacy to stand up to. So, did it succeed?

I wouldn't know at first, because the game ran like hot shit! My video card just could not run it. Not at all. It was barely scraping by for RE2, and this game's just a lot more intense. So I just bought a new one! Just threw some money at that shit. Boom. That's what it means to be an adult, I guess. Problem? Toss money at it. Whammo. It's gone now.

Uh, anyway, I could then actually run the game at a decent framerate without stuttering. And it's... Good! It's very good. Is it as good as the original? Hard to say. They are both very similar games yet also so far apart in their design ethos, the gaming industry has just evolved so much over time. 

The original RE4 felt a lot more video gamey, more arcadey. That sense is less so in the remake, which goes for a much higher degree of simulationism. Stuff feels more realistic, and you can sense this in every aspect of the game. And yet it still obviously feels like a game, you still have that same core gameplay loop of shooting enemies in certain locations and then doing a big chonking melee. Shotguns still blow enemies away, the TMP still does excellent crowd control, rifles leave an impact... It's all there, different, yet also the same.

Definitely the game feels closer to the original on the standard difficulty than it does when you crank the difficulty high. The higher it goes, the more suddenly enemies refuse to get stunned, the more the core loop sort of breaks, the more BS moments creep in. But then just play on normal, right? That seems fair enough.

But there are definitely things that do feel off, and the lack of laser sights for most guns is one of them, the accuracy just feels quite low on some guns. Rifles in particular either feel inaccurate, or like headshots don't always instakill.  When I shoot an enemy in the head with a rifle and it doesn't explode, did I miss or did I not do enough damage? It's weird. 

The actual level design is refreshingly similar to the original, yet also remixes certain elements. Most maps are faithfully recreated, sometimes with some elaboration, but the actual route by which they're explored are often novel. Other stages are still in there in spirit, but in a new form. Familiar yet distinct. Sometimes whole segments of the game are condensed into a gimmick of another room, while other times the game has wholly new content. The Castle got the most remixing, and is still my favourite part of the game. The village meanwhile stands the test of time, being mostly unchanged except for some embellished segments and added sequences. A good job overall. Even the island feels much better and more condensed, it's still the weakest part of the game but it's less stark than before.

Overall though, all the content feels right. It feels good. It never feels like something there just for the sake of being there, and I cannot say I miss any of the stuff they cut or adapted. Presumably some of the missing stuff will be in the DLC anyhow.

The enemies and bosses all feel on point. Enemies are definitely more aggressive and dangerous now, but then so is Leon with his expanded movement kit and parry abilities. I never actually used the parry system much at all though, I just got by with gunplay for the most part, and just not getting close to enemies. I loved just spamming the Bolt Thrower from afar to keep recycling the same ammo over and over to deal with small groups of enemies. That was fun. Enemy variety's also a bit higher than the original, because they throw in things like Colmillos or Novistadors more often. 

The boss battles are fine, but not too memorable. Salazar got a big boost. More remarkable is the bosses themselves, or rather, their story roles. While the Village's Mendez gets more presence due to the files scattered around the area, Salazar and especially Saddler appear much less. The former no longer cuts into the radio calls, and the latter both has no radio calls and only appears in person in the last few chapters, a big decrease in screentime. I like the stuff we see of them, but it feels like we should've had more. Maybe we'll see them more in the DLC?

But on the other side, Ashley and Luis got their much-needed expansions in this game. Ashley was flat and boring in the original, just a vehicle for LEOOOOOOOOOON memes, while Luis had intrigue but died before he could cash in on any of it. The remake gives them both better arcs and makes them worth caring over. Leon himself has a clearer personality in this game, being less just wisecracks and more in line with how we saw him in RE2 and will see him in RE6. And then Ada's typically Ada. She didn't really get much more or less in this game. 

It's a very good game overall, and of course it has that beautiful graphical fidelity. The game really is remarkable to look at, or it would be if my PC could handle the maximum settings! The actual soundtrack is still more muted than I'd like it to be though, and it does feel not quite as complete as it could be due to the obvious lack of Seperate Ways for now.

Regardless, I would recommend this game to fans of the original or the RE remakes if they want more of that. It's not an earthshattering classic like the original, but I don't think it was realistic to ever expect this remake to be that. I respect the remake for what it tried to do and how well it pulled it off. Is it necessary? Probably not. But it's a damn fine game nonetheless. 

 The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog

This is a bit if a smaller one, a game that was suddenly dropped out of nowhere on April Fools, a little Sonic visual novel murder mystery game. Yes, SONIC IS DEAD. And we have killed him. Except, no, we did not. But someone else did! Or tried to! And we need to find out who it was!

And you do that by talking to people, examining the scenery and picking dialogue choices. It's basically Ace Attorney light, with the occasional little platforming gameplay section interspersed cuz it still has to be a Sonic game, right? It all functions, though it does mean the game starts off kinda slow and only gets good when the cast all assembled and you piece together just what exactly did happen.

The core appeal of the game is probably that Sonic's friends take the center stage for once, and are actually pretty well-written, being on-point with their characterization. For Sonic fans hankering for that this game is an easy recommendation, it is free after all. Others need not really apply.

MARDEK: Nineveh Project

Ahh, MARDEK. Good old MARDEK. Every time I think I am done with it, I am actually not. Truly I am the fool. The idiot.

Last time I jumped into MARDEK it was those physical/magic only runs, this time it was a community MARDEK mod, called the Nineveh Project. The long-term goal is to remake MARDEK in Unity and release a full 8 chapters, but for now they also released a flash-based mod of MARDEK. 

It would be easier to let the project speak for itself, of course, and that do have a promotional document just for that purpose: PROMO DOCUMENT

It's an impressive feat what they've already done. I have my doubts on how viable it is to get the whole chapters 4~8 ball rolling, it seems the plans are extremely ambitious, what with wanting to continue with the scope of chapter 3 rather than reining things in to chapter 2 proportions, but I've seen big projects manage to get finished before. Pokémon Reborn was a success story. 

Regardless, the actual mod itself was to my liking! Certainly it felt more balanced and polished than the original release, as one might suspect a fanmod would be. Chapters 1 and 2 have received the most polish, whereas chapter 3 is as of yet a mix of vanilla content, polished but as of yet unfinished content and wholly revamped content. The plans are definitely to get the whole mod to the wholly revamped standard, and the next content update promises to be a big overhaul.

Every playable character has a wholly new skillset, one that leaves every character with a worthwhile niche to explore, and all items have been rebalanced. Bosses for the most part have also been changed. Many chapter 3 enemies are still quite vanilla though. Likewise, chapters 1 and 2 have had a big graphical overworld overhaul, but chapter 3 is still mostly vanilla, with some maps being the same layout with prettier tiles. It is a work in progress, but what's there is looking really good.

I still have a fondness for MARDEK, I think I always will, and the mod does attempt to sand off the game's most problematic dialogue and overall try to fix some of the just outright bad writing bits, like the whole Gem Mines Steele Incident. That doesn't of course mean the game's perfect now. I still think MARDEK just doesn't have all that solid of a foundation due to its poor plot planning, something Tobias has often said himself. But there is also undeniable a spark of magic there, that earnestness of flash games of that era. That's also something worth preserving. 

Regardless, I'm along for the ride. Perhaps when they release another batch of big updates, when chapter 3 gets the love and care that mod magic provides, I'll play it again. I just cannot escape MARDEK's oddly powerful gravitational pull. Myes.

Together in Battle

The final game for now is somewhat tricky to discuss, considering it is still in early access. It's another tactics RPG, from Craig Stern of Sinister Design, maker of Telepath Tactics and the Telepath RPG series.

The game uses the same engine as Telepath Tactics Liberated did, though the big difference is that Together in Battle uses a whole lot of procedural generation for its content. There's a story campaign with fixed battles, but most of the gameplay thus far consists of 6v6 arena clashes against a random assortment of enemies on a series of randomly generated maps. This is a very different gameplay compared to all the handcrafted big scale fights of Telepath Tactics, though it is not an unwelcome difference. 

Simply, the combat system just works. There's a lot of depth, a huge variety of character classes, 6 species to play with, there's a lot of content there and every single one of my party configurations had their own synergies to explore and exploit. This stuff all works.

Aside from that there's the people/economy sim aspect, the people you recruit are also all randomly generated, with random character portraits, names, stat and skill progressions and a boatload of character and backstory traits that can influence their gameplay as well as how they interact with each other. It's novel, but you do also quickly see that some types of statement keep repeating during the evening camp scenes. Some traits are definitely better than others, most useful of all being traits that boost character morale or make characters enjoy tidying and cleaning up. There's also managements of resources like time, gold and food, which can be spent on recruiting more people, buying from the store and directly upgrading the stats of units. 

The game is still getting frequent bugfixes and of course content updates, so I'm curious to see where it'll all wind up going. I don't think it's quite as tight as Telepath Tactics, but it does have more replay value. They're very different games, both worth checking out. 

Other media

Enough videogames! Let's talk about other things! Movies, and series, and... Fanfiction?! Goodness!

Unicorn Wars

This one just suddenly crept onto my radar. Suddenly someone dropped a clip from this movie, this very surreal and rather bizarre movie, and I wanted to see more. And I wasn't the only one who was curious. So I watched it together with a special someone, and oh boy was it something.

Unicorn Wars is a war drama story, told through the lens of anthro cuddly bears. Teddybears, polar bears, pandas and of course carebears. All participating in a grudge war against the unicorns in the sacred forest. Can you sense the tonal dichotomy yet? The whiplash between the very dark and serious subject matter and the actual aesthetics of the characters really makes this whole thing just work, and it works so well.

The movie really is all about its characters, especially the protagonist, who is just a horrible little ball of envy and human failings. He's a piece of shit and I love him.

JoJo Part 6: Stone Ocean

Another year, another JoJo part. This time we actually caught up to the anime, and as of the time I'm writing this I've yet to wholly finish the part, but I did make it some way into the third series of episodes.

The first question is always how the part compares to other parts, and in that regard Part 6 feels almost like somewhat of a mix of 4 and 5. It has a rotating cast like 4, yet the tone feels very serious like in 5. So far I definitely like Part 6, I don't think I could ever not love JoJo, but it does feel less consistent overall. There's more times where I'm scratching my head, whether in confusion or sheer bafflement.

The ensemble feels less cohesive this time around, it starts simple with Jolyne and Ermes, but then Ermes quickly splits off. Emporio joins and brings Anastasia and Weather Forecast, but they only barely appear before the final third of the show, Anastasia in particular only joining when the Isolation Cell arc begins. FF joins as well, and it took me a long time to realize what their deal even was. Anastasia's stand also took me a while to actually grasp what it does...

But then the actual stand battles themselves are very fun and creative, although sometimes they just become hard to follow and have weird rules. It is definitely ambitious, and sometimes it leads to super cool encounters, but other times I'm just lost and kinda just along for the ride.

In particular the isolation cell arc just feels bizarre, the whole set-up of finding a bone feels contrived, and there's three whole stand fights that all don't work for different reasons lined up in a row.

But then so far everything after they finally do get out of that prison feels excellent! And some Stand battles in the prison were great too, like the catch Stand, or the battle with the gravity man. Ermes is also really good, but she barely gets to do much which feels like a shame.

I think the part is well on its way to having a very good ending, so I suspect next blog I'll be much more lyrical about this part!

Andor

This came quite out of nowhere! Andor is a Disney+ show which I watched alongside my boyfriend at his request, my first real exposure to any sort of Star Wars media. Quite against expectations though, the show is firmly grounded and rooted, being more about political machinations and the horrors of imperial fascism and the sacrifices of establishing a revolt than like space wizard soap opera stuff. 

It's really fucking good, basically. The show follows several different perspectives, mainly the one of protagonist Cassian Andor, a survivor from a planet-wide genocide turned scrappy survivalist. One bad night has him get in an altercation with some corrupt guards that turns lethal, and from there it all spirals out of control. 

Some other frequent perspectives are a senator, a rising star in the empire's intelligence unit, a bootlicker with a rigid sense of justice, a spymaster rebellion organizer and more. The show's got a broad and compelling cast and deftly intertwines their plots. It's saying a lot that I love this whole cast even when over half of it is out to kill the protagonist.

It's also just clever and profound. It's got some goddamn good speeches about the nature of resistance to a truly horrific and oppressive regime while also showing the sheer banality of the Empire. There's compelling character arcs, the show has a brisk and sensible pacing where its 12 episodes are cut up in two 3-episode arcs before going into a final bigger 6-episode arc. A lot happens per episode, they always fly by despite the 40 minute runtime.

It's honestly just a solid time, made all the better by spending it with such a lovely person. I look forward to season 2!

Puss in Boots: The Last Wish

And now for something very different! I'd only heard good things about this movie, a movie that people only speak of with lyrical praise... I had to watch it eventually, it's like right up my alley! A beloved Dreamworks movie, a sequel in a grander cultural bastion of movies (Shrek), and everything I'd seen looked as good as people said! What luck that some wonderful people would invite me to their stream to watch it along them!

And yeah! It's exactly as good as people say! It really is just a fucking good movie. It's got a simple plot, but told in a very effective and compelling manner. Every character just works, both the comedic villain, the serious villain and the sympathetic villain. The protagonists are all good. The movie looks fantastic. It's just GOOD. Everything about it is. It's a solid ride of non-stop hits. There really was not a single moment that took me out of it, not even one.

Harley Quinn Valentines Special

I totally forgot this was going to come out! I felt rather middling about much of season 3 of the Harlqy Quinn TV show, but this 44-minute special truly felt like a return to form. 

The jokes were funny, the Harlivy moments were good, the general concept was fantastic, the plot points were bizarre [Clayface dating his own ass, the Bane's penis arc, Porison Ivy cums so hard she makes the entire city horny], and the whole thing in general was extremely horny in a way that never felt cringy or like it clashed. They've really mastered the art of mixing horny and funny with this show, and I love it and want more of it.

I'm really hoping season 4 will carry this same sense of energy, it'll be gold if it does.

The Nature of Sin 

Hey wait a second, I made this! It's 75,000 words long! Wow. That's a lot.

Writing a wholesale novel's worth of fanfiction for BROK the Investigator wasn't what I had in mind when I finished the game, but I got a flash of inspiration and it spiralled out of control... I'm proud of what I wrote, though! Feedback's been very positive so far, too!

I really went out of my way to try and create something that meaningfully builds on the stuff in the game, something that adds the stuff I wanted to see in the game, while sticking true to what we know of the characters and setting. Something that mixes comedy, deep character diving, political machinations, and wholesome horniness. I'm very happy with the results, proud of it even! I'd love for more people to read it!   

Of course, being a fan fic for a specific game, and an NSFW fic at that, it is somewhat difficult to get people to actually read it, I suppose. But I wrote it with love, and love what I wrote, so I'm satisfied. It feels good to get something done!

Conclusion

So, that's that. The first five months, give or take, summarised. It somewhat feels like I've played less games than in other years, but I am hardly counting. I suspect it's because I am spending more of my time doing other things. I see that as an absolute victory! While I do love videogames, there's other things in this world I care about much more. Spending more time on those other things is worthwhile, and not something I regret. 

I hope whenever my next blog is posted, I'll be able to talk about how things have been getting even better! Let's look forwards to that!