Spencer's Day

Sifu, and how practice makes perfect. A very aged review

2026-05-17T17:14:24.841-04:00

There's a funny story as to how I found Sifu. I first discovered this game when I saw some speed-runners play through it on YouTube. And because of the game's silky smooth combat, those speed-runners managed to turn the game into what can best be described as an interactive action movie. So naturally, I wanted to try the game for myself. It was more difficult than expected, but it's still a blast to play.

A quick content warning before we begin. Sifu is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. Because of violence and profanity. That's it. And it's mostly the profanity that gave the game this rating. All things considered, this is a rather tame example of an M rated video game, and it most likely could've gotten away with a T for Teen rating if the regular enemies didn't swear like sailors while fighting you. But either way, reader discretion is advised.

Official box art of Sifu, featuring an unnamed protagonist that I will refer to as the Student going forward. Image found on wikipedia.org

But what exactly is Sifu? It's an indie action game developed and published by Sloclap and H2 Interactive, released on February 8th, 2022 . Heavily inspired by martial arts action movies like Kill Bill, Karate Kid and The Matrix, Sifu is a game with a remarkably simple concept. You play as an unnamed but customizable Kung Fu student on a quest to avenge their Sifu (Chinese word for "teacher") by beating the snot out of a crime syndicate called the Dawn Group. That's it. That's the entire story.

There's no plot twists or esoteric lore in this game. Don't get me wrong, what story this game does have is decent, but the dev team's main goal was to make the best Kung Fu game ever, and everything else was secondary to that goal. But I'll summarize what story there is anyway. Just a heads up, I'll be referring to this game's protagonist as the Student. The character does not have an official name, as previously mentioned.

Before the game begins properly, we get a prologue in which we play as Yang, the main villain of this story. Yang was a disgraced Kung Fu student who sought out forbidden techniques, and was exiled as punishment. But now, he has returned to his old dojo for revenge. Yang has the same move set as the Student, but he is completely invincible during the prologue and has every upgrade unlocked.

This tutorial is doing a lot of cool things at once. Firstly, it shows the player how dangerous the main villain is by letting you control his rampage firsthand. Secondly, because Yang is an overpowered evil version of the Student, this opening doubles as a preview for the kind of power the player will eventually have at their disposal. Thirdly, it lets you know that the game will end with a confrontation between the Student and Yang, because how else is this story going to end?

The prologue ends with Yang murdering the Sifu, and ordering his gang to execute everyone else in the dojo. Not even the Student is spared from this purge. "But wait!" you cry. "If the Student dies during the prologue, how does the rest of the game happen?" You see, there was one thing Yang didn't consider during his quest for revenge.

Right before Yang arrived at the dojo, the Student stole a magic talisman that can revive the dead. After getting crossed off the census by the Dawn Group, they were brought back to life by said talisman. That talisman's magic is the in-universe explanation for how the player is able to retry levels after getting a Game Over.

The game does an 8 year time skip, as the Student finishes their training and becomes a self-taught martial artist. But despite 8 long years passing by, the Student still has only one thing on their mind: Vengeance.

The Student prepares to fight some thugs at a nightclub. Image found on Steam.

Sifu has five main levels to play through. Now I know that sounds like a short experience, but it's not. It took me about 20 hours to beat the game for the first time, plus an additional 15 hours to get the game's secret true ending. This is because of the game's main feature; Aging. You see, that talisman that protects the Student from death has some stipulations to its usage.

Every time the Student revives, their body ages by one year. Every time the Student ages, the player's health bar gets a little bit smaller. While it is true that the Student's damage output rises as they age, the steadily shrinking health bar turns the benefit into a net negative, as your room for error gets smaller with each subsequent death. Additionally, the talisman's magic is finite, and the game will end if the Student dies while above the age of 75 years. At that point you have no choice but to restart the entire level from scratch.

Aging also affects the Student's appearance, for obvious reasons. While you can customize the Student to an extent, such as choosing their gender or their outfit, there are some things that cannot be changed. Their face and hair color are always set in stone in order to best illustrate the aging process. With each revival, the Student's skin starts wrinkling, and their hair gradually changes from black to white.

The aging effect is admittedly more obvious on the male Student than it is on the female Student. In addition to the aforementioned changes, the male Student will start growing a beard that gets progressively longer as he ages. The female Student lacks a beard for obvious reasons. But the female Student makes funny Bruce Lee style battle cries while using her techniques, which I find to be oddly charming.

More importantly, whatever age the Student was at the end of the current level will be the age they start at for the next level. For example, if you finish the first level at 30 years old, you will start the second level at 30 years old. If you finish the second level at 40 years old, you will start the third level at 40 years old. And so on and so forth. Which means if you want to stand a chance against Yang, you need to stay as young as possible. And the easiest way to do that is to replay levels that you already cleared so you can break your record.

One last thing about aging. How much the Student's body ages upon revival is determined by how many times they died in that specific level. The first death ages you by one year, the second death by two years, the third death by three years, and so on. Defeating powerful enemies (marked by a golden glow) will lower the death counter by one. Keep in mind that this part of the aging mechanic is only relevant on higher difficulty settings, as on Student Mode (equivalent to easy) all deaths age the Student by one year with no exceptions.

Sifu's main mechanic is that the Student ages slightly every time the player is defeated. Die enough times and the Student will become an elder, as shown here. Image found on Steam.

Combat in Sifu is grounded, yet stylish. Of course, there's your genre standard abilities like Light attacks, Heavy attacks and blocking. You can mix and match Light and Heavy attacks to perform different combos. More complex techniques can be performed by flicking the left analog stick (or your system's equivalent thereof) in specific directions while pressing one of the attack buttons. For example, flicking the left stick "up" then pressing Heavy attack makes the Student do a leaping kick forward.

Then there's Focus Attacks, which are powerful techniques that cannot be blocked or dodged by enemies. Think of Focus Attacks as your super moves. Unlike regular attacks, Focus Attacks need to be charged up using an energy called, well, Focus. The Focus meter fills up either upon attacking enemies or upon successfully dodging and parrying enemy attacks.

Dodging and Parrying are your main defensive tools. While blocking attacks normally will mitigate damage to your health bar, it will also fill up a meter called Structure. The Structure meter is very obviously inspired by the Posture meter from Sekiro. It's an orange meter at the bottom of the screen that will stun the player's character if allowed to fill up all the way. The idea is that this meter exists to punish an overreliance on regular blocking.

And also like Sekiro, parrying an attack (performed by tapping the block button right before impact) will not break Structure, and will instead inflict Structure damage on your opponent. If you successfully break an enemy's Structure, the Student can perform a Takedown attack, which will instantly KO that enemy and heal the Student. This is the only way you can heal mid-battle.

Dodging restores your own Structure, but you need to make sure you dodge in the right direction to actually avoid the attack. All enemy attacks are divided into three categories, those being High Attacks, Low Attacks and Throws. High and Low attacks can be blocked and parried, but Throws must be dodged. High attacks consist of any technique that hits the Student from the waist up, while Low attacks are anything that hits from the waist down. In order to dodge properly, you need to hold the block button and then flick the control stick in the opposite direction of the attack (flick down for High attacks and Throws, flick up for Low attacks).

The Student can also grab enemies and throw them around. And throwing is arguably the best trick in the Student's arsenal. You can throw enemies into walls and furniture for extra damage. You can throw enemies off of ledges to take them out of the fight instantly. You can even throw enemies into each other to break up big groups and give yourself more breathing room.

Throws are your friend, and the whole game becomes much more manageable once you understand how throws work. The only restriction on throws is that an enemy can only be thrown if it was stunned beforehand. The easiest way to stun an enemy is to dodge or parry one of their attacks and counter with an attack of your own.

In addition to using Kung Fu to fight, the Student can also pick up certain objects in the environment and use them as improvised weapons. These can include mundane items like broomsticks and glass bottles, or more dangerous tools like machetes and daggers. Attacking with a weapon will almost always deal more damage than attacking barehanded, but weapons will eventually break from overuse.

All of these abilities come together to make a combat system that makes the player feel powerful from start to finish. Outside of the talisman that revives the Student, there's no magic in this setting. So all those fancy Kung Fu techniques you can unlock can believably be done by a real life martial artist. That's what I mean when I say the combat is ground yet stylish. And when you practice enough with this combat system, you will feel like a true Kung Fu Master.

Sifu has five distinct enemy types, each with their own behaviors and attack patterns. Some basic enemies use simple 3-hit combos, others use weapons and alternate between High and Low attacks to confuse you. Others still try to Throw you around. On their own, these enemies can be defeated with some decent parries and combos. But they're rarely ever alone, so you got to get used to fighting multiple enemies at once.

Sifu does have a training mode where you can practice against any enemy or boss you have encountered before, in order to learn how to properly dodge and parry their attacks. It's a nice quality-of-life feature that lets you practice against a specific threat without replaying the entire level.

The Student (right) can be customized with different outfits. You can also play as a female variant of the Student, if you want. Image found on Steam.

The Student can also be upgraded with EXP, rewarded every time the Student defeats an enemy. These upgrades can take the form of increased Structure, improved weapon durability or even new combos entirely. Keep in mind that most of these upgrades are temporary, and will reset if the Student dies before the level is complete.

If you want to make an upgrade permanent, you will have to keep upgrading the same thing repeatedly. Practice makes perfect, after all. Also, the Student can only learn a combo as long as they stay within a certain age group. Some combos can only be learned if you're 40 years old or younger, for example. This restriction seems excessive at first, but it encourages you to get good enough to where you can stay below an age threshold long enough to permanently learn the combo in question. And half the fun of Sifu is getting good enough at the game to where you can unlock everything permanently and breeze through the levels.

Side note, the Student does get some dialogue choices in each level, but they don't change the story in any meaningful way. This is a linear action game, after all. Most of these dialogue options consist of telling enemies to get out of the way, telling enemies to get out of the way but politely this time, or some kind of one-liner.

Funnily enough, there is nothing stopping the player from attacking instead of talking, so you can sucker punch an enemy mid-conversation to take them out of the fight instantly. I find the dialogue choices to be an odd inclusion, as this is clearly not a story-driven game nor is it an roleplaying game, but the ability to sucker punch enemies mid-conversation is always amusing.

At the end of every level is one of the five leaders of the Dawn Group, who serve as the game's bosses. The Dawn Group leaders all have more elaborate attack patterns than normal enemies, and most of them have unbreakable weapons that cannot be dropped at all. There are two stages to every boss, with the first stage being a normal martial arts duel. The second stage, however, activates an elemental artifact, giving the boss new abilities and even transforming the entire battlefield.

The hardest boss by far is the third one, Kuroki the Artist. Her attacks are fast, have long reach and are difficult to parry. And unlike the other bosses, who only gain one or two new attacks upon activating their elemental magic, Kuroki completely changes her weapons and fighting style. So instead of fighting one boss, it feels like fighting two bosses back to back. Even after beating the game, I never got good enough to beat Kuroki without dying at least once to her.

The Student using a bo staff to fight Sean the Fighter, one of the game's five bosses. Image found on Steam.

My favorite boss is actually the second one, Sean the Fighter. In fact, his level, the Club, is my favorite level in the entire game. The Club starts off as simple night club, but transforms into an ancient Chinese fortress with Kung Fu cultists waiting to ambush you around every corner. Sean hits hard, but almost all of his moves are High Attacks, so it isn't hard to parry or dodge his blows. Despite Sean being a fairly easy boss in a vacuum, the Club is by far the longest level in the game, easily taking over 40 minutes to complete. So the real challenge is reaching Sean with enough health and youth to survive in the first place, rather than anything Sean himself does.

Once you defeat the first four members of the Dawn Group, you will be allowed to challenge Yang. Like I said earlier, Yang has the exact same move set as the Student, just with every possible upgrade active at once. It is a grueling battle, but the Student can eventually put him down.

But here there be spoilers. Admittedly, this is not a game that people play for the story, but what I'm about to say is still a spoiler. I consider Sifu to be a 4 star game. It's not for everyone, but those who enjoy martial arts media or fluid combat will love this game.

The Student realizes too little, too late that revenge wasn't worth it. They spent so much of their life laser focused on enacting their vengeance, that achieving victory over the source of their hatred feels hollow instead of relieving. The Talisman rewinds time and gives the Student a chance to forgive and forget. This leads to the path of the "True" ending.

So now you have to play through the whole game again, but this time, you have to spare the lives of first four bosses. This can be done by breaking each boss's Structure twice without using a Takedown, which shows that you could have killed them, but chose not to. This leaves the Dawn Group leaders humbled and perhaps humiliated, but it gives them all the wakeup call needed to atone for their sins and redeem themselves.

You can also find documents and notes hidden throughout the levels that reveal the Dawn Group isn't as bad as the Student initially assumed. The entire reason Yang sought out forbidden techniques was because his wife and son died, and he wanted to use the talisman to revive them. The Sifu refused to help Yang at all when he was mourning, despite having the ability to revive his family. That's the reason why Yang murdered the Sifu in the first place. These notes don't excuse his actions, but it explains why he did what he did.

But you know that saying, "An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind?" By seeking out revenge against the Sifu, Yang set the Student down the path of vengeance as well. Only by sparing the Dawn Group leaders can the cycle of vengeance end.

An elderly Student sends a poor soul flying with a bo staff strike. Image found on Steam.

Unfortunately, this does make the Student looking somewhat hypocritical in a way that probably wasn't intended, as they continue to beat the snot out of regular enemies only to show mercy to the bosses. But the Student works on Batman logic, no matter how badly the Student beats someone up, that person can and will survive it. But if you apply real life logic to this game's fight scenes, then yeah, all those gangsters and security guards should be straight up dead.

Anyway, if you spare the Dawn Group leaders and fight Yang again, you get an extra stage to his boss fight. During this new stage, Yang steals the talisman that the Student has been using to revive themselves, so now it's a "fair" fight. And to add insult to injury, Yang then hits the Student with the exact same technique he used to kill the Sifu. The Student just barely survives it, and despite their injuries, they manage to defeat Yang again. The Student spares Yang's life, but dies of their injuries shortly afterward.

But that's okay, as showing mercy to the Dawn Group allowed the Student to achieve a form of spiritual enlightenment called Wude. The last scene of the game is the Student becoming a Sifu and opening up their own dojo, thus passing their knowledge and wisdom onto the next generation. The implication being that Yang revived the Student with the talisman after feeling moved by their display of strength and mercy in equal measure.

Overall, the story is serviceable. But as mentioned before, it's completely overshadowed by the fun combat. Like I said, the devs were trying to make the best Kung Fu game ever, and the story was mostly an excuse to justify all the fighting. But in my personal opinion, having good gameplay is more important than a good story, because the gameplay is your main method of interacting with a video game. This isn't to say that video games shouldn't have good narratives, obviously, but it's easier to sit through a fun game with a lackluster story than it is to experience a good story held back by mediocre game mechanics.

After beating the game for the first time, you unlock the Challenges, optional post-game battles with some fun gimmicks. Some of these challenges are direct homages to the very same action movies that inspired Sifu. But most of them are brutally challenging, far more difficult than anything in the five main levels. Some Challenges are timed battles, others reduce your health bar so much that any attack will end you. Others still force you to fight enemies with infinite health that can only be defeated by throwing them off ledges. One challenge requires you to fight all five Dawn Group leaders in a row with no chance to heal. Your rewards for completing the Challenges are new outfits to customize the Student with.

In terms of presentation, Sifu has a distinct, cel-shaded art style. If I had to compare it to something, I'd say the art style reminds me most of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, just with less exaggerated body proportions. The main highlight of the visuals however is the choreography. All of the Student's animations are based on real Kung Fu techniques, and in fact, Sloclap even enlisted several real life Kung Fu masters to provide the motion capture used in this game's animations. And the Student flows from one attack animation to another smoothly and seamlessly, with no wasted movements.

The result is that when you get good enough to clear out entire rooms of enemies, you will feel like an Kung Fu master yourself. And what's especially impressive is that no matter how many enemies you face or where in the level you're fighting in, the action is always clean, coherent and legible. Heck, the combat is so good that even watching someone else play it is fun, as this game is basically an interactive martial arts action movie.

The Student slides across a table while avoiding a bat swing from an enemy. Image found on Steam.

The levels themselves are distinct and easily recognizable at a glance. Heck, even the lighting in all the levels is color coded. The Squats use a lot of earthy tones like green and brown. The Club uses neon purple lights that gradually give way to fiery reds. The Museum is home to calming blue artwork that hints at the boss's backstory. The Tower uses metallic colors like silver and gold. And the Sanctuary is a peaceful dojo with off-white coloring.

One fun detail I like is that the clothing worn by enemies changes to match the setting of the level. The Squats are populated by filthy gangsters with torn-up clothes. The Club enemies are all partygoers dressed to have a good time. The Museum and Tower enemies are all sharply dressed security guards. And the Sanctuary enemies consist of Yang's own students, clad in snow white robes.

In terms of sound design, it's also distinct and memorable. Every sound effect is clean, crisp and accentuates every punch, kick and weapon strike. The music is a mix of traditional Chinese instruments and modern techno, depending on the level. It speeds up and slows down in accordance to the action on screen, which is a neat attention to detail.

The voice acting is fine, but nothing mind-blowing. Most of this game's dialogue consists of standard enemies taunting the Student and panicking once the Student starts throwing hands. But every Dawn Group leader does get to say to a pre-battle one-liner during their boss fight. The Student surprisingly has dialogue. Not a lot of it, mind you, but they aren't a silent protagonist.

This is mostly referring to the English voice acting. You can switch to one of two different Chinese languages in the settings, either Mandarin or Cantonese. I never played with either of these languages enabled, but the option is there if you want it.

Overall, Sifu is an excellent action game. Is it perfect? No. Like I said, the story is merely "okay" and the voice acting is just "fine." But the combat and levels are so fun that it elevates the whole experience, not to mention the spectacular art style. If you love martial arts, this is an easy game to recommend. I give Sifu four stars out of five.

Sifu is the property of Sloclap and Kepler Interactive. None of the images used in this review were created by me. Please support the original creators.

OMORI is a painful masterpiece. A very emotional review

2026-02-01T00:04:00.001-05:00

OMORI is a difficult game to review. Not because it's bad, mind you. Quite the opposite. It has a gripping narrative, a distinct art style, beautiful music and charming characters. But its story and subject matter is... a lot. It's a game where I can't really talk about what makes it so special without providing multiple spoiler warnings and at least one content warning. And let me tell you, avoiding spoilers for this game for six years was a challenge in and of itself. But I managed to do a (mostly) blind playthrough of this game, and now I'm going to tell you all about this very tragic, but very engrossing experience.

Official box art for OMORI, featuring the titular character. Image found on Wikipedia.

Before we begin the review properly, here's a quick content warning. OMORI is rated M for Mature by the ESRB, for violence and profanity. It is also a horror game, with a heavy focus on mental illness during its story campaign. As such, the game features themes like loneliness, depression, grief and self-harm, and how people respond to those problems. It cannot be stated enough that this one of the darkest video games I have ever covered in the history of this blog. Viewer discretion is advised.

But what exactly is OMORI? It's a psychological horror role playing game developed and published by OMOCAT. It was released on December 25th, 2020, just in time for Christmas. OMORI is inspired somewhat by Toby Fox's UNDERTALE, which was in turn inspired by 90's and 2000's era RPGs like Earthbound, Final Fantasy and OFF. The comparisons to UNDERTALE were what drew me to OMORI in the first place, as UNDERTALE is one of my favorite video games of all time. So anything that can seriously be considered equal to it is going to get my attention.

OMORI developed a reputation for its dark, but incredibly well-written story. But fans of this game will tell you that the less you know going into the game, the better the experience will be. Because of this, it can be frustratingly difficult to discuss this game in detail. So just to be safe, I'll say that this review will contains spoilers for the entire game. I will be discussing the broad strokes of the story, the major boss battles and all the twists and turns that happen along the way. This will include plot twists and discussions of the game's multiple endings.

If you want my spoiler free thoughts on the game, OMORI is a great game with good art, amazing music and an emotionally devastating storyline. Five stars out of five, if you can stomach something so grim, I can recommend it. I do not recommend it if anything in that content warning will seriously bother you. I'm serious, this game goes to some really messed up places. But most importantly, be kind to yourself and be kind to others. Mental health is important, especially in this day and age.

With all that being said, let's begin the review properly.

You play as a 12-year-old child named Omori, who lives in a whimsical land called Headspace. Despite Headspace being an idealistic paradise where kids can do whatever they want, Omori is completely numb to it all. He has a look of pure apathy plastered on his face almost at all times. And the few times he does emote, his facial expressions look almost forced in comparison to the more natural expressions of the other children. Heck, even Omori's design sticks out like a sore thumb in Headspace. Headspace is almost sickeningly vibrant and colorful, but Omori himself is completely monochrome.

Above is the inventory menu, below is a lineup of the game's four main heroes (Omori, Aubrey, Kel and Hero). Image found on the OMORI Steam page.

But Omori's friends are just as vibrant and emotive as Headspace itself. Three of Omori's friends will join his journey and assist in battle against various monsters. First is Aubrey, a cheerful girl with a love for baseball. Second is Kel, a mischievous jokester with a short attention span but a strong sense of loyalty. And third is Hero, a charismatic but mild-mannered teenager who by virtue of being the oldest kid in the friend group, is the responsible peacekeeper of the group. These three kids, plus Omori himself, make up the main group that you'll be playing as.

There are two more kids in Headspace, the soft-spoken Basil and always supportive Mari. These two are not playable (at least under normal circumstances), but they are just as important to the story as Omori's main friend group. Mari is especially important, not only because she is Omori's older sister, but because she is how you save your progress. The only way to save your progress in this game is find Mari in any given level and join one of her picnics. I know that sounds bizarre, but it makes sense with context, I promise.

Our adventure begins in White Space, a blank and empty room in the middle of Headspace. Omori starts every day in this room. We also see a cinematic of two children, with one of them crying while the other assures the first kid that "everything will be okay." We don't know the context of this cinematic, but it will make sense later. Also, the phrase "everything will be okay" gets used like a mantra throughout the game. But Omori doesn't stay in White Space for long.

Shortly after grabbing a knife (for "self defense" of course), Omori meets up with his friends. Basil invites all of the other kids to his house so they can look through a photo album together. This photo album is filled with all of the photos that Basil took of his friends over the years and as such, it's his most prized possession. Well, besides his garden. A fun bit of trivia is that each flower in Basil's garden represents one kid from Omori's friend group, and clicking on the flowers will have Basil explain the meaning of each flower.

On the way to Basil's house, you are taught the basics of combat by fighting off basic Headspace monsters. Battles are turn-based, with each kid being allowed to take one action each (for a total of four actions per turn). You can either attack with your weapons, use a snack to heal yourself, use a toy to weaken an enemy, or use powerful techniques called Skills. The four main kids learn new Skills as they level up and grow stronger.

Skills come in two main types, attack Skills that deal more damage than attacking normally, and utility effects like healing or changing a character's emotions (more on them below). Skills cost a resource called Juice, which can be restored by eating or drinking certain snacks. Think of Juice as the equivalent of stamina.

The game's combat revolves around changing and controlling emotions like joy, anger and sadness. As seen here, three out of four heroes are angry while Omori is sad. Image found on the OMORI Steam page.

The main feature of OMORI is being able to manipulate emotions to enhance your abilities. Emotions work on a rock-paper-scissors style system, with Happiness beating Anger, Anger beating Sadness and Sadness beating Happiness. You can use Skills and toys to change a character's emotions at any time. And some Skills can apply additional effects, but only if the user is feeling a specific emotion. For example, Omori's signature Skill is "Stab," a melee attack that ignores all enemy defenses, but only if he is feeling sad. Aubrey gets a similar Skill called "Headbutt" which deals double damage, but only if she is feeling angry.

The game doesn't directly mention this (or if it did, I missed that information), but if you use an emotion-changing Skill on a character already feeling that emotion, it causes that character to feel an even stronger variant of that emotion. For example, using Aubrey's "Pep Talk" Skill makes the target feel happy. If the target is already happy, they become ecstatic. The other emotions have similarly extreme variants. This produces even stronger effects, but increases your weakness to whatever emotion beats your current one.

Omori is unique in that only he can access "tier 3" emotions like Mania, Fury and Misery, which are the three strongest emotions in the game. The other kids can only use the more "moderate" emotions. Most enemies can't access tier 3 emotions either, and the only characters besides Omori who can do so are all bosses. Omori is also unique because of a special passive ability he has that lets him survive one lethal attack per battle.

In addition to the three main emotions, there's a secret fourth emotion known as fear. Unfortunately, fear is weak to all other emotions, and all Skills are disabled until the character in question is no longer afraid. The four main kids have no way of inflicting fear on enemies, but enemies can inflict fear on them if certain requirements are met. You never want someone to be afraid, so if one of the kids does gain this emotion, you have to switch them to a different emotion (if you have the ability to do so).

The last main combat mechanic is the energy counter. You start every battle with 3 energy points, and gain an additional point every time Omori or his friends take damage. You can spend three points to do a Follow Up Skill, in which a basic weapon attack gets upgraded to either hit again or change a character's emotions for free. But if you save up for 10 energy points, you can do the Ultimate Attack, which is the strongest damage-dealing ability in the game. Of course, most battles don't last nearly long enough for you to use the Ultimate Attack. In my experience, the Ultimate Attack only really gets used for boss battles.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by OMORI's combat systems. Mostly because nobody ever talks about the combat in the game. Almost all discussion of OMORI that I've seen, even after beating the game, revolves around its story and subject matter. But the emotion system is simple and easy to learn how to use effectively. And there's a good variety in Skills that let you try out all sorts of combos and strategies. Sure, the battles can grow repetitive after a while, but the combat itself is actually kind of fun.

Outside of combat, Omori and friends travel across a retro-inspired open world and can solve simple puzzles. Each kid has a unique skill that can be used outside of combat. Omori can cut through obstacles like vines or (eventually) spider webs, Aubrey can push blocks around and smash pottery with her baseball bat, Kel can throw rocks at otherwise out of reach buttons and switches and Hero can use his charming demeanor to convince certain Headspace creatures to assist him. These puzzles are not too difficult, and most of them boil down to "switch to the right character to do their thing."

Okay, back to the story. So Omori and friends reach Basil's house. The only friend that doesn't join is Mari, who politely declines Basil's offer to hang out. But as the kids look through the photo album, Basil finds a photograph he doesn't remember taking. Its contents freak him out and cause him to yell out Mari's name in panic. Before he can show the rest of the gang what this mystery photo is, Omori is whisked away back to White Space. You actually can see the mystery photo flash on screen, but it goes by so fast that unless you're recording the gameplay and slow the footage down, it's impossible to make out the photo's contents.

This scene is the first real showcase of horror elements, as before this point, OMORI's world had been suspiciously saccharine. But now Omori is now trapped inside White Space with no clear exit. But you remember that knife he picked up earlier? …It wasn't for self defense, after all. Yeah, the only way to proceed is for Omori to stab himself with the knife. Hence the self-harm warning.

Upon doing so, we switch perspectives to a new kid, one who is almost identical to Omori. The only difference is that this new kid has a fully colored sprite as opposed to Omori's monochrome aesthetic. You can name this kid whatever you want, as long as it's eight letters or shorter. But for the sake of consistency, this kid will be referred to as Sunny, as that is the default name. However, if you feel like getting completely immersed in the story that OMORI is trying to tell, go ahead and name the kid after yourself. What could possibly go wrong?

Sunny is a young boy living by himself at the moment, as his mother is out of town and his father left the family a long time ago. Sunny's family was supposed to be moving to the big city, and the only reason he's still in the old house is to finish packing everything up. While Mari is (at least initially) nowhere to be seen in the real world, you can still save your progress by interacting with empty picnic baskets.

In case it wasn't obvious, Headspace is nothing more than Sunny's dreams, based loosely off of half-remembered adventures with his real life friends. But in the real world, Sunny is just as depressed and apathetic as Omori. In fact, Sunny's mental health has gotten so bad that he experiences frequent hallucinations of a monster called Something haunting him. Yes, the main monster in this horror game is literally called Something.

The fifth hero, Sunny, fights a monster called Something by himself. This is the part of the game where the horror elements kick in. Image found on the OMORI Steam Page.

The major "highlight" of Sunny's night, for lack of a better term, is hearing a knock at the door supposedly from Mari. But when Sunny answers the door, all he finds is a jump scare from a ghostly being that only vaguely resembles her. Sunny sleeps off these literal night terrors, only to find another knock on his door the next morning.

This second knock is vitally important to the story, as choosing whether or not to answer it will cause the game to split into two routes. If you answer it, you will start the Sunny Route. If you don't answer, you will start the Omori Route. The Sunny Route focuses more on the real world and on what happened to Sunny's friend group, and it will eventually reveal the source of Sunny/Omori's depression and apathy.

The Omori Route, meanwhile, takes you back to Headspace so you can do more wacky RPG adventures. But you will never learn the truth behind Sunny/Omori's despair if you go down the Omori Route, as this route skips over a lot of important information. The only positive of the Omori Route is that it unlocks Basil as a playable character, in case you wanted to experiment with the combat system even more.

I will say that it's really clever to have a jump scare play the first time you interact with the front door in Sunny's house, but not the second time. Having the jump scare happen first makes the player feel just as reluctant to interact with the outside world as Sunny himself is (because the game "taught" you to associate that door with danger), which makes the decision to answer it again even more impactful.

Answering the door again reveals the real life version of Kel, who happens to be Sunny's next-door neighbor. As it turns out, Kel has spent the last few months trying to get in contact with him, in an attempt to reconnect with his old friend. Now that Sunny has managed to actually leave his house, the two decide to spend the next three days hanging out together.

Why three days, specifically? Because that's when Sunny's mother comes back to town and takes him away to their new house in the big city. Once those three days are over, it's going to be much harder for Sunny and Kel to stay together. And the game's entire story structure from here on out is built around getting as much stuff done as possible within those three days. The game doesn't have a real time limit, thankfully, as time only moves forward if certain story events are triggered (i.e. boss battles). The "three days" thing is just for storytelling purposes.

This brings us to my favorite part of OMORI's story, Faraway Town. This town encompasses the "real world" sections of the game, and it provides crucial context for understanding Headspace. Something you must understand is that everything in Headspace is meant to symbolic of something in Sunny's life. For example, all of the creatures seen in Headspace are either exaggerated versions of people that Sunny has encountered in the real world before, or they're abstract concepts that represent something about Sunny himself.

From this point onwards, you will alternate between playing as Omori and Sunny, with the former being in the Headspace sections and the latter being in Faraway Town. Headspace is more lighthearted and goofy than Faraway Town, and it can be tempting to stay there as long as possible to avoid dealing with all the horror stuff (which mostly happens in Faraway Town). But that's the point. OMORI is a game about how ignoring your problems and escaping to a fantasy land is not a healthy way to live, and that the only way to move on with your life is to head back out into that big, scary real world.

Another quirk of Headspace is that some areas are not accessible because of Sunny's real life fears and phobias. Specifically, he has a fear of heights, a fear of spiders and a fear of drowning. As such, Omori cannot climb ladders, cut through spider webs or swim until his real life counterpart, Sunny, overcomes these fears. Sunny can accomplish this by fighting Something and defeating it each time it appears.

While hanging out at the park in Faraway Town, Sunny and Kel meet up with the real world version of Basil, who is being bullied by the real world version of Aubrey. While most of the kids are more or less the same as their Headspace counterparts, this is not true for Aubrey. Headspace Aubrey is a cheerful girly gal that likes baseball. Real world Aubrey is a bitter street punk that uses a baseball bat as a weapon. She's also the leader of a gang of high-school delinquents called the Scooter Gang, who are just as abrasive as Aubrey herself.

But Aubrey wasn't always like this. The Headspace kids are all based on how Sunny remembered his friend group last time they were all together, which was four years prior to the start of the game. Because of this, the Headspace kids are four years younger than their real-life counterparts, both physically and mentally. So something happened to Aubrey since those four years that caused her to become so bitter.

So Aubrey steals Basil's photo album and runs off. At Basil's request, Sunny and Kel go on a quest to get it back. This results in our dynamic duo tracking down and fighting each member of the Scooter Gang just to get a clue as to where Aubrey went off to. Battles in Faraway Town are heavily simplified, because Sunny and Kel are weaker than their Headspace counterparts.

Eventually Sunny and Kel track Aubrey down to the local church, where they confront her over her theft of Basil's photo album. This results in an explosive argument between Kel and Aubrey, in which the latter reveals the reason why she's so bitter.

Mari, Omori/Sunny's sister and the glue that held the friend group together, is dead. And she's been dead for four years.

A lot of things suddenly make more sense with this absolute bombshell of a revelation. Mari's death was what led to the friend group going their separate ways. It led Sunny to become a depressed shut-in that stays home all day. And Aubrey's rage and bitterness is a result of her unresolved grief from losing her best friend. The reason she still goes to church despite her punkish attitude is because it's the only thing that brings her peace of mind. At least it did, until this argument ruined the experience for her.

This leads to a boss fight against Aubrey in the church. It doesn't matter if you win or lose, as Aubrey storms off and throws away the photo album regardless. In fact, it's pretty difficult to actually win this fight due to limited healing items and a lack of healing Skills. The whole time this fight is happening, Aubrey is being ostracized and mocked by the elders in the church, who are completely apathetic to her sorrow. And this only makes her even angrier.

Regardless of how the boss fight went, Sunny and Kel manage to get the photo album back, but a few of the photos are suspiciously missing. Basil decides it's best for Sunny to hold onto the photo album, both so he can cherish the memories of their friendship, and so he can (eventually) retrieve all the missing photos. But Kel accidentally reveals that Sunny is moving away, which causes Basil to start acting... Strange. Erratic, even.

Sunny follows Basil into the bathroom due to the latter's suspicious behavior, but he quickly learns that Basil can see Something. You know, that hallucinatory monster that's been haunting Sunny this whole time? Yeah, not only can Basil see it, he has Something of his own that's been tormenting him all day. And Sunny's response to this revelation is to just leave and go home, even while Basil is having a Something-induced panic attack.

Not going to lie, I don't really like that the only way to progress on this Route is to not only leave Basil behind while he's in the middle of a panic attack, but then say absolutely nothing about what Sunny just witnessed. Obviously, trying to explain Something to "normal" people is going to sound insane, but like, we could at least have been given the option to bring up Basil's panic attack with Kel. He, of all people, would definitely be supportive of a friend at their lowest point. Maybe Sunny's inaction is supposed to show that he's too broken by his own problems to help anyone dealing with a similar crisis. But eh, whatever.

Side note, Kel is just a really good and supportive friend in general. Without Kel's intervention, most of the game's story simply wouldn't happen. We could all use a friend like Kel. The world would be so much better if there more people like Kel in it.

Omori and Friends talk to a gator guy while in Headspace. Image found on the OMORI Steam Page

So we return to Headspace and take control of Omori again. All of the Headspace kids are back except for Basil. So the gang decides to go explore this whimsical realm and rescue Basil from whatever fate had befallen him. But while looking for Basil, the gang gets distracted by a space pirate crew whose leader just went through a nasty break-up. Omori and friends agree to help the space pirates comfort their captain, which leads to the first major boss fight outside of the tutorial.

This boss, a character literally called Space Ex-Boyfriend, serves as a wakeup call. If you don't take advantage of the emotion system, you're going to get absolutely bodied. All of the bosses possess either strong emotions or the ability to change the emotions of others. Spamming basic attacks is not going to cut it anymore.

The whole B-plot with the space pirates is supposed to "subtly" set up how all of the Headspace sections will work going forward. Omori and friends go to a place to look for Basil, get distracted by a wacky side quest, and fight a boss armed with strong emotions. Every time the gang actually makes progress towards finding Basil, they get warped back to White Space, and the only way to leave is through more self-inflicted violence.

Time passes to the next day, and we take control of Sunny again. Kel wants to hang out, just like before. If you declined to answer the door back on the first day, Sunny will automatically refuse to answer it again, thus locking you into the Omori Route. If you answer the door on the first day but refuse on the second, you get the Mixed Route, which is just a milder version of the Omori Route with none of the Route-exclusive content. The rest of the story summary describes the Sunny Route, as it definitely feels like the "intended" game path.

So Kel takes Sunny with him while running errands on his mother's behalf. Kel's older brother, the real world version of Hero, is coming home from college later that same day. So Kel's parents want to surprise him with an elaborate dinner.

The only problem encountered on the second day is that Basil has mysteriously disappeared, not just in Headspace, but in the real world as well. And his family is getting worried, enough to ask Sunny and Kel to go look for him. So now Sunny and Kel have to look all over town to find the real Basil, which was nowhere near as difficult as finding him in Headspace. It turns out that he went to a hidden lake that Sunny's friend group used to hang out at during the summer. But unfortunately, Aubrey's gang is there as well.

This leads to a boss fight against all six members of the Scooter Gang, a fight that is scripted so you don't really have a chance to win. As it turns out, a six-vs-two battle isn't exactly fair, especially when one side is armed with baseball bats and the other has no real weapons to speak of.

Anyway, Aubrey crashes out over how quickly everyone else "got over" Mari's death while she's still grieving all these years after the fact. This culminates in Aubrey accidentally pushing Basil into the lake. But Basil can't swim, so Sunny has no choice but to jump in the water and save Basil from drowning. At the same time this happens, Sunny gets attacked by Something and has to overcome the fear of drowning on the spot.

While Sunny does defeat Something, he starts losing consciousness after being underwater for so long. The only reason he and Basil don't drown is because Hero managed to show up just in time to save both of them. Despite Kel claiming that Aubrey has become too aggressive to be reasoned with, Hero still wants to reach out to her because he still remembers the cheerful girly gal Aubrey used to be and believes that the "old" Aubrey is still in there.

Unfortunately, the day is almost over by now, so the gang heads home. Sunny winds up hosting a sleepover event at his house, during which he and Hero talk about Mari. There was one room in the house that Sunny refused to enter before now, which was the piano room. And this piano was important, because the same day that Mari died was the day she and Sunny (who was an aspiring violinist prior to becoming a depressed shut-in) were supposed to perform a duet at their school together. That duet never happened, for obvious reasons.

Sunny and friends go to sleep, and we return to Headspace. Every time we enter Headspace, we get sent on increasingly nonsensical detours to distract Omori and friends from finding Basil. First it was the space pirates. Then they had to pass through an obnoxiously sweet candy kingdom ruled by a minor antagonist named Sweetheart. After that they had to deal with a hotel called the Last Resort that is owned by a literal loan shark. And finally, they have to explore the vast belly of a talking whale. All of these are the major bosses in their respective regions of Headspace. And with each adventure, the gang's memories of Basil fade away.

Truth be told, the Headspace sections are probably the weakest part of OMORI's story. The pacing here is unfortunately rather slow, and battles against regular enemies can become repetitive. They do add some levity to what is otherwise an extremely grim and dour game, but depending on who you ask, these sections outstay their welcome. But then again, the slow pace may have been deliberate.

Now what I'm about to say is going to sound strange, but hear me out. There is a sentient coral branch encountered on the way to the talking whale that will clarify the lore in case you're unclear about how Headspace works. For such a minor character, the coral branch gives a lot of important information.

First of all, the coral branch states clearly that Headspace is a dream, just in case there was any doubt about that. The second thing it says is that White Space represents the idea of pure nothingness, as Omori (not Sunny, the coral branch makes a clear distinction between the two) finds it better to feel nothing than it is to feel sad. The third and most important thing that the coral branch says is that Basil is not in Headspace, but instead is trapped in a darker part of Sunny's mind called Black Space.

Above is the vibrant and whimsical Headspace, below is the dark and foreboding Black Space. Image found on Wikipedia.

In order to get to Black Space, we must first solve a Hangman puzzle. Starting from your second visit to Headspace (the one with the space pirates), you can find special letters hidden all over Headspace. If you collect enough letters to spell out the solution to the Hangman puzzle, you can enter Black Space. Funnily enough, it's actually impossible to fail the Hangman puzzle on the Sunny Route, as most of the wrong letters are only found in places exclusive to the Omori Route.

Black Space is a bizarre location, even by this game's standards. You are treated to a maze of strange, violent and unsettling imagery. At the end of this maze is the Headspace version of Basil, held in place by blood-red hands. But Omori does something incredibly shocking, regardless of the player's input. He stabs Basil with a knife and resets the entirety of Headspace. What's worse is that this is not the first time this has happened.

Omori is revealed to be a sentient coping mechanism tryin to protect Sunny from Something, and he has been deliberately creating these outlandish scenarios to keep Sunny's mind entertained and distracted. So the slow pace of Headspace might've been a deliberate choice on the developer's part, possibly representing how the Headspace sections are supposed to be nothing but silly distractions created by Omori for the express purpose of wasting Sunny's time.

More importantly, every time Sunny (or the other Headspace kids) get close to learning the truth of what Something is, Omori destroys them and resets Headspace. Basil seeing that mystery photo at the start of the game allowed him to learn the truth, whatever it may be, which was why Omori struck him down.

But each scenario is getting messier and messier, as if Omori is running out of ideas for new adventures. Because Omori is not a healthy coping mechanism. He is denial made manifest. And he has killed the Headspace versions of his friends hundreds of times before, just to keep the fantasy going just a little bit longer. But no matter how many times Omori resets Headspace, one of his friends will always discover the truth of what Something really is. This whole cycle of Omori killing his friends and resetting Headspace has been going on ever since the day Mari died in the real world.

Omori being in full control of Headspace is also the reason why Mari never joins a battle officially. Omori is so scared of Mari getting hurt in any capacity, even in a fictional scenario like Headspace, that he keeps her trapped at the various picnic sites seen throughout the game. The only time Mari leaves the "safety" of a picnic blanket is when showing Omori/Sunny the way to the Last Resort, which "coincidentally" prevents enemies from appearing until she returns to a picnic site.

Thanks to Sunny reaching out to Kel on the first day, he no longer needs Omori to heal from the grief of losing Mari. So Omori takes the role of the main villain from this point on. At least, if you're on the Sunny Route. None of what I just described happens in the Omori Route, as you just sink deeper and deeper into the fantasies of Headspace until the line between reality and fiction becomes indistinguishable.

So the final day comes, I'm going to put another spoiler warning. The final day is literally the grand finale. So this is your last chance to go play the game, if anything I said before has caught your interest.

So the gang confronts Aubrey one last time in an attempt to reconnect with her. Aubrey reluctantly gives the remaining photos back to Sunny, and as it turned out. all of the missing photos were of Mari. The entire reason she stole the photo album in the first place was because she wanted something to remember Mari by, and Basil wouldn't give the photos away willingly.

The four main heroes do a group hug after some spoiler-filled trauma bonding. Image found on RPGFan.com

The gang reconciles their differences and goes to visit Basil. But just like the day before, he isn't home. This time he's visiting his grandmother in the hospital. So the gang passes the time by doing side quests in Faraway Town. After plenty of side questing, we get a scene where the gang visits Sunny's house, in which they pass by a tree stump. And it's here that we learn how Mari died, exactly. And uh... There's no nice way of putting it. According to Hero, Kel and Aubrey, Mari took her own life using a noose. Which makes her passing feel even worse. The stump is what's left of the tree that Mari "self-destructed" on.

I'm going to be so real with you, seeing Sunny's friends mourn Mari's death got me teary eyed. Reading their dialogue hurt on a spiritual level. I never experienced clinical depression in my life, nor have I ever experienced a relative dying in such a tragic manner. But this game does a really good job at getting you to sympathize with its characters. The gang tries to cheer themselves up by focusing on the positive memories they have of Mari, like the time they built a treehouse together.

After doing everything I just described, the gang heads back to Basil's house. But Basil won't leave his room or respond to anyone. He has blocked himself off from everyone else, just as Sunny did for over four years. But this time, Sunny and friends won't leave Basil behind. The gang spends the night at Basil's place specifically so that he wouldn't feel lonely. When Sunny falls asleep, we are brought to Headspace one more time.

Except this time, we're still playing as Sunny. Omori is now separate from Sunny, unresponsive to our commands but still observing with an apathetic stare. Sunny decides he is ready to face the truth of what Something is and enters the darkest corners of his mind to do so. After a nightmarish sequence of Black Space-esque imagery, we find a collection of photos taken from Basil's POV. Photos depicting the night of Mari's passing and revealing Sunny's darkest secret. And one of these photos happened to be the mystery photo that Headspace Basil looked at back at the beginning of the game.

You know how everyone just said earlier that day that Mari took her own life? That was actually a lie. Mari never hurt herself, nor was she ever hanged. What really happened was that she and Sunny got into an argument and the confrontation got physical. It's not stated what they were arguing about and to be honest, the argument itself doesn't matter, as the result is always the same. There is an unused transcript revealing what they were arguing about, but that can't be encountered in the game by normal means, so take it with a grain of salt.

Sunny pushed Mari away from him, but he used more force than he intended, and Mari fell backwards down a long flight of stairs. Mari died on those stairs, and Basil (who was spending the night at Sunny's house) saw everything. What's worse is that some optional dialogue in Headspace has Mari mention that she "always had bad knees." A minor detail made worse with hindsight.

Only Basil and Sunny know how Mari really died. In fact, it was Basil's idea to make it look like a suicide in the first place. For whatever reason, Basil was terrified of the truth becoming public knowledge, and he was especially afraid that Sunny would be taken to prison for manslaughter. Basil is completely and utterly dependent on Sunny, in a way that comes across as a toxic obsession.

Were Sunny and Basil right to do what they did? No. But we're talking about a pair of (at the time) 12-year-olds who just saw someone close to them die before their very eyes. They were not thinking clearly when they did what they did. And you remember those two kids from the intro? Those two were Sunny and Basil, on the night they hanged Mari's body. And it was Basil telling Sunny that "everything will be okay." Because, you know, Sunny's sister literally just died.

And that is what Something is. Something is the regret of having been directly responsible for Mari's death, and the guilt of having desecrated her corpse. Something is the fear and paranoia that came from keeping this secret for so long. Something is the shame that prevents Sunny and Basil from coming clean about what they did. And until Sunny and Basil reveal the truth of what they did, they will tormented by Something for the rest of their lives.

And here I'm going to have to put a side note. You know how I said this was a "mostly" blind playthrough of OMORI? This was the one thing that was spoiled for me. Sort of. I knew that a major character died from a staircase-related injury, but I didn't know that it was Mari specifically or that it was caused by the main character himself. One of the few things I knew about OMORI prior to playing it was that the fandom made a ton of darkly humorous memes about all the staircase-related injuries that happen in this game.

Anyway, the guilt of what he did to Mari's body is driving Basil mad. Unlike Sunny, who coped by wrapping his memories in several layers of denial, Basil never stopped thinking about the night Mari died. All throughout the game, Basil's behavior in the real world had been increasingly erratic and anxious. Now we know why. He has spent the last four years living in fear of someone figuring out how Mari really died and tracing it back to him and Sunny.

After learning the truth, Sunny wakes up from Headspace in the middle of the night, and the player is faced with a choice. Either confront Basil now, or wait until morning to do so. The latter choice leads to the first of many bad endings, in which Basil takes his own life because he can't handle the guilt anymore. The rest of the gang mourns him, as they had mourned Mari beforehand. Sunny does not reveal the truth in this ending, because it would be a really bad time to do so.

Choosing to confront Basil as soon as Sunny wakes up will result in a boss battle against Basil himself. Or rather, the Something that's been tormenting him. At this point, Basil's Something has grown out of control. In order to save Basil from Something, you will have to fight them both. Unfortunately, both Sunny and Basil are inflicted with fear, so neither of them can use Skills. The result is a straightforward slugfest where you hope you can do more damage to Basil than he can to you. The fight ends in a draw, as Basil is knocked out, but Sunny is stabbed in the eye with garden shears.

As the two are rushed to the hospital by Aubrey, Kel and Hero, Sunny is pulled into Headspace one last time. Sunny remembers all the positive memories he has of Mari, which allows him to finally heal from the guilt. Within these memories, Sunny finds a violin, which was the same one that Mari gave him as a Christmas present. This violin becomes Sunny's weapon of choice, completely replacing the knives associated with Omori. This leads to a showdown with Omori himself.

This is the final boss battle, a one-on-one duel against the embodiment of depression and denial. It is impossible to defeat Omori permanently. Every time his health bar hits zero, Omori gets back up again with a new health bar. Because depression and grief can't be beaten down so easily. And throughout the whole fight, Omori taunts Sunny by rubbing Mari's death in his face with lines like "She loved you, and you killed her" and "Your friends will hate you once they learn the truth." This is the only time Omori speaks, as he was a silent protagonist/antagonist prior to this point.

This battle will continue until Sunny is defeated, at which point the player gets to make another choice. Either retry the Omori boss fight, or give up. Giving up here leads to another bad ending, in which Omori takes control of Sunny's body, even in the real world. Omori then makes Sunny walk off the edge of the hospital rooftop, killing them both. How did Omori get to the rooftop with no hospital staff to stop them? I dunno, but it makes for a thematically fitting bad ending.

But choosing to keep on fighting leads to OMORI's best possible ending, and the only ending that can be considered even remotely "good." Sunny stands back up for a rematch, and uses his violin to play a song. And Mari's angelic spirit joins the song with some hauntingly beautiful piano playing. Even in death, Mari still loved her little brother.

The song that the siblings play together is simply called Duet, and it is *the* signature song in the OMORI soundtrack. I'm going to be honest, if you *don't* get moved to tears by the Duet scene, you have no soul. I'm being serious. The song and the animation here is that good. In fact, I argue that the Duet scene is so emotionally powerful that it is worth buying and playing this game just to see it for yourself.

Anyway, Omori is defeated and Sunny gains complete control of his mind and body. He wakes up in the hospital, with an eye patch over his damaged eye. The Headspace versions of his friends fade away, as he no longer needs the fantasy to live. He makes his way to where Basil, Aubrey, Kel and Hero are. And Sunny tells them all the truth of what happened to Mari all those years ago. The game ends abruptly here.

We do not get to see Sunny's friends react to the news that Mari never hanged herself, or that her death was in actuality an accident caused by Sunny. How they might've reacted is a hotly debated subject among fans. Some people in the fandom say that they would forgive Sunny, others say that they (mostly Aubrey) would be furious and want nothing to do with Sunny ever again.

Frankly, it doesn't matter if they forgive him or not. This is still the same day that Sunny's family is supposed to move out of town and go to the big city. If they forgive Sunny, they'll keep in contact with him. If they don't, well, at least he won't be coming back to Faraway Town any time soon. It's as simple as that. The only thing Sunny has to worry about is explaining what happened to his eye to his mother. I actually kind of like that the ending is ambiguous. I don't know,

There is a secret variant of the good ending, acquired by watering Basil's flower garden every single (in-game) day. Which I didn't do, because I legitimately forgot about it. But if you do this, the good ending gets an additional scene where Sunny actually smiles for the first time in the game. A real, genuine smile. Something fades away, symbolizing that the burden of that dark secret is no longer haunting Basil and Sunny. So even if Aubrey, Kel and Hero didn't forgive them, at least Basil and Sunny can forgive themselves.

The last two endings are exclusive to the Omori Route. In this alternate storyline, Sunny refuses to answer the door to Kel and spends the rest of the game inside his home. There, he regresses further into the fantasy of Headspace. This route unlocks some new areas and bosses, including a boss rush against stronger versions of all the previous bosses. There's also a new layer of Black Space with even more deranged imagery than before, known as Black Space 2.

Because Sunny never went outside in the Omori Route, a ton of things that are supposed to happen simply don't. Aubrey never moves on from her bitterness. Kel and Hero never get a chance to reunite with the other kids. And Basil dies offscreen, and nobody realizes that he's gone until it's too late. Both of the Omori Route endings are unmistakably bad endings.

The first Omori Route exclusive ending is called Abandonment, and in it, Sunny's mother comes home and takes him away. Sunny's old friends are left with unanswered questions and Something is still haunting Sunny. And it will continue to haunt him until the end of his days. The second ending is simply called Knife. It's exactly what you think it is. Sunny stabs himself with a knife, but because he's not in Headspace, he dies for real this time.

These two endings are anticlimactic at best, and lead to a narratively dissatisfying experience. But that's the point. Despite being the game's namesake, the Omori Route is antithetical to the themes and lessons this game is trying to teach. OMORI is a game about how escaping to a fantasy land and cutting yourself off from the rest of the world is not a good way to deal with your problems. To do the Omori Route, you have to ignore this lesson and sink even deeper into the fantasy.

Omori and friends look at their reflection in the mirror. Image found on RPGFan.com

And that's the story of OMORI. This game, while fantastically well made, can be emotionally challenging to play through. It's reputation as one of the most tragic horror games ever made is well-earned. And that's what makes the game so difficult to review. There was a saying I heard once, that "Art should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed." OMORI is that kind of art. It is not a game I would play for the fun of it, but for the *experience* of it. I don't think I'll play through the game again, at least for a long while. But to say this game is "bad" would be a lie on my part.

In terms of presentation, OMORI is a nice looking horror game with a distinct and recognizable art style. Or rather, art styles. The game uses a mixture of retro-inspired pixel art, hand drawn anime-style cut ins and distorted photorealistic images to get its point across. It sounds like a chaotic mess of clashing styles (and in some ways it is), but the game somehow manages to make it work. The only thing I can truly criticize here is that some character faces (mostly Kel and Hero) can look a little bit too similar to each other. But even that is a nitpick at worst.

The sound design is also good. The sound effects are crisp and clear, even if they are a little on the simple side. The music is amazing and arguably just as good as UNDERTALE's soundtrack, which is very high praise. Of course, this being a horror game, a lot of music in the soundtrack tends to be spooky ambience rather than conventional music. But the conventional songs that *are* in the soundtrack are all fantastic.

I already mentioned Duet, but there are other great songs in OMORI's soundtrack as well. World's End Valentine is a spectacular theme for the boss fight against Sweetheart (that minor Headspace villain), managing to sound oh so regal and pompous. And even though it only plays in the game's worst possible ending, bo en's My Time works perfectly as both the only licensed song in the game and the only song with lyrics. My Time is by far the most chaotic and deranged song I have ever heard (not just in video games, but in general), and I mean that as a compliment. Like an out-of-control carnival ride.

Overall, OMORI is exactly what I said it was in the title of this post: A painful masterpiece. This game will not be for everyone, but it is the kind of game that could change someone's life. I have no choice but to give it 5 stars out of 5, because the game clearly did something right to garner such a reaction out of me. Is it as good as UNDERTALE? Kind of. The two games are going for wildly different vibes despite the similar concepts. UNDERTALE is a goofy game that occasionally delves into darker themes. OMORI is a dark game that has occasional moments of levity.

OMORI is the property of OMOCAT. None of the images featured here were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Let's review Hollow Knight: Silksong, for real this time

2025-12-31T14:21:00.001-05:00

So here's a funny story about today's review. Hollow Knight: Silksong was a game that I and many other nerds on the Internet had waited almost 7 years for. This game's lengthy development cycle and infamous lack of marketing made this game borderline mythical in the eyes of the video game industry. I literally made an April Fool's post where I pretended the game was already out and was so good it brought world peace and solved all problems with society. When I wrote it, I basically gave up hope of seeing Silksong being released before 2030, if at all.

Official box art for Hollow Knight: Silksong, featuring main heroine Hornet front and center. Image found on wikipedia.org

But you'll never guess what got a surprise release on September 4th, 2025! That's right. Silksong is real. I am not joking this time. You CAN play it, on almost any modern system. And for just $20 USD. Which is a very generous price considering that this game can easily take 90-100 hours to complete. What's especially impressive is that the game went from having no marketing at all, to a surprise trailer suddenly announcing the game would be released officially by the end of the week.

And let me tell you, the indie game industry collectively lost their minds at the surprise release date of Silksong. Some dev teams even delayed their own projects specifically so they wouldn't have to compete with Silksong. And when the game did release, there were so many people trying to buy the game at once that several digital game store websites (such as Steam and Playstation Store) crashed from the initial demand overload. It was a wild time.

For those unfamiliar with this blog or with Hollow Knight, you might wonder why this game was such a big deal. So to recap, Hollow Knight was an extremely popular Souls Like/Metroidvania platformer developed and published by Team Cherry. It took place in a dark fantasy world populated by anthropomorphic bugs who write poetry and fight horrifying monsters. Think A Bug's Life meets Dark Souls and you got the vibe that Hollow Knight for. Thanks to its hauntingly beautiful art and music, challenging boss battles and tragic but intriguing lore, this game is considered a modern classic by anyone with good taste. If you like platformers or Souls Likes, you owe it to yourself to play Hollow Knight.

Silksong is the long awaited sequel to Hollow Knight, also developed and published by Team Cherry. This game focuses on the adventures of Hornet, a fan-favorite boss who served as a rival to the Knight, who was the protagonist from the first game. I had spent two months playing this game, because of course I would. In fact, the reason why I didn't do another Halloween horror game review this year was because this game ate up all my free time. And the reason I didn't publish any reviews in November was entirely because of computer problems on my part. So consider this review a sort of late Christmas present.

But do you need to play Hollow Knight to understand Silksong's story? Well, not really, but I would recommend that you play Hollow Knight first anyway. While Silksong is more or less a standalone adventure (save for the occasional callback), its challenging difficulty makes it clear that this game was made for people who already completed Hollow Knight. Thus, the first game helps you build up the skill level necessary for the second game. Also, just as a heads up, I will be comparing Silksong to its predecessor when applicable. It's rather difficult not to compare a sequel to what came before, after all.

To summarize Hollow Knight lore briefly is to do it a disservice. But like I said earlier, Silksong is mostly self-contained with only the occasional callback to the first game. All you really need to know going into this game is that every character you meet is some kind of bug, and that despite her name, Hornet is a spider. She's also the former princess of a kingdom called Hallownest, which was wiped out by a supernatural plague. The reason she's out adventuring is because her homeland is now an inhospitable wasteland.

Silksong begins with a poem, just like the original Hollow Knight. Unlike the first game's poem, which described a great king that built a utopian paradise for his people, this game's poem describes a beautiful yet cruel tyrant who hides their true nature behind a veil of civility. This poem is very obviously describing the main villain of this game, but at this point we do not know who said villain even is.

After the poem, we get a beautifully animated cinematic of Hornet being kidnapped by a mysterious group of veiled bugs. Hornet manages to escape her captors with the help of a mysterious pale butterfly. Unfortunately, she was left in a weakened state by her time in captivity, which means that most of her abilities are initially disabled. This is the in-universe explanation for why Hornet doesn't use any of the fancy weapons or spells she used in her boss fight back in the first game, though she can eventually regain her old abilities as well as several new ones.

Once that intro sequence is over, our journey into Silksong begins. Like the first game, the tutorial is fairly minimalistic, as Hornet's move set is self-explanatory. She can run and jump. She has a blade called the Needle that she can swing either vertically or horizontally. She has a midair dive attack that allows her to bounce off of any enemies or objects hit by said dive. And she can cast magic spells using Silk, which can be gained by hitting enemies with the Needle. Starting out, the only spell Hornet can cast is Bind, which is a simple healing ability. She can learn other spells as the game progresses, but all spells draw power from Silk. A big part of Silksong's combat is figuring out when to use Silk for an extra strong attack and when to use Silk to heal.

Just like literally every single Souls Like in existence, Silksong has a universal currency acquired by slaying regular enemies. This currency, called Rosaries in this game, is dropped if Hornet dies. But you can recollect any lost Rosaries by trekking back to where you died and smashing open a cocoon that marks the place of Hornet's most recent death. Rosaries are used to buy items from various merchants and to unlock benches (which serve as this game's checkpoint system). However, Rosaries are surprisingly rare, as only certain enemy types will drop them. For lore reasons that will make sense later, not all enemies will drop Rosaries when defeated. Only "pious" enemy types will drop Rosaries.

Non-pious enemies drop a less valuable resource called Shell Shards, which don't seem to serve a purpose at first. However, Hornet will eventually unlock additional weapons called Tools, which consist mostly of projectiles and traps such as boomerangs and caltrops. Tools have limited ammunition, but Hornet can use Shell Shards to craft more ammo as long as she is resting at a bench.

After climbing and fighting her way out of the starting area, Hornet meets a group of peaceful bugs called the Pilgrims. One of the elder Pilgrims, the Chapel Maiden, explains to Hornet that she has been brought to the kingdom of Pharloom. This land is a mountain with a heavenly Citadel crowned upon its peak, and the Pilgrims are all on a spiritual journey to prove their faith by climbing up the mountain. The Pilgrims are the reason why Rosaries (a kind of prayer bead) are the main currency, as they literally "trade in faith." This setting's economy does carry the sinister implication that "rich" Pilgrims are measurably more faithful and "pure" than their poorer counterparts, but I'm *totally* sure that this doesn't foreshadow the Pilgrims' religion being more malicious than it first appears.

The veiled bugs from earlier are also confirmed by the Chapel Maiden to be holy servants from the Citadel. So Hornet decides to climb up Pharloom herself, both because she wants to know why the Citadel bugs kidnapped her in the first place, and because she wants to beat the snot out of whoever is in charge. But standing between her and this goal is a horde of monsters possessed by haunted Silk. From here, Hornet is free to explore Pharloom while gradually making her way to the Citadel itself.

One thing that Silksong does better than Hollow Knight is that it gives you an objective to work towards right away. The early game of Hollow Knight is mostly aimless wandering while you piece together whatever tragedy befell Hallownest prior to your arrival. But Silksong says, "Here's a tall, mountainous kingdom. Climb to the top and kill anything that stands in your way. Have Fun!"

The biggest difference between the Knight and Hornet is that the latter has an actual personality. I know that sounds like an insult towards the Knight, but its whole deal is that it is both incapable of speech and devoid of any emotion. It was literally designed by the Pale King (Hornet's father and former ruler of Hallownest) to be a silent and emotionless warrior, as the Knight being Hollow (term for emotionless beings) was vital for its mission. Meanwhile, Hornet does have emotions and speaks somewhat frequently, because she is not Hollow. I was initially taken aback by Hornet actually talking to the various bugs she meets on her travels, because I was so used to the Knight's perpetual silence.

Hornet explores a rainy region called Greymoor. Image found on Silksong's Steam page.

Speaking of her, Hornet is a highly enjoyable protagonist. Her dialogue manages to sound both diplomatic and assertive. You can tell she was raised by royalty just from the way she speaks. She calls everyone she meets "good sir/madam" and she acts respectful until you give her a reason to stop respecting you, at which point she becomes blunt and brutally honest. Despite her stoic demeanor, she also has a soft side, as she grows to genuinely care about Pharloom and its people as her adventure progresses.

The best look into Hornet's personality is in the Hunter's Journal, a bestiary documenting every enemy type and boss that Hornet encounters. In addition to a "professional" description detailing the enemy's behavior, she often adds her personal thoughts on the enemy in question. Most of the game's levity comes from seeing this stoic warrior princess privately confess to wanting to pet all the "fluffy" enemies she encounters, as well as bemoaning the fact that she can't fly like other bug species due to a lack of wings. One of the Journal entries even reveals that Hornet had multiple lovers throughout her life, though she sadly outlived all of her previous partners. As it turns out, being a child of the Pale King (who is literally a god) gave Hornet an extended lifespan, causing her to live much longer than a normal spider should. And that information is just casually put into the Journal. Hornet never mentions her previous lovers or her heritage in conversation, both because she doesn't need to and because that is "private" information.

Hornet is not the only bug travelling through Pharloom, as she can meet new friends and foes who have all come to Pharloom for their own reasons. Such as Sherma, a sweet and idealistic Pilgrim boy who just wants to play music and reach the Citadel. There's also Shakra, a warrior-scout from a foreign tribe who is on a quest to track down her missing mentor. Shakra will also sell maps of recently discovered areas, which makes said areas easier to navigate. Then there's the Flea Caravan, a group of traveling fleas who will reward Hornet if she can rescue any lost fleas hidden throughout the world. And of course, there's Lace, a childish yet maniacal fencer who serves as a rival to Hornet. Which is somewhat ironic, as Hornet herself was meant to be a rival to the Knight.

I really like the new supporting characters. I'm not sure if I like them more than their counterparts from the first game, but I'd say they are about equal in terms of writing quality and character designs. My favorite new character is Shakra, both because her design is really cool, and because the sound of her singing is enchanting. And her singing is important, as it's an indicator that she set up shop somewhere nearby.

I also like Sherma for his wholesome vibes, even if I spent most of my playthrough worried he was going to get killed off. Not only is he similar in mannerisms to Myla (a character from the first game infamous for her tragic death), but this is a dark fantasy game, and this genre usually isn't kind to wide-eyed idealists. But not only does Sherma survive the journey to the Citadel in one piece, he even survives all the spoiler-filled nonsense that happens in the game's final Act.

A new feature in Silksong are Wishes, which are literally just side quests in all but name. Sometimes you might meet a friendly bug who will give you a rare item in exchange for completing a specific task. These tasks can range from fighting a secret boss, to collecting a certain number of items, or donating Rosaries to one of the three towns in Pharloom (Bone Bottom, Bellhart and Songclave). In case you can't meet the quest-giver in person, each town has a Wish-board where everyone puts their Wish on display publicly.

Generally speaking, I like the Wishes. They're easy to keep track of and provide clear instructions on what you need to do to complete them. There are some that can be rather obnoxious because of a difficulty spike, but I never found myself having to look up a guide for any Wish. Well, aside from the Courier's Rasher Wish. This Wish is infamously difficult, as it requires you to carry a delicate food item from Bellhart all the way to a diner in the Citadel within five minutes or less. You cannot use elevators or Hornet's Bell Beast companion to fast travel there, by the way. You have to make the journey on foot. And every time Hornet takes damage, the timer speeds up. It can be done, but just barely.

Speaking of difficulty, let's address the elephant in the room here. Silksong is a really hard game. I'd say that it's harder on average than Hollow Knight ever was. While it is true that there are specific things in Hollow Knight that are clearly more difficult than anything Silksong has to offer, such as the Path of Pain and the Pantheon battles, those are rather extreme outliers. If we're talking just the average, moment to moment gameplay, Silksong is harder. Like, the average Silksong enemy will take more effort to defeat than the average Hollow Knight enemy. And that is going to either make or break the game for you. You will either bounce off the game because of its high difficulty or tolerate its difficulty as you work your way to the "fun" parts of the game.

Hornet prepares to fight a giant robot called the Fourth Chorus. Image found on Silksong's Steam page.

To give you an example of how janky the difficulty can be, look no further than the boss and enemy design. Enemies in Silksong come in two types, duelists that are similar in size to Hornet herself and giants. Giant-sized enemies deal twice as much damage as "normal" sized enemies. And most of the game's bosses count as giants. And on top of the increased damage, all bosses have contact damage, where simply walking into them will hurt Hornet. Which, when combined with the double damage, means there's some nonsense in the early game that definitely feels unfair.

The worst example of the boss design is the Savage Beastfly, an optional boss that is without a shadow of a doubt the most annoying boss fight in the entire game. Or rather, the rematch against Savage Beastfly. You see, you can fight this boss twice. The first fight is simple enough, as the boss only has two attacks (a vertical slam and a horizontal charge). The only hard part is that regular enemies will join in to assist the Beastfly, but it can be tricked into squishing its own allies with some clever maneuvering.

The second Beastfly fight, however, doesn't really let you do that anymore as the minions now fly *just* out of reach. Also, the second fight happens directly above a lava lake, and the minions that the Beastfly summons can spit out a lingering fire that temporarily removes one of the few platforms that Hornet can safely stand on. This rematch, despite its seeming simplicity, was by far the most difficult boss in the game. Not even the final boss took as much effort as the Savage Beastfly rematch. Was it a fun boss to fight? No. Not at all. I found the whole fight frustrating and obnoxious. And the worst part of all this is the fact that the Savage Beastfly is just a bigger version of a regular enemy from the starting area. So it's not even a cool looking or lore-significant boss.

What's especially crazy is despite being one of the most annoying boss fights in recent memory, Savage Beastfly exists in the same game as the First Sinner, who is by far the best boss not just in this game, but in the entire series. The First Sinner has fast but reasonable attack patterns, as she uses her own version of Silk magic to fight. She can heal herself using her own version of Bind, but she can't attack and heal at the same time, so Hornet is free to strike the First Sinner whenever she tries to heal. And the best part of the First Sinner is that even though she is initially hidden behind a secret room in an already secret area, it takes only a few seconds to challenge her to a rematch because of how close the nearby bench is.

Other bosses I liked include Skarrsinger Karmelita, Shrine Guardian Seth, the Cogwork Dancers and Phantom. I don't like them as much as I like First Sinner, but all of them are fun duelist style bosses with cool designs and intriguing lore.

Believe it or not, I found myself liking the platforming and exploration parts of the game more than the boss battles. Which feels bizarre, as I generally enjoy the boss battles most in games like this. But where Silksong truly shines is in its world. The kingdom of Pharloom is not only beautiful to behold, but is filled to the brim with secret collectibles and a rich history. And Hornet is just really fun to play as. She's graceful and acrobatic, especially once you unlock the Dash and Wall Jump abilities.

Hornet is also a lot more customizable than expected, thanks to the Crest system. Crests are essentially alternative fighting styles that Hornet can learn throughout her adventure. They change the shape and size of her Needle swings, and some Crests can even alter Bind, either by giving it additional effects or by replacing it with an alternative healing method. Crests also determine how many Tools Hornet can bring into battle, if any.

Hornet starts with the Hunter Crest, which is her default move set. It's a generalist style that doesn't specialize in one specific strategy, which makes it good for beginners. There's also the Reaper Crest, which has slow, wide slashes for a more patient fighter. The Wanderer Crest is the Reaper's total opposite, shortened range in exchange for quick stabs. The Beast Crest replaces Bind with a Fury Mode that allows Hornet to steal health with claw swipes. The Witch Crest turns the Needle into a bladed whip, and it replaces Bind with a life-stealing tentacle attack. And the Shaman Crest is greatly improves your Silk spells, and lets Hornet shoot waves of magical energy with each swing of the Needle.

My favorite Crest is the Architect, which turns the Needle into a drill and allows Hornet to instantly craft ammo for her Tools anywhere at any time. This Crest is so good that it gets its own section in the review. It is laughably strong. Not only do the drill attacks hit multiple times (thus racking up damage and Silk quickly), but the fact that you can craft extra ammo for your Tools mid-battle means you can be a lot more reckless with your Tool usage. In fact, I was able to beat the final boss simply by using the Architect Crest to spam Tools with careless abandon. I tried to do the final boss fight with other Crests, but none were as effective. The only downside of the Architect Crest is that it still needs Shell Shards to craft ammo, so prolonged use of it can get expensive very quickly. That, and the only Silk spell you can use is Bind. The Architect is meant to be an "anti-magic" fighting style.

Hornet fights the warrior bugs of the Citadel. Image found on Silksong's Steam page

So now I want to talk about the lore and story of Silksong. Keep in mind that just like Hollow Knight (and Souls Likes in general), parts of the lore are left vague and up to interpretation. So while there are some objective truths, there are also parts of the story that I will not be able to describe perfectly. Also, spoilers abound from this point on. If you must know my thoughts on the game, I'd give it either a 4 star rating or a 5 star rating, depending on your tolerance for difficult games. The only thing I can say bad about Silksong is that the difficulty can feel borderline sadistic in some parts of the game. But aside from that, this is easily Game of the Year material that was well worth the wait. But without further adieu, let's talk about the lore.

You know those friendly Pilgrims I mentioned? The ones climbing up Pharloom so they can prove their faith and be allowed to join the heavenly Citadel? Turns out their religion is built upon a lie. Most Pilgrims die long before they reach the Citadel's gates, either killed by beasts or possessed by haunted silk. And the lucky few that survive are immediately enslaved and cast down into the Underworks, a mechanical region that serves both as a prison and as a factory. This facility was designed to keep the Citadel above running for eternity, by any means necessary. In case you haven't realized it, the beautiful yet cruel tyrant that the poem warned us about at the start of the game was referring to the Citadel itself.

In addition to all the usual dangers you might expect, like powerful enemies and tricky platforming, the Underworks does something rather unique. Everything in the Underworks is designed to scam you out of your hard-won Rosaries. The benches and beds are pay-per-use and retract into the walls and floor if you don't have enough money. There is a confession booth where you get to pay for the "privilege" of confessing your sins. And the confession booth only responds with a pre-recorded message that tells you that your only chance for "redemption" is to work an additional 24 hours without resting or eating. And because the Citadel's religiously charged propaganda is so effective, the Pilgrims are too indoctrinated to realize that they're being exploited. And on top of all that, the enemies here only drop 3-4 Rosaries each on death, while every other Citadel enemy drops 30 or more. The implication being that they don't get paid well for their efforts, if at all.

The Underworks is genuinely my favorite area in the game, because the environmental storytelling is immaculate. Everything about the Underworks, from the scarcity of Rosaries to the overpriced pay-per-use services, is meant to force you to see the harsh reality of the Citadel's tyranny. It's not my favorite aesthetically, as I feel that there are other areas that look "prettier" like Greymoor and Shellwood, but the Underworks is the area I enjoy from a narrative perspective the most.

But who exactly rules over the Citadel? The answer is a little complicated, but bear with me. The Kingdom of Pharloom in its current form was established by a spider goddess known as Grand Mother Silk, who is the progenitor of all spiders. Even Hornet is related to her, albeit distantly. Grand Mother Silk (who I will call GMS for short) was a tyrant who destroyed any nation that refused to join Pharloom, and she created the haunted silk that's been possessing all the enemies specifically to make her subjects easier to control. After untold centuries of conquest and warfare, Grand Mother Silk was eventually betrayed by her daughters, the Weavers.

The Weavers created the Citadel to produce a magic song (one might call it a "Silksong"), which would keep Grand Mother Silk asleep for eternity. But after the Weavers left Pharloom and migrated to Hallownest, the remaining Citadel bugs started a cult dedicated to keeping the Citadel running for eternity. That haunted silk I mentioned earlier is the result of GMS's influence slowly leaking out of the Citadel and spreading to the rest of the world. So the Citadel isn't exactly doing a good job containing her. Thus, Hornet decides that the best thing to do is to slay GMS herself, which would destroy the haunted silk and shut down the Citadel for good.

Grand Mother Silk is the final boss of this game's second Act. She's actually a pretty fun boss to fight. She doesn't feel outrageously hard, but she's certainly no push over. She uses similar attack patterns to the Radiance, the final boss of Hollow Knight, with her throwing floating blades around and conjuring spikes from the ground. But this time you have a character with a lot more mobility and combat options, so GMS feels "easier" to fight than the Radiance did.

But like I said earlier, Act 3 is completely optional and it is entirely possible to beat the game without ever seeing it. And just like Hollow Knight, there are multiple endings based on what preparations you made prior to defeating the final boss. At the time of writing, I've done three out of four of the game's main endings. However, one of those "endings" is just the intro to Act 3, so it feels weird to call it an ending.

The first ending, called Weaver Queen, is what happens if you fight Grand Mother Silk without making any additional preparations. Hornet kills GMS and absorbs her power. This causes Hornet to transform into a goddess herself, but the implication is that she is doomed to be repeat GMS's mistakes and become just as tyrannical as the goddess she just overthrew. Especially since earlier in the game, Hornet herself said that her heritage gives her an instinctual desire to rule over civilizations, even at the expense of others.

The second ending is called Twisted Child and this is the only one I have not done. Nor do I expect to do it any time soon, as the requirements are a little... extreme. Additionally, this is generally agreed to be the game's "bad" ending, so outside of 100% completion there's not much reason to go for it. So back in Act 1 Hornet can meet a witch named Greyroot, who says some cryptic nonsense about the "time of rebirth." If you give her an item called the Twisted Bud, Greyroot will forcibly infect Hornet with a parasite which prevents her from being able to use Silk spells (including Bind!).

Normally, this side story would end with Hornet visiting a surgeon named Yarnaby, who would remove the parasite and give Hornet the Witch Crest for her trouble. But if you carry the parasite with you all the way to the final boss, you get the Twisted Child ending. In this ending, the parasite within Hornet is "birthed" into an eldritch tree monster that absorbs both Hornet and Grand Mother Silk into itself. This tree monster is a newborn god, but given how shady Greyroot is and how violent its creation was, the chances of the newborn god being nice are pretty slim.

Then there is the Snared Silk ending, which is the aforementioned Act 3 intro. To get this ending, Hornet needs to grant at least 17 Wishes and rescue enough Fleas to get the Flea Caravan to move from the starting area all the way to the Citadel. Because she's helped so many bugs this time, she has grown to care about the citizens of Pharloom and can resist her instinctual desire to become a goddess. This leads to Hornet researching alternative methods to defeat Grand Mother Silk. And conveniently enough, a family of magicians called the Snail Shamans claim to know of a ritual that can banish the gods from Pharloom. One of the Snail Shamans is actually the Chapel Maiden from the start of the game. The ritual would in theory defeat GMS, shut down the Citadel and allow Hornet to continue life as a "regular" spider. So it's a win-win for everyone. At least it would be, except that the Snail Shamans neglected to mention where exactly GMS would be banished to.

Hornet uses her dive attack during a duel with Lace, her main rival. Image found on Silksong's Steam page.

As it turns out, the banishment ritual sent Grand Mother Silk to the Void, a realm of darkness that consumes the souls any bug exposed to it. GMS tried to drag Hornet down with her, but the latter is saved by Lace. Not because Lace likes Hornet or anything, but because she she hates GMS and is acting entirely out of petty spite. Why does Lace hate GMS? To make a long story short, Lace is GMS's magnum opus; an artificial bug made of enchanted silk. Lace resents her creator, for her body is flawed and fragile, and has decided to interfere with GMS's plans for no other reason than petty revenge. In fact, that pale butterfly from the intro is implied to have been sent by Lace. But GMS still has access to her haunted silk, which is made with the souls of her enslaved subjects. And the ritual opened a portal to realm that literally eats souls. So it doesn't turn out well.

Act 3 begins with the haunted silk combining with the Void, which transforms the entire game world. Shortcuts get blocked off and have to be reopened, enemies get replaced with Void-Touched variants that are twice as strong as before, and multiple friendly bugs get either killed off or corrupted by the Void. No one is having a good time now.

Hornet manages to fight her way out of the Citadel and back down to Bone Bottom, the town at the start of the game. There, she confronts the Snail Shamans for lying about their usage of Void magic. This scene is one of the few times where Hornet loses her temper, which should give you an idea of how dire the situation is. The Snail Shamans make up for their blunder by revealing the existence of a special flower that can counter the Void; the Everbloom. But there are no such flowers in Pharloom, as it only grew in Hallownest, which is currently a dead kingdom with no life in it at all.

All hope to save Pharloom seems lost. But the Snail Shamans have one last ritual they can try, one that does not draw power from the Void. This second ritual could send someone into the memories of the past, and pull a physical object out of that memory and into the real world. It's not quite time travel (as the past is always set in stone), as it's more like a magical copy-paste feature. Anyway, the Snail Shamans teach Hornet a song that can be played to enter the memories of other bugs, which Hornet must use to collect the hearts of three monarchs.

You see, Grand Mother Silk was not the first ruler of Pharloom, she was just the most recent one. There were four monarchs before her, those being Crust King Khann, Nyleth, Skarrsinger Karmelita and the Green Prince. Hornet only needs to collect three out of four hearts, so you could choose to skip one of these monarchs for your playthrough. None of the monarchs will give up their hearts willingly, so Hornet has to fight them in extra tough boss battles.

Side note, but Crust King Khann is my second least favorite boss in the game. The first is the Savage Beastfly, for reasons I already explained. But the reason I dislike Khann is not because he's hard or annoying to fight. The reason I don't like him is because you have to fight through the longest gauntlet of regular enemies in the entire game. It's an arduous and tiresome process that involves fighting through 30 waves of enemies, with each wave consisting of 2-4 enemies each. On top of that, coral starts growing out of the walls and floor to restrict Hornet's movement. If you die at any point during the gauntlet, you have to do the whole thing all over again. So if you're going to skip one of the monarchs, let it be Crust King Khann. The other monarchs are much more fun to fight because you don't have to go through a small army every time you want to fight the boss.

Funnily enough, Skarrsinger Karmelita also has a gauntlet battle beforehand, but it's nowhere near as long as the Khann gauntlet, so it doesn't feel as bad to fight through. Karmelita is my favorite of the four Monarchs, both because I enjoy her character concept and I enjoy her boss fight. She's an ant queen salsa dancer with boomerangs, and that right there is peak Hollow Knight character design.

Once Hornet has enough hearts, the Snail Shamans can perform the ritual to send Hornet into her own memories and retrieve the Everbloom flower. And this is the best look at Hornet's backstory we get, at least for anyone who hasn't played the first game. It's kind of weird that almost all of the references to Hollow Knight are in Act 3, which is the tail end of the adventure, but here we are. That being said, I do like this scene. The music and artwork here is hauntingly nostalgic, and seeing all the old Hallownest rulers again did make me smile.

Anyway, Hornet gets the Everbloom and dives into the Void to confront Lace and Grand Mother Silk one last time. The only way to stop the Void from devouring all of Pharloom is to dive into its core and beat it into submission. And Hornet is absolutely determined to save Pharloom by this point. Her homeland is a dead kingdom, and she cannot live with the guilt of seeing another civilization fall to ruin. So we get the true final boss of Hollow Knight: Silksong, Lost Lace.

While I like the idea of Lost Lace's concept, as its a Void-touched rematch against Hornet's main rival, I didn't really care that strongly for the battle itself. You see, the main problem with Lost Lace is not that she's hard (though she is), the problem is that it's difficult to see what's going on because of the coloring of this area. Lost Lace's body is oily black, the background is oily black, and her Void magic spells are oily black. This fight would be so much better if it was easier to see what Lost Lace is doing.

Upon defeating Lost Lace, we get Silksong's best possible ending, Sister of the Void. In this ending, Hornet literally beats the Void corruption out of Lace and saves her life. Grand Mother Silk bestows the last of her power to give Hornet enough strength to literally super jump out of the Void with Lace in tow. Does this redeem GMS? Not really. But I understand why she did this. Because Lace is still her magnum opus, her perfect "daughter." Ensuring that Lace survives means that GMS's legacy is secure. Unfortunately, the Everbloom flower's protection wears off mid-jump, leaving Hornet and Lace vulnerable to the Void.

But before they can be consumed by the Void, Hornet and Lace are saved by a surprise appearance from the Knight. Yes, the same Knight from the original Hollow Knight. Since the events of the first game, the Knight has become a god of the Void itself, but it couldn't interfere with Hornet's adventure because the haunted silk prevented it from entering Pharloom. And with no more haunted silk holding it back, the Knight is able to carry Hornet and Lace back to the living world. Despite supposedly being a Hollow being, the Knight does care to some extent about Hornet. After all, the Knight is technically a child of the Pale King, which would make Hornet its sister. In fact, that's why this ending is called "Sister" of the Void. The game ends there, with Hornet and Lace thankful to be alive and with the promise to rebuild Pharloom into a better nation.

For obvious reasons, the Sister of the Void ending is my favorite of the bunch. It's the ending that is most narratively satisfying, and getting to see the Knight again is absolute cinema. I can see this ending being confusing for anyone who hasn't played the original Hollow Knight, as the game introduces a new character seemingly out of nowhere specifically to save Hornet from the Void. But despite that, this ending is still beautiful.

After getting any of the endings I just described, you unlock Steel Soul Mode, which is this game's equivalent to hard mode. Yeah, a game already infamous for its high difficulty has a secret hard mode that is unlocked after beating it for the first time. But the only change between regular mode and Steel Soul is that in the latter mode, your save file is deleted upon death. Which means that you have to beat the entire game in one try. I already know that I do not have the skill level necessary to attempt this, but I have nothing but respect for anyone brave enough to try this challenge. Hollow Knight also had a Steel Soul Mode.

Hornet fights three enemies at once in the Coral Tower. Image found on Silksong's Steam page.

Okay. We're done talking about the lore. Now let's talk presentation. Silksong is, much like Hollow Knight, an absolutely gorgeous game. I mean, have you seen the screenshots on this very review? It's literal art. This game's aesthetic has quite a lot going on, but simply put, it's using cel-shaded art on three separate layers (the foreground, the background, and the actual levels). Silksong moves away somewhat from the medieval gothic vibes of the original game for something more akin to a fusion of steampunk and vaguely Catholic imagery, especially once you reach the Citadel. And once again, all the characters are supposed to be different kinds of bugs, but the game heavily anthropomorphizes its insects to make them "cuter" and more aesthetically pleasing.

The music and sound design is also just as incredible as the original. Silksong does not have traditional voice acting, as all the voice actors speak in a fictional nonsense language. The text boxes are supposed to be an in-universe "translation" of what the characters are actually saying. I personally like the made up nonsense language, as I consider it a part of the Hollow Knight charm. But if you want full voice acting for every line of dialogue, you will not find it here.

The official soundtrack (composed once again by Christopher Larkin) is so good that it sounds like a gift from the Heavens. One of my favorite songs from this game is Red Maiden, which is a triumphant reprise of Hornet's theme from the first game. It only plays once in the entire game, which is during a completely optional side-story in which Hornet is kidnapped and stripped "naked" of all her gear, and must sneak around a prison called the Slab to get her stuff back. Once she has done so, she massacres the prison guards while Red Maiden blares heroically in the background. The whole scene is a great sequence, but it can be missed entirely if you don't die to a specific enemy encountered once in the entire game.

Other standout songs include Skarrsinger Karmelita's theme, which has an almost angelic vocal performance that in-universe is performed by Karmelita herself. The First Sinner and Widow share a boss theme, and the little violin strings during the second phase make the battle sound like an intense, life-or-death struggle.

And of course, there's Shrine Guardian Seth's theme. It's oddly sad and melancholic for an otherwise fast-paced duel, but it makes sense when you learn the real life story of why this particular boss was created. To make a long story short, Shrine Guardian Seth was originally a fan-made boss created by Seth Goldman, a fairly prominent Hollow Knight fan who contracted a terminal illness. As a last request, he was allowed to visit Team Cherry's headquarters and design one boss, which he chose to name after himself. Goldman passed away before Silksong released, but now his legacy is forever immortalized as the Shrine Guardian Seth.

Hornet rests on a bench while visiting Bellhart, one of the three towns in the game. She is surrounded by various peaceful villagers. Image found on Silksong's Steam page.

Overall, Hollow Knight: Silksong is a fantastic, but intimidatingly difficult game. I personally consider it my Game of the Year, mostly because I haven't played the other Game of the Year candidates enough to form a definitive opinion on them. And despite loving deltarune's new Chapters (which came out this year as well), it feels wrong to give what is essentially an unfinished game any kind of award. Like I said earlier, depending on your tolerance for difficulty, this is either a 4 star game or a 5 star game. If you liked Hollow Knight, you'll probably like Silksong.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is the property of Team Cherry. None of the images used were created by me. Please support the original creators.

The Big and Blocky Minecraft Review

2025-08-31T21:22:00.005-04:00

Minecraft is a game that needs no introduction. Everyone with an Internet connection has at least heard of the game. It is one of the most staggeringly successful video games ever made. This silly block-building survival game dominated the 2010's and still has a prominent fandom in the 2020's. And yet I never reviewed it properly. So let's amend that oversight and finally discuss Minecraft fully.

Minecraft's official box art, as of 2024. Image found on Wikipedia.org

For anyone living under a rock, Minecraft is a first person survival adventure game made by Mojang, which takes place in a world where everything is made of blocks. The trees are blocks, the mountains are blocks, even the animals are blocks. You play as a person made of blocks. You can customize your blocky persona with a variety of costumes called "Skins." The default Skin gives your character the name of Steve, though this admittedly isn't that important since the game lacks any conventional story mode.

Speaking of story modes, Minecraft Story Mode is one of three spin off games based on the original game (the other two being Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends). But of the three spin off games, Story Mode is the only that is no longer publicly available. To make a long story short, the devs for Story Mode, Telltale Games, went bankrupt and almost their entire catalogue was bought out by other companies. While some of Telltale's projects would eventually get republished (such as their Walking Dead games), no one has tried republishing Story Mode. Somehow, I wrote multiple reviews for Story Mode back when it was still available, but I never reviewed its source material. Not sure how that happened, but here we are. Side note, but those Story Mode reviews are so old that I cannot bring myself to read them in their entirety, as doing so causes me to die of cringe.

Minecraft was first released in 2009, albeit with a caveat. The Beta version was released in 2009, but version 1.0 (which Mojang considers the "full" version) wouldn't release until 2011. In 2014 the legal rights to Minecraft were bought by Microsoft, who have been using the franchise as their main mascot ever since. Because of the game's popularity and open-ended nature, Mojang has added dozens of updates, adding more and more content to the game. As such, "modern" Minecraft is a different beast from its days in Beta. Also, the overwhelming popularity of this game led to the development of not just those spin-off games I mentioned earlier, but also a live action movie starring Jack Black. I haven't watched the movie yet, but I'll write up a review once I do.

The strangest thing about Minecraft is that the game has been divided into multiple Editions. While the core gameplay is more or less the same across all versions, there are some important differences between them that are worth discussing. Minecraft: Java Edition is the version that's available on PC. This is the original version of the game, and the first to receive new updates. It also has an impressive amount of modding capability, meaning that one could create or download fan-made creatures and items and put them into the game directly. For these reasons, Java is often considered by most of the fandom to be the "definitive" Minecraft experience. The only downside of Java is that it has poor framerate on all but the most advanced computers.

A player defends their cozy little house from a horde of undead Mobs, with another player staying inside. Image found on minecraft.net

Then there's Minecraft: Bedrock Edition, which is the version available on current-generation consoles (PS5, Xbox Series, etc.). This is the version I am most familiar with. Bedrock has a much smoother framerate than Java, and it has simplified combat. Oh yeah, combat. Quick intermission. In Java Edition, weapons have cooldowns dictating how often you can attack, with certain weapon types having faster cooldowns than others. Swords are the fastest, Axes are the slowest. But the slower a weapon is, the more damage it deals per attack. This cooldown does not exist in Bedrock Edition, so you can attack as fast as you can press the button.

Unfortunately, Bedrock does not have modding support like Java. Instead, Bedrock has paid DLC packs, which come in a few varieties. There are Skin Packs, which are new costumes for your character. Texture Packs meanwhile change the appearance of all the blocks and creatures to match a certain theme. And finally, Add-Ons change or add onto the core mechanics of the game itself, and function similarly to mods. In fact, there's a few Add-Ons that were originally popular mods for Java before being reworked for Bedrock. These packs are typically sold for about $5 to $15 USD. These aren't needed to enjoy the game, and I personally don't use Add-Ons at all (though I will mess around with Texture Packs from time to time). So my advice is to be responsible with your money. Though this goes for any video game with microtransactions.

The next version is called Minecraft: Mobile Edition, which is (to the extent of my knowledge) the same as Bedrock but with the controls reconfigured to work with mobile devices like IPhone and Android. I cannot speak to the quality of this version, as I never played it. But if you want to play Minecraft on your phone for whatever reason, well, there you go. There's also Minecraft: Education Edition, which reworks the game so that it can be used in schools to teach subjects like math or history. Again, I never played this version, so I cannot speak to its quality. But hey, it's there in case you want it.

Finally, there's Minecraft: Legacy Edition, which is the version available on old-gen consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, etc.). This was the version I started with, and as such I feel a great sense of nostalgia towards it. Unfortunately, this version has been abandoned by Mojang and as such, it hasn't received a single update in over a decade. That being said, this edition was a precursor to Bedrock Edition, and in some ways it was even better than its successor. The standout feature of Legacy Edition was the Tutorial World, a custom-built world that taught the player all the core game mechanics in a fun and natural manner, while also showcasing some large-scale builds to inspire the player's creativity. Bedrock's tutorial, by comparison, is just a series of popups. It's simpler, but the Tutorial World was an incredibly creative way to teach the player and was more in line with the "spirit" of Minecraft.

Thankfully, you could transfer Legacy Edition save files into Bedrock Edition, so those old worlds could live on and still be played on a modern system. The only thing I could say bad about Legacy Edition was that it also had no modding support, and just like Bedrock, you needed paid DLC packs to get any additional content. Legacy's DLC was even more limited than Bedrock, as all of the "old" DLC packs were made by Mojang exclusively. No fan content in sight. Also, world generation was a lot more wacky in this version, as biome placement (more on that later) was completely random.

Minecraft has two main modes, Survival and Creative. Creative Mode is the simpler of the two, as it renders your character invincible, grants the ability to fly and gives you an infinite supply of every resource in the game. This mode exists primarily for people who like the building and artistic side of Minecraft but don't want to go through the challenges of regular gameplay. And there's no shame in that. I have spent hundreds of hours playing this game throughout the years, and I'd wager most of that time was just messing around in Creative Mode.

Two players work together to build a mountainside castle. Image found on minecraft.net

Survival Mode is the real "meat" of the game, as this is where combat and resource management is most prominent. When you start a new Survival World, you are unceremoniously dumped in the wilderness with nothing of value to your name. World generation is somewhat random, as biomes and landscapes will get shuffled around into different shapes and sizes. One World might be a sprawling supercontinent with two dozen wildly different regions to explore, another might be a small island surrounded by hundreds of miles of ocean. If you're looking for a specific kind of World, you can type in a number or phrase into the seed generator, which turns whatever you type into a specific combination of biomes and landscapes.

Everything in the game is, as previously stated, made of blocks. Every block is 1 meter cubed (or 3.5 feet cubed), and can be picked up using certain tools and placed down somewhere else. You can build a wide variety of structures, from simple huts and gardens to giant castles and statues, by rearranging blocks into the desired shape. There are many kinds of blocks, each with their own unique properties. For example, dirt blocks can used as the foundation for most farms, as you can plant crops on top of them. Redstone can be used to construct advanced machines that can handle certain tasks automatically. But the most important block in the game is the humble wooden log.

Wood is the foundation that Minecraft's core gameplay is built upon. Simply put, it is almost impossible to beat this game without using wood in some capacity. You need wood to build your first shelter. You need wood to craft tools. You need wood to make the Crafting Table, which unlocks more advanced crafting recipes. You need wood to build bridges across perilous chasms. You need wood to build ladders to climb up and down cliffs. You need wood to build fencing for all of your animal farms. You need wood to build vehicles like boats or minecart tracks. It cannot be stated enough just how important wood is.

But how do you get wood, you ask? By punching trees. Is it realistic for a presumably average human to punch a tree down with their bare hands? Probably not. But you got to start somewhere, and in Minecraft, you start by punching trees. But once you have enough wooden logs, you can craft all of the things I just described. And you can collect saplings (which can eventually grow into new trees) by destroying the leaf blocks left behind by recently chopped down trees, so a patient player can get an infinite supply of wood by replanting all the trees they punch/chop down.

Once you have enough wood for your needs, you will inevitably head underground, either by digging a hole or finding a cave. The deeper you go, the rarer and more powerful the gems and metals become. But you can't (normally) skip straight to the best stuff. You are intended to pass through each "tier" of equipment one at a time, with each tier being stronger than the previous one. With the exception of wood, every material can only be mined with a pickaxe made from the previous tier. With a wooden pickaxe you can get stone, with a stone pickaxe you can get iron, and with an iron pickaxe you can get Diamonds. Diamonds are the rarest and highest quality material in the game. And Diamond-tier equipment is so strong that the player becomes borderline invincible. Keep in mind that all tools and armor will break from overuse, and even though Diamond tools have the most durability, they can be broken eventually.

One nitpick I have with Minecraft's progression is how it handles early-game armor. There simply isn't any kind of "wooden" or "stone" armor at all. Instead, The first armor tier is leather, which has terrible defenses compared to the amount of effort and materials needed to craft it. The second armor tier is chainmail, which cannot be crafted at all and only rarely appears inside treasure chests hidden all over the world. Just like with leather, chainmail's defenses aren't worth the effort needed to acquire it. Literally everyone who plays this game will always skip the first two armor tiers and go straight for iron. Leather's one redeeming quality is that leather boots will protect you from sinking into powdered snow, which is a hazard only encountered in "cold" biomes, but it's better than nothing.

You also need Diamonds to make an Enchanting Table, which is a special block used to upgrade preexisting armor and weapons with magical properties called Enchantments. These upgrades, generally speaking, are so strong that a player with Enchanted gear will almost always defeat a player with unenchanted gear. You are given a choice between three randomized options each time you use the Enchanting Table. Most Enchantments are pretty good, and well worth the investment. Just to list a few examples, The "Sharpness" Enchantment improves the damage output of weapons, while "Silk Touch" allows a tool to pick up blocks that are normally too fragile to pick up (such as glass or leaf blocks). "Infinity" gives ranged weapons, such as bows and crossbows, infinite ammo. And Fire Aspect lets a weapon set a foe on fire upon striking them.

The only Enchantment I would call outright bad is "Bane of Arthropods," which causes extra damage to spider-type enemies. The problem is that out of the 30+ creatures in this game, only two are classified as spiders. And both of them are so weak that you do not need the extra damage to fight them. In fact, Sharpness deals extra damage to ALL enemy types, including spiders. Thus, Sharpness is literally better than Bane of Arthropods in every conceivable way, as the latter is far too specialized for its own good.

Minecraft operates on a strict day/night cycle, with each day lasting 20 real life minutes (13 minutes of sunlight, 7 minutes of darkness). Keeping track of this cycle is important, as hostile creatures called Mobs will start appearing once the sun goes down. They can also appear during the day, but only in dark places like caves or roofed forests. The Mobs include classical monsters like zombies, spiders and skeletons, but there's also some weirder beasts like Endermen and Creepers. Each Mob has specific abilities that have to be taken into consideration when fighting them.

But Mobs are not the only danger in the game. There's also the Hunger Meter, which is basically a countdown showing how much time your character has until they starve. Whether or not you die from starvation is dependent on your chosen difficulty setting. But even on lower difficulties, you still need to keep Hunger full whenever possible, as you can only heal from injuries with a full Hunger Meter. You also need a full Hunger Meter to run at maximum speed. Hunger can be refilled by eating food, obviously. And there's a plethora of ways to get food. The simplest method is to kill an animal (such as a pig or a cow) then cook the meat by placing it inside a Furnace block.

You *could* eat meat raw, but raw meat doesn't restore as much Hunger, and it has a chance to poison your character. Cooking meat makes it 100% safe for consumption, as well as increasing the amount of Hunger restored. Alternatively, you can plant crops on dirt blocks and start growing your food with a farm. This method takes longer to set up properly, but it can eventually produce much more food than simply killing livestock.

Minecraft's Survival Mode is legendarily open-ended. The game doesn't give you any goals to work towards outside of immediate self-preservation. This is both the best and worst thing about Minecraft's core gameplay. It's great in the sense that Minecraft is quite possibly the most "freeing" game to play. The only long-term goal you have to worry about is whatever goal you give to yourself. You could hunt down the game's bosses, build a giant fortress-city with impenetrable defenses, ride a roller-coaster that's hundreds of miles long, map out the entire world, or create an industrial complex so advanced it can produce thousands of resources with the flip of a lever. And this is not even mentioning all the wacky nonsense that mods/Add-Ons and multiplayer interactions can bring to the table. I firmly believe that the main reason this game got as popular as it did is because nothing else in the industry gives you as much freedom as Minecraft does.

But at the same time, Minecraft offers no guidance for the player at all. Ergo, if you don't have a goal to work towards in mind, you can find the game boring or even frustrating. As such, the game asks a lot out of the player to come up with a goal for themselves and actually stick with it long-term. The closest thing you get to "beating" Minecraft is defeating its two bosses, the Wither and the Ender Dragon. But even then, the game doesn't give you any hint on how to find these bosses. Nor does the game tell you that these bosses even exist. Most Minecraft knowledge is acquired either through word of mouth or through checking the wiki. Which is precisely why the Tutorial world from Legacy Edition was such a good addition. Because it actually gave the player a general idea of what to do for a standard playthrough.

There is one last quirk to Survival Mode. In addition to all the normal difficulty options (easy, medium, and hard), there is a variant of Survival Mode called Hardcore Mode. Hardcore works the exact same way as normal Survival Mode, with one caveat; the player has only one life to work with. If your character dies while in Hardcore Mode, you will be forced to delete that world forever, completely erasing any and all progress in that world. In the case of multiplayer worlds, Hardcore simply auto-bans you from that world upon death, instead of deleting the world outright. This is the greatest challenge the game has to offer, and not one to be taken lightly. I myself have never tried Hardcore Mode, because I don't really play Minecraft for a challenging experience. I already play enough Souls Likes for that.

The player's character (who is by default named Steve) stands at the top of a mountain, overlooking a nearby village. Image found on Wikipedia.org

Speaking of difficulty, you want to know something that can completely obliterate any sense of challenge? Villagers. Villagers are pacifistic Mobs who will buy and sell various items in exchange for emeralds, a material that is only exists to be used a currency with these creatures. Now, this doesn't sound too impressive by itself. But trading with the same Villager repeatedly causes that Villager to "level up" and offer more exotic deals. What a Villager sells changes based on their job, which can be changed by placing a thematically appropriate block in their home. For example, placing a Smithing table in a Villager's home turns it into a Smith. Placing a composter turns the Villager into a Farmer, et cetera.

At max level, Villagers can sell you some *very* powerful items. You can get Golden Carrots, which are the best food source in the game. You can get Enchanting books with specific upgrades, letting you skip the random nature of Enchanting books/gear normally. You can get Redstone and Glowstone, which are needed for advanced machinery and potions. And you can get Diamond-tier tools and armor. As long as you have emeralds, you can keep buying as much of these items as you want. And you can get emeralds simply by selling surplus crops or other cheap materials back to the Villagers, so everything that they sell to you is technically infinite. Villagers are almost comically overpowered once you understand how to take advantage of their capabilities.

Now let's talk about Minecraft's endgame areas, the Nether and the End. The Nether can be reached by building a portal frame using obsidian blocks (a rare material created by pouring water on lava), then lighting said frame on fire. The Nether is meant to be a fiery, nightmarish hellscape that looks, sounds and feels dangerous. The bottom layer of the Nether is flooded with lava, and water instantly evaporates if you try to bring some with you through the portal. The Nether is also home to some of the most dangerous enemies in the game.

One of the best things to happen to Minecraft was 1.16, also known as the Nether Update. This update reworked the Nether with new biomes, tree types, structures and enemies. It also added a new Mob called Piglins, who are kind of like Villagers, but more difficult to negotiate with. Piglins are normally hostile and will attack on sight, unless the player is wearing golden armor. Additionally, Piglins will only use golden ingots as currency, and their trades are completely random. There is no way to know what a Piglin will give you until you give it some gold first. In other words, Piglin trading is the Minecraft equivalent of gambling.

The main goal of the Nether Update (besides reworking the Nether) was to make gold more useful, as prior to this update it was considered the worst material in the game. Golden tools and armor were too fragile to justify using, and unlike wood and stone, it wasn't required to access better quality metals or gems. Gold's only redeeming quality was that it could be used to crafting Golden Apples and Golden Carrots. But now gold has an additional niche as both a currency and a deterrent to an otherwise highly dangerous Mob. Also, 1.16 added in a new metal alloy called Netherite, which can be combined with Diamond-tier equipment to make it even stronger than before. Netherite cannot be combined with any material other than Diamond, however.

Three players climb out of a Nether Portal. Image found on minecraft.net

But why would ever want to come to the Nether in the first place? There's a few reasons. Firstly, Netherite allows you to make the best equipment in the game even better, and the desire for more power is intoxicating. Secondly, walking across one block in the Nether is equal to walking across eight blocks in the overworld, so a smart player can use the Nether as a kind of "shortcut" to reach faraway places more quickly. Thirdly, the items needed to access the two main bosses can only be found in the Nether.

To summon the Wither, you need to build a cross made of Soul Sand (a Nether-exclusive block type) and place three Wither Skulls (dropped by Nether-exclusive enemies) on top of it. Once you do this, you are free to fight the Wither itself. The Wither is a beast of mass destruction, capable of blasting through most terrain. Upon defeat, the Wither will reward you with the materials needed to craft the Beacon. This is a special block that bestows one positive effect of your choosing to all players within a 50 block radius. Its effect can be further enhanced by building a pyramid made of iron, gold or diamond blocks (your choice), and then placing the beacon on top of said pyramid. While this is mostly an excuse for an endgame player to show off their wealth, the mining speed bonus can be used to clear out large swathes of land in a timely manner. Overall, a good, if niche, reward for a well-won battle.

Reaching the Ender Dragon is a lot more complicated. In order to reach it, you first need Eyes of Ender, which are crafted using materials dropped by both Endermen and Blazes, the latter of which is a Mob unique to the Nether. These special items are needed to reach the second endgame location, the End. Unlike the Nether, you cannot build a portal directly to the End. Instead, you have to find an End portal frame that has spawned naturally within the world. There is always at least three End portal frames per world, and they will always be underground. To make finding them easier, the Eyes of Ender will always fly towards the direction of the the closest portal frame. Once you find a frame, you have to put 12 Eyes of Ender into it.

After doing all that work, you will be taken to the End, which is a small island floating in the center of an endless void. And the Ender Dragon is already here, ready to battle. The Ender Dragon is nowhere near as destructive as the Wither, nor is it as difficult. In fact, the main challenge comes not from the dragon itself, but a dozen or so crystals that continuously heal the beast. You're expected to find and smash all the crystals in order to turn the Ender Dragon battle into a fair fight.

For a long time, the reward for defeating the Ender Dragon was a tad anticlimactic. You get the Dragon Egg, a decorative block with no special uses outside of looking cool. You also get a new portal taking you back home, and upon entering this portal you receive... A poem. This poem is the ONLY piece of written narrative in the entire game. The poem is written from the perspective of two unknown beings, who (among other things) congratulate the player on surviving for so long in such a perilous environment. After the poem ends, the player is returned to their base. The player won, but the strangeness of the poem and the lackluster rewards made the victory feel a little hollow.

This was changed in Updates 1.9 and 1.11, as both of these updates expanded the End. The biggest change is that there are now multiple portals, which will take the player to more islands within the End. These islands have abandoned cities and floating ships for you to loot, as well as a new Mob called the Shulker. The Shulker is a stationary enemy that shoots darts that temporarily remove gravity on the target. These enemies drop the materials needed to craft Shulker Boxes, which are basically magic backpacks that expand a player's inventory (thus letting them carry more items on their person).

But this isn't the only reward in the reworked End. There's also Elytra wings, found on those floating ships I mentioned. Elytra wings allow the player to literally fly. Or rather, glide. You cannot fly straight up without some assistance, but horizontal movement is just fine. This item provides a massive boost to your mobility, and flying with Elytra is (to my knowledge) the fastest method of long range transport in the game besides Nether shortcuts. Both the Elytra and the Shulker Boxes make the End a more worthwhile adventure.

But what's left for you to do after you beat these two bosses and claim their rewards? Well... Nothing much, really. You can keep playing in that world, expanding your base and working on your personal goals. But as far as the game itself is concerned, you've completed your journey once the Wither and the Ender Dragon have been slain. The only thing left for you to do is wander the world you've explored and marvel at everything you (or your friends) built. That would be your legacy in that world.

Now that I got the core of Minecraft out of the way, I want to talk about the many updates this game has received. Mojang has added a plethora of content to the game over the years. New biomes, new Mobs, new items, et cetera. Like I said earlier, the Nether Update was one of the best things to happen to the game. The Nether was always the most dangerous location in the game, but with hindsight, it was fairly bland looking and didn't have that many points of interest. Thus, there was no reason to stay there long-term. The reworked Nether looks a lot better and is actually livable, so you can actually set up a base and live in the Nether as long as you want. Another update I really liked was 1.18, the Caves & Cliffs Update. Caves & Cliffs was actually two updates

A lovely view of Minecraft's landscape. Image found on minecraft.net

In terms of presentation, Minecraft's blocky art style is simple and iconic. In fact, this style is so heavily associated with Minecraft that ANY video game that attempts a blocky art style is going to inevitably be called a Minecraft clone regardless of how similar it is in terms of gameplay. The game does have a vaguely medieval aesthetic, especially in regards to the structures and monster designs, but it doesn't confine itself to any one genre. You can easily building something that looks modern or even sci-fi with the right combination of blocks.

In terms of sound, Minecraft's music is relaxing and cozy. It doesn't have bombastic orchestras or heavy metal rock concerts or anything along those lines. Just a few calming piano notes and some ambient chimes. It's the perfect soundtrack to listen to while reading or writing. Most of the music for Minecraft was composed by C418 (real name Daniel Rosenfield), but as of 2020, a new musician known as Lena Raine took over the role of composer. I mention this because one of Raine's songs, Pigstep, might just be my favorite song in the entire soundtrack. It's so groovy and fun, while being more "exciting" compared to the other songs. At the same time, Pigstep manages to fit in with the cozy vibe that the rest of the soundtrack is going for.

The sound effects are also iconic and memorable. From the popping noise that plays when you pick up an item to the breaking sounds of all the different block types, every sound effect is immaculate. And how could I forget that one ambient sound effect that plays when you enter caves? It's so excessively creepy for an otherwise calm and relaxing game. You get used to it after a while, as the sound effect is purely for ambience and is not meant to signal any kind of danger. But every now and again, it gets you like a bad jump scare.

Overall... What else could I say about this game? There's a reason Minecraft has dominated the video game industry for 16 years. I was actually intimidated at first when I started writing this review. How do you review a game that gives the player so much freedom? This is the video game equivalent of a treasure chest full of LEGO bricks. You may not have any instructions on what to build, but you have all the tools to do whatever you please. I have my gripes with how the game has been handled in recent years. I still miss the Tutorial worlds. I don't really like the idea of fan-made mods becoming paid DLC, especially if their free counterparts are still publicly available. But it feels wrong to give Minecraft anything less than 5 stars out of 5 simply for the sheer cultural impact this game had. It would be like giving Star Wars: A New Hope or Lord of the Rings a low score.

Minecraft is the property of Mojang and Microsoft. None of the images used belong to me. Please support the original creators.

deltarune Chapters 3-4, going darker than dark. A very determined review

2025-07-19T18:48:00.010-04:00

Back in 2021, I reviewed the first two Chapters of deltarune, an ambitious indie game project created by legendary game developer Toby Fox. That was actually one of my favorite reviews that I ever wrote. And deltarune itself is just a fun game to play and talk about. Fast forward to June 5th, 2025, and we see the official release of deltarune Chapters 3 & 4, which were released simultaneously. So naturally, I want to review the new Chapters, because I have a lot of thoughts on them.

The official logo of deltarune. Image found on Wikipedia.org

I do, unfortunately, have to make an important PSA. Chapter 4 (or at the very least the PS5 version, which I played) contains a glitch that can potentially soft-lock your playthrough, thus forcing you to reload to an earlier save file. Because I only had one active file when the glitch happened, I had to replay ALL of Chapter 4 to get back to where I was. This softlock soured my opinion of Chapter 4, despite enjoying the overall experience. Just to be clear, I don't hate or even dislike Chapter 4, despite getting soft-locked. I still consider the Chapter to be a worthwhile experience. But this was a valuable lesson for me, to always have a backup save file ready to go in case something like this happens again. Also, there's a good chance that this glitch will be fixed in an update, at which point this criticism is rendered null. But now that we got the PSA out of the way, let's get back to the review.

deltarune is a story-focused roleplaying game with an 8-bit art style, famous for its eccentric sense of humor and emphasis on pacifistic gameplay. It takes place in the same setting as Toby Fox's previous game, UNDERTALE. In both games, the world is populated by Humans and Monsters, the former being strong but unskilled with magic, the latter being magically gifted but cursed with fragile bodies. Both games have a Mercy System in which you can use nonlethal abilities called Acts to convince enemies to surrender peacefully. Both games have Bullet Hell sections where the Player has to dodge a barrage of thematically appropriate projectiles by using a cartoon heart to fly around. And both games have branching storylines that change based on how violent or merciful you were, with the good ending being locked behind the path of pacifism.

However, deltarune is NOT a direct sequel to UNDERTALE. Toby Fox likes to call it a "parallel story." While both games have similar mechanics and themes, deltarune focuses primarily on a brand-new cast of characters, with a handful of fan-favorites returning in supporting roles. There are also new game mechanics, like Tension and magic spells. Tension builds up when you "graze" past an attack (i.e. get as close to the projectiles as you can without taking damage). You need Tension to cast magic spells, which can be used to either deal more damage, heal allies or put wounded/tired enemies to sleep. For lore reasons, only Monsters can use magic.

Speaking of Monsters, let's talk about the three main heroes of this game; Kris the Human, Susie the Monster and Ralsei the Dark Prince. For the sake of both humor and brevity, I will referring to these three heroes as the Fun Gang.

You play as Kris, or rather, the Soul inside of Kris. This is an important distinction, as you are not meant to project yourself onto Kris the same way you would with a conventional self-insert (i.e. your average RPG protagonist). Kris had a life long before the Player showed up, with their own friends, family and hobbies. Kris knows that they are being controlled by someone else, and they are not happy about having to share a body with the Player. They will occasionally rebel against the Player's commands, such as making chosen dialogue choices sound more sarcastic than intended or interpreting commands in ways that are maliciously compliant. Like, if you tell Kris to "turn a doorknob" they will do as instructed, but they will not open the door unless you specifically say the words "push open the door." Whenever Kris does something automatically, without Player input, is when we see a glimpse of their true nature. And that's what makes Kris an interesting character. Name one other video game where A; the protagonist is aware of the Player controlling them, and B; said protagonist is actively trying to sabotage the Player's goals whenever they can.

Susie meanwhile is too wild and independent for anyone to control. A common joke you'll hear among deltarune fans is that Susie is the "real" main character, as her choices are the ones that move the story along the most, or allow it to go in unexpected directions. She also gets the most character development. Without spoiling things too much, Chapter 1 Susie is almost a completely different person from Chapter 4 Susie. Don't get me wrong, she's still as vulgar as a T for Teen rating will allow, but she goes from being a high-school bully to being the coolest best friend Kris, Ralsei and the Player could ask for. Honestly, Susie is my favorite character so far, and the game is all the better for her inclusion.

Ralsei is content to follow Kris and Susie's lead, but that's because he's following a prophecy. Said prophecy is the titular Legend of Deltarune, which warns of the arrival of eldritch beings called Titans, who are destined to destroy the universe. As such, Ralsei is doing his best to "stick to the script" while Kris and Susie do whatever they want. The most interesting thing about Ralsei is that despite his wholesome, boy scout persona, he clearly knows more about the world than he lets on.

Our heroes, Kris (top left), Susie (middle left) and Ralsei (bottom left) can use the Mercy System to defeat enemies peacefully, usually by putting on silly costumes and performing comedic Acts. In the example above, they have to literally shoot the enemies' socks off. Image found on steamdb.com

This game's story is divided across seven Chapters, with each Chapter being effectively a full blown video game in and of itself. While the exact contents of each Chapter vary, they all follow a somewhat similar structure. The Fun Gang goes to/starts in a Dark World, they befriend/defeat all the Darkners (enemies) inside said Dark World, and they seal the Dark Fountain at that Dark World's center. Somewhere along the way they get to visit Castle Town, which is a sort of home base for the Fun Gang. If you show Mercy to enough Darkners of the same type, they will be recruited as townsfolk for Castle Town, which causes things like new shops and minigames to appear.

Hidden in each Chapter are the Super Bosses, optional enemies that are much stronger than their peers. If you can find and defeat each Super Boss (either with violence or with Mercy), you will be rewarded with new weapons and armor, as well as additional lore and story details. All Super Bosses are identified by two characteristics, they all carry an item called a Shadow Crystal and they all have the Freedom motif in their respective theme songs.

All available Chapters are about 10 hours long each, possibly longer depending on how much time you spend on the Super Bosses. However, Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are not available yet, as they are planned to be released as free updates. Buying the game now only gets you Chapters 1-4. I already reviewed the first two Chapters, as they were released for free. This review focuses mostly on what's actually new, as most of my opinions about the first two Chapters remain mostly unchanged. But because of this game's episodic nature and its connection to UNDERTALE, I will have to warn you that this review contains spoilers for both games. It's kind of impossible to discuss the new Chapters without spoiling twists from the previous Chapters, and some story beats only make sense with context provided by UNDERTALE. You have been warned.

Chapter 1 was equal parts tutorial for the game and an introduction to the world of deltarune. To make a long story short, Kris and Susie were regular high schoolers who wandered into the first Dark World by accident. They meet Ralsei, who tells them of the Prophecy and offers to guide them home. Susie learns a valuable life lesson about how violence is not always the answer to your problems, the Fun Gang defeat the evil King of Spades, and the Dark Fountain of this Chapter is successfully sealed.

Chapter 2 was a major expansion to the game's scope, introducing the existence of multiple Dark Worlds and hinting at the game's main overarching villain, the Roaring Knight. We do not know who the Roaring Knight is, only that it is responsible for creating the Dark Fountains (and by proxy, the Dark Worlds). Also, this Chapter focuses heavily on Noelle Holiday, Kris's childhood best friend and Susie's main love interest. While Noelle is not considered a "main" party member (yet), she's important enough to be considered an "honorary" member of the Fun Gang.

Also, Noelle's presence allows for the start of the Weird Route. This is an optional but very dark side story in which the Player forces Kris to psychologically abuse Noelle until she becomes a cold-blooded killer (literally in her case, as Noelle's specialty is ice magic). Completing the Weird Route results in Noelle being forced to murder her classmate, Berdly. This is the most evil thing the Player can do in this game. And make no mistake, we would be the bad guy for pursuing this storyline. Kris doesn't want to hurt Noelle, and they give us, the Player, plenty of chances to abandon the Route and make things right before it's too late.

Regardless of whether or not you did the Weird Route, Chapter 2 ended with the Fun Gang sealing the second Dark Fountain, saving the day and going home. Susie decides to have a sleep over at Kris's House. But while everyone else is asleep, Kris removes their own Soul (thus regaining complete control of their body) and they create a Dark Fountain right in the middle of the living room. This was one heck of a cliffhanger ending.

There was a four year gap between the second and third/fourth Chapters' release. In that time lots of theories about where the story was headed propped up all over the Internet. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have theories of my own going into the new Chapters. The most popular theory floating around was the idea that Kris was the Roaring Knight all along, because they made a Dark Fountain. Which, to be fair, was a reasonable assumption.

Another mystery that was left unsolved was whatever happened to December "Dess" Holiday, Noelle's older sister who went missing prior to the start of the game. And then there's the mystery of the Weird Route and why it exists. And of course, there's the mystery of the bunker at the southern edge of town, which seemed to have no clear purpose aside from being vaguely ominous.

Chapter 3 takes place right after Chapter 2's ending. Susie wakes up in the new Dark World along with Kris, who is under the Player's control again. Susie never learns that it was Kris who created this Chapter's Dark World, nor does she care to learn. She's been viewing the Dark World occurrences as nothing more than fun little adventures she can do with her friends.

They meet up with Ralsei, and while Susie invites Ralsei to the Light World for an upcoming festival, Ralsei declines. Not because he doesn't want to go to the festival, but Ralsei literally can't leave the Dark Worlds. Ralsei explains that Dark Fountains turn fantasy into reality by bringing inanimate objects to life. This is how Darkners are created. But once the lights come back on, those objects will revert back to their original form. Ergo, Darkners (like Ralsei) will cease to exist if they ever leave the Dark Worlds.

What makes this worse is that Ralsei's inability to exist in the Light World is clearly affecting his mental health negatively. He straight up says that none of the Darkners are truly real, including himself, and claims that the Darkners only exist to serve the Light World. Susie, naturally, tells him not to think of himself so lowly because as far as she's concerned, all her friends are equally real.

The main antagonist of Chapter 3, Mr. Tenna (right), is a crazy game show host who forces our heroes to partake in his show. Image found on rpgfan.com

This heart-to-heart is interrupted by the main antagonist of this Chapter, Mr. Tenna. Mr. Tenna is a TV-themed Darkner who forces the Fun Gang to take part in his game show. Most of the Chapter is spent playing minigames with Mr. Tenna, with the minigames being themed around old NES-style video games and various TV Channels. Just to give a few examples, there's a cooking minigame where Kris has to toss piles of food to passing customers, a music minigame where the Fun Gang act out a rock concert and a Legend of Zelda style adventure minigame where you explore an expansive map and solve simple puzzles.

The whole time these minigames are going on, Mr. Tenna is trying to pander to Kris's nostalgia by reminding them how much fun they had watching TV with their family. Almost as if he's afraid that Kris will discard him if he's not "entertaining" enough. And that's really Tenna's whole deal. He's an antagonist, sure, but I hesitate to call him evil. He's just a lonely guy who buries his insecurities underneath a larger than life persona.

While the Fun Gang do find Mr. Tenna's antics amusing at first, they insist on leaving Tenna's show to seal the Dark Fountain. Things take a turn for the worse when the Fun Gang discover that the "grand prize" of Tenna's show is a toy ball containing Toriel, Kris's (adoptive) mother who has slept through the entire Chapter. The only thing I can truly complain about Chapter 3 is that Toriel doesn't get to actually do much in this Chapter. I understand why, as she is a returning character from UNDERTALE and returning characters are basically fanservice for Toby Fox's older fans. Still, it is a shame we never see her reaction to the Dark World or get any interaction between her and Ralsei, given that have similar designs and similar abilities (magical healing, cooking, et cetera).

Unfortunately for everyone, Mr. Tenna has a psychotic breakdown, which culminates in a battle in which all abilities besides Acts are disabled. The Fun Gang manage to escape by exploiting certain limitations with the Acts, which is a really clever way to solve that problem. The rest of Chapter 3 is spent escaping from Mr. Tenna's TV Dark World and recruiting all of the new enemies. Despite being just as long as the other Chapters, Chapter 3 feels oddly short in comparison, partly because most of this Chapter's runtime is spent on the minigames. But to be fair, this is mostly a lighthearted romp with an emphasis on the comedy side of the game.

Things only really get serious after the heroes confront Mr. Tenna for the final showdown. Speaking of which, I really like Mr. Tenna's boss battle. He has the ability to force the heroes to play a random minigame and how well you perform in the minigame affects how much damage the Fun Gang takes. In other words, all the minigames you have been playing with Mr. Tenna was actually training for his boss battle. And I think that's cool. Assuming you showed Mercy to him, Susie gives Mr. Tenna a pep talk, telling him to not worry about being thrown away or replaced. She also says that if Kris's family doesn't want him anymore, then the Fun Gang can just find Tenna a new home. Moved by Susie's words, Mr. Tenna has a change of heart and agrees to give back Toriel.

But oh boy, here comes the mother of all spoilers. I really don't want to spoil this Chapter's final battle, because the ending of Chapter 3 is a major highlight of the entire game and irreversibly changes the tone of the story to something comparatively more serious. But I cannot continue the review without mentioning it. Just know that I give deltarune Chapter 3 five stars out of five, and I give deltarune Chapter 4 four stars out of five, at least until that glitch I mentioned gets fixed. Go play this game if you can afford it. It's only 25 US dollars, at the time of writing. If you want to know my more detailed thoughts on this game, come back after you finished Chapter 4. Understood? Good!

So you remember the Roaring Knight I mentioned, and how there was a lot of speculation as to who the Roaring Knight was? Well, the good news is that we get official confirmation that Kris is NOT the Roaring Knight! …Because the actual Roaring Knight appears seemingly out of nowhere and KOs Tenna with a single blow. The Knight also tries to kidnap Toriel for unclear but obviously malevolent reasons, thus starting a battle between the Fun Gang and the Knight.

You know, it's funny. After 4 years of nonstop speculation and theorizing, no one predicted that the Fun Gang would simply get ambushed by the Roaring Knight in part three of a seven part story. I distinctly remember my first reaction to the Roaring Knight's debut being "WHAT DO YOU MEAN we have to fight the Knight now!?" And I'd bet that most other deltarune fans had a similar reaction.

The Roaring Knight is also this Chapter's Super Boss, and perhaps fittingly, it is the most difficult opponent the Fun Gang will ever fight. Not only does the Knight have complex Bullet Hell attacks that leave no room for error, it also cannot be shown Mercy at all. Just this once, our normally pacifistic heroes are allowed to use violence to defend themselves. You can make this fight easier by equipping a special armor called the Shadow Mantle, but this armor can only be acquired by completing an easily missed secret minigame. Said minigame also provides instructions for doing the Weird Route, in case you didn't know how to do so already. I'm totally sure there's no distressing narrative implications about this.

Should you manage to lower its health down 75%, Susie can break off a piece of the Knight's sword, which becomes this Chapter's Shadow Crystal. Kris will also be rewarded with a unique weapon called the Black Shard, which is the most powerful weapon in the game (so far). But no matter how well you do against the Knight, it will always end the battle with an unavoidable, one-hit KO attack that leaves the Fun Gang kneeling.

Before the Roaring Knight can finish off the Fun Gang or capture Toriel, it is attacked from behind by Officer Undyne, another returning character from UNDERTALE. Why was Undyne in the Dark World, you ask? She entered the Dark World while investigating some property damage Kris caused back in Chapter 2. Anyway, the Knight grabs Undyne and drags her kicking and screaming all the way to the bunker in the Light World, the one at the southern edge of town.

Kris and Susie give chase, but by the time they catch up, the bunker has been completely locked down. Not even Susie, the strongest of the three heroes, can break through its doors. The only way in is with a passcode, but none of our heroes know the code. The Chapter ends here, with Undyne trapped inside the bunker and Kris and Susie forced to go home, as there is literally nothing else for them do. And let me just say, boy, am I glad that Chapters 3 and 4 released simultaneously. If Chapter 3 released by itself, this fandom would not survive a cliffhanger like that. We barely survived Kris opening a Dark Fountain. Also, getting to see the Roaring Knight this early into the project is crazy to me. I always figured that the Knight would show up in Chapter 5 at the earliest, but what do I know?

Ralsei explains the Legend of Deltarune, a prophecy dictating the events of the entire game. Image found on rpgfan.com

Chapter 4 is still only 10 or so hours long, but so much plot and character development happens in this Chapter that it feels a lot longer to play through it. This is both a good thing, since it provides a plentiful experience on a first playthrough. But it's also a bad thing, because it can feel repetitive going through the longest Chapter again on a second playthrough. And because of that softlock and my careless save file usage, I had to play through this entire Chapter twice. I'm still a little salty about that, but I will try not to let that cloud my judgement.

Chapter 4 starts the day after Undyne's kidnapping, with Kris having sealed the Chapter 3 Dark Fountain offscreen. Toriel invites Susie over for church service, to which she agrees. Not because Susie is religious, but so she can hang out with Kris and look for clues for the bunker code. I really like the church service scene, it's a heartwarming bonding moment with Susie that really cements the idea that Kris and Susie are best friends by now. Especially since we don't control Kris while they're goofing around with Susie, so we know for a fact that those shenanigans were 100% voluntary on Kris's part.

After the service, Kris/the Player has to ask around the church for clues, in which they learn only two people have ever opened up the bunker in the town's history; The Chief of Police and the Mayor. Unfortunately, the current Chief of Police is Undyne, who is in no position to share the code for obvious reasons. Which means that the Fun Gang's only option is to visit the Mayor, Carol Holiday. Who coincidentally happens to be Noelle's mom.

Before we go to the Holiday Household, we get a free roam section where Kris and Susie are free to explore the town and talk to literally everyone, including Berdly (if he's still alive), Toriel and Kris's many neighbors. You can even pop into Castle Town to hang out with Ralsei for a bit (and catch him up to speed on everything going on the Light World). Most of these conversations are lighthearted and humorous in nature. In case you're wondering whatever happened to Mr. Tenna, he's fine. Well, sort of. If you recruited all Darkners back in Chapter 3, Tenna will survive the Knight's ambush. If you don't, he's straight up dead for the rest of the game. If he's still alive, you can keep Susie's promise to find him a new home by either taking him to Castle Town or giving his Light World form (a TV set) to one of Kris's neighbors. Either way, Tenna gets what he always wanted; a new audience to entertain. This is the last we'll see of Tenna for now.

Our heroes (left) get attacked by enemies (right). In order to dodge attacks, you need to control a red cartoon heart and move it away from hazards. Image found on SteamDB.com

After exploring everything in town, Kris and Susie go visit the Holiday Household, ostensibly to work on a school project with Noelle. This was just an excuse to go snooping around the Household without drawing too much attention to themselves. And the Holiday Household might be my favorite location in the Chapter. It is a beautifully designed Christmas mansion that is filled to the brim with secrets, lore and a whole lot of Christmas puns.

The only room in the Household that is not readily accessible is Dess's old bedroom, but Kris can enter it once Susie starts distracting Noelle. And in Dess's room, we find (among other things) a guitar that has the code to the bunker inside of it. Before the Player can finish reading the code, Kris rips out their Soul again and throws it into a supply closet. Which leads to a stealth section where we must control the bodiless Soul and navigate the air vents, while avoiding the now openly hostile Kris. It's a tense scene that makes you feel vulnerable during a first playthrough, but with the benefit of hindsight, it's basically a Tom & Jerry skit. Just replace Tom with Kris and Jerry with the Soul.

The most important revelation about Kris's character comes from a phone call that the Soul can eavesdrop on. Kris is working for someone, strongly implied to be the Roaring Knight, and is actively trying to keep whatever is inside the bunker a secret from everyone. And honestly speaking, the idea of Kris being a secret double agent working for an unseen villain is actually more interesting narratively than simply having Kris be the Knight directly. But now we have a new mystery to solve; Why is Kris involved in such a sinister scheme? I have a theory, but explaining it would spoil the Chapter's ending. For what it's worth, I don't believe that Kris is willingly evil.

The whole time Kris and the Soul are duking it out, Susie and Noelle bond over a shared love of horror movies and video games. It's another cute and wholesome scene, made comical by the fact that Kris is beating the snot out of their own Soul in the background with a hockey stick. And I got to say, Toby Fox is a master at writing small talk. Like, the way Susie and Noelle bounce from one subject to another before returning to something they talked about earlier is the exact way most friends talk to each other in real life. At least, based on my experience. It is uncannily believable dialogue. This scene definitely highlights how good the dialogue in this game is.

Eventually, Susie grabs the guitar and puts on an improvised performance for Noelle at the latter's request. Which is also cute. All of Susie and Noelle's scenes are cute. They're just cute together, in general. Keep in mind, I am not a romance guy. Not in the slightest. BUT. Susie and Noelle have genuinely good chemistry together and I find myself feeling oddly invested in their relationship.

Unfortunately, Susie never notices the bunker code as she's too busy trying to impress Noelle. While this is happening, Kris calls their mysterious benefactor (who I will call the Voice on the Phone) that Susie has the guitar. Whoever the Voice on the other side of the phone is, they say that they will "be right there."

Not even ten minutes after Kris makes this call, Susie and Noelle's bonding is interrupted by Carol Holiday, who had (allegedly) just got home from work. Carol has maybe five minutes of screen time in this Chapter, but man, she makes those five minutes count. She is immediately introduced as an intimidating, no nonsense woman where the only thing colder than her icy appearance is her stern demeanor. She forcibly takes the guitar away from Susie and forbids her from seeing Noelle ever again.

Carol's attitude warms up slightly when speaking to Kris, but even when she's trying to be pleasant she gives off a sinister, vaguely threatening vibe. Specifically, she says "As you know, you are welcome here anytime." With the second "you" in that sentence being highlighted in blood red text. And deltarune is a game where text is only colored either as the setup for a joke or because that word is important somehow. I'm not sure about you, but this scene doesn't strike me as humorous, so I have to believe that it's the latter. Especially since the shade of red used is the exact same shade of red that the Player Soul is colored in.

Kris and Susie are forced to leave the Holiday Household (but not before the Soul repossesses Kris). Neither Susie nor the Player got the code, and Kris clearly isn't going to share what they know with anyone. Also, because this scene sees the return of Noelle, we get the long-awaited(?) continuation of the Weird Route.

If you play Chapter 4 on a save file that has completed the Weird Route, Kris removes their Soul like before, but this time they take Noelle into her bedroom so they can explain the whole situation to her privately. This is ironically the best look at Kris's true nature that we get. The Voice on the Phone doesn't matter in this Route, the only thing Kris cares about is protecting Noelle from the Player. Which is why I don't believe they are evil. At worse, they're a reluctant accomplice for someone else's villainy. Unfortunately, The Player can still possess Kris even while they are consoling Noelle, at which point you can either abandon the Weird Route by saying "It was just a prank" or continue it by saying "Proceed."

The latter option leads to the Player forcing Noelle to wear the Thorn Ring (a weapon only found when doing the Weird Route). Once the Thorn Ring is back on Noelle's finger, there is no going back as her mind is broken beyond repair. After all, the Thorn Ring's existence is proof that the murders Noelle committed on the Player's behalf actually happened and weren't just a bad dream. And honestly, this whole scene is just... immensely uncomfortable to watch. Like it feels like you're about to witness a crime. So congratulations! We successfully traumatized a cute little anthropomorphic reindeer (again). That's our reward for doing the Weird Route.

Back on the Normal Route, Kris and Susie head home, only to discover that A; it's raining and B; Kris's House is locked. Which means that our dynamic duo needs to find Toriel to unlock the house. Toriel went back to church for choir practice, so Kris and Susie go to church again. But whoops! The Roaring Knight is back, and it has already opened a Dark Fountain in the church. And thus we finally get to the main Dark World of this Chapter, the Dark Sanctuary.

Kris and Susie find the Dark Fountain almost immediately, but are attacked by the Roaring Knight again. Both of them are sent tumbling down to the lower part of the Dark Sanctuary, and spend the rest of the adventure climbing back up. They meet up with Ralsei again, but something seems... off with Ralsei. As if he's worried about something. And Susie starts feeling insecure about her own capabilities once she realizes that Ralsei is a better healer than her.

The Fun Gang finds the Prophecy describing the titular Legend of Deltarune after exploring around. Back in Chapter 1, Ralsei mentioned the Prophecy, but his version was simplified and had key details left out. The Prophecy seen here is the original, full version. But before the Fun Gang can read the final passage, it gets destroyed by a mysterious stranger.

This leads to the introduction to the main "guest" character of Chapter 4, the Old Man. Who is the Old Man? The Fun Gang never learns his name, but anyone who played UNDERTALE will immediately recognize him as Gerson Boom, the old Turtle Monster who runs the shops in that game. And as far back as Chapter 1, you can visit a grave that has Gerson's name on it. When I first saw him, my initial theory was that Gerson never died, he just got trapped in the Dark Worlds and everyone just assumed he was dead because he's been missing for so long. Which is... Not even close to what's really going on with Gerson, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The game gets a lot of humor out of Gerson, as he acts like an absent-minded elder but is secretly wiser than his gnarly appearance suggests. Case in point, there's a unique "Old Man" Act that Kris can use as long as Gerson is on the team. The description of said Act only reads, "I'm Old!" And using that Act causes Gerson to interrupt the battle and perform a random, but always positive effect. He might heal the party with candy, deflect enemy bullets with his cane, or even just instantly Recruit enemies.

A boss battle against Jackenstein, a Halloween-themed enemy that has to be fought in the dark. Image found on rpgfan.com

Also, I want to talk about a boss named Jackenstein. Jackenstein is a joke boss that shows up halfway through the Dark Sanctuary and is one of the funniest things Toby Fox has cooked up in a while. Jackenstein's gimmick is that all of his "attacks" are not Bullet Hell patterns, but Pac-Man mazes, complete with collectible pellets. And if you take too long to complete the mazes, Jackenstein summons a pumpkin that speaks with a Text-to-Speech device, and the only thing it says is "YOUR TAKING TOO LONG." And then Jackenstein starts sentence mixing the pumpkin to make it say goofy nonsense like "YOUR LONG" and "YOUR TAKING TOO TOO." Jackenstein also marks the beginning of a HUGE difficulty spike, as Tension buildup is reduced during his battle (thus making it harder to use Susie and Ralsei's magic spells). But other than that, this fight is peak comedy. 10/10, would take too long again.

After the Jackenstein fight, Gerson notices Susie's insecurities and encourages her to start practicing her magic more seriously. Which means that Susie's "Ultimate Heal" spell is now worth using. For context, Ultimate Heal was the worst spell in the game, as it only existed for the sake of a joke. It cost 100% Tension to cast and only restored 1 hit point (out of 200+). But after the pep talk with Gerson, Ultimate Heal has been renamed to "OK Heal" and it will both heal more and cost less Tension with each cast. You can eventually get the cost down to 80% Tension and get it to heal 100+ hit points if you keep letting Susie heal you instead of Ralsei. And that's a cool way to tie game mechanics into character development. Practice makes perfect, after all.

The same time Susie gets an upgrade, Kris gets a upgrade called the Claimb Claws (typo intended). These claws let Kris (and by proxy, the Fun Gang) climb up certain walls. Now, you *can* use Kris's newfound climbing skills to move on to the next area, or you can backtrack to all the places you've already been to. Because the Claimb Claws let you access a bunch of hidden areas. In three of these hidden areas are golden music sheets, and if you play the completed melody on a golden piano, the path to the Chapter 4 Super Boss is revealed. And this one might be my favorite Super Boss yet.

So playing the melody reveals a hidden chamber in Gerson's study. And lying in that chamber is the Justice Axe, which is the strongest weapon Susie can equip. But before she can even grab the Justice Axe, Gerson tells her that she needs to pay for it. The Justice Axe is so expensive that it is impossible to buy it. Like, I don't even think the game will let you carry the amount of money that Gerson is asking for. So instead of paying, Susie makes a deal with Gerson; If she can cut off a hair from Gerson's beard, then he has to give the Justice Axe to her for free. Gerson agrees to the deal, and reveals his true power.

In case you haven't realized it yet, Gerson is the Super Boss of this Chapter. And this fight breaks a lot of rules. Firstly, it's a 1vs1 duel between Susie and Gerson. Kris and Ralsei are not allowed to interfere. Secondly, Susie is forbidden from using consumable items like health potions, as Gerson will steal them if she tries. Thirdly, Gerson can force you into Green Soul Mode, replacing your ability to fly around with a shield that can block directional attacks. And finally, Gerson can just straight up parry Susie's signature spell, Rude Buster, and throw it back at her. The only advantage Susie has is that losing to Gerson doesn't count as a Game Over, as he will end the duel once Susie has been reduced to one hit point, then he will give her a chance to heal up and try again from scratch.

So how are you supposed to beat Gerson? With magic of course. The whole point of Susie's character arc in this Chapter is learning to get better at magic, and this fight is meant to train her magic up. Any time you cast a spell, whether it be Rude Buster or OK Heal, Susie's magic will get stronger and Gerson will be impressed. Impress him enough times and Susie will figure out how to distract Gerson long enough to chop off his beard.

Gerson admits defeat after losing his beard, and he will give Susie both the Justice Axe and this Chapter's Shadow Crystal. He'll also share some wisdom about how our destiny is not set in stone, no matter what the Prophecy says, and that stories can be changed as they pass through the generations. When Gerson was in his prime, he wrote an in-universe fantasy novel series called "Lord of the Hammer" which was based on the Prophecy, but changed some core details around. And when that series got popular, it was made into an in-universe video game franchise called "Dragon Blazers," which made even more changes to the story. Gerson says that both his own work and the video games it inspired are equally valid, as like he said, stories change as they pass through the generations. And that's a really cool take on the idea of adapting preexisting stories.

Like I said, Gerson is my favorite Super Boss, both because of the story surrounding him and because it's just a fun fight in general. Also, Susie's healing magic is upgraded once again after Gerson is defeated, being renamed to "Better Heal" and only costing 75% Tension to cast. It also FULLY restores all HP as long as the target has not been KO'd yet. So now Susie has a genuinely strong, if somewhat expensive, spell to cast.

Okay, back to the main story. The Fun Gang climb up a series of pillars and find a giant piano. In order to solve the next puzzle and reach the Dark Fountain, you need to play a melody on this piano. But there's just one problem. The nearby music sheet that Susie and Gerson discover is too long for most Players to memorize. To solve this puzzle, the Player has to willingly lose control of Kris, and let them play the song instead. It's a cool moment that's made better because the whole game has been foreshadowing it. Kris loves playing the piano, but cannot play it while the Soul is possessing them, because the Soul can only interact with musical instruments during minigames. So by loosening their grip on Kris, the Player is giving Kris a taste of freedom, while placing all their trust in Kris to solve this puzzle voluntarily. The piano puzzle gives way to the Dark Fountain, and the Fun Gang seal it with no issue.

But as Kris and Susie return to the Light World, they find a conundrum. The Roaring Knight made two Dark Worlds in the church, one in the lobby and another in the actual congregation. The door to the rest of the church is locked with another code. So now Kris and Susie have to look around the lobby for clues. Which leads to Susie snooping around in the pastor's office, and finding a glass case... Containing a dusty hammer and a photograph of Gerson. Remember what I said about Monsters having fragile bodies? As explained back in UNDERTALE, when Monsters die, their body crumbles to dust. As such, Monsters don't bury their deceased as there is nothing for them to bury. But they do cover the dust in an item that is heavily associated with that Monster, and bury the item instead. There's also a book you can read earlier in this very Chapter that explains how Monsters perform funerals.

Susie puts two and two together and realizes what exactly happened with Gerson. Like Ralsei said, Dark Fountains turn fantasy into reality by bringing inanimate objects to life. And the dust left behind by a dead Monster counts as an "inanimate object." Which means that Gerson really was dead, and that the Gerson we got was just a Darkner version of him. This is both infinitely more creative than what I thought of and infinitely more disturbing. Imagine dying and coming back to life as an idealized version of yourself because someone brought your cremated remains to a fantasy world. That's the human equivalent of what happened with Gerson.

No matter where you look in the lobby, Neither Kris nor Susie can find the code, so Susie comes up with a plan; create a Dark Fountain of her own and ask a newly revived Gerson for the code. When he was alive, Gerson's family visited this church frequently and his son, Alvin, became the current pastor. Susie also wants to try bringing Gerson back to Castle Town, despite that raising all sorts of ethical questions.

Kris and Susie climb a wall while avoiding fireballs made of dark magic.

The Dark World that Susie creates, the Second Sanctuary, is messier and more chaotic than the first. It even warps the colors of the Fun Gang, changing Susie from purple to orange, Kris from blue to pink, and Ralsei from green to blue. Despite the warped nature of this Dark World, the Prophecy is still intact. Which means we can read it in greater detail without interruption. Notably, it says that three heroes are required to stop the Roaring Knight; A Lonely Prince from the Dark (referring to Ralsei), a Cage with Human Soul and Parts (referring to Kris and the Player), and a Monster Girl, with Hope crossed on her Heart.

There are some additional details in the Prophecy (some of which are obviously joke predictions), but the most important detail is this part; "LOVE will find its way to the Girl." Susie assumes this means she will fall in love one day, but because this game is set in the same universe as UNDERTALE, this has me wondering. Because in that game, LOVE is an acronym, standing for Level of Violence. Basically, it's a number on a person's Soul that measures how much death that person has caused, and their capacity to kill others in the future. The higher the number, the more powerful (and the more violent) a person becomes. Remember, UNDERTALE was a critique on the glorification of violence in video games, and it forced the Player to ask if it's even worth getting stronger if the only way to do so was by committing an act of unjustifiable murder.

Now, we can't get Susie to kill anyone, she's too independent to be manipulated. Even if we order her to attack Darkners during battle, they will always run away before suffering lethal damage. But you know who can be manipulated? Noelle. And you know can kill enemies permanently? Noelle. And you know who is also a Monster Girl, who also has Hope crossed on her Heart? Noelle. So there's a good chance that Noelle was meant to be one of the three heroes instead of Susie. Ergo, the Weird Route is what the Prophecy intended to happen, if this theory is true. Even if it's not true, the Weird Route still ties into the central theme of deltarune, which is the pursuit of freedom. If the Weird Route is not what the Prophecy intended, then the Player can only have real "freedom" by tormenting Noelle and ruining Kris's life, forcing us to ask "is freedom worth it if this what we have to do to get it?" If the Weird Route is what's prophesized to happen, then not only is the Player forcing Kris to torment Noelle (stripping both characters of their agency), the Player is taking away any chance for a "free" future from these two by forcing them along a predetermined path. Either way, the Weird Route is unambiguously evil, and it cannot be justified.

While in the Second Sanctuary, Kris and Susie get trapped in a dark room, and are forced to fight what they think is Gerson. This boss is basically a "Simon Says" minigame where you have to block directional attacks in the correct order. Susie tries to reason with "Gerson" and comes to regret making the new Dark World. Ralsei arrives just in time to save the day, and he just straight up kills this boss, which is revealed to be nothing more than a statue mimicking Gerson's appearance.

Ralsei explains that Gerson is not in this Dark World, and even if he was, the Fun Gang cannot take him back to Castle Town. Darkners modeled after the deceased can only exist in "specific" Dark Worlds, and thus are incompatible with Castle Town. Which leads to Susie snapping at Ralsei for not saying that sooner. And also for not telling anyone about the Roaring Knight, or how the Dark Fountains work, or the many other details that Ralsei neglected to mention.

But Ralsei isn't withholding this information because he's evil. Far from it. Ralsei was cursed with the knowledge of how EVERYTHING in the world of deltarune works. He knows about the Prophecy, he knows about the game mechanics, he knows about the Save Files. Heck, he probably knows about the Player. But his own knowledge scares him, and he never knows when to say something when it's relevant. And he is terrified of the Prophecy's ending. The reason he's been acting weird in this Chapter is because he's been doing his best to cover up the ending. But the fact that he is going to such lengths to hide it already speaks volumes about how unpleasant it must be.

The Fun Gang get to the code to the lock, seal up the Second Sanctuary and head inside the third and final Dark World of this Chapter, the Third Sanctuary. Now I'm going to put another spoiler warning here, because now it's time for the final boss of this Chapter. And it is pure insanity. Like, I'm shocked that Toby Fox would use this kind of boss for Chapter 4, because any sane developer would've waited until Chapter 6 or 7. But now I'm left wondering who the final bosses of Chapters 5, 6 and 7 are going to be, because I cannot think of any way to top this boss.

So the Fun Gang catch up to the Roaring Knight, and it looks like the boss is just going to be a standard rematch. But then the Knight opens a Dark Fountain while still inside the Dark World, which summons a Titan. Yeah, those eldritch beings I mentioned that are prophesized to destroy the universe? The Knight just casually summons one. As you do. And that's the final boss of this Chapter. Much like with the Knight, my first reaction to this boss was "WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE HAVE TO FIGHT A TITAN NOW!?" And again, most other fans had a similar reaction.

The first phase of the battle is a climbing sequence where Kris has to climb up the Titan's body, Shadow of the Colossus style, and the second phase is a more straightforward battle against just the Titan's head. And again, this is one of the few times where the Fun Gang is allowed to use violence to defend themselves. Because at this point, they aren't fighting wacky supervillains anymore. They're fighting Lovecraftian Gods. Not only does the Titan have a shield that Kris needs to break through with the "Unleash" Act, but once its health drops low enough, the Titan will start regenerating. And the speed at which it heals is faster than the speed at which the Fun Gang can damage it. All hope seems lost at this point... Until Gerson arrives and joins the party. Gerson may be a Turtle Monster, but today, he is the GOAT (greatest of all time).

With Gerson's help, the Fun Gang manages to defeat the Titan in the most hype boss fight in the entire game. While Gerson is my favorite Super Boss, the Titan is now my favorite Final Boss. At least, it's tied with Queen from Chapter 2. This fight is perfect. It has gorgeous pixel art animation, it has a banger theme song (both before and after Gerson arrives), it even brings back the gimmicks from Jackenstein's battle. This fight is peak cinema. 10/10, would climb up a Titan again.

But the Fun Gang's victory is short lived, as the Roaring Knight got away, Gerson is nowhere to be seen, and Toriel is still missing in action. Honestly I kind of forgot that the entire reason we came to the church was to get Toriel, because of... well, everything else. Anyway, Susie runs ahead of the group and gets to see the ending of the Prophecy. We don't get to see it ourselves, because by the time we catch up with her, Susie has already destroyed the mural depicting the Prophecy's ending.

The Prophecy predictions range from serious to silly. This is one of the sillier predictions. Image found on steam.steampowered.com

Ralsei frantically apologizes for letting Susie see the ending, but she just ignores his worries. Susie boasts that she "wouldn't let that happen." She also assures Ralsei that Kris "wouldn't let that happen," and of course, Ralsei himself "wouldn't let that happen." She never says what "that" is exactly, but if I had to guess, one of the three heroes is prophesized to die. Presumably in a violent fashion. It's the only thing I can think of that would justify this kind of reaction.

We also get one of my favorite interactions between Kris and Ralsei in this scene. Ralsei starts crying, because it's getting harder to put up his wholesome, boy scout persona. He knows too much for his own good, and the stress of all that knowledge is getting to him. But despite that, he still forces himself to smile. The Player can choose to make Kris say "It's okay not to smile." Doing so leads to Kris kneeling down and hugging Ralsei. Willingly. Without Player input. Ralsei is taken aback by this kindness, but getting hugged does help him feel better. Most importantly, Ralsei says that he wants to believe that their future is not set in stone, and that there can be more than just one ending for this story. Which is a bold claim, as Toby Fox himself has gone on record saying that he has "only" one ending planned for deltarune.

The Fun Gang seal the Third Sanctuary and prepare to head home. But the atmosphere is a lot more gloomy. It's the middle of the night by now, and the rain from earlier has stopped. The song that plays when Kris and Susie walk home is a special one. It's a remix of a song from UNDERTALE, called It's Raining Somewhere Else. It was one of the most somber songs in that game's OST, being the one time where Sans the Skeleton (UNDERTALE's mascot) finally stopped joking around and had a serious conversation with Frisk, the protagonist of that game. In deltarune, the song is called The Place Where It Rained, and it somehow sounds even more melancholy than it did originally. Yet, there's something nostalgic about hearing The Place Where It Rained. Hearing it felt like I was like being transported back to 2015 when I played UNDERTALE for the first time.

And speaking of Sans the Skeleton... Kris and Susie finally find Toriel, and learn that she was never in the Dark Worlds in the first place. On the way to choir practice, Toriel got caught in the rain, and ducked inside Sans' grocery store for shelter. Evidently she liked Sans enough to bring him home and start partying. Which means that the Fun Gang's adventure to the Dark Sanctuary was technically all for nothing.

By the time Kris and Susie make it back to Kris's House, Toriel is outrageously drunk and all semblance of her saintly mother persona is gone. She's cursing, making bad puns, flirting with Sans, and just being an overall mess. Susie immediately bails and leaves Kris alone with their drunken mother and a man who is for all intents and purposes, a homewrecker. Any chance of Toriel getting back with Asgore (Kris's dad and Toriel's ex-husband) died in this scene. Without context, this scene is hilarious, but with context, you kind of just feel second-hand embarrassment for Kris. The most accidentally funny thing about this scene is, THIS was where I got softlocked. Yeah, the scene where Kris comes home to find their mom black-out drunk with a sassy skeleton was where the glitch that ruined my first playthrough happened.

Anyway, the Chapter ends with Kris trying and failing to sleep through Toriel and Sans's drunken banter. They receive a call, but what it says changes depending on whether or not you completed the Weird Route. If you didn't do the Weird Route like a good boy/gal, the Voice on the Phone tells Kris "Don't Forget... You promised." We don't know what Kris promised to do, but that line combined with how Kris behaves in the Weird Route has led me to believe that Kris is being coerced and is not cooperating with the villain(s) willingly.

Speaking of the Weird Route, the Weird Route version of this ending has Kris receive a call from Carol (we know it's Carol and not the Voice on the Phone, because the Voice uses a different font and sound effect when speaking), who thanks Kris for "agreeing" to take Noelle on a date to the Festival that Susie mentioned earlier. Which considering that the Weird Route is "reindeer abuse simulator" is very much not a good thing.

The last thing we see before the Chapter ends is Susie walking away from Kris's House, promising to "not let that happen." Her attitude is a lot more somber than when she first saw the Prophecy's ending, so whatever it was clearly affected her more than she would care to admit. It's a bittersweet ending, but it's nowhere near as much a cliffhanger as previous endings. And honestly? Given how intense this Chapter got, having a calmer ending was perhaps for the best.

And that's Chapter 4. We're done. We're at the halfway mark, now. This review was surprisingly difficult to write, mostly because so much *stuff* happens in Chapter 4 that it's difficult to summarize it in a way that feels coherent. Heck, even this summary is omitting things like Lancer's antics, the rematch against Rouxls Kaard, and the Asgore subplot.

Aside from getting softlocked, this Chapter was fantastic. If I were to rank the Chapters now, I would say that Chapters 2 and 4 are tied for my favorite, and the only reason they tie is because of the softlock. If Chapter 4 didn't have a glitch that can softlock your progress, it would just be my favorite Chapter, no contest. But below 2 and 4 I would put 3, and below 3 I would put 1. Chapter 1 wasn't bad, mind you, it's just outclassed by the other three Chapters.

As for presentation, deltarune has a simple, yet charming pixel art style. Everyone in the game is animated in 8-bit sprites, with the sole exception of Mr. Tenna, who instead has a 3D model that was run through some kind of pixilation filter. The result is that he looks like a Donkey Kong Country character standing next to a bunch of Donkey Kong Classic characters. He sticks out like a sore thumb, but in a way that feels deliberate and oddly charming. But the most impressive thing is the animation on the Titan. The animation on the Titan's hand is the smoothest and cleanest pixel art in any Toby Fox game.

Ignoring characters for a bit, the background art is gorgeous. In fact, Chapters 3 & 4 have by far the prettiest backgrounds. Like the Holiday Household is so detailed that it looks almost like it came out of a different game. Which in a weird way, tracks. Toby did hire some guest artists for the new Chapters, so I wouldn't be surprised if the Holiday Household was handled by the guest artists.

Kris (middle), Susie (left) and Ralsei (Ralsei) play a rock concert minigame. Image found on steam.steampowered.com

As for sound, it's a Toby Fox project. You know the music is going to be spectacular. Most of the songs are relatively simple melodies, but they sound crisp and clear. In typical Toby Fox fashion, characters that are somehow related to each other, either narratively or literally, share similar motifs during their respective theme songs. This is part of the reason the Freedom motif is so important. And also the Don't Forget motif exists. Don't Forget is the main theme song of the entire game, and as such, the Don't Forget motif appears just as often as the Freedom motif.

As for the standout songs, Gerson's theme, Hammer of Justice is a fast-paced banjo medley of a whole bunch of songs from UNDERTALE, mostly Spear of Justice and Battle Against a True Hero. And it adds a banjo version of the Freedom motif in on top of that. It sounds exciting and nostalgic, but for reasons that are more lighthearted than The Place Where It Rained. Hammer of Justice might just dethrone The World Revolving for my favorite boss theme.

All of the piano-centric tunes are a joy to listen to as well. As they should, as the piano is Kris's instrument of choice, to the point where there are multiple puzzles that can only be solved by playing piano music. One detail I like about Kris's piano playing is that while they are obviously good, they are not a perfect prodigy. If you listen closely, you can hear Kris make minor mistakes while playing certain songs. And that makes sense, as Kris is still a teen and they haven't had time to practice, because of the whole "sharing a body with the Player" thing. It's a fun bit of characterization.

The sound effects are a little bit funny. While most of the sound effects are unique, there are also a handful of public domain sound effects. All of the public domain sound effects are used exclusively for comedy and are never used when the story gets serious. The most obvious being the explosion sound. Unrelated tangent here, but one day I decided to watch The Cuphead Show and that cartoon uses the exact same explosion sound effect that deltarune uses. This is not a bad thing as that specific sound effect is public domain, therefore, anyone can use it. But it was a funny coincidence that two indie projects in completely different mediums used the exact same explosion sound effect.

Overall, I'd say that deltarune Chapters 3 & 4 were worth the wait. I wish I didn't have to harp on Chapter 4 so much, but I can't in good faith give it a 5 star rating as long as that glitch exists. But despite that technical hiccup, I still enjoyed my time with the new Chapters. The jokes were hilarious, the characters continue to be charming, the Weird Route is still horrifying. And it gave some of the best boss fights in the game. Like I said earlier, Chapter 3 gets 5 stars out of five, Chapter 4 gets four stars out of five. And now all we have to do is wait for Toby Fox to release the other Chapters. However long that takes.

deltarune is the property of Toby Fox. None of the images used in this review were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Darkest Dungeon, a harrowing challenge that will leave you humbled. A very stressful review

2025-06-01T00:17:00.001-04:00

I am no stranger to challenging games with moody, gothic atmospheres. From Dark Souls to Elden Ring, I've played my fair share of "spooky hard games." But there's one game that has completely captivated me. Red Hook's Darkest Dungeon, a cult classic strategy game with a reputation for being fiendishly difficult, and also for being heavily inspired by the writings of the classical horror author H.P. Lovecraft. While it is NOT a Souls Like, this is still a Gothic Horror game about medieval fantasy adventurers fighting nightmarish monstrosities. So it's something that's still within my wheelhouse, as I am the Guy Who Likes Spooky Hard Games. Before we continue, here's a quick content warning. Darkest Dungeon is rated T for Teen by the ESRB and is (at least ostensibly) meant for ages 13 years and older. Despite this, I still feel the need to put a content warning because this game can be... a lot. Expect to see violence, body horror, psychological horror, offscreen self-harm, offscreen debauchery and mild profanity.

Official box art of Darkest Dungeon. Image found on Wikipedia.org

So what exactly is Darkest Dungeon? It's a side-scrolling strategy roleplaying game developed and published by Red Hook Studios, released on January 16, 2016. It gained a following online due to its striking art style, impressive voice acting and fiendish difficulty. It would later get three DLC packs titled Crimson Court, Color of Madness and The Butcher's Circus. The former two being major expansions that add in new areas, classes and bosses while the latter is a Player Vs Player minigame. Not only that, but Red Hook also made a full blown sequel to this game, simply titled Darkest Dungeon II. Taking place in a Victorian Gothic setting, Darkest Dungeon tells you everything you need to know about the story with what is perhaps the most captivating intro to any video game ever. The art and voice acting in the intro is so good that I almost never skip it, and it sets the bleak, oppressive vibe that the game goes for perfectly. To put it simply, this intro makes one heck of a first impression.

In Darkest Dungeon, you play as an unnamed, 19th century noble who had received a letter from a mysterious relative only known as the Ancestor. This unnamed noble is meant to be a self-insert for the player, and as such this character remains unseen for most of the game. I am going to refer to this unseen character as the Heir for the sake of consistency. The Ancestor is already dead by the time the letter reaches the Heir, as he discovered *something* so horrible and terrifying that he took his own life in an attempt to escape whatever it was that he found. The letter he sent gave the Heir legal ownership over the Ancestor's estate, which includes a mansion, a nearby hamlet and the titular Darkest Dungeon. Unfortunately, most of the estate is overrun with monsters, cultists, bandits and many more threats to the Heir's safety. Because the Heir is a member of the aristocracy, their life is too important to set foot on the estate in its current condition. So the Heir hires adventurous mercenaries called the Heroes to clear out the estate in their stead. That's the basic premise, and the story doesn't really get more complicated than that. Most of the lore you learn outside of this intro is about the Ancestor's life before he died. Also, the Ancestor's ghost narrates over the entire game, describing both the story and the in-game battles with flowery prose befitting a Lovecraft protagonist.

The Ancestor, who narrates over the entire game, writes a letter to his family begging them to come home and retake the titular Darkest Dungeon. Image found on MobyGames.com

Darkest Dungeon officially starts with a brief tutorial in which you are ambushed by bandits. Fear not, for the Heir always starts with two Heroes on their payroll already; A Crusader named Reynauld and a Highwayman named Dismas (these Heroes are the only ones with canon names, the other Heroes are given randomized names upon recruitment). These two are your starter Heroes, and they exist mostly to teach you the basics of battle. Combat is turn-based with the turn order being decided by a number called the Speed stat, in which the character with the highest number goes first. Each Hero on your team has four different abilities they can choose to use on their turn. What these abilities are depends on the Hero's class, of which there are 18 (15 in the base game and 3 more in DLC expansions). Some Heroes focus on supporting allies with healing and buffs, others focus on killing enemies quickly with big burst attacks, and others still focus on tanking and defenses. You can have up to four Heroes in the same team, with any class combination you want (including multiple Heroes with the same class).

Additionally, the Heroes follow a strict marching order, and their place within the marching order changes their abilities. These positions are your backline (far left), your frontline (far right) and two middle positions. Some Heroes want to be certain places more than others. For example, the Arbalest and the Plague Doctor both want to be in the backline, as they are long range fighters who use projectiles and support abilities to keep their teammates alive. The Leper and the Hellion meanwhile want to be in the frontline as they are both melee powerhouses who focus on tearing through enemies with close range attacks. Some classes, like the Grave Robber and the Jester, can even change their position mid battle when using certain abilities. And other classes like the Occultist and the Man-at-Arms don't really care where in the marching order they are, as they have abilities that can be used in any position.

The last main combat mechanic is Torchlight, which is meant to be a high risk, high reward system. Basically, the lighting during an expedition will gradually get darker as you progress, but you can use torches to restore it. Monsters grow more powerful in darkness, but the odds of finding more valuable items and treasure are increased when the Torch Light gets low enough. If you're feeling very brave (or you're desperate for more money) it could be worth letting Torchlight run out on purpose for the extra rewards. But keeping Torchlight high is safer for your Heroes.

Speaking of safety, I should warn you now that Darkest Dungeon is deliberately designed to be a challenging experience, to the point where it provides a warning saying as much every time you boot it up. Why is this game so difficult, you ask? Because of four main mechanics. First and most obvious is permadeath. When a Hero dies for any reason, that specific Hero is dead for the rest of the game, and anything they were carrying at the time of death is lost forever as well. Secondly, Heroes have two health bars, one for their physical wellbeing and one for their mental health. If their physical health reaches zero, that Hero is put on Death's Door. Despite the name, this event doesn't kill the Hero, but if they get hit while on Death's Door there is a 1-in-3 chance that they will die for real. However, literally any healing spell will remove the "Death's Door" condition. As long as your Heroes are NOT on Death's Door, they will never die from physical injuries.

The Plague Doctor, one of the game's many playable Heroes, suffers a mental breakdown and becomes Fearful. Image found on TrueAchievements.com

But this leads to the third major mechanic of the game, Stress. Stress represents your Heroes' declining mental health, and it will rise the longer a battle progresses. If the Stress meter fills all the way up, the Hero will reach their breaking point and they will gain a random, but usually negative, ailment called an Affliction. These can take the form of extreme fearfulness, paranoia and hopelessness, among others. While Afflicted, the Hero in question will occasionally do things that are detrimental to the team, such as skipping turns or even attacking teammates. If the Stress meter fills all the way up a second time, the Afflicted Hero will have a heart attack that puts them on Death's Door immediately. If they were already on Death's Door at the time this happens, then the heart attack straight up kills the Hero. There is a small chance that a Hero will gain a positive status effect called a Virtue, which instantly heals Stress and provides a power boost for the whole team, but Virtues are rare and should not be relied on. If they happen, great! But don't count on them for victory. Also, Stress is persistent across multiple expeditions and can only be treated by giving that Hero a break. These three mechanics work together in tandem to ensure that battles against even basic enemies can quickly devolve into a life or death struggle if you aren't careful.

So how do you deal with the horrors of the estate? The answer is by upgrading the hamlet. The hamlet is your base of operations, and from here you can ~~replace casualties~~ recruit new Heroes and outfit them with new armor and weapons. You can also give a Hero the week off and let them visit either the Tavern or the Church. Both of these facilities will heal Stress, but most Heroes will develop a preference for one or the other. You can also send the Heroes to the Sanitorium to cure them of any diseases they may have contracted (diseases, while nonlethal, will still weaken a Hero in addition to other status conditions). You can use a collectible currency called Heirlooms to upgrade the hamlet (thus making each facility more effective), and you can get more Heirlooms by exploring the estate. Upgrading the Heroes themselves does not cost Heirlooms, but instead costs Gold, which is also found within the estate. Keep in mind that a Hero will be unavailable for deployment until the next expedition is complete if they are spending the week at the Sanitorium, Tavern or Church, as these facilities' effects are not instant. In fact, my biggest criticism of Darkest Dungeon is that your Heroes are often forced into long periods of downtime even when they are successful. Like, let's say that a Hero becomes Afflicted and gets infected with a disease. You can only heal one ailment at a time, meaning that if you want that Hero to be back at full strength, you need to wait at least 2 in-game weeks for that to happen. The wait gets even longer if the Hero contracts multiple diseases at once.

An overview of the hamlet, which serves as your base of operations. Image found on MobyGames.com

And speaking of taking the week off, the game measures time in weeks, with one expedition to the estate taking up one in-game week. This translates to about 30 minutes to an hour of real life playtime. On the game's hardest difficulty setting, officially called Stygian mode, you will have a time limit forcing you beat the entire game within 86 weeks or sooner. Stygian mode also puts a 30% multiplier on the health and damage output of all enemies. So maybe don't try this mode if it's your first time playing, as it is especially sadistic. The last major mechanic concerning the hamlet is that there are random events that can occur. These events are always positive, and include things like discounts at the various facilities, all Heroes belonging to a specific class getting a free level up, or even bringing one dead Hero back to life. This random event is the ONLY way to revive dead Heroes, by the way.

The estate is divided into five main areas, each themed around a different archetypal monster; the Ruins (undead), the Warrens (beast men), the Weald (witches/fungi), the Cove (sea monsters) and finally, the Darkest Dungeon (Lovecraftian horrors). The Crimson Court and Color of Madness expansions add two new areas, also themed around archetypal monsters. The former adds the Courtyard (vampires) and the latter adds the Farmstead (aliens/crystals). All areas have human enemies, which take the form of either bandits or cultists. Once you pick an area to explore, the layout in those areas are randomized. The layout might be a linear hallway during one trip, or a sprawling maze during the next trip. Additionally, each expedition has a quest objective. These quests can range from defeating all enemies, to collecting three specific items, to killing a boss. Normally, your Heroes cannot leave until their current quest is complete. However, you can choose to abandon the quest, which will allow all currently living Heroes to return safely, but you will get reduced rewards for doing so. Keep in mind that if all four Heroes sent on an expedition are killed, you lose access to EVERYTHING that they found. As cowardly as it sounds, it is always better to abandon a quest before you lose too many Heroes, as it is better to come back with some rewards than it is come back with nothing at all.

While exploring any given area, your team may stumble across objects called Curios. These can range from treasure chests, to bookshelves, to confession booths, among many others. Interacting with Curios will produce a random effect, which can be either positive or negative in nature. However, you can use certain supply items on specific kinds of Curios to force a positive effect to occur. For example, you can use a skeleton key on treasure chests to get even more treasure from them than normal. You can use holy water on confession booths to heal Stress. You can clear out a blocked passage using shovels. And there are many more possibilities. The only restriction you have to worry about is limited inventory space. Your Heroes can only carry an absolute maximum of 16 different items, with items of the same type sharing an inventory slot. For example, a single slot can hold either 12 rations, 6 bandages or 4 shovels, but not all of those at once. All supply items are one time use, and if you have any unused supplies once the expedition is complete you will get a refund for your troubles. To quote the Ancestor regarding treasure and supplies; "The cost of preparedness, measured now in gold, but later in blood."

On the subject of Heroes, let's talk about them in more detail. As previously mentioned, the Heroes are divided into classes, with each class having a unique role on any given team. While you can make most team compositions work, some classes work better with others. For example, The Highwayman and Grave Robber are mid-range damage-dealers whose weapons can deal extra damage against enemies with the Marked condition. Neither the Highwayman nor the Grave Robber have any way of Marking a target by themselves. So if you want to get the most out of these classes, pair them up with Heroes who can Mark targets like the Hound Master, the Bounty Hunter or the Occultist. In fact, you can build an entire team of Heroes around Marking enemies so that their teammates can obliterate them. The same practice can be applied with other status conditions, like Bleeding and Blight. Or you can forsake all these fancy status conditions altogether and run a party of three melee powerhouses who overwhelm their foes with sheer strength, and give them a single healer to keep them alive. And if you are in desperate need of Gold, the otherwise unimpressive Antiquarian can multiply the amount of treasure found on an expedition, as long as the other three Heroes do everything they can to protect her. The possibilities are endless.

You can also customize your Heroes with collectible items called Trinkets that provide a passive boost to certain abilities. Like a scroll that increases the amount of health healing spells restore by 30%, or a bandana that raises the damage of all long-range attacks by 25%. All bosses (excluding the final boss) drop extra strong Trinkets with powerful effects, and most bosses are worth killing just for their Trinkets. The last thing about Heroes you need to worry about is camping. On longer expeditions, the party will be given a log of firewood. Use this item in an empty room and your Heroes will camp for the night. Outside of certain Curio events, camping is the only reliable way of healing Stress mid-expedition. All classes also have special camp abilities, which allows them to either heal Stress even further or give the party some kind of buff. But of course, this game won't let you camp without danger, as every time you set up camp there is a 1-in-3 chance that you'll get ambushed. And said ambushes always start in complete darkness, meaning the enemies will always be at max strength should this happen. Some Heroes, such as the Crusader, Occultist and Vestal, have camping abilities that outright prevent ambushes from occurring. For the sake of your own sanity, make sure at least one of your Heroes has an anti-ambush camping ability.

A promotional comic depicting the Leper leaving his kingdom for the greater good. Image found on darkestdungeon.fandom.com and darkestdungeon.com

One fun bit of trivia I want to mention about the Heroes is their backstory comics. These comics are not accessible within the game itself, but were made as promotional material. These comics show more of the Heroes' lives prior to the start of the game, and all of them are meant to paint the Heroes in a tragic, or at least sympathetic light. Just to give a few examples, the Crusader was once a farmer with a wife and son who was drafted into a holy war, but he's been fighting for so long he gave up hope on returning home. The Arbalest was forced to run away from home as a child due to an angry mob burning her village down, with the only relic of her childhood being her father's crossbow. The Hound Master was once a police officer with a strong sense of justice, who left the police force in disgust when he found out his commanding officers were part of a cult. My favorite comic goes to the Leper, who was once a fair and just king that was beloved by his subjects. But one day, the Leper contracted leprosy (obviously), and he left his kingdom willingly to spare his people from a potential plague. And keep in mind, the comics manage to communicate these ideas and themes without a single word of dialogue, instead choosing to let the art tell the story by itself. Even if you have no desire to play Darkest Dungeon yourself, I can highly recommend looking at the comics. They are only one page long each and have some hauntingly beautiful artwork.

One last thing about the Heroes before we continue. Each Hero is given a random set of minor strengths and weaknesses called traits. Traits provide either an improvement or a penalty, like 10% extra damage against undead but having -1 Speed. Some traits make it so a Hero can only heal Stress with specific methods, like the Tippler trait, which makes the Hero become an alcoholic who can only heal Stress by drinking at the Tavern. A Hero can have a maximum of five "positive" traits and five "negative" traits, and once that limit is reached, the old traits will swap out for new traits at random intervals. If there's a positive trait you really like and want it to stay on a Hero, you can send them to the Sanitarium to lock that trait in, making it permanent. Likewise, if there's a negative trait that you feel is more trouble than it's worth, you can use the Sanitarium to instantly remove it. While most of the traits are minor enough to not make that big a difference, there is one negative trait that's hugely detrimental and should be removed immediately; Kleptomania. It's exactly what it sounds like, a random chance for that Hero to steal treasure and supplies from the rest of the team. The problem is that there is (to my knowledge) no way to get those items back, as they are pretty much gone forever. For obvious reasons, you don't want a Hero who will steal from their own comrades. Funnily enough, Reynauld, the Crusader given to you during the tutorial, always starts with Kleptomania as his first negative trait. Every playthrough of Darkest Dungeon will involve you sending Reynauld straight to the Sanitorium to cure his Kleptomania as soon as you are able to. This is not negotiable. It's a canon event.

A group of Heroes start a battle against the Swine King, one of the game's bosses. Image found on MobyGames.com

But now it's time to talk about the bosses, which are a major highlight for me. Not only because their designs are creatively monstrous, but they have some neat mechanics that make them more interesting that the regular enemies. Each of the four main parts of the estate have two bosses that need to be defeated three times each (with each rematch being more difficult than the previous battle).The Ruins get the Necromancer and the Prophet, the Warrens get the Swine King and the Formless Flesh, the Weald gets the Hag and the Brigand Pounder, and the Cove gets the Siren and Drowned Crewmen. There are other bosses in the game, but these are the main ones you need to worry about. Anyway, every time you start an expedition to fight a boss, you will get a confession from the Ancestor's ghost where he explains his relationship with the boss in question. Fight these bosses enough times and the Ancestor will reveal more information, both about the boss and about himself. And the more you learn about the Ancestor, the more you learn that he was kind of an awful person in life. Every boss encountered is either one of his failed experiments, a co-conspirator he betrayed or an unfortunate victim who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I have more to say about the Ancestor himself, but let's get back to the bosses. All of them have a gimmick that allows the boss to mess with the Heroes' positioning or even the turn order itself. Just to list a few examples of my favorite bosses, the Prophet can "predict" an attack that will hit a random Hero three turns in advance, and if that Hero doesn't switch to a safer spot in the marching order they'll get crushed by a boulder. The Formless Flesh is actually four different creatures fused together, and thus it gets four separate turns for each of its parts. But because these parts share a health bar, damage over time effects like Bleeding and Blight are four times as effective, as these effects activate once per each part's turn (thus dealing damage four times total). The Hag can grab a random Hero and put them in her stew, preventing them from doing anything until the other three Heroes free them by smashing the Hag's cooking pot. My favorite boss is the Brigand Pounder, as it's literally just a really big cannon being escorted by regular human bandits. The cannon can't do anything by itself, but if a Brigand Matchstick Man gets a chance to light the cannon's fuse, all four Heroes get hit with enough damage to instantly put the ENTIRE TEAM on Death's Door. The idea being that you have to kill the Matchstick Man before that can happen, and once he is dead you can focus on whittling down the cannon itself.

Now let's talk about the Ancestor himself, because he is part of the reason I like this game as much as I do. I know I just called the Ancestor an awful person. But make no mistake, the Ancestor is my favorite character in this whole game, besides the Heroes themselves. Having such a villainous character narrate both the story and the gameplay is such an interesting artistic decision to me. His ghost speaks with a mixture of flowery prose and thinly veiled bitterness. He can go from mourning the decline of the estate and regretting how he handled his original expedition, to proudly boasting about the many ways in which he ruined the lives of the bosses, and somehow both of these views feel in character for him. You could make the argument that he is trying to atone for his sins by helping the Heir retake the estate. But honestly? I don't get the vibe that he even wants redemption. He sounds more annoyed that he died before his plans came to fruition than anything else.

And of course, I have to mention the incredible voice acting of the late Wayne June, who voiced the Ancestor. June brought his absolute A-Game when it came to delivering such verbose narration, and the game is all the better for it. And the Ancestor's callouts during the expeditions are iconic, with memorable lines like "These nightmarish creatures can be felled, they can be beaten!" and "A moment of clarity in the eye of the storm!" My favorite line the Ancestor says is "Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit, lest inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue!" Because that is the fanciest and most pretentious way of saying "the bigger they are, the harder they fall." And how could I forget THE most famous quote from this game? "Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer." This quote is is unironically the best piece of advice anyone could give while playing this game. Never assume your Heroes are invincible, as all it takes for an expedition to fail is for you to push your luck too far. Always be prepared for any scenario, including the possibility of your favorite Heroes dying. Heck, you could make the argument that the Ancestor was guilty of overconfidence himself, as the entire reason he did everything he did was because he believed he was above facing consequences for his actions.

The Bounty Hunter smashes his axe into an enemy, destroying it. Image found on TrueAchievements.com

Okay, now that we have discussed most of the game, let's talk about the Darkest Dungeon itself, as it is the location that the game is named after and works under some different rules from other areas. Firstly, it is the only location with non-randomized layouts. This means you could look up a map online and use that information to beeline for the quest objective. Secondly, there are no Curios whatsoever in the Darkest Dungeon. It's meant to be a marathon of extra tough battles with few chances to rest. Thirdly, any Hero who goes to the Darkest Dungeon and survives will never return for a second trip, with the idea being that the Darkest Dungeon was so horrific and traumatizing that it gave that specific Hero permanent PTSD. The only exception to this rule is if you are playing on Radiant mode, the game's version of easy mode. Radiant mode removes this PTSD restriction, though "traumatized" Heroes will start the expedition with the Stress meter at 80% full the moment they return, so you're still discouraged from using the same Heroes again. These traumatized Heroes can still go on expeditions to everywhere else in the estate, and they even give weaker Heroes an experience boost, causing them to level up faster. So they can still contribute to the campaign, even if they won't get a chance to fight the final boss. I would say that the final boss being in the Darkest Dungeon is a spoiler, but come on. Where else would the final boss of a game called Darkest Dungeon be if not in the place literally called the Darkest Dungeon?

Speaking of the final boss, the final battle is really cool narratively, even if it is not as difficult as the other bosses. Full spoiler warning ahead. The final boss is none other than the ghost of the Ancestor himself. Here at the final floor of the Darkest Dungeon, the Ancestor reveals what exactly was the great and terrible *thing* he found that drove him to take his own life; The Heart of Darkness. This ancient being possesses all knowledge of the cosmos, including truths that mankind was never meant to learn. It also feeds on human suffering, and if it eats enough suffering, it can grow strong enough to cause the end of the world. So the Ancestor made a deal with it. The deal was that the Ancestor would be revived as an immortal spirit with access to as much knowledge as he wants, and in exchange, the Ancestor would cause human suffering on an unprecedented scale, thus speeding up the Heart's gestation. The Ancestor knew his relatives would spare no expense in reclaiming the estate. He also knew that plenty of Heroes would "suffer" in the process. But the Heroes were never meant to push as far into the Darkest Dungeon as they did, and as such, the Heart of Darkness is forced to wake up early, which is why the Ancestor is fighting you now.

The battle against the Ancestor/Heart of Darkness is not a hard fight, but it is a long one. It has four phases and plenty of attacks that can inflict all the major status conditions, but it doesn't have anything you haven't seen before by this point. That is, until you reach the final phase. Once the Heart is down to its fourth and final health bar, it can use its signature move: Come Unto Thy Maker. This "fun" little ability is a guaranteed one-hit kill move. This attack ignores Death's Door and is always 100% accurate. Nothing will save you from Come Unto Thy Maker. The good news is that the Heart can only use this technique twice per battle. The bad news is that the Heart forces the player to choose who gets hit with it. This attack is devastating for obvious reasons, and for a long time everyone (including Red Hook themselves) believed it was impossible to defeat the final boss without suffering casualties. The fact that the game forces you, the player, to choose the target of this attack is adding insult to injury. Yet it works from a narrative standpoint. When you start out, you feel compelled to be a good boss to your Heroes, paying for their healthcare and outfitting them with the finest equipment available. But as they start dying and you get used to replacing the deceased, you start to see less value in your Heroes' lives. Soon enough you realize that unless the Hero in question is fully upgraded (or close to it), it's often cheaper to just fire a half-dead, traumatized Hero and hire a replacement than it is to heal them properly. This battle is basically calling you out for (potentially) becoming just as ruthless as the Ancestor was. After all, at this point you are not only desensitized to the death of the Heroes, you are sacrificing them yourself just for a chance to finish the final battle.

But what if I told you it doesn't have to end that way? As it turns out, some people on the Internet figured out not one, but two different ways to circumvent Come Unto Thy Maker, completely skipping over the sacrifice and outsmarting the developers themselves. The first method is the simplest, but arguably the most dangerous. All you have to do is bring ONLY two Heroes to the final boss fight. You see, the Heart of Darkness can only use Come Unto Thy Maker if at least three out of four Heroes survived long enough to reach the final phase. If there's less than three Heroes on the team by the time you reach this phase, the Heart has no reason to use its signature move. The second method is more complicated, but more satisfying; Figure out a way to kill the Heart in a single turn. The Heart can't use Come Unto Thy Maker if it's dead. I don't know the exact details, nor do I have the time to explain, but there are plenty of YouTube videos out there showing that it can be done.

Regardless of how you choose to defeat the Heart of Darkness, its gestation is halted and forced back into dormancy. But as is tradition with Lovecraftian storytelling, the Ancestor claims that the Heart cannot be permanently destroyed by mortal hands, and that the Heart will return one day to destroy the world. The game ends with the Heir writing a letter to their next of kin, just as the Ancestor did. And the Heir takes their own life to escape the Darkest Dungeon, just as the Ancestor did. And the letter calls in another relative who leads another doomed crusade to retake the estate, just as the Heir did. And then when they defeat the Heart again, that relative will write a letter to their next of kin. And that relative will come to reclaim the estate, defeat the Heart, and write a letter to THEIR next of kin. And so on and so forth. This familial bloodline is now locked in a never ending loop of wasting money and lives on trying to retake this cursed estate, while inadvertently saving the world repeatedly. It's a bittersweet ending, one that's more bitter than sweet. It does create the somewhat humorous mental image that the only thing stopping the end of the world from occurring is a single, stupidly stubborn family of aristocrats with more money than sense who refuse to let this estate go.

A group of Heroes make camp for the night. Image found on SteamDB.com

In terms of presentation, Darkest Dungeon is stylishly macabre, with a comic book inspired art style with heavy shading and sharp angles on literally everything. The game is so over-the-top in its Gothic Horror aesthetic that it borders on absurdity. I mean, what other video game has a literal leper as a playable character? One detail I love is how all of the Heroes cover their eyes, either with masks, helmets or shadows. Despite having wildly different outfits from a wide range of cultures and time periods, the eye covering is something that is consistent across everyone. The only creatures with visible eyes are the monsters you battle against. I'm sure there's some symbolism there, if you want to read into it. I also like how the vampire enemies added in the Crimson Court are based off of mosquitos instead of bats, thus giving them a more insectoid appearance. It's a rather clever spin on a tried and true monster concept.

The actual animations are a little limited, unfortunately, but there's a certain charm to the Heroes various poses. You see, the only part of the game that is fully animated is walking from room to room. When in battle, the Heroes simply *snap* from an idle pose to a handful of contextual poses based on what is happening at the moment, with no smear frames to make the transition between poses smoother. You'd think this would weaken the visual experience, but in practice it makes the game look and feel even more like a comic book, and I mean this as a compliment. Basically, there is no other video game that looks quite like Darkest Dungeon. The only negative thing I can say about the visuals is that I noticed some mild typos in the captions. Nothing serious, but things like not capitalizing the letter "I" when using it as a first person pronoun, or accidentally putting the plural version of the word when the Ancestor is clearly referring to something singular. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but once you notice the typos, it becomes hard to ignore them.

I've already mentioned the incredible voice talents of Wayne June as the Ancestor, and thus I will not repeat myself. Keep in mind that the Ancestor is the only character in the game who is fully voiced. Everyone else gets comic book speech bubbles containing written dialogue. Anyway, the sound effects are crisp and instantly recognizable. I like how every attack (for both Heroes and monsters) has two different sound effects depending on whether or not the attacker actually hits their target. Like you can hear the weapon whizzing past the target and hitting only empty air, but the if attack strikes true, you can hear the weapon crush through bone and slice through flesh. It's brutal sound design, but it fits the gruesomeness of the game's aesthetics.

The music meanwhile could best be described as stressful (pun intended again). The battle music (composed by Stuart Chatwood) sounds less like a heroic conflict between good and evil and more like a siren warning of impending doom. The music makes it clear that the Heroes are not welcome in the estate, and its monstrous denizens will show no mercy. And as the Torchlight lowers, the music gets louder, with more instruments and even demonic cackles and growls joining the beat. The only "calm" songs in the soundtrack are the hamlet's theme, simply titled The Hamlet, and the camping music, titled A Brief Respite. Both of these songs are meant to be relaxing and comforting, in their own way. But The Hamlet has a distinctly mournful vibe to it, sounding like something you would hear at a funeral. I don't know what instruments were used to make the soundtrack, as music is something that is not my expertise, but I do know that I would call the soundtrack "good" for what it's trying to do. Would I willingly listen to the combat music while doing chores or something? Not really. But this soundtrack does a good job keeping you immersed in this setting.

Overall, Darkest Dungeon is a brutal game that is most definitely not for everyone. Not to sound like a stereotypical game journalist, but I can see the difficulty being a major turn off for some people. This is not the kind of game you play casually to blow off steam. At the same time, so much care and passion was put into it that I can say with confidence that I greatly enjoyed the 90+ hours I spent with the game. No other game looks, sounds or plays quite like it, and I can respect the artistic vision. The game isn't difficult for the sake of it, there's a point to it. Have you ever heard the phrase, "suffering builds character?" That is the core thesis of Darkest Dungeon, both on a narrative and mechanical level. So I will give Darkest Dungeon 4 stars out of 5. It is really good for what it's trying to do. You just need to be onboard for that kind of experience.

Darkest Dungeon is the property of Red Hook Studios. None of the images used in this review were created by me. Please support the original creators.

A "totally serious post" on Hollow Knight: Silksong

2025-04-01T12:34:00.000-04:00

One of the best platformer games I've ever had the pleasure to experience was Hollow Knight. Thanks to its haunting music, thrilling boss battles and Gothic art style, Hollow Knight is a game that I'd argue comes the closest to being "the perfect video game." So when Team Cherry announced their plans to make a sequel back in February 19th, 2019, I was naturally excited. Who wouldn't be? Especially because the sequel, officially titled Hollow Knight: Silksong, would focus primarily on Hornet, a fan favorite supporting character from the original game.

Official cover art for Hollow Knight: Silksong. Image found on Wikipedia.org and IGN.

In case you don't know what Hollow Knight is or if you need a recap, it was an action-platformer game taking place in a world of anthropomorphic insects. You played as a character called the Knight, who is a humble warrior tasked with exploring the fallen kingdom of Hallownest. Within the heart of Hallownest lies the Hollow Knight, the host of an ancient goddess of plague and disease called the Radiance. The Knight's ultimate goal is to find a way to destroy that goddess to stop her plagues from spreading to the rest of the world. Making the journey more complicated is Hornet, the long-lost princess of Hallownest who believes the Knight is not worthy of saving the world. Eventually, after many trials and tribulations, Hornet agrees to team up with the Knight and the two of them fight the Hollow Knight together. Spoilers here, but depending on the ending you got, the Knight would die sacrificing itself to destroy the Radiance. Hornet meanwhile is released from her royal obligations and is now free to travel the world as she sees fit. Like I said earlier, the main sales pitch of Silksong is that it's supposed to focus on Hornet's adventures as she travels the world of bugs and beasts.

Only problem was the wait. There were very few trailers after the initial announcement. No new screenshots. And not a release date in sight. The only reason we knew the game was still in development was because Team Cherry would post on their social media accounts specifically to remind everyone that Silksong is still in development. For six long years, the Hollow Knight fan community waited with bated breath for, well, anything more substantial than a Twitter/Facebook post. Because of that arduous wait, the fandom was driven mad and started making increasingly nonsensical memes about a game that technically doesn't even exist yet. Usually these memes took the form of fake spoilers or fake boss names. Were these memes a thinly veiled coping mechanism for a fandom that's been deprived of potential content to enjoy? Probably. Was it hilarious to watch the insanity unfold? Definitely. What makes the insanity even funnier is that Silksong actually won two awards already, both times for Most Anticipated Game. The first time was in 2022. The second time was in 2024.

But then Silksong released in The Year of Our Lord, 2069 and it made 420 Morbillion dollars at the box office. It won a Nobel Prize for being the pinnacle of human achievement. All the world leaders of Earth and Mars collectively agreed that nothing they could do or make will ever surpass the majesty that is Hollow Knight: Silksong. Centuries from now, Hollow Knight Silksong will be required studying for History Majors, as it will go on to influence our society's culture for generations. It would go on to be praised for such profound scenes like the time Hornet said "Every Silk has its Song!" And it would feature spectacular battles against legendary foes like "Nightmare Queen Grimm-Ette" "Grey Prince Zote 2: Mighty Boogaloo" and "Radiance Prime," which are all totally real bosses and not outlandish parodies that I invented on the spot.

…Okay, I've run this joke into the ground. This isn't a real review. In case it wasn't obvious, this was an April Fool's joke. But in all seriousness, the sheer insanity of the Hollow Knight fandom could have been avoided had Team Cherry just done a better job marketing the game. For all we know this game was shadow-canceled and Team Cherry is too ashamed to make that public knowledge. Either that, or they announced it way too early. Never before had I seen a game with such little marketing cause so much drama on the Internet. Then again, maybe not advertising the game was the plan all along, because the sheer mystery of whether or not this game will release within our lifetimes is better marketing than all the potential trailers and screenshots Team Cherry could have released combined.

I hope you enjoyed this little joke post. Obviously this joke is going to age like milk if Team Cherry ever actually released the game (or announced its cancellation publicly). So depending on how far you are into the future, this is going to look like utter madness. Or it's going to look like I got hit with Apollo's Gift of Prophecy and used it in the silliest way imaginable. Either way, I do genuinely recommend playing the first Hollow Knight. Even without a sequel, it's an excellent experience that has been honed to near perfection.

Hollow Knight and Hollow Knight: Silksong are the properties of Team Cherry. None of the images used in this post were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Untitled Goose Game is outrageously silly. A very fowl review

2025-03-16T20:47:00.000-04:00

It's pretty rare for a video game to be advertised as a "slapstick comedy experience." Sure, there are jokes and quips in video games, but rarely is the game itself built entirely around the joke. But today's review is about the exception to that rule, a game called Untitled Goose Game. Before you ask, yes, that is the actual title of the game. For obvious reasons, the "untitled" part of the name was meant to be a placeholder. The developers, House House, decided that leaving the "untitled" part in the title was funnier and did a better job communicating the idea that this is supposed to be a comedy game.

The official box art for Untitled Goose Game. Image found on Wikipedia.org

Untitled Goose Game is a stealth-focused puzzle game that was developed and published by House House and Panic Inc. respectively. The game was released September 20th, 2019 and became a hit because of the inherent absurdity of the concept. In Untitled Goose Game, you play as a goose. Obviously. But not just any goose. You play as the Horrible Goose, who has come to a quiet, unnamed village specifically to mess with the townsfolk and cause as many problems for them as possible. The game has basically no lore or narrative outside this premise. The only official bits of lore is that the village is located "somewhere" in England. Anything else the devs have said about the lore of this game should be taken with a grain of salt, as this is a comedy game and thus it is not meant to have a serious narrative.

The Goose has a handful of abilities at its disposal. It can run, crouch, pick up small objects, push and pull around larger objects, flap its wings and honk. You use these abilities in tandem with each other to solve simple logic puzzles and be an overall menace to society, as geese are wont to do. The Goose cannot fly, mostly for gameplay reasons. A lot of puzzles would be trivialized if the Goose could just fly over the obstacle. Just to give a few examples of how puzzles work in this game, you could trick a villager into hitting his own thumb by honking at him right before he hammers a sign into the ground, Looney Toons style. You can also trick a villager into putting a lovely red ribbon on the Goose by pretending to be a statuette, then start flapping your wings right afterwards to give that villager a jump scare.

In each of the game's four main areas (the Garden, the High Street, the Back Gardens, and the Pub), there is at least one townsperson with a simple behavior schedule. As long as the Goose doesn't distract or hinder them, the townspeople will perform a set of thematically appropriate tasks and carry on with their day. The Groundskeeper for example will tend to his garden if the Goose leaves him alone, while the Shopkeeper will brush away dirt from her marketplace. If they see the Goose pick up one of their belongings, they will give chase to get it back. Given the mellow/humorous vibes that Untitled Goose Game goes for, the Goose is never killed or captured. In fact, there simply isn't any kind of game over status at all. If the Goose gets caught, it's forced to drop the item it stole, but nothing's stopping you from stealing that exact same item again immediately afterwards. Heck, the Goose can just yank items right out of people's hands as long as they aren't paying attention.

The Horrible Goose has just stolen the Groundskeeper's keys. Image found on goose.game/presskit

There are, however, two villagers with unique interactions with the Goose. The Wimp (encountered in the High Street) and the Burly Man (encountered in the Pub). The Wimp is terrified of the Goose and will run away if approached. The Burly Man meanwhile works as a bouncer for the Pub and will chase the Goose on sight, even if it hasn't stolen anything yet. But only if the Goose is already inside the Pub. Honestly, I almost feel bad for the Wimp specifically because out of all the villagers in the game, the Wimp gets tormented the most. If you complete all the tasks related to the Wimp, he gets chased into a phone booth by the Goose, who also steals his glasses and swaps them out for a worse pair. The Goose can also untie his shoelaces to make him trip and fall flat on his face. And top of all that, the Goose tricks the Wimp into buying a toy airplane that he already owned by placing said toy plane inside the nearby market. Like, the Goose is obviously a villain (of the harmless, Saturday Morning variety) but the way the tasks single this one person out feels almost excessive. Not that this is a bad thing. Comedy needs a victim, after all.

Every time the Goose makes its way to a new area, it is given a To-Do List. You cannot progress to the next area until all tasks on the list are completed. These tasks can include things like "trick the groundskeeper into hitting his own thumb" or "place a bunch of (stolen) groceries in a basket." Again, the solution to most of these tasks is simple enough to be solved without too much issue. Heck, even the final task (which I won't spoil here) isn't too hard once you have a decent path planned out. Once you beat the game for the first time, you unlock even more To-Do Lists for the four main areas . There's even speed run challenges where you have to complete each area before the town church bells ring, which in practice gives you about six minutes per area to complete it.

Untitled Goose Game's two-player co-op mode being used to bully the Wimp. Image found on mobygames.com

Also, Untitled Goose Game sports a two player co-op mode, with the second player controlling a second Horrible Goose. I haven't had a chance to test this mode out for myself, but from what I understand, all of the tasks are more or less the same as their single player counterparts. Keep in mind that co-op mode is local only. It does not work online. What this means is if you want to try it for yourself, the second player as to be be there with you in person, and you need an extra controller for the second player to use. That being said, I'd imagine some tasks might be easier with a second player, since one player could distract the villagers while the other completes a task in secret.

There is only one bad thing I can say about Untitled Goose Game, which is that it's a very short experience. It will take you about three-to-six hours to complete your first playthrough. And while the game does have bonus challenges that become available after completing it for the first time, these challenges take just as much time to complete as well. But then again, if my biggest complaint is "I wish there was more of this game to play through" I suppose that's a blessing in disguise. After all, it proves that the game is fun enough that I would want more of it.

In terms of presentation, Untitled Goose Game is a cutesy, simplistic game. Everything has a smooth, cel-shaded, pastel aesthetic to it, from the Goose itself to the environments. The Goose's mannerisms are humorous, and speaking as someone who sees waterfowl on a regular basis, the body movements and animations on the Goose are surprisingly accurate to how geese move around in real life. The townspeople have a surprising amount of personality in their animations, despite having no spoken dialogue or even facial expressions. The most you'll hear from them is either annoyed grunting or screaming in goose-related terror. The human character designs remind me of the character designs in Aardman's Wallace & Gromit series. But I think my favorite thing would be the music and sound effects in this game. The Horrible Goose has a dedicated "honk" button, and hearing the Goose honk will never not put a smile on my face. To make it even better, the exact sound of the honk changes based on where the Goose is located or what item the Goose is holding. Like if you honk near a tunnel or well, the honk will echo. And if you honk while holding a glass bottle, the honk sounds slightly muffled. And if you honk while holding a harmonica, the Goose will play a little tune with it.

The Goose honks into a well. Image found on goose.game/presskit

The game's soundtrack consists entirely of piano, because a simple game needs a simple soundtrack. The piano notes vary in intensity based on what the Goose is doing. The piano is dead silent when nothing important is happening, it plays a triumphant jingle when the Goose completes a task, and it plays a panicked tune when the Goose is being chased by a villager. Funnily enough, House House never intended for Untitled Goose Game to even have music at all. The music was originally meant only for the game's announcement trailer, but it was so well-received that the devs recorded some new piano music as a last-minute addition to the game. Honestly, the piano music elevates the experience. It makes the game feel more charming and lively. Like one of those old silent films from the 1890's and 1920's.

Overall, would I recommend Untitled Goose Game? Yes. 100%. It's a short, sweet slapstick spectacle. Again, my only criticism is I wish the game was a little bit longer. And you know a game is good when the only complaint I have is that I wanted more to do in it. It's current price at the time of writing is around $20 USD, and for a bite-sized comedy experience I'd say that's pretty reasonable pricing. I give Untitled Goose Game 5 stars out of 5. This review feels like it's shorter than normal, but there admittedly isn't much to talk about. It's a simple game through and through.

Untitled Goose Game is the property of House House and Panic Inc. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, it's a Souls Like IN SPACE. A very Forced review

2025-01-31T21:52:00.014-05:00

Star Wars is an absolute monolith of a franchise. Everyone has either heard of it, saw at least one of the nine main movies or played one of the literal 100+ video games. Back in 2020 I reviewed Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, a surprisingly competent game that combines the "Space Western Samurai Movie" aesthetic of the franchise with Souls Like combat and Metroidvania style exploration and upgrades. All things considered, this combination worked shockingly well. So naturally, a sequel to Fallen Order was released in 2023, titled Star Wars: Jedi Survivor. I knew I wanted to review it, because not only do I like Star Wars, I am a big fan of Souls Like games. That being said, I came away with mixed feelings on this game, for reasons I will explain more thoroughly later. Before we begin, I have a few disclaimers. Firstly, I played the game on Playstation 5, and thus can only speak to its performance on that system. Secondly, I have already explained terms like Souls Like in greater detail in other reviews, and will assume you know the basics of the genre. I will also offer (brief) explanations of common Souls Like terminology as needed.

The official box art of Star Wars: Jedi Survivor, featuring Cal Kestis and BD-1. Image found on Wikipedia.org

In the event you somehow don't know what Star Wars is, here's an attempt to summarize over 40 years of lore. A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away there was a Galactic Republic. The Republic was the de facto main government of the entire galaxy, with senators and representatives from literal thousands of different planets. One day, the Republic went to war with a group called the Confederacy of Independent Systems, called the Separatists for short. The Separatists didn't want to live under Republic rule, and unleashed an army of robotic minions called Battle Droids to terrorize the Galaxy. The Republic responded by creating an army of super soldier clones, and tasked an ancient order of psychic warrior-monks called Jedi Knights to lead said clones into battle. The Republic came very close to winning the war, thanks to the clones' tenacity and the Jedi's otherworldly Force powers giving them a distinct advantage. However, the clones were actually a trap devised by Chancellor Palpatine, who was manipulating both sides of the war for his own benefit. When Palpatine told the clones to "Execute Order 66" all the clones turned on their Jedi masters, killing 90% of them in a violent coup. To add insult to injury, Palpatine corrupted the strongest Jedi of them all, Anakin Skywalker, and turned him into an evil cyborg samurai called Darth Vader. With no one left to oppose him, Palpatine rebuilt the Republic into the first Galactic Empire, with himself as Emperor and Darth Vader as his personal enforcer..

In both Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor, you play as a Jedi Knight named Cal Kestis, who as previously mentioned is a survivor of Order 66. Back in Fallen Order, he and his friends found and destroyed an artifact showing the location of every Force user in the galaxy. This was important, because the Empire is still hunting down and executing the few survivors of Order 66, and converting the few "neutral" Force Users into Sith Inquisitors. Also, Cal attempted to fight Darth Vader. Emphasis on the word "attempted." Cal is meant to be a fairly average Jedi. He's a good swordsman, his Force powers are strong enough to compete with most other Force Users, and he has a knack for improvising and adapting to his opponents mid-battle. But Darth Vader is the strongest Force User in the galaxy. Darth Vader's entire purpose, narratively speaking, is to be an absolute menace that puts the fear of death in the heroes. You see Darth Vader approaching, you run. Don't fight him. You will not win.

Jedi Survivor takes place five years after the first game. Cal is now working with Saw Gerrera, leader of a rebel group trying to overthrow the Emperor. Meanwhile, his old friends Cere, Greez and Merrin have all gone their separate ways. The game starts with a tutorial mission in which Cal and a crew of Saw's rebels kidnap an Imperial Senator and steal confidential information, right in the middle of Coruscant (the Imperial capital). This mission shows off all the main mechanics of the game, from combat to puzzle solving to climbing sections. One thing I like about the game is that Cal starts off with all the movement upgrades from the previous game already unlocked, such as double jumping and running on walls. The tutorial ends with a boss fight against a Sith Inquisitor known as the Ninth Sister, who was actually a major villain from the first game. In this game she gets bodied, because Cal has spent the five year time skip training and perfecting his abilities, and the Ninth Sister did no such training in the meantime. And that's actually a good way to show both narratively and mechanically how much stronger Cal has grown in the transition between games.

The mission ends in a bust, as four out of the five rebels assisting Cal are killed in action and the senator is killed as collateral damage. Cal and the last surviving rebel, a gunslinger named Bode, barely escape from Coruscant. Unfortunately, Cal's ship, the Mantis, is damaged in the escape. Before he crash lands, Cal redirects the Mantis onto an Outer Rim planet called Koboh. This wasn't a random landing spot, for Cal knows that one of his old friends lives on Koboh. So he's hoping that said friend will help him repair the Mantis. The Outer Rim is essentially the Wild West in space. While it's technically a part of the Empire, it's so far removed from "civilized society" that criminal organizations and bounty hunters are allowed to do whatever they want with very little consequence. In the case of Koboh, the locals are routinely bullied and harassed by a bandit gang called the Bedlam Raiders. What makes the Raiders dangerous is that they got their hands on Separatist technology, and thus have access to Battle Droids. And the higher ranking Raiders have figured out how to make their own Lightsabers. But anyway, the game starts for real here.

Jedi Survivor has open-world exploration across five different planets. Though truth be told, it is very obvious Respawn put most of their effort into Koboh. It is by far the biggest planet you can explore, has by far the most number of collectible items and is one of two planets that allow Cal to ride on the back of an animal to cover greater distances. But back on subject, Cal can check his map via a helper droid called BD-1, and said map will highlight the location of the next story objective in gold. But there is nothing stopping you from ignoring the main story and exploring the wilderness. Even during high-stakes missions that seem like they would be time-sensitive, there is nothing stopping Cal from taking a lengthy detour to grab a new outfit or fight a secret boss.

Cal clashes Lightsaber blades with a Bedlam Raider. Image found on starwars.com

Speaking of fighting bosses, the single best thing about both Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor is the combat. Cal is armed with a Lightsaber, obviously. He can use it both as a melee weapon and to deflect laser blasts from enemies back at them. Additionally, he can use the Force to grab enemies and objects and throw them around, or throw his own saber like a boomerang. He can even use the Jedi Mind Trick to manipulate enemies into fighting each other. Cal feels powerful when you mow down hordes of Stormtroopers or Raiders, which feels appropriate. Cal may be only an "average" Jedi in terms of raw power, but even the weakest Jedi will be leaps and bounds more powerful than a regular soldier. The only people who can give Cal a challenge are either other Force Users, armored mechs or giant monsters. So naturally, almost every boss encountered in this game belong to one of those three categories. The only exception to this rule is an Imperial Stormtrooper named Rick the Door Technician, who is a joke boss clearly meant to be a pushover that goes down in exactly one attack. All things considered, Rick is an excellent example of how to do a "joke boss." Like, you find him at the end of a grueling gauntlet in which you fight through an army's worth of Imperial forces, and by the time you reach him you should be low on healing items. So when a boss health bar appears at the top of the screen, you get filled with a brief sense of dread until you realize that the boss is literally just a dime-a-dozen Stormtrooper that's no different from the ones you've been slicing through the whole game. And they gave him the most normal sounding name in the history of Star Wars.

While it is true that this is a Souls Like, and thus has a stamina-based combat system, Jedi Survivor is meant as a "baby's first" Souls Like experience. For example, the way this game handles stamina is very forgiving. The stamina equivalent of this game, the Force, only drains when using either a strong attack or when using a Force Technique. Basic attacks actually charge up Force instead of draining it. Additionally, blocking is given its own dedicated meter that does not affect the Force meter in any way. As long as the block meter isn't completely empty, Cal can keep blocking attacks. Speaking of blocking, tapping the block button right before an attack hits will parry it, which does not drain the block meter and has a chance to knock the attacking enemy off balance. How strict the timing is varies based on the difficulty you are currently playing on. Speaking of which, the fact that Jedi Survivor even has multiple difficulty settings further reinforces the idea that it's a baby's first Souls Like. Most games in this genre don't even have adjustable difficulty, since a lot of these games advertise themselves as a deliberately challenging experience meant to push your skills to their limit. But there's absolutely no shame in playing on a lower difficulty setting. In fact, as long as you are not in battle, you can change the difficulty whenever you want. I started the game on Jedi Master mode (the equivalent of hard mode), but brought the difficulty down to Jedi Knight (the equivalent of medium difficulty) and found the game more enjoyable from then onwards.

New to Jedi Survivor are the Stances. Stances change Cal's fighting style and modifies the shape of his Lightsaber's blade. Also, with the sole exception of Single Blade Stance, all of the Stances are based on the fighting styles of fan-favorite characters from throughout the franchise (Darth Maul, Ahsoka Tano, Kylo Ren, etc.). Cal can only equip two Stances at a time, though he can swap them out at Meditation Points (the main checkpoint of this game). Each Stance comes with its own set of attacks, defenses and combos. Keep in mind you don't start with all five Stances available. You start with two and unlock the other three throughout the main story. That being said, none of these Stances are spoilers, since they are all over the marketing and serve as the main "sales pitch" of the game. While Jedi Survivor doesn't use stats like a normal Souls Like, the Stances all play like classic Souls Like archetypes. Just to give a few examples, Cross Guard Stance is your big heavy Strength Build with slow but powerful swings, Dual Wielding is like a Dex Build with high speed and mobility but poor defenses and Blaster Stance is your long range "archer" build. Returning from the first game are Single Blade stance and Double Blade stance. The former is literally just Cal's move set from Fallen Order, while the latter is a Darth Maul inspired fighting style that can clear out crowds of enemies with wide reaching spin attacks.

The second best thing about Jedi Survivor is the customization. You can change Cal's hairstyle, what kind of facial hair he has (if any), his outfit and his Lightsaber's appearance. In fact, finding new customization options for Cal's appearance is the main collectible in the game. The Lightsaber customization is especially thorough. Not only can you change the color of the blade, you can swap out each individual part of the hilt. Those being the blade emitter, the switch, the grip and the pommel. You can even change the materials used the Lightsaber's construction, which changes both the color and the textures on the hilt. You can make it look wooden, metallic, plastic or any combination of the above. Some materials like Beskar Steel even have unique patterns on them. The pistol used in Blaster Stance can also be customized with similar options to the saber itself. The only restriction on the saber customization is that you cannot make your Lightsaber have a red blade during your first playthrough. This is mostly for lore reasons, seeing as how only Force Users who have been corrupted by the Dark Side have red blades on their Lightsabers. And Cal hasn't been corrupted (yet), so no red blade for him.

One odd design choice is how this game handles currency. Because unlike every Souls Like game ever, Jedi Survivor doesn't have a universal currency. Each merchant has a special collectible item associated with them exclusively, and the only reward for defeating enemies are Skill Points. Skill Points are used to unlock new abilities and techniques for Cal, or to improve the powers he already has. Almost all of the merchants only sell cosmetic items for either Cal himself, his Lightsaber or for BD-1. The only merchant who does sell items with actual impact on gameplay is a retired bounty hunter named Caij, and even then she only sells ammo types for Blaster Stance. Personally, I don't really like how every merchant gets their own unique currency that only they will accept. If they really wanted Skill Points and "merchant money" to be separate resources, they could have just called the latter Credits and have that work as a semi-universal currency. Especially because Credits already exist as a universal currency in the Star Wars universe.

Back on the subject of the actual story, Cal and Bode meet up with one of Cal's old friends, Greez the four-armed alien gambler. During the 5 year time skip, Greez settled down on Koboh and opened up a bar called Pyloon's Saloon. This saloon serves as the main base of operations for Cal and his friends, at least while they are on Koboh. Greez agrees to repair Cal's ship and even shows Cal his private stash of ship parts for just the occasion. This event leads to Cal accidentally discovering an abandoned Jedi temple, whose caretaker droid is somehow still active. This droid is Zee, and she reveals that her old master was an ancient Jedi named Santari Khri. Santari, along with her best friend Dagan Gerra, discovered a mythical planet called Tanalorr. Tanalorr is hidden inside a nebula, and cannot be accessed without a special compass.

Cal and Night Sister Merrin. Image found on starwars.com

So Zee tells Cal and Greez about Tanalorr, and our plucky protagonists see an opportunity. Greez is interested in Tanalorr because Tanalorr is said to be filled with riches. Cal is interested because he's losing faith in his ability to fight the Empire. After all, he has been working with Saw Gerrera for over 5 years and despite their best efforts, the Empire isn't slowing down. But a hidden planet that the Empire can't access is the perfect place to raise a new generation of Jedi, or at least develop a new rebel base. So Cal investigates the key to finding Tanalorr. During his travels he wakes up Dagan Gerra, who was stored in stasis this whole time. Dagan is an accidentally funny antagonist. This man woke up after a 200+ year long coma, learns about the destruction of the Jedi Order, and immediately falls to the Dark Side. Like, Dagan literally modifies his Lightsaber to produce a red blade mere seconds after being released, while in the middle of a conversation with Cal. Now granted, some later flashbacks reveal he was corrupted long before being put in stasis. But still, bleeding out your Lightsaber to produce a red blade is one heck of a first impression. Anyway, Dagan is the main antagonist for this game, as most of the plot is spent racing against Dagan to get to Tanalorr first. Cal and his friends want to use Tanalorr as a sanctuary, Dagan wants to use it as the birthplace of an Empire of his own. Letting Dagan get there first would be replacing one tyrant with another. And because I don't have a better place to mention it, be prepared to hear the word "Tanalorr" a lot. Everyone (Mostly Dagan) brings it up in conversation so often that if you were to make a drinking game out of it, you would get hospitalized.

Cal's journey brings him to Jedha, a desert world where Merrin, Cordova and Cere have been running a sanctuary for persecuted Force Users called the Hidden Path. Cere and Cordova are two of the last surviving Jedi Masters (and act as mentor figures to everyone else), while Merrin is a Night Sister. The Night Sisters are technically Force Users, but the way they use the Force is completely different from everyone else. Think of it like this. Jedi and Sith are samurai IN SPACE, and they use the Force to do better samurai stuff. Night Sisters are witches IN SPACE, and they use the Force to do better witchcraft. Anyway, Merrin will assist Cal in battle while he's on Jedha, immobilizing enemies with her witchcraft and opening up portals that he can jump through to quickly travel across greater distances. Also there's a romantic subplot between Cal and Merrin, as the two clearly have feelings for each other despite coming from very different cultures. It's an alright romance, nothing too annoying, gross or problematic about it. But this is coming from a guy who generally dislikes romance in media, so take anything I say about romance in general with a grain of salt.

The bulk of the game's first two acts consist of Cal, Bode, Greez and Merrin traveling from one planet to another. They try to track down the compass leading to Tanalorr before Dagan Gerra can, while fighting off both the Empire and the Bedlam Raiders. Truth be told, this part of the story is kind of weak in my opinion. Throughout this part of the game I felt like I was just going through the motions instead of getting properly invested in the story. The most interesting thing that happens in this part of the plot is Cal fighting this dude called Rayvis, who is the leader of the Bedlam Raiders and Dagan's right hand man. There are two reasons why I like Rayvis. The first is that he is a Gen'Dai, a species of alien that was declared non-canon back when Disney bought the legal rights to the Star Wars franchise. But obviously, the Gen'Dai were made canon again for this game. Which is good, because the Gen'Dai are a cool idea for a Star Wars creature. The Gen'Dai are essentially a mass of rapidly growing nerves and flesh who live inside suits of armor. The armor they wear gives them a humanoid shape, but without it they become an eldritch blob of fleshy tentacles. Anyway, these guys are one of the few aliens that can survive being cut by a Lightsaber because their rapid growth allows them to heal even the most severe injuries. Which means that the Gen'Dai as a species work well as boss monsters. The second reason I like Rayvis is because he's voiced by D.C. Douglas, who also does the voice of Albert Wesker from Resident Evil. And I think that's kind of funny, because Rayvis' villainous monologue that he says at the start of his boss battle feels like something that a Resident Evil villain would say before transforming into a horrifying meat monster. Which fits oddly well, since the Gen'Dai are an entire species of meat monsters.

So I'm going to fast forward to the most interesting thing that happens in the story, which unfortunately requires me to put up a spoiler warning. You have been warned. So Cal manages to defeat Dagan Gerra and find the compass leading to Tanalorr, so he heads back to Jedha. Cal and friends had agreed to expand the Hidden Path to Tanalorr because of how well-hidden the planet is. But then the game hits you with a plot twist. Bode, the gunslinging rebel that's been helping Cal on his adventure was not only an Imperial Spy this whole time, he was also a fallen Jedi turned Sith Inquisitor. So Bode steals the compass and assassinates Cordova, because he's the only person smart enough to reverse engineer the compass. He also exposes the Hidden Path on Jedha to the Empire, and uses the ensuing chaos to flee the scene. Cal gives chase and gets into a boss battle against Bode, but no matter how good the player fights, the duel is scripted so that Cal always gets knocked unconscious while Bode escapes.

The game does something really cool once Cal is defeated here. It takes you to the Game Over menu and asks you to hit the respawn button like it does when the player dies under "normal" circumstances, but when you do, you're not playing as Cal anymore. You're now playing as Cere, who has a completely different move set from Cal. She only has one Stance (Single Blade), but Cere's version is both faster and stronger than Cal ever could be. Her Force Powers are also a lot more powerful. If Cal is meant to be an example of an "average" Jedi, Cere is an example of an "exceptionally strong" Jedi. She isn't as powerful as someone like Starkiller, Darth Revan or Darth Vader, but she is pretty close to them. Which is impressive, since two of those characters are from Star Wars Legends, a sadly no longer canon spin off series where everything in the Star Wars universe is cranked up to eleven. But speaking of Darth Vader, guess who shows up to shut down the Hidden Path?

We get a boss battle against Darth Vader himself, and he is by far the hardest fight in the game. And the funny thing is, Darth Vader doesn't even know about Tanalorr nor does he care to know. Once again, Darth Vader is an outside-context problem that puts the fear of death in everyone involved. Case in point, while Cere is fighting for her life, Vader is lazily deflecting her blows with only one hand, and only takes the battle seriously when Cere manages to wound him halfway through their duel. It's an almost perfect fight, except for one little thing. If you die to Vader through normal gameplay, you have to do the fight again. But if you empty out Darth Vader's health bar completely, instead of dying like a normal boss, Vader stops holding back and finishes Cere with a one hit kill move. I feel like they should have done the Sekiro thing where if you manage to "beat" the unbeatable boss you get an extra cutscene, but still allow the story to progress if you die through normal gameplay. Especially because the Bode fight I literally just described does exactly that. I prefer the way Fallen Order handled the concept of a "lore-accurate" Vader fight better, because in the first game, Vader was straight up invincible. Nothing you could do in the first game could hurt Vader, so the only way to "defeat" him was to run away while he stalked you like a horror movie monster. Because as far as the Star Wars galaxy is concerned, that's what Darth Vader is. That being said, I still enjoyed Jedi Survivor's Vader fight, and it's tied with the Rayvis fight for my favorite boss battle in the game.

Cal prepares to fight a squad of Stormtroopers using Double Blade Stance. Image found on steamdb.info

So Cere and Cordova are dead, and Cal swears to get vengeance on Bode for ratting them all out. And Cal is so outraged by Bode's betrayal that he starts using the Dark Side of the Force, which anyone with even a basic knowledge of Star Wars lore knows is very much a bad thing. But I do like how the Dark Side is used in gameplay as a kind of super mode for Cal. While "Embracing the Dark" Cal automatically switches to Cere's move set and his damage output goes through the roof. Basic enemies like Stormtroopers die in one hit on even the highest difficulty, and the much stronger Purge Troopers and Security Droids go down in two or three hits. His Force powers get upgraded as well, letting him Force Choke enemies and crush droids and mechs with ease. Additionally, Cal can use the Force to slow down time itself while embracing the Dark Side, which allows him to either heal with no consequences or get some free hits in on his hapless victims. Cal could actually freeze time before this point, but the ability felt lackluster prior to the Dark Side upgrade. Also, you remember when I said that you couldn't make Cal's Lightsaber red for lore reasons? The real reason is that while "Dark Side Mode" is active, Cal's Lightsaber changes from its usual color to red, and it returns to its original color once the effects wear off.

The big finale of Jedi Survivor is a three-phase, 2vs1 boss battle with Bode, right inside the heart of Tanalorr. Merrin will help Cal during the first two phases of the battle, but the final phase is a 1vs1 duel. This fight is nowhere near as dramatic or as difficult as the Vader fight, but to be fair, any battle with Vader is going to be both more dramatic and more difficult than anything else in the game. Bode starts the fight with his own version of Blaster Stance, though he later switches to a Dark Side-boosted version of Single Blade Stance for the final phase. It's an okay fight. Not too easy, not too hard. That being said, I find it amusing just how easily Bode goes down when you use Dark Side Mode, and the transition between second and third phase is scripted so you have no choice but to embrace the Dark Side. Like, from Bode's perspective, he isn't the final boss. Cal is, and Embracing the Dark Side is Cal's version of a second phase. Bode's like a Souls Borne character without the resurrection ability, fighting an unwinnable battle. The only thing I will overtly criticize here is that Tanalorr itself is a disappointingly boring planet to explore. It consists of a shoreline leading up to a temple, and the temple's interior serves as the final boss arena. That's it. There's no collectibles or hidden super bosses or anything like that.

But why did Bode betray them all in the first place? The reason is because he has a daughter named Kata, and he made a deal with the Empire. Bode would work as a spy and in exchange the Empire would spare Kata's life. However, after learning about Tanalorr, Bode decides to betray both the rebels and the Empire so he can raise his daughter in peaceful solitude. Which doesn't strike me as particularly smart. Like, Tanalorr is a whole planet. You don't need an entire planet to raise one child. He could easily just raise his family on one side of the planet and let the rebels/Empire do their thing on the other. But then again, Bode's entire characterization post-betrayal is a real-time reenactment of Yoda's warning to Anakin back in The Phantom Menace. "Fear leads to Anger. Anger leads to Hate. And Hate leads to Suffering." Bode is so scared of losing Kata that he betrays everyone who has ever helped him. When his former friends confront him, he lashes out in anger. His anger turns to murderous hatred because he now views literally everyone in the galaxy as a threat to Kata, and any threat to his daughter must be destroyed. And in his hatred, he frightens and almost kills Kata while fighting both Cal and Merrin at the same time. In the end, Bode is killed by Cal and Kata is shockingly okay with that. Even before this point, Kata agreed with Cal and Merrin that what Bode did was morally despicable. Imagine being such a bad father that your only child not only agrees with your killers that you were a terrible person, but said killers adopt your kid and turn out to be better parents than you ever were. Massive L on Bode's part.

The game ends with Cal, Greez and Merrin hosting a funeral for all their fallen friends (and Bode). They decide to build a new home on Tanalorr and adopt Kata into their found family. The Empire still doesn't know about Tanalorr, and the Bedlam Raiders are scattered and leaderless due to the deaths of both Dagan Gerra and Rayvis. It's a bittersweet ending, all things considered. And overall, I found the game to be okay and almost good. There is just one problem I neglected to mention, in addition to my smaller critiques. This problem is so great that it needs its own section in the review.

Jedi Survivor is not a well optimized game by any stretch of the imagination. I ran into a plethora of technical problems that dragged the whole experience down. The game crashed on me twice, the first time being during the tutorial. I also experienced a glitch on two separate occasions where Jedi Mind Tricks stopped working, forcing me to restart the game until they did. Some character models didn't load in correctly, causing random body parts to become invisible. Enemies would sometimes get stuck inside walls and if it wasn't for Cal's ability to grab enemies with the Force, I would not have been able to get those enemies unstuck. That last one is especially bad because a battle isn't considered "finished" until all enemies involved are dead. The framerate would also frequently dip during the more intense cutscenes or when traveling between areas. On top of all of this, the game has a 150+ gigabyte download size, meaning this game by itself took up almost a whole third of my PS5's active memory. If the game ran perfectly and didn't have such glaring tech issues, I would have given this game an easy 4 out of 5 stars. But the tech problems are so great that the game fluctuated between a 3 star rating and even a 2 star rating. And you want to know the real kicker? From what I've heard other reviewers say, apparently the PC version has even worse technical issues than the PS5 version. I can't say for certain but if that's that's true, that's a real shame.

As for presentation, I consider Jedi Survivor to be fairly average. The whole game is fully voice acted and sports motion capture animation for all the main cinematics. But the graphical quality isn't particularly impressive by itself. It's a nice looking Star Wars game for sure, but it does that thing that a lot of Triple-A games do where they try really hard to look photo-realistic but lack either the technology or the budget to pull it off properly. This game looks like your stereotypical Triple-A game. This isn't a compliment nor is an insult. I just wish the game had more of a visual identity of its own. All the games using Capcom's RE Engine do a better job at the "realistic" art style, just to give a comparison. One thing I like is that the camera work in the cinematics. It does the thing that the modern God of War games do where the camera shows everything in a long take format (meaning no sudden changes in the camera angle). Additionally, the camera is slightly shaky, creating the illusion that they were recorded by an onset cameraman. It makes the cinematics feel, well, cinematic. If there was a new theatrical Star Wars movie with this kind of camerawork, I would actually really enjoy it.

The sound design is good. Not only do we have all the classic Lightsaber/Blaster sound effects that we all know and love, there's also a fun little quirk with changing the Lightsaber's color. Each color changes the sound of the "hum" the blade makes when the saber is activated. The voice acting is also generally pretty good. I especially like Merrin's voice, because she speaks in a Slavic accent. I don't know exactly if it's supposed to be Russian or some other variant of Eastern European, but either way it makes her sound like she came from a completely different culture from everyone else. It also makes her sassy remarks even funnier. But I do want give my compliments to Scott Lawrence, who does the voice of Darth Vader in this game. He does such a good job sound-a-liking the iconic Vader Voice used by the late James Earl Jones that at first I thought that it actually was James Earl Jones himself doing the voice. It's not, unfortunately, but like I said, Scott Lawrence does the character justice. Speaking of voice actors, there's a side character named Turgle. Turgle has no plot relevance whatsoever besides handing out the occasional side quest. And you know who they got to voice this goofy frog-looking alien man? Richard Steven Horvitz, a legendary voice actor well known for roles such as Zim from Invader Zim, Billy from The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy, and Dag from Angry Beavers. I was not expecting to see Richard Steven Horvitz in a Star Wars game, but it's cool that he's here.

Cal and BD-1 looking at the sunset on Koboh. Image found on starwars.com

So would I recommend Star Wars Jedi Survivor? No, or at least not at full price. I bought my copy of this game during a sale that brought the price down from $70 to $20 USD. And I feel like $15-$20 is the ideal price range for a game of this quality. Paying $70 for an otherwise average video game based on a preestablished franchise with glaring performance issues is too much money. Then again, asking for $70 for any video game is quite the demand, and I feel like the game needs to be as close to perfect as possible to justify that kind of price. Especially when other Souls Likes are typically priced between $40-$50. But honestly speaking, even if the game ran perfectly, I don't think I was in the right head space to enjoy it properly. I've been feeling burnt out on Star Wars content for a while now. So let me ask you a question. What exactly is a Star Wars fan exactly? The biggest problem with Star Wars as a franchise is that there is so much "stuff" with the Star Wars brand on it that you cannot possibly be a fan of EVERYTHING Star Wars related. Especially since each "thing" in the franchise has wildly inconsistent quality. For everything as good as say, Star Wars: Andor there is something as bad as The Star Wars Holiday Special. Jedi Survivor feels like it's the middle of those two extremes. Like it's not even close to the best Star Wars video game, but if it's also nowhere near the worst. It's a perfectly average, some would say mediocre experience. One might even call this game "mid." I give Jedi Survivor 3 stars out of 5.

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor is the property of Electronic Arts and Respawn Entertainment. Star Wars (the franchise) is the property of Disney. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Lies of P is Peak Pinocchio Fiction. A very "honest" review.

2024-12-21T21:05:00.001-05:00

If you told me five years ago that the closest thing we would ever get to a Bloodborne sequel is a weird Pinocchio game, I would have called you mad. But here we are, with a review of Lies of P. Developed by Round8 Studio and published by Neowiz back in 2023, Lies of P is a Souls Like, but it is not a Souls Borne. What's the difference you ask? Well, Souls Borne refers to the dark fantasy/gothic horror action roleplaying games made by From Software. A Souls Like is a game not made by From Software but still inspired by From Software's signature style. There are many Souls Likes out there, some being of better quality than others. But out of all the Souls Likes I've seen, Lies of P comes the closest to recreating the "From Software Magic." Which feels like a weird thing to say, because this game's sales pitch is "What if Pinocchio was in a Gothic Horror setting?" and the game takes that premise 100% seriously. A quick disclaimer before we begin. I played Lies of P on a Playstation 5, and thus can't speak for its performance on an Xbox system nor on PC. Lies of P is also rated M for Mature by the ESRB because of violence and mild profanity. Reader discretion is advised.

Lies of P official box art. Image found on Wikipedia.org

In case you (somehow) don't know what Pinocchio is, it's an Italian fairy tale originally written by Carlo Collodi back in 1883. The original story was about a wooden puppet that came to life and had to learn basic life lessons like "stay in school" or "don't tell lies." It was later adapted into a Disney movie that wounded up becoming the most famous version of the story, because 1940's era Disney movies had a habit of being more popular than their inspirations. And in case you don't know what Bloodborne is, it's a Gothic Horror action game about a monster hunter tasked with exploring a Victorian city overrun by a variety of nightmarish monsters, ranging from werewolves to cultists to literal aliens. It's regarded as one of the greatest Playstation Exclusive games ever made, and depending on who you ask, it's one of the greatest games in general. I bring all of this up because Lies of P pulls heavy inspiration from the original fairy tale as well as from Bloodborne.

Just so everyone is caught up on what a Souls Like is, it's a subgenre of action/roleplaying games that is characterized by five main characteristics. Firstly, Souls Like games use a stamina based combat system. What this means is that every action, from swinging your sword to casting a magic spell, spends stamina or some equivalent thereof. Stamina recharges automatically as long as you aren't doing anything strenuous. Secondly, these games have you collecting a universal currency that is used both to buy items from merchants as well as to unlock upgrades for your character. This currency is collected by defeating enemies, but if the player's character dies for any reason, they drop all unspent currency that they were carrying on their person. This is not the end however, for if the player returns to where they died, they can recover the lost currency and add it to whatever they got in the time since their previous death.

Thirdly, games of this nature give you a limited number of healing items which refill automatically when you rest at a checkpoint. Fourthly, the main method of progression involves exploring labyrinthine levels in search of boss monsters to fight, either because they block the way to the next level or because they have an item you need for something. The boss monsters will more often than not be the highlight of the game, and most Souls Likes live and die by the quality of their boss battles. And finally, Souls Like games like to be cryptic and mysterious in their story-telling, often hiding story-relevant information in the descriptions of collectibles, hidden details in the environment or easily missed conversations with the occasional friendly bystander. There are other things that most Souls Likes have in common, such as a poison swamp level or a "level up lady" but the five points are the most common characteristics. Additionally, a Souls Like doesn't need to do all five of these things to "count" as one, though it does need to do at least three of them. All of this is important because Souls Likes sadly cannot be judged in a vacuum. Any time a new Souls Like releases, the question on everyone's mind is always "Is it as good as From Software's stuff?" After all, From Software's style is so specific and niche that anything imitating it will have no choice but to compete against its inspiration. So expect me to make comparisons frequently in this review.

Lies of P takes place in the City of Krat, a bustling metropolis that discovered a borderline magical source of energy called Ergo. An inventor by the name of Geppetto used the Ergo to create puppets so advanced that not only can they move around without the aid of strings, they can even develop minds of their own. In other words, the puppets are basically robots in all but name. So naturally, the citizens of Krat use the Puppets for manual labor. Construction work, law enforcement, house cleaning, things along those lines. There was just one problem. An incident known as the Puppet Frenzy led to the overwhelming majority of puppets going rogue and killing their masters. There is only one thing that can stop the puppets, which is ironically, another puppet. So a mysterious fairy named Sophia awakens Geppetto's magnum opus, a concerningly lifelike puppet boy named Pinocchio, and orders him to destroy all the other puppets and save Krat from total annihilation. The game starts here.

Like almost every Souls Like, Lies of P starts with the player choosing a class. There's only three to choose from, and the decision admittedly is not that important. The classes determine what weapon Pinocchio starts the game with and what his starting stats are, though he can acquire the other weapons later. And unlike every other Souls Like in existence, Lies of P has no minimal stat requirements. As soon as you pick up a weapon, you can start using it. It may not do that much damage if your stats aren't leveled up properly, but the fact that every weapon is at least usable the moment you pick it up is a nice quality of life feature. Speaking of stats, one minor critique I have is that the stats are oddly named and not exactly intuitive at first glance. Let me give you an idea of what I mean. In most Souls Likes, there's a stat that improves your character's skill with heavyweight weapons like war hammers and great swords, a stat that improves lightweight weapons like bows and daggers, and a stat that improves magic. These stats are usually named Strength, Dexterity and Intelligence, or at least some synonym for those three terms. Lies of P calls these stats Motivity, Technique and Advance. These stat names don't exactly roll off the tongue that well. Again, this is a minor nitpick.

Pinocchio running towards a monster called a Carcass. Image found on SteamDB.info

Lies of P has the aforementioned stamina-based combat system alongside a few quirks. Firstly and most obviously, you can mix and match different weapon parts to make new weapons entirely. Almost every weapon you can find has two parts, a blade and a handle. The handle changes what attacks and combos you can perform with the weapon while the blade changes the range and type of damage. This is honestly a brilliant system. If you like the move set on one weapon but need to change your damage type to counter a particularly challenging enemy or boss, all you have to do is swap out the blade for something else. Heck, there are some weapons with really good blades but really lame handles, almost begging you to try switching the blades onto something else. For example, the Salamander Dagger is a superheated knife. It's one of the first weapons you get that can deal fire damage, but the Dagger suffers from lack of range. But say you put the blade of the Dagger on the Handle of something like a spear, and suddenly the dagger's blade is now a superheated spearhead. Another example, the Great Sword of Fate has one of the longest and damaging blades in the game, but normally is very slow. But if you put that blade on a rapier's handle, your attacks will become a lot faster without sacrificing power or reach.

The second quirk of Lies of P's combat is its parry and stagger system. There are three ways of preventing damage; blocking, parrying and dodging. Blocking is the easiest to do. Just hold down the appropriate button and Pinocchio will use his current weapon as a makeshift shield. If he gets hit while in this stance, he'll lose some health (but not as much as he would if the hit was unblocked). Parrying is much better than blocking but is more challenging to do consistently. Basically, tap (don't hold) the block button right before the attack hits Pinocchio and he will deflect it perfectly. This does no damage to him at all, builds up Stagger (which stuns the enemy when maxed out) and even has a chance to break the enemy's weapon. Dodging is simply running or jumping out of the way. This also doesn't hurt Pinocchio in any way. In fact, from the start of the animation to the end of it, Pinocchio is invincible. Which means that if you time it right, you can dodge through enemy attacks and follow up with a counterattack of your own. Mastering this game's combat relies on being able to tell which attacks are safe to block, which ones are easy to parry, and which ones can be dodged through. Most enemies and bosses have what are called Fury Attacks, where their body glows bright red right before delivering their most dangerous attack. Fury Attacks cannot be blocked, but they can be parried and dodged.

The third quirk of Lies of P's combat is how it handles healing. At first glance, Pulse Cells (this game's main healing item) works like any other Souls Like heal. It's limited in use but recharges when resting at a checkpoint. What makes Lies of P unique is that if you run completely out of Pulse Cells, you can recharge one of them if you land/block/parry enough hits while fighting enemies and bosses. This is a perfect compromise between the limited healing of the subgenre's standards and the more forgiving healing items of Bloodborne. It also allows you to be more frivolous with your healing, because if you're good enough at the game you can just recharge your Pulse Cell mid-battle.

The final quirk of the combat is the Legion Arm. Pinocchio's left arm is the only part of him that is truly mechanical, and as such it can be customized with various gadgets, Sekiro style. The Legion Arm gadgets are the game's equivalent of magic spells, being either long range projectiles or utility powers meant to compliment specific fighting styles. These gadgets can range from a grappling hook that can pull enemies towards you (or vice versa), a shield that greatly enhances blocking, or a literal handgun. Legion Arms have limited energy, however, so they should be used sparingly. Additionally, only one Legion Arm can be equipped at a time, unless you unlock an upgrade that removes this restriction. Speaking of upgrades, in addition to Ergo as the main currency, there's a second currency called Quartz. Quartz can be used to unlock more specialized upgrades like extra Pulse Cells and a higher chance to stun enemies. Quartz can be found in treasure chests or as a reward for completing side quests.

Pinocchio being given the choice to lie or tell the truth about an aging woman's appearance. Image found on IGN.com

The main thing setting Lies of P apart from other Souls Likes is the way it handles dialogue and morality. Arguably the most well-known thing about Pinocchio is that his nose grows whenever he tells a lie. This game's Pinocchio technically doesn't do that, though his shadow does get longer with each lie. Multiple times throughout the game, the player needs to choose whether or not to tell the truth. To make sure the player can't cheat and look up the consequences for lying or speaking honestly, the game puts a 10 second time limit to pick a truth or lie. You would think that telling the truth would be the "morally good" option every time, considering this game is supposed to be a Pinocchio adaptation. But Lies of P has a hidden stat called Humanity, which not only determines how close Pinocchio gets to becoming a real boy, it also determines which ending you get. You gain Humanity in one of four ways; telling lies, solving riddles, listening to music records and helping your friends with their problems. Telling lies is the easiest way to gain Humanity, and the game's best possible ending requires you to be 90% Human or better. You don't need to tell a lie EVERY time if you want this ending, though doing so is the easiest way to get that much Humanity in the first place.

That being said, the lies in this game aren't particularly malicious. Most of the time, when Lies of P's Pinocchio lies, he does so to avoid hurting someone's feelings or to protect someone else. I think the best moment that showcases how lying can be a "good" thing in the right context is a side quest involving a sickly grandmother. She is dying of an illness called the Petrification Disease and wants to see her baby grandson one last time before she passes. The real grandson is dead, murdered by rogue puppets. However, Pinocchio can find a defunct, baby-shaped puppet and pretend that it's her real grandson. The grandmother is going blind because of her illness and can't tell the difference. But in this instance, Pinocchio lies to give this poor woman some much needed closure in her dying moments.

Another example of how lying can be a "good" thing is when first meeting a shady merchant named Alidoro. Alidoro is this game's version of Honest John, a talking fox that deceived the original story's Pinocchio with delusions of fame and stardom. Here, Alidoro is a merchant wearing a canine mask who asks you where Hotel Krat is. Hotel Krat is the main hub world of Lies of P, and all of Pinocchio's friends take shelter there as it's the only real safe zone. Lady Antonia, the owner of the hotel, explicitly told Pinocchio not to let any strangers find the hotel. So in this case, Pinocchio lies about the hotel's location to protect his friends from a dangerous-looking stranger. Alidoro still finds the hotel no matter what, it just takes him longer to do so if you lie to him.

One thing I need to mention about Lies of P is that has a few quality of life features that made the experience much more manageable. You see, Souls Likes have a reputation for being really hard. And some nerds online get real mad if you suggest ideas to make the experience more enjoyable out of a misguided fear that such features would "ruin the challenge." Lies of P is a hard game, but its quality of life features don't ruin the challenge. They make getting back to the fun parts after a Game Over less stressful. Here's an example. This game's currency is called Ergo. You get Ergo every time you destroy a puppet or kill a living creature. You lose Ergo if Pinocchio dies. But say you die to a boss. In most Souls Likes, you would need to scramble to the exact spot in the boss arena you died previously to get your currency back. In Lies of P, lost Ergo is placed just before the entrance of the boss arena, completely removing the added hassle of getting your stuff back while a boss tries to squish you like a bug. Like most Souls Likes, there are optional side quests where you help the few friendly characters with a problem. Unlike most Souls Likes, Lies of P puts special icons on the level select menu to remind you of those side quest objectives. Now this isn't perfect, because if you never meet the character face-to-face and progress the story too far, they might leave before you can even talk to them. But once you actually find the side characters and talk to them, you don't have to worry about forgetting where they are or what they want. If you really struggle with a specific boss, you can summon an entity called the Specter to assist you. The only time you can't summon the Specter is during the first boss (the Parade Master) and the final boss, as you are expected to deal with that on your own.

But this brings me to my biggest criticism of Lies of P and the primary reason I cannot justify giving it a 5 star rating. This game doesn't have a pause button. I can forgive Bloodborne, Elden Ring and the Dark Souls trilogy for not having a pause button. But I cannot forgive Lies of P for not having the ability to pause the game. Why, you ask? Contrary to what sweaty edge lords on the Internet will tell you, the Souls Borne series not having a normal pause button is NOT a deliberate design choice on From Software's part. It was a necessary sacrifice because of the unpredictable nature of Souls Borne multiplayer. In From Software's games, another player can summon you into their world (or vice versa) either to help out with a boss battle or to challenge you to a duel. This can happen at any time, thus every player's game needs to be compatible with an "always-online" server, and thus the game can't be paused reliably. After all, how can you get hundreds of thousands of players across the world to pause the game as a community? The answer is you can't. Thus, the pause feature was axed from the Souls Borne series. Lies of P doesn't have ANY multiplayer components to speak of whatsoever. Which means that Neowiz and/or Round8 either forgot to include a pause feature or they excluded it deliberately in a misguided attempt to make the game harder. The former scenario would be outrageously amateurish for what is otherwise an extremely well polished game. The latter scenario tells me that Neowiz values the opinion of the aforementioned sweaty edge lords too much. It's especially bizarre because the previously mentioned quality of life features prove that the devs not only like Souls Likes, but took the time to find ways to make the experience smoother. You would not believe the number of times I had to forfeit a boss battle because something in real life needed my attention, something that could have been solved with a pause feature.

Speaking of bosses, Lies of P has about 27 bosses in total. And overall, I'd say it's a fairly good lineup. Generally speaking, all enemies in this game are divided into three categories. Humans, Puppets and Carcasses. What's a Carcass, you ask? Mild spoilers here, but the Puppets aren't the only creatures powered by Ergo. If a human who was infected with the Petrification Disease consumes Ergo, they are cured of the disease, but start mutating into a hideous monster called a Carcass. Basically, Carcasses are magical zombies. These categories are important to remember because certain weapons and items do more damage to one category than the others. Puppets take extra damage from electrical weapons, while Humans and Carcasses take more damage from fiery and acidic weapons, respectively. But anyway, I generally prefer the Puppets and Humans as far aesthetics go. The Puppet enemies are all wonderfully designed and are wholly unique to Lies of P, being robotic abominations whose limbs and bend and rotate in ways no human can. Human enemies are the rarest of the bunch, and almost all of them are based on characters from the original Pinocchio story. But Carcasses feel the least "unique" of the bunch, as most of them look like fairly stereotypical From Software monsters. Which is to say, lots of body horror and grotesque monstrosities.

Unfortunately, there are bosses I think are annoying and could benefit from a rework. For example, one boss that I didn't really care for is Laxasia the Complete. This warrior woman is a two phase battle. In fact, most bosses in this game have two phases. The problem is that First Phase Laxasia and Second Phase Laxasia feel like two completely different bosses that were crudely combined together. In her first phase, Laxasia is an armored knight who swings a big heavy great sword around. She occasionally supercharges her sword swings with lightning and her armor leaves her invincible from behind (forcing you to fight her head on), but is otherwise inoffensive with easy to learn attack patterns and no annoying gimmicks. She's not too easy, not too difficult.

But in her second phase, Laxasia removes her armor, equips a shield and starts moving around with the speed of an anime character. The rhythm of the fight completely changes, and not for the better. She moves around so fast she might as well be teleporting, and she can now fly so high up in the air that the camera struggles to keep her in view. Honestly, you could split these two phases into separate bosses, with Second Phase Laxasia being some kind of optional super boss placed at the end of a hidden level, and the whole game would have a better boss roster. I mean, Laxasia is already doing the whole "beautiful warrior woman who is much harder to defeat than any other boss in the game" thing that From Software likes doing in their own games. The difference is that From Software makes their "beautiful warrior women" bosses optional and puts them at the end of a hidden level. Laxasia meanwhile is absolutely mandatory, with no way to skip over her fight if you want to progress the story.

The introduction to the Black Rabbit Brotherhood, one of the main bosses of the game. Image found SteamDB.info

But you know who doesn't need a rework? The Black Rabbit Brotherhood. This is easily my favorite boss in the game, both because of their design and because of the battle itself. First a little bit of context. In Krat, there is a group of elite warriors called the Stalkers. The Stalkers were formed to be an anti-puppet militia force in the event the puppets turned hostile. The Black Rabbit Brotherhood were a group of Stalkers that went rogue, and now they antagonize human and puppet alike in the name of causing mischief. The battle itself is a what's called a gank fight, where you must face multiple opponents simultaneously. Unlike most gank fights in the Souls Like subgenre, the Black Rabbit Brotherhood is actually fun. A problem with a lot of gank fights in other Souls Likes is that it is difficult to learn attack patterns when there are three or more attacks coming at you at the same time, all from different directions. The Black Rabbit Brotherhood circumvents this problem by doing two things. First, only the Eldest Brother has a health bar, meaning that you have to concentrate on him specifically in order to defeat the whole Brotherhood. Secondly, the younger Brothers (of which there are three) drop in one at a time and leave after a short while, ensuring that you only have to fight an absolute maximum of two Brothers at a time.

Also, the Black Rabbit Brotherhood is one of the few bosses that gets a rematch. The rematch plays out in the reverse order of the first battle, with the younger Brothers attacking first and the Eldest only joining the fray once the younger Brothers have been defeated. But even in the rematch, the younger Brothers take turns fighting you and are generally passive when it's not their turn yet. I think the devs knew deep down that the Black Rabbit Brotherhood was the best fight in the game, as not only do they get a rematch in the first place, but these guys were all over the pre-release marketing. They even have what is by far the coolest intro cinematic in not just the game, but possibly out of all Souls Likes. These goofy mad hatter-looking rabbit boys start their fight in the rain, carrying a literal open coffin with the word "LIAR" spray painted on the inside, and they invite Pinocchio into it as a morbid taunt. The Black Rabbit Brotherhood manages to be the perfect blend of stylish and intimidating.

On the subject of level design, Lies of P is oddly linear. Most levels are a narrow set of paths with the occasional shortcut to an earlier part of the level. That being said, I like how the levels make enough sense geographically that you can see previous or upcoming levels in the distance if you can get to a high enough vantage point. Speaking of presentation, let's get the most obvious thing about this game out of the way. This version of Pinocchio looks like an anime pretty boy. In fact, this is by far the least puppet-like interpretation of the character. I know that Humanity is supposed to represent the process of becoming a real boy, but Pinocchio looks like he's 3/4ths of the way there already. Literally the only thing robotic or mechanical about his appearance is his left arm. This isn't exactly a criticism, it's just an observation. Neowiz legally cannot make their version of Pinocchio look like the Disney version nor can they use something similar to Guillermo del Toro's design. While the concept of Pinocchio is public domain, specific designs of the character are not. Essentially, you can make your own version of a living Italian puppet, as long as your living Italian puppet doesn't look like Disney's version. Or Guillermo del Toro's version. Thus, we got anime pretty boy Pinocchio.

In terms of music and sound design, Lies of P has what might just be the best soundtrack in Souls Like history. Not because of the regular boss battle music, which is about you expect for a game of this nature (intense orchestra with vaguely Latin sounding choirs). But because of the music records. I previously mentioned that listening to music records gives you Humanity. Speaking as a firm believer that making art (both visual and audible) is one of the most important aspects of the human experience, I approve of the implication that listening to music makes your more human. Jokes aside, the record songs are all brilliantly performed classical symphonies. Not all the songs have lyrics, but some of them do. Some of the songs are even sung in French. The main highlight of the soundtrack is a song called Feel. It's one of the first records you can find, and it leaves quite the first impression. Feel is a somber melody performed mostly by piano with some jazz instruments to back up the pianist and the lead singer. Feel is the closest thing Lies of P has to a theme song, and whenever I heard the song I felt the need to stop what I was doing and just enjoy the tranquility of the music.

Pinocchio being grabbed by the Scrapped Watchmen, one of the first bosses encountered. Image found on SteamDB.info

The actual sound effects are also quite good. Just to give a few examples, the parry sound effect is a crisp and clear *clang* and walking on different surfaces (wood, stone, metal et cetera) produces different footstep sounds. One sound effect that I particularly like is Pinocchio's various noises. Pinocchio is pretty much a mute protagonist, only speaking when the player is given the option to pick a truth or lie. But when he's fighting, you can hear different grunts as he uses his weapons and dodges enemy attacks. These grunts sound mechanical when Pinocchio is low on Humanity and gradually sound more organic and "natural" as his Humanity increases. The voice acting is also surprisingly competent. The main highlight of voice acting has to go to Arlecchino, the King of Riddles. He sounds a little goofy when you first encounter him as he speaks almost entirely in rhyme. But after you learn that he's (technically) responsible for every bad thing that happened in Krat, he becomes a lot more sinister. I also like Venigni the Inventor, who speaks with an over-the-top Italian accent and is the only character who speaks with said accent.

There's one last thing I want to say about the game before I share my final thoughts. Lies of P has a New Game Plus mode, letting you replay the entire game with a fully upgraded Pinocchio. To make sure that the game is still a challenge, every boss receives a boost to their health and damage output. There are also special Golden Records that can only be collected in New Game Plus mode, and these songs are remixes of preexisting songs. The other big change in New Game Plus is that the captions are changed slightly. You see, in a first playthrough, whenever any of the Puppet bosses speak, it sounds like robotic gibberish and the subtitles get distorted into an incomprehensible mess. In New Game Plus, the captions are fixed, you can now understand what the Puppet bosses are saying as they fight you. The actual plot of the game won't change, but it is a neat idea.

Overall, Lies of P is a great Souls Like. It does a lot of things right, both in terms of innovating on the Souls Like formula, and in terms of being a new adaptation of a classic fairy tale. But the inability to pause the game (and with no multiplayer functions to justify its absence) does drag down the game's overall quality. Despite that glaring issue, the rest of the game is polished enough to be a worthwhile experience. Ignoring the game's status as a Souls Like for a second here, it's the best Pinocchio game I've ever played. Granted, it's the ONLY Pinocchio game I've played. And truth be told, the sales pitch being so absurd yet taken so seriously is what drew me to the game in the first place. But either way, I give Lies of P 4 stars out of 5. I'd love to see what Neowiz does next, especially since the devs have expressed interest in doing Souls Like adaptations of other fairy tales. Mild spoilers here, but after the credits roll Lies of P ends with a teaser for a Wizard of Oz themed Souls Like starring Dorothy. And personally, taking classic fairy tale characters and filtering them through the lens of dark fantasy and gothic horror is an idea I approve of.

Lies of P is the property of Round8 Studio and Neowiz. None of the images used were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Another Halloween Special: a very scary Resident Evil 4 Remake review

2024-10-22T18:43:00.001-04:00

It's the spooky month again. And you know what that means! Trick-or-Treating, costume parties, candy and me writing a review of a horror game. And today we are reviewing Resident Evil 4. Specifically the remake version that was released on PS5, Xbox Series X and Steam, because that's the only version of the game that I have played for myself. A quick content warning before we continue. Resident Evil is a horror franchise and as such every game in the series is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. Because of violence, swearing, disturbingly detailed zombies, body horror and cheesy one liners. Reader discretion is advised.

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But what exactly is Resident Evil 4? Released back in 2005 by Capcom as a Nintendo GameCube exclusive, Resident Evil 4 (often shortened to RE4 for the sake of brevity) is the fourth main title in the Resident Evil franchise. Resident Evil is, along side its rival series Silent Hill, the grandfather of the horror game genre. Without Resident Evil and Silent Hill, there most likely wouldn't be horror games at all. Or at least, the genre would look very different without their influences. RE4 won the Game of the Year award in that same year and to this day is considered a beloved classic that anyone with even a passing interest in horror should play. What's more interesting is the fact that the game's director, Shinji Mikami, had the video game equivalent of writer's block while working on RE4. So he and his crew made four different video game demos, labeled them all RE4, released them to the public as part of a limited time event and whichever demo was most popular would become the basis for the "real" RE4. Capcom didn't want to waste the other demos, so after they figured out which demo to turn into a full Resident Evil game, the others were renamed and reused for other projects. And that's how we got Devil May Cry.

Resident Evil 4 Remake is well, a remake of the original RE4. Released in 2023, the remake was made because Capcom's current big project is to bring Resident Evil 1-6 up to the graphical standards established by Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, as well as to expand on the story and gameplay. They've already released remakes for the first three games, and while longtime fans may have their gripes with the third remake, the general consensus is that they are at least as good as their original counterparts. While Shinji Mikami did not work on RE4 Remake (the role of director instead went to Yasuhiro Anpo and Kazunori Kaboi), he did state on his personal Twitter/X account that he "enjoyed it very much." An important disclaimer for this review. I never played the original RE4 myself. My only personal experience is with the remake. That being said, I did some research beforehand and will mention any major differences between the original and the remake when necessary.

In Resident Evil 4, you play as Leon S. Kennedy. Leon was one of the main protagonists of RE2 and RE4 serves as a direct continuation of Leon's story. While you don't need to play RE1 or RE3 to understand this game's story, doing a little research on the events of RE2 would help. Anyway, Leon was a police officer stationed in a fictional USA town called Raccoon City. In 1998, Raccoon City had the bad luck of being infected with the T-Virus, a rabies-like affliction that basically turns people into zombies. This virus was created by the Umbrella Corporation, who released it deliberately along with a bunch of other bio-weapons as part of an eugenics experiment. The CEO of Umbrella, Albert Wesker, believes it is his destiny to breed a generation of perfect superhumans that can survive in a post-zombified world, and is more than happy to throw away the lives of millions of people in the name of that destiny. Because of the T-Virus, 90% of Raccoon City's population was transformed into hideous monsters and the remaining 10% were forced to fight for their lives. Leon was one of the few survivors of the T-Virus incident. And the worst part about all of this is that everything I just described happened on Leon's first day in the service. That has to be like, the worst luck ever. Imagine getting a job and showing up to your first day of work only for your city to get overrun with zombies. Anyway, Leon managed to escape Raccoon City, which was then blasted with hydrogen bombs to keep the Virus from spreading to the rest of the country.

Fast forward 6 years later, and Leon Kennedy is now a secret agent working directly for the US President himself. During those 6 years Leon received training in marksmanship and hand-to-hand combat from a military veteran known as Major Krauser. Despite his newfound skills, Leon is still haunted by the events of his previous adventure. But Leon doesn't mope around and whine about his trauma, he just pours himself even deeper into his work as a coping mechanism. Speaking of Leon's new job, The President's daughter, Ashley Graham, is kidnapped by a Spanish cult called Los Illuminados. This cult somehow found a bunch of parasites that let's them make monsters of their own, and they plan to put a parasite in Ashley's body. It's up to Leon to track down the cult, stop their schemes and save Ashley. Complicating this mission is a run in with Ada Wong and Luis Serra. Ada is a femme fatale spy who Leon once had feelings for. They kind of have a Batman/Catwoman thing going on. But why is Ada in Spain? For reasons I won't spoil. Luis meanwhile is a former Umbrella employee who was studying the parasites that Los Illuminados use. That said, Luis seems to regret his involvement with Umbrella and promises to assist Leon on his mission as a means of atonement.

Resident Evil 4's story campaign takes place in three main locations; the Village, the Castle and the Island. Leon always starts in the Village and cannot access the other two locations until he makes significant progress in the story. But in the meantime, Leon has to deal with all sorts of monsters and villains. RE4 is heavily combat focused. And this is an important distinction because how much combat a horror game even has tends to vary on a case-by-case basis. Generally speaking, horror games can fit on a sliding scale of combat focus. Games like Resident Evil and Dead Space are the extreme end of extensive combat in a horror setting. Games like Five Nights at Freddy's and Outlast are at the extreme end of no combat at all in a horror setting. Every other horror game exists between those two extremes. Which style is better is a matter of opinion. Combat-heavy horror games can have enjoyment outside of the scares, and allowing the player to defend themselves against weaker monsters makes the *main* monsters scarier by comparison when their weapons suddenly stop working on the main threat. That being said, letting the player fight back might reduce the tension that the horror game is trying to build up. Combat-less horror is scarier on a first impression, since not being able to defend yourself at all is inherently scary. However, once the player knows where all the scares are the game becomes a glorified haunted house. It might be spooky, but predictable.

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Leon starts the game armed with a custom handgun called the SG-09 R and a combat knife, but he can find more exotic weapons throughout his adventure. These can include shotguns, sniper rifles, grenades, SMGs, and even a rocket launcher. In fact, there are so many different weapons to use that you could play the game three different times, each time using different guns, and have a wildly different experience each time. Because of the weapon variety, RE4 has a lot more replay value than other horror games. Heck, you could do a playthrough with just the SG-09 R and have a great time, because unlike every other video game in existence, the starter pistol is a genuinely good weapon that will serve you well from the start of the game all the way to the end of it. But every gun has some kind of unique benefit to it. The Punisher handgun does less damage than the SG-09 R but its bullets can pierce through shields and damage multiple enemies with one shot, provide they are standing in a row. The Red 9 handgun is basically a pistol sized shotgun, with tremendous firepower at close range but horrific recoil and below-average accuracy. But some guns, like the Red 9, can be enhanced by attaching additional parts to them. In the case of the Red 9, you can attach a stock to it to reduce the recoil.

Another important aspect of RE4's combat is knowing where to shoot enemies specifically. Headshots do more damage than body shots, obviously. But shooting an enemy in the knees will immobilize them, allowing you to finish them off with a melee attack. This attack will be either a roundhouse kick if performed in front of the immobilized enemy, or a literal suplex when performed from behind. This is actually the most cost effective method of fighting enemies. Ammo is limited, and the less ammo you waste the better. In my experience, shooting the knees and following up with a melee attack is the method that uses the least amount of ammo. It's also debatably the most stylish method of combat. Of course, this does not apply to bosses, or four-legged enemies, or to Regeneradors (more on them later.) Also, the knee shot method works best with handguns and SMGs. Shotguns and (most) rifles are so powerful that they can blow limbs completely off an enemy's body, which the game counts as an outright kill.

New to the remake is Leon's combat knife. Well, sort of. He had a knife in the original, but it was reworked to make melee combat more engaging. The knife gives Leon two different melee attacks, a sweeping slash and forward lunge. But more importantly, it allows Leon to parry enemy attacks and break free from enemy grapples. Some enemies like to grab Leon in an attempt to strangle him. Under normal circumstances, the player would need to mash the X button (or the equivalent thereof) to break free. But if Leon has a knife, he can skip this whole process and get a free stab on whoever just grabbed him. The reworked knife is the biggest difference between the original game and the remake. In fact, the knife is so important that there is literally an entire boss battle dedicated to knife-fighting. The only downside of the knife is that it has limited durability and will break if used too frequently. However, if Leon is carrying an extra knife, he will automatically switch to that knife when his main one breaks. Additionally, Leon's main knife can be repaired by a mysterious stranger called the Merchant in exchange for Pesetas, the main currency of this game.

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The Merchant can be found in (almost) every safe room. Think of safe rooms as checkpoints. You can save your progress in them, and most enemies cannot enter them. They are the only places that are truly safe. The Merchant will sell you all sorts of items. From crafting materials to new weapons. The Merchant can also upgrade the weapons you already have by improving the power of each shot, the ammo capacity, the reload speed or the rate of fire. Obviously some guns are going to be better at different things, but the upgrades can really close the distance in effectiveness. For example, the Blacktail handgun normally does a lot less damage than the Red 9. But fully upgraded in power, it becomes the second most powerful handgun in the game in addition to having superior accuracy, fire rate and reload speed. At that point the only advantage the Red 9 has over the Blacktail is that it can kill enemies using one less bullet.

The most important thing you need to remember is that Leon's inventory is limited. He has an attaché case that he can store everything in. Guns, ammo, healing items, crafting ingredients, even those additional weapon parts. Because of this, weapons with additional parts might be more powerful than average, but are balanced by taking up a lot more space in the case, thus preventing you from carrying additional items. You can rearrange the positioning of these items to make room for more in a process similar to playing Tetris. But if you can't make room for an item in the attaché case, you cannot carry it at all. You can combine two or more items together to make new items entirely, which also has the side effect of taking up less space than the sum of the item's parts. This is actually how you get most of your ammo. While you can find ammo lying around in barrels and crates, most of the time the only bullets you have are the ones you craft yourself. Each weapon also only takes ammo for its associated category. Handguns can only use handgun ammo, shotguns can only use shotgun shells, rifles can only use rifle ammo, et cetera. The one exception to this rule is the rocket launcher, on account that it's a one use only weapon. The rocket launcher is the strongest weapon in the game and can kill anything with one shot, up to and including the final boss. The downside is that not only does the rocket launcher take up more than half of Leon's inventory, it only has one shot. Once you fire the rocket launcher, that's it. You're not getting another shot with it for the rest of the game.

Resident Evil 4 sports a nice variety in enemy monster designs. You start off with basic villagers armed with torches and pitchforks, and then the monsters get gradually crazier as you progress. Just to give a few examples, Leon can encounter rabid dogs with tentacles erupting from their backs, chainsaw-wielding maniacs, cultists with man-eating worms for heads, literal zombified giants and the Regeneradors. The Regeneradors are my "favorite" enemy because their design is incredibly nightmarish and watching them slither around like a demented snake makes my skin crawl. Also, they can rapidly heal from any injury up to and including decapitation, with the only way to kill them being to destroy 3-5 hidden parasites in their torso. Regeneradors are scary because not only do they fall in the uncanny valley (looking almost human but not quite perfect), they are by far the most dangerous standard enemy type. Be thankful that game waits until you reach the Island before throwing these blubbery menaces at you.

You know how I said that Leon's main goal is to rescue Ashley? Well, he accomplishes that goal. Surprisingly early. So early in fact that this plot point isn't even considered a spoiler. But there's just one problem. Leaving the territory of Los Illuminados is far, far more difficult than entering it. Which means that until Leon and Ashley can find an escape route, you the player have to make sure both of them stay alive. Ashley is sometimes playable for brief solo adventures, but most of the time she is a non-playable companion who will follow Leon automatically. She has no weapons or combat skills to speak of. If she gets hit by any enemy, she will be incapacitated until Leon helps her back on her feet. If she gets hit while incapacitated, she will die and you will get a Game Over. Additionally, some enemies will try and grab Ashley to carry her away. If she gets carried too far away from Leon, she will be recaptured and you will get another Game Over. The other biggest change from original to remake is that Ashley has also been reworked. In the original game, she had a limited health pool that could only be refilled by "sacrificing" some of your own healing items to her. Now, her health refills by itself as long as she isn't incapacitated or being carried away. This change was made with the intention of making the "escort Ashley" sections easier. After all, the less healing items you use on Ashley, the more you have to heal up Leon.

In both the original and the remake, you can give Ashley simple commands. Things like "Stay Here" "Hide" or "Run Away." In the remake specifically, you can tell Ashley to follow Leon in either a "tight" formation or a "loose" formation. The former makes so that Ashley will try her best to stay right behind Leon's back at all times. The latter makes her keep her distance from Leon, but she will still stay close enough to have a line of sight to him. The tight formation is good for running through dangerous areas or through enemy hordes you don't have the resources to fight properly. The loose formation is good for giving Leon the breathing room he needs to actually fight off said enemies. You can also give Ashley context-sensitive commands like "hold this button down" or "hide in this specific locker." Every time the game lets you put Ashley in a locker (which is a wild thing to say without context) it usually means there's about to be a fight against a strong enemy, like one of the aforementioned chainsaw maniacs, or even worse, a Regenerador.

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But now I want to talk about Leon Kennedy himself, because he is very much the star of the show. In the original game, Leon became infamous for spouting cheesy, 80's action hero style one liners like "No thanks, BRO!" and "Where's everybody going? Bingo?" Most of said one-liners have since become memes in the Resident Evil fan community. And to be fair, the original Resident Evil were meant to be campy, since the franchise started out as a love letter to 70's and 80's era horror movies. The remakes take themselves more seriously in comparison. Don't get me wrong, though. Leon still says funny one-liners and does outrageous action hero stunts like back flips and suplexes on literal zombies. But in the remake, his cheesy action hero vibes are contrasted against the nightmarish horrors he encounters. And you know what? It works. Especially if you buy in to the idea that Leon's antics are a coping mechanism for all the stuff he went through back in Resident Evil 2. But one thing I adore about Remake-Leon's personality is that he acts more annoyed than scared by the aforementioned monstrosities. He does react with disgust at things like occult shrines and new enemy types, but every time after that initial surprise he's like "Oh great, it's these guys again." Which is honestly just as funny as the original's one liners.

Ashley on the other hand is scared out of her mind and reacts with appropriate levels of terror at every other monster. Which makes sense for her situation. She's been kidnapped by a cult, is trapped in a foreign country, has a dormant parasite in her body and her dad thought that sending only one guy to rescue her was enough. She is very lucky that the one guy that the President sent was Leon Kennedy. One of the few gripes I heard other people having with the original game was that Ashley's voice was annoying. Though perhaps it wasn't necessarily the voice and more the fact that in the original game she screams "LEON HELP!!!" every time an enemy so much as looks in her general direction. She still screams a lot (as a civilian in a horror franchise is wont to do) but I never found her to be annoying. This may be a Remake thing making the character more likable or it may be me not having any biases from experiencing the original game. I don't know.

One quick note before we continue talking about the story. Resident Evil 4 Remake has DLC. One DLC pack is free, the other is a paid expansion. The free DLC is titled The Mercenaries and is a non-canon minigame where you try to kill as many enemies as possible within a time limit. The game actually gives you a spoiler warning the first time you boot up the minigame, both because it features end-game locations as arenas and because it spoils the identity of one of the main villains. But this game mode is neat because it lets you play as other characters besides Leon such as Ada, Major Krauser, Luis and even Albert Wesker. There's also HUNK, a masked soldier that is not encountered in the main story in any capacity, but he's the closest thing the RE franchise has to a mascot, which is why he's here. Each character comes with a different set of weapons meant to encourage a specific fighting style. For example, Leon and Ada are both generalists who don't excel in anything but aren't particularly bad at anything either. They both have a pistol and a shotgun. Leon gets a semi automatic rifle unique to him in this game mode, while Ada gets a crossbow and a grappling hook, the latter of which lets her perform long range melee attacks by pulling herself towards stunned enemies. Major Krauser goes all in on melee combat, sporting a custom knife that's pretty much unbreakable as well as explosive arrows and an SMG to deal with big groups. Luis meanwhile is meant to be a sniper, with a bolt-action rifle and a Red 9 handgun giving him very good damage per shot at the expense of speed and mobility. HUNK gets an SMG and a pocket knife as his only weapons, but he can perform a neck snap on any stunned or immobilized enemy to kill them instantly. Albert Wesker is a master of parries. In fact, he's so good at parrying enemy attacks that he doesn't need a knife to do so, and every time he does parry an enemy attack he automatically performs a one-hit kill move. He has both a pistol and a magnum to deal with the few threats can can't be parried.

The last main mechanic of The Mercenaries is Mayhem Mode. This is a temporary super move that is unique to each character. Leon and Ada's Mayhem Mode just improves their damage and movement speed. Luis' lets him plant dynamite to blow up a large group of enemies at once. Krauser's is a spoiler-filled transformation that supercharges his already impressive melee attacks. HUNK's Mayhem Mode gives his SMG infinite ammo, thus letting him literally melt anyone standing in his way. And finally, Albert Wesker gains the ability to literally teleport right to any enemy in his field of vision and unleash a barrage of punches and kicks. It looks like something pulled straight out of an anime. While there is a time limit in The Mercenaries, you can extend it by either collecting green orbs hidden in each arena, killing enemies with headshots or with melee attacks. However, the game mode is NOT endless. After 150 kills, the game ends automatically and you are given the highest score possible for your troubles.

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The second DLC, Separate Ways, is a (probably) canon side story where you get to play as Ada Wong, with her adventure happening alongside Leon's. Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to play Separate Ways yet, so I cannot speak of its quality in good faith. I might write a mini-review for Separate Ways in the future. But here's as good a place as any to reveal why Ada is in the Los Illuminados compound. Ada is working for Albert Wesker. Yes, the same guy who doomed Raccoon City. Wesker wants an item called the Amber, which contains the dormant egg of one of the cult's parasites. He wants to combine the parasite with his zombie viruses to create undead superhumans. But Ada does eventually change her mind about working for a man who casually brags about how his plan will cause the deaths of not just millions of people, but billions. So she does agree to help Leon stop the cult and eventually disposes of the Amber so that it will never be used for evil ever again.

Okay, now we get into the realm of spoilers, because I want to talk about the villains. Los Illuminados is led by a cult leader named Osmund Saddler. Saddler was infected with the original parasite, and with it he can effectively mind control anyone who has another parasite in their body. There doesn't seem to be a limit to the range of his possession, in fact the entire cult is infected with parasites, implying that every enemy you face is being mind controlled all at the same time. His entire evil plan is to infect Ashley, use her as a sleeper agent to infect the President with another parasite, and then rule the United States from the shadows by mind-controlling the U.S. leadership. Funnily enough, in the original game, Saddler himself explains his plan in a stereotypical villainous monologue. In the remake, It's Luis who tells Leon why Saddler wants to put parasites in people.

Speaking of Luis, I like him. He's this smooth talking, kind of sleazy but still charming scoundrel who despite being "just" an Umbrella researcher, can keep up with Leon. In fact, there's a boss battle against two zombified giants (called El Gigante) where Leon and Luis have to work together to bring the giants down. He reminds me of Han Solo from Star Wars, just with a Spanish accent. Luis is a scoundrel who provides much of the humor and comic relief for the game. But honestly speaking, Luis is the true unsung hero of RE4. He alone was able to figure out how to remove the parasites without killing the victim. Meaning that without Luis' help, even if Leon and Ashley escaped Los Illuminados, Ashley would be doomed to mutate into some kind of freaky monster and bring about the apocalypse. Unfortunately, spoilers for this next section, but Luis does not live to see the fruits of his labor. He is sadly killed off by one of the main villains, though with his dying breath he gives Leon the key to his lab so he can remove the parasite inside Ashley safely. How Luis dies changes depending on whether it's the original or the remake. In the original game, Luis is killed by Saddler. In the remake, Luis is killed by Major Krauser. It's a minor change in the grand scheme of things, but the main reason the change was made was to introduce Krauser as a villain a lot earlier than the original did.

What's the deal with Major Krauser, you ask? The answer is that he was a double agent working for Los Illuminados the whole time, and that he was the one who kidnapped Ashley in the first place. Krauser did all of this because several years ago, Krauser and his men were sent to South America for a top secret mission called Operation Javier. What Operation Javier was is never explained, outside the fact that it was a complete disaster and the US Military left Krauser's squad to die. Krauser was really mad about how the government treated his crew, and while it's possible that he sought out Los Illuminados because he wanted revenge for his fallen comrades, he currently only cares about power. And he has the exact same skills that Leon has, because he was the one who taught Leon how to fight in the first place. And if I had a nickel for every time a Capcom game had a rival character with the same skillset as the protagonist who forsakes their humanity in the name of getting more powerful, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's still weird that both Resident Evil 4 and Devil May Cry had this exact character archetype. But then again, if Devil May Cry started life as a RE4 demo, I'd suppose you would see similarities between the two.

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The game has a few bosses to fight, and here I need to mention a "quirk" of the Resident Evil franchise. The bosses have what Capcom calls Adaptive Difficulty, where the amount of health a boss has is proportionate to the amount of ammo and healing items you have in your inventory at the start of the battle. Regular enemies have the same amount of health no matter what. Adaptive Difficulty also effects how much ammo and money you can find in barrels and crates, with ammo appearing more frequently if you're running low and money appearing more frequently when you have a surplus. The purpose of this system is meant to encourage a "use it or lose it" mentality in the player, where you gain ammo just as quickly as you use it up. Because of this, it can take anywhere between 5-6 shots to kill a boss, or up to 50-60. Overall, I like the bosses. Major Krauser is my personal favorite. You fight him three separate times, with the first time being a standard knife fight with no guns from neither Krauser nor Leon. The second time is a gun fight where Leon is forced to navigate a booby-trapped maze while Krauser harasses him with SMG fire and explosive arrows. The third time, Krauser uses a parasite to mutate his arms into a sword and shield made of bones and meat for one last duel. And the whole time they're fighting, Leon and Krauser engage in gloriously cheesy trash talk. But no matter which version of Krauser you're fighting, you have to learn how to do the parry correctly. That's just non-negotiable. Unless you use your one and only rocket launcher shot on Krauser.

On the subject of the final boss, Osmund Saddler himself, I did not do the fight legitimately. I used my one and only rocket launcher shot on Saddler, completely skipping the final battle entirely. His monster form looks cool though. Like a giant demonic crab covered in eyeballs. One boss I do enjoy is Ramon Salazar. Salazar is an arrogant noblemen who is a fanatic follower of Saddler's cult. He mutates into what can best be described as a cross between a rose and an octopus. Salazar acts as the main villain of the Castle area, and he spends the whole time being an over-dramatic nerd. The funniest thing about Salazar is that you can completely trivialize his boss fight by throwing a golden chicken egg (an item that normally is only good for selling to the Merchant) at him. This somehow removes 75% of his health and stuns him instantly. Meaning if you're quick enough, you can just blitz Salazar with shotgun blasts and rifle shots before he can even finish his villainous monologue at the start of the fight. Which is both hilarious and good for speed running!

Speaking of speed running, Resident Evil 4 gives the player a rank at the end of each playthrough based on how well they did. This considers things like number of enemies defeated, number of Game Overs, and how quickly it took the beat the game. When I first finished the game, it took me around 33 hours to complete it. But you can very easily beat this game in 8 hours or less. The current record (at the time of writing) is roughly 1 hour and 35 minutes on Standard difficulty. Oh yeah, I should mention the different difficulty settings. In addition to Adaptive Difficulty, RE4 has four traditional difficulty options. Assisted, Standard, Hardcore and Professional. Assisted is the easiest and recommended for people unfamiliar with horror games. Standard mode is intermediate and recommended for horror game fans who have not played the original game from 2005 (aka people like me). Hardcore mode is well, hard, and is recommended for people who have already played the original game. Professional mode is the same as Hardcore but with stricter parry timings and no autosaving your progress at all. It's also unavailable at first. You need to beat the game on one of the other difficulty options before it will let you even attempt Professional mode. What the difficulty options do is adjust the amount of health that regular enemies have (bosses are unaffected because of Adaptive Difficulty). It also affects how much damage they do per attack and how quickly they move around. The higher the difficulty, the faster and deadlier enemies become. Finally, the difficulty options change how much ammo you can craft and how expensive the Merchant's wares are.

The last thing I want to mention before talking about the presentation is the extra content. By completing certain "challenges" within the game, you can unlock a special currency called Challenge Points. These can be exchanged for nice cosmetic things like concept art, 3D models of all the different characters and weapons, and even fun little costumes for Leon and Ashley. Some of the costumes have additional effects, but most are just for fun. Like there's a pair of cat ears you can put on Leon that gives all of his weapons infinite ammo. Said cat ears are unlocked by getting an S+ Rank (the highest rank possible) on Professional Mode. By that point you've perfected the art of playing this silly horror game, so I don't think you need infinite ammo that badly. There's also a Pinstripe Suit for Leon that makes him look like a 1940's era gangster. Ashley gets (among other things) a suit of medieval armor that makes her too heavy for most enemies to pick up. There are some unique weapons that can only be unlocked with Challenge Points, like the Hand Cannon and the Chicago Sweeper. Of course, those weapons can only be accessed by playing New Game Plus mode. New Game Plus allows Leon to start the game with all of his weapons and upgrades from a previous playthrough. Which means you can hypothetically blitz through the game with an overpowered Leon and enjoy some sweet catharsis on any part of the game that gave you trouble the first time around.

In terms of presentation, Resident Evil 4 is a very nice looking game. Like, the original game looks shockingly good despite being almost 20 years old (which in the video game industry might as well be 200 years), and the remake manages to be debatably better. It's objectively better in terms of facial expressions and texture quality, but then again, the entire reason the remake was made was to bring this game up to a new graphical standard. In that regard, the remake succeeded. There's also a ton of little details that most people probably won't notice, but the fact they were put in the game at all makes me appreciate the effort. Just to give a few examples, Ashley tip-toes around the bodies of dead enemies instead of stepping on them. Leon starts limping if his health gets too low. Leon occasionally checks the chamber of his currently equipped gun to make sure it's loaded. Leon practices exceptional trigger discipline, never putting his finger on the trigger until the player pushes the "shoot" button. Ashley covers her ears when Leon starts shooting at something. The only thing I could say bad about RE4 Remake is that it isn't as campy and over-the-top as the original game. Which isn't even that much of a bad thing because this game is still campy. Just a different flavor of camp.

In terms of sound design and voice acting, both are good. The music consists mostly of ambient droning meant to put the player on edge (because this is still a horror game). That said, there is some peaceful music in the safe rooms meant to serve as a break from the harrowing nightmares outside. The sound of the guns firing is crisp. Leon still has his cheesy one-liners, which are delivered in the most deadpan way imaginable. And enemies bark out Spanish phrases while fighting you. I don't speak Spanish, and the subtitles don't translate the Spanish, but I have heard from Spanish speaking corners of the Internet that the Spanish voice acting is an improvement over the original. You know what's not an improvement over the original? Ada Wong's voice. I do not know why Ada Wong's voice in the remake bothers me. Like, it's not as good as the voice acting for everyone else but it's also not bad enough to where I can call it bad acting in good faith. I think the problem is that she sounds oddly stiff. I'm not sure if it's the actor herself, or if the problem lies with the voice direction, or if the game just used a bad take. I remember seeing some people on the Internet say that her voice acting sounds better in Separate Ways, but again, I haven't played that DLC yet. It's unfortunate, because the rest of the game's audio presentation is so good that this one thing sticks out even more.

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Overall, I'd say that Resident Evil 4 is a splendid horror game. Both the 2005 original and 2023 remake. But which is better? As cliché as it sounds, both are good. The original is a classic for a reason. But the remake is a great game in and of itself. Personally, it comes down to preference. The original is campier and places a greater emphasis on spectacle. The remake, while still campy, takes itself more seriously and puts greater focus on the horror elements. But like I said at the start of the post, if you have any passing interest in the horror genre, this is a great place to start. I give Resident Evil 4 Remake 5 stars out of five.

Resident Evil is the property of Capcom. None of the images used were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Frostpunk, survive the apocalypse with the power of steam. A very frosty review

2024-09-24T16:03:00.008-04:00

Have you ever wondered what it would take to survive a post-apocalyptic world? Pretty sure anyone who has heard the words "post" and "apocalyptic" in the same sentence had that thought. And one video game in particular asks a much more interesting question. "Can you survive a second Ice Age while still preserving your moral integrity?" That is the question posed by the game we are reviewing today, Frostpunk. A quick content warning before we begin. Frostpunk is rated M for Mature by the ESRB. Because of foul language and the aftermath of violence. And because this game's protagonist can potentially become a tyrannical dictator based on the player's decisions.

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But what exactly is Frostpunk? Developed and published by indie team 11 bit Studios back in 2018, Frostpunk is a city-building survival strategy game where you are in charge of the construction and maintenance of a steampunk city. What's steampunk, you ask? It's a subgenre of science fiction in which you take a civilization from the past (most commonly 19th century England) and give it access to technology far better than whatever they had in real life, with the goal of a steampunk story being to show how technology can change societies either for the better or for the worse. I have a soft spot for steampunk, as it's my personal favorite style of sci fi. Anyway, the aforementioned steampunk city is tasked with surviving the most brutal winter in human history, with the temperature starting at -4 degrees Fahrenheit (-20 degrees Celsius) and only getting worse from there. The game released to a generally positive reception, developing a passionate fan community online. More importantly, 11 bit Studios released a sequel to this game simply titled Frostpunk 2, which is supposed to be much larger in scale than this game. That being said, I'm only reviewing the first game for the simple reason that I have not played Frostpunk 2 yet.

So imagine. The year is 1886, and things played out mostly the same as they did in real life. America gets colonized only for the colonists to rebel and build a new country from scratch, the Industrial Revolution led to the rabid development of technology, Krakatoa erupted, et cetera. But there's one big difference between real life history and the world of Frostpunk. Instead of global warming, the Frostpunk universe got hit with global cooling. Things cooled down so much that it caused a new Ice Age, which a bunch of scientists named "The Great Frost". The only reason anyone survived the initial blizzards this Great Frost brought forth was because that same bunch of scientists predicted something like this would happen. They created in secret a set of giant heat-producing towers known as the Generators, which provide just enough warmth to create little "safe zones" for the coming winter. As such, the entire population of the British Empire (and presumably the rest of the world) marched up North for months on end to reach these Generators and rebuild society from scratch. Why up North you ask? The in-universe explanation is that the global cooling originated from the South Pole and slowly spread up northward to the rest of the world. So I guess the Generators were placed in the places furthest away from the South Pole in the hope that the Great Frost wouldn't affect those communities as badly, or maybe it was done to give the construction crews more time to finish the project.

You, the player, are the Captain, the leader of a group of survivors that managed to reach one of these Generators. As such, you decide what gets built and where, what jobs people are allowed to work, and what laws are legalized. Ironically enough, the Captain has more in common with a mayor or a baron than an actual ship captain. The only reason your character is even called a Captain is because they used to command a carrier ship prior to the Great Frost happening, so the title is a holdover from the "good old days." Frostpunk has four main story campaigns (called "Scenarios"), each with a different goal to work towards as well as different starting conditions. Another two were added in a DLC expansion, but thankfully, Frostpunk is actually a solid enough product on its own that it frankly doesn't need DLC to function. So my advice is to only get the DLC if you are absolutely starving for more Frostpunk. But in addition to the main Scenarios, there is also an Endless Mode where you are free to keep playing for as long as you want, or at least until your City gets destroyed. Anyway, the only scenario available right at the start is A New Home. Surviving past Day 10 of A New Home unlocks the Arks Scenario. Surviving past Day 20 in A New Home unlocks both The Refugees and The Fall of Winterhome. Before I continue describing the Scenarios themselves, let's talk gameplay, because most of what I say is applicable to all playable Scenarios.

In order to accomplish literally anything in this game, you need to assign jobs to your citizens. Each building in your City comes with an associated job, and each building can employ up to 10 citizens at once. They will carry out their jobs automatically during work hours (8:00 to 18:00), but once the work shift has ended, they will go enjoy Free Time. If there are unfinished construction projects during Free Time, the citizens will help out and speed up the process. If not, they go back home to rest up for the night. If the citizen in question is unemployed, he/she will work on construction during both work hours and free time. But a very important thing to remember is that people are not mindless robots. They got needs that must be fulfilled if you want your City to survive. And Frostpunk's gameplay loop is like walking a tightrope. You can fall at any moment unless you maintain a near-perfect balance of all the main resources.

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Let me tell you what the average Frostpunk playthrough looks like. You start off with needing to build tents in your City so that your people can sleep comfortably at night, and housing needs wood. So you send some guys to go gather wood from some nearby debris piles. But because this process involves marching through waist-deep snow, some of your workers will get sick from the cold. And sick workers can't work, obviously. So you need to build a medical post to heal your people when they inevitably get frostbite or hypothermia. But people can't work on an empty stomach, so you also need to build a Hunter's Hut so you can hire some hunters to go outside the City and gather food. The only problem with that is that your workers can't eat raw food, it needs to be cooked into something actually edible. So now you need to build a Cookhouse and hire some chefs. And you need roads connecting all of these buildings to the Generator so that your people can actually walk to work without marching through snow, which costs more wood. Only by now, you ran out of salvageable debris, so you need to build a sawmill to chop down some trees. And don't forget, you must find a way to produce enough coal to keep the Generator active at all times, because if the Generator powers down for too long your City will freeze to death. Which means building coal mines, which costs steel, which means you need to build a steelworks to make enough steel to build the coal mines. And steelworks require even more wood. By this point the temperature of the outside world is dropping, so now you have to improve heating and insulation by either upgrading the Generator or replacing all the tents with proper bunkhouses (which costs wood and steel). While everything I just described is going on, you can send Scout Teams to explore the world, and the scouts will come back anything ranging from extra supplies, to more survivors to expand the City's population or Steam Cores. Steam Cores can be used to build the most powerful machines in the game, such as Hothouses that grow edible plants (thus producing twice as much food as a Hunter's Hut), and Automatons, which are giant steam powered robots.

But the most important building that you absolutely must have in your City is the humble Workshop. The Workshop is a place where your smartest citizens get together and do some research. Research projects lead to the invention of new technology that can improve the City in some way. These upgrades can range from making the Generator produce more heat than before, to unlocking newer and better buildings that can produce more resources than their weaker counterparts, or simple passive bonuses that make preexisting structures more efficient. The Workshop is absolutely essential to Frostpunk's gameplay and it is literally impossible to beat any of the Scenarios without building at least one Workshop. My general advice is that unless you're playing the Fall of Winterhome Scenario, your first priority should be building a Workshop at the start of every playthrough. If you are playing Fall of Winterhome, let the Workshop be the second structure you build.

On top of all that, you also have to deal with Hope and Discontent. Think of these two as like health bars for your city. If the City runs out of Hope, your citizens will declare the City a lost cause and will leave, either to die in the frosty wilderness or to (hopefully) join someone else's City. If the City's Discontent gets too high, the people will declare you a tyrant and overthrow you in a violent revolution. Either way, you will lose the game and have to start all over from the beginning. There are ways to raise Hope and lower Dissent, such as building churches and fighting arenas respectively, or promising your people to do a task like collecting enough food to feed the city for a week, or promising to keep the City above a specific temperature for three whole days. Is it stressful keeping track of all this? Yes. But that's like the fun of Frostpunk. It really sells the fantasy of establishing a community that just barely, by the skin of its teeth, manages to survive the impossible.

Back on the subject of citizens, the last main thing to know about them is that all citizens are divided into four types; Workers, Engineers, Automatons and Children. Workers are the most common and can work almost any job. The only jobs they that can't work are those that require advanced education, like medical treatment and running the Workshop. Engineers on the other hand, can work in medical posts and Workshops. They can also perform simple labor, but are forbidden from hunting, which Workers can handle just fine. Automatons are giant steam-powered robots that don't need to sleep or eat, can work 24 hours a day without pausing, and are immune to the ever-decreasing cold. They do need to recharge every now and again, but these things are very powerful. Think of Automatons as Workers on steroids. Automatons can work almost any job, and the Workshop can research ways to make Automatons even better. Automatons are also the rarest citizen type in the game. You won't get a lot of these guys, unless you're playing The Arks Scenario. And finally, Children cannot work any jobs at all under normal circumstances, but they still need to be cared for like any other citizen. But notice my choice of words there. They cannot work under "normal" circumstances. And now we get to talk about my favorite thing about Frostpunk, which is how it handles morality.

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As the Captain, you have the authority needed to pass laws. You can pick which laws to pass from a branching list, structured like a skill tree from a normal roleplaying game. Not all the laws are particularly nice. In fact, the further down the list of laws you go, the more tyrannical you become. The laws start off sensible enough. Legalizing experimental treatment to save frostbitten citizens is a no brainer. Replacing solid meals with soup because its cheaper to create makes sense when you need make every ration worthwhile. And while it seems harsh at first, extending the work shift from 10 hours a day to 14 hours a day is essential to producing enough resources to finish major construction projects. But as the winter worsens and the needs of your people become more demanding, you will be pushed to pass laws that are dubious at best, and straight up evil at worst. For example, if you are really desperate for more Workers, you can legalize Child Labor, which turns all Children in the City into Workers. Running low on food? You can legalize cannibalism and start turning the deceased into rations. You don't have to pass the unethical laws if you don't want to, in fact there's a secret golden ending that's acquired if you beat any of the main scenarios while practicing only "humane" laws. It's just a lot harder to do a "good guy run" because the evil laws offer some kind of practical benefit at the cost of one's own moral integrity.

And this leads into the biggest aspect of the law system; The Purposes. Without spoiling the story too much, eventually you will have to pick a Purpose for your City, which is some kind of ideology to really bring people together and form a longer-lasting community. Your options are either Order, which rules with militaristic strength and discipline, or Faith, which rules with spirituality and religious devotion. Both of these options unlock a set of unique laws and buildings to match their respective themes. Both of these start off fairly benign. And both of them get really scary when you push them too far. Order seems like the obvious bad guy option at first, since the Order-only laws and Order-only buildings are eerily reminiscent of Big Brother from 1984. I'm talking things like Propaganda Centers and armed guardsmen publicly beating disobedient citizens to the brink of death just to keep the rest of the City in line. But Faith is arguably just as amoral. In fact, for everything Order does, Faith has something that accomplishes the same effect, just with a vaguely religious coat of paint over it. Instead of propaganda, Faith has sermons. Instead of public beatings Faith has "mandatory penance" (which still involves dissenters getting publicly beaten). Order and Faith are ultimately two sides of the same coin.

But the thing you need to remember is that neither Order nor Faith start off evil right away. They always start benevolent, Like Order starts with just a neighborhood watch to keep people safe, watchtowers that lower discontent for anyone living near them and the ability to hire foremen to oversee a building's production (thus making any jobs in that building produce more resources). Faith starts with churches that give Hope to anyone living nearby, field kitchens that raise the temperature of any adjacent building while also providing rations for the area, and houses of healing which work as a decent alternative to traditional infirmaries. Order and Faith only become evil when pushed too far. In fact, the final Purpose law, called New Order or New Faith, is by far the most extreme law in the game and is the only law that will actively cause the deaths of a few citizens. If you legalize New Order, the Captain crowns themselves Supreme Leader of the City and establishes a totalitarian regime, and anyone who opposes the regime (between 12 and 30, depending on the City's total population) will be executed. If you legalize New Faith, the Captain declares themselves to be the second coming of the Messiah and converts the City into a cult with a zero-tolerance policy on any faith that is not the state religion. And just like with New Order, anyone who opposes the cult (again, 12-30 people) will be executed. But hey! At least Hope will be permanently maxed out for the rest of the game! …And it will also be renamed to "Obedience" (for Order) or "Devotion" (for Faith). Because at that point, the people have given up hope for a free society, but are now either too loyal or too scared to leave the City.

But why would you go so far with these Purposes? Because as the situation grows more dire, those "evil" laws might be the one thing allowing you to repair the damage done to your City. Remember, the ultimate goal of Frostpunk is to make sure the City survives the Winter. As long as you have just enough citizens to keep the City operational, you can and will push your people to their absolute limits. Mild spoilers for the A New Home Scenario, but halfway through the story you learn that the closest neighboring City, Winterhome, has been destroyed. This causes an existential crisis in your citizens, since the plan prior to this point was to contact the other Cities and establish trade routes and supply lines so that the Generator communities could survive long term. Because of this, a group of rebels will start making plans to leave for London. You have 14 days to convince them to stay. And every day that passes, if you don't raise Hope high enough or get Dissent low enough, the rebels will convince another citizen to leave. But those harsher Purpose laws that allow your guards/witch hunters to beat criminals in public or spy on them in their own homes? Those laws let you get the rebels under control. If the rebels get really out of hand, these evil laws might be the ONLY way to get the rebels under control.

Okay, that should cover the "universal" parts of Frostpunk. Let's talk about specific Scenarios.

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A New Home. The main Scenario, serving both as a tutorial for the game as a whole and setting the standard for which all other Scenarios are to be judged by. You start in a spacious crater with plenty of building room, 80 citizens and enough supplies to get your first set of buildings established. The win condition here is to simply survive for more than 48 days. Once you make it past day 48, your City is deemed stable enough to not only survive the whole winter, but even beyond it. The final week of this Scenario is positively brutal, as a violent blizzard tears through your City. This Storm will disable Hunter's Huts and Hothouses, meaning that the only source of food your City will have will be whatever rations you stockpiled ahead of time. Additionally, the Storm will force the temperature to start dropping rapidly. Nothing short of a fully upgraded Generator can produce enough heat to survive this. The Storm is the closest thing Frostpunk gets to a boss battle, though you cannot defeat the Storm in any meaningful way. All you can do is prepare, stock up on rations and coal, and pray that your City survives long enough to make it to Day 48. This is also the Scenario with the Londoner rebels, and how you deal with that will also effect the ending.

The Arks. In this Scenario you start in a narrow ravine with significantly less building room and only 45 citizens. All of these citizens are Engineers however, and to make up for their lack of numbers, they also start with an Automaton. The goal of this Scenario is to protect the Seedling Arks, special greenhouses preserving the seeds of every plant in the world. The plan here was to breed some plant life that could survive in a post-Great Frost world. Unlike the other Scenarios, this one has a secret alternative win condition. A neighboring City called New Manchester is falling apart and needs a bulk order of supplies from your City to survive. You can choose to either ignore New Manchester and focusing only on your own City, abandon the Arks to save New Manchester, or try and save both New Manchester and the Arks at the same time. The biggest challenge this mode presents is the fact that your City's population never increases, so the only way to get more workers is to build Automatons. In fact, this game mode can best be described as "Oops! All Automatons!" But this mode is uniquely challenging in its own right. Because depending on how quickly you find New Manchester, you might not have enough time to send them any supplies at all. When I found them there were only three days left before the Storm came. And even if you do find them in time, you still need to have a good enough industry to fund basically two whole Cities at the same time.

The Refugees. In this game mode, you start with only 43 citizens in a star-shaped canyon, making construction somewhat awkward. But true to its name, in this Scenario dozens of refugees will flock to your City in groups of 15, rapidly expanding your population up to 270. The win condition here changes throughout the Scenario. At first, it's to make sure that at least 250 of those 270 refugees survive for a whole week. When that week is over and you succeed, the game keeps going. Then a second wave of refugees comes to your City in groups of 100 people each. Now that doesn't sound too bad at first. There's just one problem. The second wave of refugees are all rich, upper class nobility while the first wave were all peasants and farmers. Also, the working class straight up stole this Generator site, because this specific Generator was meant for only the upper class elites of the British Empire. So there's a lot of bad blood between the two groups and its up to you to decide what to do with the second wave of refugees. Personally, I found this Scenario to be the easiest of the main four. The weather is at its absolute calmest here with not a single Storm in sight, and the only real challenge is making sure you have enough food and housing for all the refugees. And while I like the story here, a classic struggle between the ruling elite and the working class, the ending is oddly anticlimactic.

The Fall of Winterhome. This Scenario is by far the most challenging and the most complex out of the main four. Winterhome, canonically, was destroyed before A New Home even began. And in this game mode, you start with a fully constructed City in a crater not unlike the A New Home City, with a population of over 600 citizens. But there's just one problem. The previous Captain of Winterhome was a moronic tyrant whose incompetence nearly destroyed the City before the Scenario even began. You want to know how bad the previous Captain was? He built the City with the most awful layout imaginable, with lots of wasted space and redundant roads. He legalized Child Labor for all jobs despite having a large enough adult population to fill out every job opening available. His tyranny and incompetence got so bad that the people of Winterhome overthrew him, but in a final act of spitefulness, the previous Captain torched over half the City, rendering most of the buildings unusable.

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In Fall of Winterhome. you play as the replacement Captain, who was chosen to lead by the rebels who overthrew your predecessor. And Fall of Winterhome gives you quite possibly the worst start imaginable. Over half the buildings and roads need to be torn down and replaced, over a third of your 600+ citizens are gravely ill and need medical care immediately, and you have no choice but to enforce some of the laws that the previous Captain passed because there's no way to repeal a law once it is in effect. Which means you get Child Labor whether you want it or not. The win condition is to stabilize the City by removing at least 30 ruined buildings, raising Hope to 50% or better, and lowering Discontent to 25% or less. You have one week to accomplish these three tasks. Once you do, the win condition changes once again. As it turns out, the Winterhome Generator is malfunctioning and your Engineers have no way to repair it. It could have been fixed if the problem was handled earlier, but the previous Captain deliberately ignored the problem until it was too severe to solve. In other words, the previous Captain was so incompetent that he turned Winterhome into a ticking time bomb. So now you have to construct the Dreadnought, a giant armored tank which is effectively a City on wheels, and use it to evacuate Winterhome. This process involves producing a metric boat load of steel, coal and rations. And there's also one last issue to worry about. The Dreadnought, once fully constructed, only has room onboard for exactly 500 people. You have more than 600. While the other Scenarios can, hypothetically speaking, be completed without suffering a single casualty, Fall of Winterhome is the only Scenario where people will die no matter what. Even if you stabilize Winterhome, cure the gravely ill of their sicknesses and construct the Dreadnought in time for the evacuation, at least 100 of your citizens will be left behind so the rest can live.

On the Edge. This is one of the two DLC Scenarios, and serves as a direct sequel to A New Home. In this game mode, you don't have a Generator at all. Instead, you control an outpost being funded by the City from A New Home, with your heat coming from a set of Steam Hubs. And because your heat comes from another City entirely, you are the mercy of their Captain's laws. As such, you have to donate a portion of your supplies every day to keep your outpost running. You can also form political alliances with other outposts, which is the only way to get resources that your outpost doesn't have access to. And because your outpost can only produce steel and steam cores, that means making trade deals with a lot of people if you want to survive here. Also, you have the least amount of building room out of all the Scenarios. True to its name, you are building on the edge of a literal cliff. What makes this DLC amusing in hindsight is that it seems to be a proof-of-concept for Frostpunk 2. Both On the Edge and Frostpunk 2 take place multiple years after A New Home, both On the Edge and Frostpunk 2 focus heavily on political alliances, and both On the Edge and Frostpunk 2 feature the establishment of outpost colonies that donate a portion of their own resources to fund the construction of the main City.

The Last Autumn. This DLC is a prequel Scenario to all the others. Taking place before the Great Frost arrives in the Northern Hemisphere, you are tasked with building one of the Generators that became vital to the success of the other Cities. This Scenario radically overhauls the Purpose laws. Instead of Order vs Faith, it's now Engineers vs Workers. Because this is still the 18th-19th century, worker's rights aren't really a thing. So the Generator project is a massive OSHA violation, and you need to choose between legalizing worker rights to make the project safer, or giving more power to the Engineers so the project can be finished in time. And just like with Order and Faith, the further you go into your Purpose, the more amoral and sinister you become. Just for example, the Workers will literally start a communist rebellion if you give them too much power, and the Engineers will gleefully send dozens, possibly hundreds of people to their deaths just to keep the construction project on schedule. Neither side are saints, but they are canonically the only reason the Cities in the other Scenarios can survive at all, since these guys built the Generators in the first place. This is the only game mode where you don't have to worry about temperature, because the Great Frost isn't here yet. As such, coal isn't as important here as it is in the other Scenarios. The win condition here is to finish construction of the Generator, which is done in stages, and make sure that each stage of the project meets a specific deadline. Failure to keep the project on schedule results in you getting fired.

And finally, Endless Mode. Endless Mode has three different campaign options, two in the base game and one in the DLC. These campaigns are called Serenity, Endurance and Builders. In all three campaigns, you can pick the starting location, which not only includes all of the locations from the main six Scenarios, but even three brand new locations not available anywhere else. Those exclusive options are the Flats, which is an open field with tons of building room, in fact this is the single largest location in the game. But resources are further away than normal in the Flats, so building roads is even more important here. Then there's the Rifts, which splits the available space up with bottomless pits that you have to build bridges over. And finally, there's the Crags, which is a somewhat large field with giant rock formations peppering the landscape, and you have to build your City around those rocks. Additionally, you can enable Hazard Events, which cause randomized problems to occur in your City, such as forcing you to spend twice as much steel to build something or temporarily disabling your hothouses. Personally, I'm not a fan of the Hazard Events, and now whenever I play Endless Mode I turn them off. The most interesting thing about Endless Mode is that it gives you an optional quest to collect relics, which are items that were made before the Great Frost came. These relics provide some nice lore that isn't accessible anywhere else in the game.

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Anyway, in Serenity mode, you start with 105 citizens, most research projects already completed and the weather is significantly calmer than normal. Temperature drops are rarer and the Storm (which happens once every 14 days in Endless) now only lasts a single day instead of a whole week like in A New Home. This mode exists for those that don't care about the "survival" part of the survival strategy game and just want to build an aesthetically pleasing steampunk city in peace. In Endurance mode, you start with 80 citizens, the Storm will last for 2-3 days and will gradually become more frequent each time it arrives, and you have just enough supplies to get your first set of buildings up and running. Basically, if you want to do A New Home again but in a different location and with a hypothetically infinite campaign, Endurance mode is for you. Builders mode gives you 125 citizens and works the same way that The Last Autumn does. You don't have a working Generator in this mode yet, and you have to get the Generator operational before the cold becomes too much to handle.

The only problem with Endless mode (all three versions) is that it almost all of its challenge comes in the first few weeks, and once you get past those first two or three Storms your City is more or less good to go for the rest of time. Now, all the Scenarios are generally pretty short experiences. It only took me 13 hours to complete A New Home, and another six hours to complete both The Arks and The Refugees. I don't remember how long it took Fall of Winterhome but it couldn't have been longer than ten hours at the most. And that sort of length is perfect for what Frostpunk is trying to do. But the problem with Endless mode is once your City survives long enough to be self-sustaining (producing more coal and rations than the City can use up), there's not much that the game can do to put your City in danger. Sure the Storm will come back, but if you can survive it the first time, you can survive it again. And it would even easier to survive it the second time round because you would have access to better technology by then. There's no traditional enemies to fight against in Frostpunk, the only other people you meet are survivors who are more than happy to join your City. And even then, the game has a hard cap of 790 citizens on Serenity mode or 695 on Endurance and Builders mode. Once your City's population reaches those numbers, other survivors will never appear ever again unless you suffer severe casualties in the near future. There's no political alliances to be made with other Cities, in fact you just straight up don't find any other Cities in Endless mode. You don't even get a rebellion you have to deal with like in A New Home. And once you run out of research projects, laws to pass or room for construction, there's not much left to do. There's an achievement/trophy you can get if your City manages to survive past Day 100 of Endless mode, and I'd say that's a good stopping point for this game mode because you WILL run out of things to do by then.

In terms of presentation, Frostpunk is one of the best examples of the steampunk aesthetic and is just a very pleasing visual and audio experience in general. The whole game carries itself with a somber, melancholic vibe that wants you to reflect on the nature of the human experience. And I'm a sucker for somber, melancholic worlds in fiction. Anyway, every building has a rustic, vaguely Victorian vibe, but with steam pipes pumping heat in and out everywhere. Even the most advanced machines in the game, like the Automaton or the Hothouse, look gritty and weathered. After all, it's kind of hard to keep your tech clean in the middle of an apocalypse. While the 3D models of the citizens look fairly simple, there's more detailed artwork of said citizens that appears during the story events in any given Scenario. One detail I really like is that if you have multiple buildings of the same type right next to each other, their model is changed to look interconnected with branching hallway extensions. This is most obvious on Workshops and bunkhouses. But it makes those buildings feel more complete in a way. Also, the execution animation that plays if you legalize New Order or New Faith is one of the most creatively cruel methods to kill something I've seen in a video game. Said animation involves the victim being chained up, placed on top of the Generator's exhaust vent, and forced to stand there until the next time the Generator releases steam. The sheer force and heat of the vents basically cooks the victim alive. Positively brutal stuff. And if you max out Discontent while New Order/Faith is in effect, then instead of the usual banishment scene, the Captain is given a taste of their own medicine and executed with this exact method. "Reap what you sow" and all that.

The music and sound effects in Frostpunk are exquisite. The way the ice cracks and reforms as the temperature rises and lowers is crisp. The annual barks of the town crier announcing the start and end of every work shift help set the vibe. And said annual barks change depending on which Purpose you chose, with the Faith version of the town crier sounding like a priest and the Order version sounding like a drill sergeant. If you zoom in on specific structures, you can hear some ambient sounds associated with that structure like church bells or the drunken laughter of the local bar patrons. And of course, we got to talk about The City Must Survive, the closest thing the Frostpunk universe has to a theme song. So imagine. Your City is doing well. You got a surplus of coal and rations, sickness is at an all time low, and the overwhelming majority of your citizens have access to proper heating. Then you see the mother of all blizzards approaching on the horizon. You have seven days to prepare for the Great Storm, and as you rescue the last of the survivors from the frozen wilderness, a chilling realization hits you. Your City is not ready. People will die, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.

And nothing fills you more desperation and dread than hearing The City Must Survive. That one orchestral song is desperation incarnate. When I think of Frostpunk my first thought is that final week of A New Home with the Great Storm battering down on my City. The buildings shutting down from sheer coldness one by one until only the coal mines and infirmaries remained. The people of my City being sent straight to said infirmaries by the dozens due to rapidly spreading frostbite. Forty Workers sacrificing their lives to keep the coal mines operational in such horrid weather. Families perishing in their own homes as the last of the rations run out. And this song, with violins shrieking like it's the end of the World as my City is crushed beneath -230 degree winds. No other event in any video game, movie or book managed to instill in me such despair. And somehow, my City survived. I fully expected to be wiped out completely by the Storm, but against all odds, 492 of my citizens (out of 603) survived. They were beaten, frostbitten and starving, but they survived. And the violins go silent. There is no triumphant chorus of horns to celebrate your victory. Just a peaceful quiet as the surviving citizens reflect on everything they sacrificed to make it this far. This moment right here is now one of my favorite moments in any video game ever. And The City Must Survive is a key factor in making this finale so memorable.

One last thing about the presentation I want to say. At the end of every Scenario, the game will provide some narration recapping all the major decisions you made. While this narration is on screen, you can see a time lapse of your City being built from the ground up. It's a cool way to show how far your citizens have come since the day they arrived at the Generator site. Even if the ending narration taunts you for every evil law you passed and every amoral decision you made. The only criticism I have of Frostpunk's presentation is that I ran into a minor glitch that caused the screen to be covered in a blank white texture, thus preventing me from being able to actually see anything. Reloading to an earlier save was enough to fix the problem, but be aware that such a glitch could happen in your game.

Image found on steamdb.info

Overall, Frostpunk is a somber survival strategy game that succeeds in showing just how soul-crushingly brutal a post apocalyptic setting can be. This game is one of my favorite video games now, and definitely my favorite strategy game. Even if you aren't the biggest fan of strategy games or games along those lines, Frostpunk is an easy game to recommend because it's just a generally high-quality experience. And if you have any interest in steampunk, this is one of the better examples of steampunk in action. So I'd say that Frostpunk gets 5 stars out of 5.

Frostpunk is the property of 11 bit Studios. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the original creators.

Stellaris, the strategic space opera simulator. A very complex review

2024-08-20T19:47:00.001-04:00

Space. The Final Frontier. In a Galaxy Far, Far Away. Where in the Grim Darkness of the Far Future, the Spice must Flow. You get the idea. Science fiction is a staple of modern entertainment, because there's something fun about speculating how a spacefaring society with technology so advanced it might as well be magic would function, with or without alien life forms. But have you ever thought to yourself, "Gee, I sure would love a needlessly complex strategy game about creating my own sci fi civilization and exploring the cosmos while reenacting my favorite sci fi stories!" Well do I have the game for you.

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Enter Stellaris. Released in 2016, this sci-fi strategy game was developed and published by Paradox Interactive, with the console port being made by Tantalus Media. This is one of the many Grand Strategy games that Paradox specializes in, though the concept of this game is in my opinion an easier sell. Most of Paradox's games are historical fiction, taking place in alternate versions of the distant past. Crusader Kings, for example, is set in Medieval Times, while Hearts of Iron takes place during the World Wars. Stellaris is the odd duck out, taking place in a completely fictional time period, starting roughly 200 years into the future. As such, there's a lot more room for creativity, at least in theory, since you are not bound by historical accuracy. Instead, the goal of Stellaris was to be a love letter to all things science fiction and as such, there are plenty of references to other sci-fi stories sprinkled in all throughout the game.

To be a man in a 2200+ year old society is to live among untold trillions. It is a time to seek out new civilizations and boldly go where no one has gone before. But most importantly, it's the perfect setup for a space opera. And that's basically the entire story of Stellaris. Well, sort of. A big part of this game's appeal is that it features an Emergent Narrative. What that means is that after creating your own civilization (which I will call Empires for the sake of brevity) the story is dictated almost entirely by randomized events and how you choose to deal with them. As well as how you choose to deal with any over Empire that you encounter on your travels. It's a very free-form approach to storytelling, and the result is that it's rare for two or more playthroughs to play out the same way. Though there are a few standard beats. Every civilization starts off isolated and alone in the galaxy, slowly expanding until they contact alien life. Intergalactic superpowers fight, trade and form alliances as the number of unclaimed star systems begins to dwindle and borders begin to take shape. And all civilizations have to deal with a universal threat towards the end that puts the whole galaxy in danger. What happens in between these points is more or less randomized.

But where do you begin with this game? You start at Empire Creation. While you can play as about 20 or so premade Empires, the real core of this game comes from designing your own aliens. Or your own version of Humanity's Future, if you like that sort of thing. And I am letting you know now that this game is DENSE. Paradox games are infamous for their steep learning curves and numerous complexities. And Stellaris is no different. While the tutorial that starts once the campaign begins does help with teaching the player the bare minimum, this is a game that will take more than a little while to get used to. Especially if you prefer more fast-paced, action focused games. This doesn't make Stellaris a bad game, not in the slightest. But its gameplay is meant for a very specific audience, the kind that enjoys solving problems with brains rather than brawn. And the kind of audience that doesn't mind looking up guides on the Internet just to make sense of the convoluted information this game can sometimes throw at you. While I do like games that require you to think and plan ahead like Fire Emblem and X-COM, nothing I have played or reviewed here before has quite as many moving parts as Stellaris. And from what I hear, the rest of Paradox's catalogue boasts a similar level of complexity.

Okay, let's breakdown Empire Creation, since all the important choices start here. Your Empire can be customized in a multitude of ways. Most of it is cosmetic stuff like picking an animated portrait that will represent your aliens/future-humans in some menu screens, or what biome your home planet is, or even designing your own flag. But there are mechanical decisions to be made here, like choosing Authorities and Origins. Authorities are the type of government your civilization uses, whether that be an Imperial Dynasty where the role of leadership is passed down from parent to child in a single family across the generations, or a Democracy where the the leaders are chosen by popularity votes at regular intervals. Origins are basically your Empire's backstory, giving you some nice lore and roleplay potential while also simultaneously changing how the game starts. Some Origins offer really strong bonuses, others exist to add an extra challenge to the campaign to push your management and strategy skills to their limits. For example, the Mechanist Origin allows your Empire to start the game with eight fully operational robots as well as a factory to build even more. The Doomsday Origin will make your home planet explode after 35 (in-game) years, so you have to find a new planet for your people to live on before then or risk your species going completely extinct. But most importantly, there's an option to write/type out a custom biography. This has no effect on gameplay but as an aspiring writer, being able to write custom biographies for fictional civilizations is something that makes me very, very happy.

Image found on SteamDB.com

But the three most important things to worry about are Traits, Ethics, and Civics. Traits are biological strengths and weaknesses your aliens/future-humans have that make them better or worse at certain tasks. Things like enhanced upper body strength, fast learning minds that can invent new tech sooner than everyone else, or extended lifespans to live longer. However, not all Traits are beneficial. Some might make your citizens have a hard time reproducing, others might make them prone to riots. So I know what you're thinking. "Why would I ever pick Negative Traits!?" Well, you see, every Trait is assigned a point value. Positive Traits cost points while Negative Traits give more points to work with. The idea is that you're supposed to pick one or two weaknesses that you think you can live with so you have enough points to unlock the Positive Traits that you actually want. If you are smart about it, you can turn your weaknesses into a net positive.

Ethics are the next main decision and this will greatly determine the "vibe" of your Empire. Ethics are the moral and societal values that your Empire respects and practices. Ethics come in two variants, Moderate and Fanatic. Much like Traits, they will grant bonuses like increased fire rate for weapons or being able to hire extra diplomats, but they also come with downsides like restricting who or what you can wage war with or restricting your ability to build robots. Normally, you can pick any three Ethics of your choosing so long as they do not contradict each other. For example, your Empire can be Militaristic, Spiritual, and Egalitarian because those Ethics do not contradict each other. But your Empire cannot be both Militaristic and Pacifistic since those two Ethics are opposite to each other. Fanatic Ethics are even stronger than their Moderate counterparts, but you can only pick one Fanatic Ethic and one Moderate Ethic at a time. Fanatic Ethics are basically exaggerated versions of their Moderate counterparts, with everything that Ethic represents being cranked up to eleven. For example, a moderately Pacifist Empire will only fight in war to overthrow tyrannical regimes and replace them with something more humane and ethical. A Fanatically Pacifist Empire won't fight in wars at all. The other Fanatic Ethics follow this pattern of being a more exaggerated version of the Moderate counterpart. But again, the benefits of being Fanatic makes the Empire far stronger at whatever they are Fanatic about. Fanatic Militarist Empires have a whopping 30% fire rate upgrade compared to the Moderate version's 10% as an example. Basically, by making a Fanatic Empire, you are sacrificing the versatility of a third Ethic in exchange for greater specialization. Both are valid ways to play. But I do prefer making Fanatic Empires, but that's because I like seeing big numbers get even bigger.

Finally, Civics. Civics are more specialized bonuses that become available based on which Ethics you chose. These also help form the "vibe" of your Empire. While there are some Civics are available to all Empire types, all of the fun Civics are locked behind certain Ethic combos. For example, the Citizen Service Civic requires your Empire to be both Militaristic and Egalitarian, and it allows you to (potentially) build up a bigger navy than everyone else. The Inward Perfection Civic meanwhile requires you to be both Xenophobic and Pacifistic, and it basically cuts you off from the rest of the galaxy while GREATLY boosting the growth of your Empire's economy and population. The other Civics have similar restrictions and similar benefits. You can pick any combination of two Civics that you want as long as you meet the requirements for both. And finally, you can mix and match Traits, Ethics, and Civics for some very powerful or very wacky combos. Like a democratic society of future-human monks with the Inward Perfection and Agrarian Idle Civics, who are so obsessed with preserving the environment that they developed Traits like Communal and Conservationist that allow them to use even less resources for their day-to-day lives. Or a society of hyper-intelligent but physically weak Fanatically Materialist space rats who use the Technocracy and Meritocratic Civics to not only build robots to do all the hard work for them, but structure their entire society around science and knowledge. Or a group of strong and industrial but unruly and stubborn space dragons who are so Fanatically Militarist they took the Citizen Service Civic and Distinguished Admiralty Civic specifically to make the most dangerous navy the galaxy has ever seen. These three are but a taste of the kind of spacefaring civilization that you can make once you learn how everything works.

Okay, so you got your Empire ready and raring to go. Now we can get to the actual gameplay. Stellaris is a fairly hands-off game. You interact with your Empire mostly through a variety of menus. Because unlike every other game, you are controlling AN ENTIRE CIVILIZATION, not just one character. Because of that, you see everything happen at the macro scale. Time is measured in days, months, and years while mere minutes pass in real life. You spend a good chunk of your time just checking an intergalactic map and watching out for meaningful changes like expanding borders or reports of hostile activity. You can zoom in to individual star systems to see your ships and planets in more detail, but you can't get any closer to the action than that. You can give orders to your fleets and ships, and order construction of various facilities on any planets you own. Planets are quite possibly the most valuable resource in the game. Without a planet to build on, you have nothing to work with. The main challenge of Stellaris revolves are the classic Four Ex's of Paradox games. Explore, Expand, Exploit, Exterminate. If you are not doing any of those four things you are, to be blunt, playing the game wrong. You must send out Science Ships to Explore uncharted star systems and survey desirable planets before building on them. You must use your resources to Expand your reach and grow your power. You must Exploit any natural resources you find so you can continue Exploring and Expanding. And if anything gets in your way, you must Exterminate the threat before it can cause any lasting damage to your Empire. All Paradox games, regardless of setting or time period, live and die by the Four Ex's.

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Like I said earlier, there are random events that will change the history of your Empire. Maybe your citizens will track down a temple idolizing a long-forgotten god which causes a spiritual awakening among the people. Maybe your science team discovers an ancient, hyper-advanced ancestor and they invent new technology by reverse-engineering the relics left by their forebears. Maybe your king/queen/president got in contact with a Lovecraftian monstrosity that promises unfathomable power in exchange for servitude. All these are a few examples of the random events that can occur in your playthrough. But because of this, how enjoyable your playthrough's story will be is a coin flip. Either you get just the right combination of random events to make a space opera so epic it would get George Lucas and Gene Rodenberry themselves to nod in approval, or you might get eaten by a Devouring Swarm before your Empire has a chance to do anything cool. It depends both on luck and what difficulty you are playing on. And credit where credit's due, Stellaris has dozens of ways of customizing the game in its options, including no less than seven main difficulty options. That said, the difficulty does not dictate where rival Empires start on the intergalactic map, nor does it dictate how aggressive they are. Instead, all difficulty does is determine what kind of economic bonuses an enemy Empire gets at the start of a campaign. An NPC Empire will never attack or antagonize you if your military is equal to or stronger than theirs. Because of this, even Pacifistic Empires still benefit from having a a well-built navy even if they don't plan on using it. The mere presence of a navy will deter would be enemies from attacking. Additionally, you can negotiate with other Empires and form alliances and peace treaties with them.

But rival Empires are not the only dangers in the galaxy. So let's talk about the Crisis Events. Crisis Events are special events that only happen once the campaign reaches certain years. You can change which years it happens in the options menu, but once a campaign starts, the Crisis Years are locked in and cannot be changed unless you start a new campaign from scratch. Anyway, when a Crisis Event occurs, a violently hostile alien will appear somewhere in the galaxy and attack all Empires indiscriminately. What kind of alien is random by default, though again, you can pick something specific from the options menu. These range from space pirate clans banding together to tear down galactic society at large, to living bioweapons that devour all who stand in their path, to a classic Terminator style AI uprising. Crisis Events are incredibly strong, and they exist as a "stress test" for your Empire. If your Empire can survive the Crisis Events, your Empire can survive anything. In fact, there's an entire difficulty slider that exists for no reason than to increase or decrease the power of the Crisis Events. At max strength, Crisis Events can become over 25 times more powerful than normal. If you wish to defeat a 25x Crisis Event, you need nothing short of a perfectly optimized Empire and a foolproof plan that you spent the whole campaign carefully laying out. Anything less will result in failure. Of course, you could turn the Crisis strength down to give your less-than-perfect Empire a fighting chance.

There are also Fallen Empires. Fallen Empires are special Empires that start the game in control of a small area in the galaxy, usually about only five or six star systems. But they also start the campaign with a comically overpowered navy that will curb stomp anyone who angers the Fallen. The Fallen themselves are all themed around the main Ethics. Unlike Crisis Events, who only appear later on in a campaign, the Fallen are present from day one. The only reason the Fallen don't immediately wipe out the other Empires is because they literally cannot expand their borders outside their starting zone. Nor can they replace any casualties should they encounter the rare opponent that can wound them. At least, not until the Fallen Awaken. When a Fallen Empire Awakens, they will start rapidly expanding their borders in all directions and reinforcing their already fearsome fleets. Depending on their Ethics, the Awakened will either give a chance to join them as a vassal state willingly or wipe your Empire off the star charts. The good news is that a Fallen Empire can only Awaken in very rare circumstances. Like if a Crisis Event happens and the Fallen haven't Awakened already, they will Awaken to go fight the Crisis. If there are multiple Fallen Empires in the same galaxy with opposing Ethics, a special event called the War In Heaven will occur where both Empires Awaken at the same time and all the "normal" Empires have to either pick a side in the War or risk getting caught in the cross fire. While it is possible to fight off both sides of the War In Heaven as a neutral party, it is a difficult undertaking, perhaps even more so than fending off a Crisis Event. Again, good planning and optimization is required to survive the War In Heaven.

But how does one defeat such powerful foes? Well you need a strong navy. While ground battles exist in Stellaris, they don't happen anywhere nearly as often as space battles do. And to be honest, the ground battles are probably the weakest part of the game, since it's a fairly barebones system (at the time of writing) that can be easily avoided. And going back to the Four Ex's, you use the resources you Exploited to build warships so you can Exterminate your enemies so you can continue to Explore and Expand in peace. At the start of the campaign the only combat-capable ship type you can build is the humble Corvette. All ships can be outfitted with various weapons such as plasma cannons, railguns, flamethrowers and even deployable drone fighters. But you have to invent that technology before you can use it, so initially your Empire's Corvettes are all armed with nothing more than dinky little lasers. You invent new tech by having a named Scientist lead a research project, with the research options being randomized (noticing a trend?). Research progresses automatically unless the Scientist leading the research project dies, in which case you need to hire a new Scientist to continue the research.

Image found on SteamDB.com

Once research is finished, your Empire can now use the newly invented tech to give your warships a much needed power boost, and that Scientist can be given a new project to work on in the meantime. While all the different weapons provide unique strategies and fighting styles, generally speaking, you can win most battles by having either bigger guns or more ships than your opponent. This ties in to Fleet Power, a little number that conveniently shows at a glance the combined power of every warship in that fleet. Unless the enemy has built a fleet designed entirely to counter yours, if your Fleet Power is a bigger number you will win the battle. It's probably the simplest thing in this very complicated game. And while it is true that your Fleet Power will gradually lower as your ships take damage and suffer casualties, you can easily repair and replace damaged and destroyed ships so long as you are not in combat. And while it might be tempting to pour all of your resources into your naval fleets the first chance you get, this is actually a bad idea because you have to balance your economy and not drive yourself bankrupt by overinvesting. Instead, you want to build your navy up over time. Like, once every in-game year (roughly equal to ten real life minutes) you can get away with adding three or four ships to your navy. Three or four dozen ships a year is an unrealistic goal, at least with how the in-game economy works.

But you cannot just attack any other Empire without some kind of cause. This is the Casus Belli system. Basically, if you want to go to war with another Empire, you need to give a reason why. The reason also changes the win condition and end result. For example, Liberation Wars are fought to change a rival Empire's Ethics to match the winner's, thus turning them into a potential ally, while Domination Wars are fought to expand the winner's borders by forcibly taking control of the losing Empire's star systems. The only time you don't need a Casus Belli to wage war is if you have a Civic that lets you ignore the whole system like Devouring Swarm or Fanatical Purifiers. Or if the opponent in question is a Crisis Event or the War In Heaven. Or if your opponent has one of the aforementioned Civics that ignore Casus Bellis. But anyway, once the war starts, you are free to invade your enemies' territory and attack their ships and stations. There is a timer system called War Exhaustion that mostly exists so you can't keep the war going forever. Basically, as both you and the rival Empire take casualties, War Exhaustion for both sides builds up. Once it reaches a certain threshold, you can either settle for a truce or claim absolute victory, based on how well you did in the war. The only criticism I have of the War Exhaustion system is that makes evasive, hit-and-run style navies far more powerful than defensive "stand your ground!" style navies. Because War Exhaustion doesn't build up when you or your enemies retreat from battle, only when your ships and stations are completely destroyed.

But speaking of planets and economy, let's talk resources. Resources come in five basic varieties. Food, Minerals, Energy, Alloys and Consumer Goods. Food is self-explanatory. It's the stuff to keep your Empire from starving. Energy is both electricity and money. Everything has a monthly upkeep cost of at least one point of Energy, so you need to keep this somewhat high so you don't go bankrupt. Minerals are raw materials for construction. Minerals can be converted into any other resource, and most early construction projects require a few hundred of them on hand. This is probably the most common resource in the game. Alloys are refined metals, needed to build space ships, space stations and (eventually) robots. This is the rarest and most valuable resource. Consumer Goods are luxury products for civilians. Things like books, movies, video games, sports cars, and cell phones. Things that they technically don't need but provide entertainment. This is probably the least useful resource unless you explicitly plan on playing a merchant style Empire that resolves everything with trade deals as opposed to violence (which is a valid way to play the game). Because Consumer Goods only really exists to keep your citizens happy. And happy citizens won't want to start a rebellion to overthrow you. So even though they aren't as important as the other four, it's still worth investing into Consumer Goods. But no matter what, you need to find a habitable planet to build facilities to produce these resources. Farms for Food, Power Plants for Energy, Mines for Minerals, etc. Once you decide what to build, it is again, automatic. Only this time you don't need to have a named character lead the project. You can hire a Governor to watch over that planet (or several planets at once), and while they might speed up the process, they aren't required. Governors mostly exist to provide boosts for the entire planet so long as they remain in office. These boosts are themed around the Governor's personality. Like a Governor with a strong sense of justice will reduce crime on any planet under his jurisdiction while a Governor with a love for agriculture will increase Food production for any Farms on that planet.

There are also advanced resources like Dark Matter and Exotic Gases that are so volatile that your Empire needs to invent new tech just to be able to collect or produce them in the first place. These advanced resources aren't as essential to your Empire's development, but they do let you build bigger and more dangerous weapons, which makes your warships better combatants, which lets you Exterminate your enemies and so and so forth. You should understand how everything comes back to the Four Ex's by now. Anyway, one last important resource are Pops. Pops is the catch all term for any citizen living in your Empire, although I heard somewhere that one Pop is supposed to represent hundreds of people as one unit, because you know, macro scale space game. Pops are needed to work all the jobs to produce every resource mentioned earlier. Pops also have their own needs. They need Food to not starve, they are paid in Energy, and they indulge in Consumer Goods. They also need Housing to rest at night and Amenities to keep them happy. If their needs are not met they might start a rebellion. Which means setting some resources aside to tend to your people's needs, which is yet another reason why overinvesting in your navy is a bad idea. Because if you pour all of your resources into the navy, you won't have anything left to tend to your people. It's all about finding that economic balance.

Image found on SteamDB.com

The final two "resources" we need to talk about are Influence and Unity. Which are more like concepts that build up over time than something physical but that's neither here nor there. Influence is a measure of your political sway. You can spend Influence to Expand your borders by claiming to be the legal owner of a star system. You can spend Influence to give your entire Empire temporary power boosts called Edicts (which do things like boost resource production or shorten construction time). And you can spend Influence doing manipulative, politician type shenanigans. But how do you get Influence? Much like in real life, sci-fi civilizations are not one dimensional clichés, at least when written well. There will almost always be smaller political Factions within your Empire who embody the main Ethics. While the first Factions to appear in your Empire will be the ones whose Ethics are already supported, if the campaign goes on long enough you'll have at least one Faction per Ethic. Making the Factions happy by legalizing their desired policies will earn you Influence. Displeasing the Factions by outlawing their desired policies will halt your Influence gain, though to my knowledge they can't take it away forcibly. At least, I've never seen Influence go into the negatives before, and I put well over 100 hours into this game across four different campaigns. But no matter what, as long as you have more satisfied Factions than displeased Factions, you can still get Influence.

Unity represents your Empire's cultural development and how, well, united your people are. This resource builds up automatically at all times, never going down under any circumstances. Once it reaches a threshold, you will be allowed to unlock a Tradition, which are basically the Influence Edicts but substantially stronger and once chosen, a Tradition will work for the entire rest of the campaign. The Traditions are divided into sets of five all built around a theme. Domination, Expansion, Harmony, Diplomacy, Supremacy and Discovery. If you unlock every Tradition in a set you unlock an Ascension. Ascensions are upgrades that are even stronger than Traditions, though you can only have up to eight per campaign. And when I say that Ascensions are strong, I mean they are ABSURD. These include things like becoming so advanced at robotics your Empire's species uploads their souls into robotic shells so they can live forever, meaning your Scientists and Governors will never die again. Or your Empire's leaders declaring themselves to be the Guardians of the Galaxy, thus making all of your Empire's weaponry deal double damage against Crisis Events. But this brings us to my biggest complaint with Stellaris, and it's something that Paradox and Tantalus have acknowledged themselves, so this is a pretty big deal.

There are two words that will strike fear into the hearts of any seasoned Stellaris fan; Xeno Compatibility. This Ascension right here is responsible for a lot of behind the scenes technical difficulties. What Xeno Compatibility does is it allows your Empire's species to become able to mate and reproduce with any other alien species, thus creating hybrid citizens. Which at first glance doesn't sound that bad, especially for the Mass Effect crowd. The problem here is that the game doesn't put a hard "stop" on how far Xeno Compatibility goes, so it can very easily create hybrids of hybrids, and then make hybrids out of those hybrids, ad infinitum. The result is that the game literally cannot keep up with the infinite hybrids being created by a Xeno Compatible Empire, resulting in frame rate drops or even crashes. This got so bad that in a free update, Paradox added a feature to the options menu that straight up disables Xeno Compatibility and prevents it from even showing up in the Ascension list. Honestly, what I would have done, speaking as someone who never made a video game before but knows how challenging the experience can be, is simply make Xeno Compatibility a massive permanent boost to Pop reproduction speed. Like 50% or even 100%. Just have the hybrid stuff be flavor text. I feel like that one change would make Xeno Compatibility actually usable while still allowing for "hybrids" in your Empire.

And now that I got my gripes with Xeno Compatibility out of the way, let's talk DLC. The other thing Paradox games are known is a ludicrous amount of post-launch support. For better and for worse, most of the post-launch support tends to be in the form of paid expansions that cost additional money (between $5 to $20). And again, Stellaris is no different. At the time of writing there are 12 main expansions that radically alter the game by adding new Civics, new Origins, new structures and ship types, new space creature bosses called Leviathans that your navy can fight, and a bunch of other things you would expect from you average space opera. And also a ton of cosmetic DLC adding new portraits to customize the appearance of your aliens. Is the DLC worth buying? Maybe. I'm not in charge of how you spend your money. But me personally, cosmetic DLC doesn't excite me personally, since I would rather have an expansion that completely transforms the experience than a new look that feels the same to play. That being said, the only DLC that I going to tell you to pick up, if you choose to get this game, is Utopia (which allows you to build giant space stations called Megastructures as well as the option to make your Empire's species a Tyranid/Zerg style hive mind) and Leviathans (which adds the aforementioned bosses). Without those two DLC packs, playing Stellaris feels like playing the demo of a game and not the full experience. Keep in mind that the version I played was just the Deluxe Edition, which comes with Utopia, Leviathans and the Plantoids portrait pack for no extra cost. I don't have any of the other expansions.

But trust me, Stellaris with the DLC packs is a completely different beast from the vanilla experience. The Apocalypse pack adds the ability to build the Colossus, which is literally just your Empire's own version of the Death Star from Star Wars. Federations has an overhauled diplomacy system that lets you rule the galaxy with the power of friendship and Jolly Cooperation, and allows you do a lot more with peaceful alliances. Nemesis lets you choose to literally Become the Crisis and become a threat to the galaxy so dangerous all of the Empires in the galaxy (including the actual Crisis Events) will team up to stop your evil plans. Synthetic Dawn adds in a metric boat load of content for robot lovers, including the option to make your Empire start as a species of completely mechanical androids. Toxoids is a nice middle ground between a cosmetic pack (adding some poison and pollution themed portraits) while also adding thematically appropriate game content like two new Origins and a ton of toxin-themed Civics and Traits. Megacorps allows you to turn your Empire into what can best be described as Space Amazon and lets you build major businesses on any planet in the galaxy, if it belongs to another Empire entirely. This is both the best and worst thing about Stellaris. The fact that the game is still receiving post-launch support eight years later is impressive. But at the same time, buying absolutely every DLC available is akin to buying a whole new game entirely. So if you are gaming on a budget, only buy the DLC if it has something that you genuinely feel would make the whole game better. I personally consider the portrait packs to be fairly anticlimactic, since most of the changes are mostly cosmetic. The more recent portrait packs have made an effort to include more mechanical changes like new Traits, Origins and Civics, so there's that.

The final gameplay thing that is important to note is that Stellaris does have an optional multiplayer mode, with up to 32 players can each take control of an Empire and meddle in strategies and alliances far more nuanced than what can be done in single-player. In this game mode, real people effectively replace all the NPC Empires. And very generously, only the host of the server needs to own a DLC pack for it to function. As long as the host owns something like Utopia or Federations or Apocalypse or any of the other DLC packs, any other player on that server can access the content those expansions have for free. This is, in a way, the closest thing Stellaris has to a "Try Before you Buy" system. So once again, the power of friendship and Jolly Cooperation can save the day. Or at least, a few dollars from your wallet. I haven't messed with multiplayer that much myself.

In terms of presentation, Stellaris is good for what it's trying to do. This game is, as stated many times, played on a macro scale. You will never get a close look at your cities or citizens. Your named leaders are portrayed by 2D portraits with one or two simple looping animations. But the stars and planets themselves look good. Every time you get a report of a random event, you also get some nice artwork that provides a visual aid, and the artwork is generally pretty good. The different alien portraits are all divided into different taxonomies, like Mammals and Avians. Most of the portraits generally have a good variety to them. There are some portraits that are literally just anthropomorphic animals like foxes or geckos, or humans with a weird thing on their head. But then you have some that look truly alien, like an Avian that looks more like a feathered Christmas tree than an actual bird, or a Fungoid "parasite" that has attached itself to a different alien entirely. Even with just the base game, there's a lot of options for making almost any kind of alien you can imagine. Keep in mind, however, that most of the game is spent looking at the galactic map. And depending on how each Empire turns out in

In terms of sound, again, the game is good for what it's trying to do. The music is good background noise, but I never felt like listening to the music by itself. The sound effects are better, with a set of recognizable beeps and tunes notifying of of anything noteworthy. There is almost no voice acting whatsoever, with the only voiced dialogue coming from the Advisor, a character that teaches you the basics during the tutorial, while also informing you of import events like war declarations or the completion of research projects. The default Advisor voice is basically a stereotypical British butler voice, with a robotic filter on top of it. The other Advisor voices are locked behind the Synthetic Dawn expansion as well as a few portrait packs such as Necroids and Toxoids. All of these voices are based on the main Ethics and Civics, with a few outliers like the Diplomat and Soldier voices not being based anything in particular. A few favorites of mine are the Cyberpunk, the Necroid, the Xenophile and the Technocrat. The Cyberpunk voice is a walking (or rather, talking) reference to Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk series, complete with using fictional slang words like "Preem" and "Frag." The Necroid voice sounds ethereal, sinister and oddly seductive. Which works well for Empires that are trying to be aesthetically creepy or menacing. The Xenophile voice sounds like she's just happy to be of service and is by far the friendliest voice available. The Technocrat voice sounds like a cold and pragmatic scientist willing to do anything he can to unlock the secrets of the universe, consequences be damned. Which works very well for a more morally questionable Empire that focuses primarily on technology. Also, the Technocrat has by far one of the coolest one-liners when you declare war on an opposing Empire. "We shall cure them of their ignorance." The delivery is, as the saying goes, peak cinema.

So overall, Stellaris is a lot of fun once you learn how to play it properly. The hardest part is sticking with the game long enough to get to that point. Again, there's no shame in looking up guides and walkthroughs just to understand the many moving parts of a Paradox game. That being said, this game is heavily reliant on DLC expansion for most of its features. Stellaris by itself feels like a demo for another, better game without DLC. So if you want to get this game, do yourself a favor and get at least Utopia and Leviathans. Those two expansions add enough content to make the game worth playing at least once. The other DLCs add to the experience, yes, but they don't feel as important as those first two. So this game gets an unusual rating. Stellaris with no DLC gets a 3 out of 5 stars. It's competent, but rather bland due to a lack of actual content to engage with. But with DLC, Stellaris goes up to a 4 stars out of 5. It would be 5 stars if it weren't for the fact that buying every single DLC ever released would cost just as much money, possibly even more so than the game itself. The good news is that Paradox often puts discounts and sales on some of the more popular expansions, such as Federations and Nemesis. But this is definitely one of those games where you need to spend more than the initial fee to get the full experience, and that can and will be a turn off for anyone trying to enjoy the video gaming hobby while on a budget.

Stellaris is owned by Paradox Interactive. I have not created any of the images used in this review. Please support the original creators.

Katana Zero, psychedelic samurai action. A very chronological review

2024-06-20T16:55:00.001-04:00

Honestly speaking, Katana Zero was a game I bought on a whim. It was only 15 dollars at the time, and a cyberpunk action game about a Feudal Era Samurai in a modern day urban setting? That's the kind of sales pitch that catches my attention. Because I like cyberpunk, I like samurai, and I like action games. This seems like the holy trinity of all my nerdy interests. Three hours later, and I finished what can best be described as a psychedelic thrill ride through a dystopian story that I sincerely wish was longer. So that's what we're reviewing today. Two quick warnings before we continue with the review. Firstly, I played the Nintendo Switch version of the game, so I will be using that console's controllers as a frame of reference when I discuss the controls. And secondly, Katana Zero is rated M for Mature. Because of violence. And profanity. And because the main character is canonically addicted to a fictional drug. Reader discretion is advised

Image found on Wikipedia.org

But what is Katana Zero exactly? Developed by Akiisoft and published by Devolver Digital back in 2019, Katana Zero is a game with a delightfully simplistic premise. You play as an amnesiac Samurai named Zero. Zero is tasked by a mysterious employer to go around the city of New Mecca and assassinate various "undesirable characters" for reasons unknown. Also, according to designer Justin Stander, the whole game is heavily inspired by neo-noir action movies such as Sin City and John Wick, with a little bit of AKIRA thrown in for good measure. So if you've seen those movies, you know exactly what kind of "vibe" that Katana Zero is going for. In between each mission, Zero visits a suspicious psychiatrist in an attempt to understand a reoccurring nightmare that plagues his mind whenever he sleeps. Said nightmare may or may not be a distorted recreation of an event from Zero's childhood that holds the key to his true identity. Things only get weirder from here.

Let's start at the gameplay. Katana Zero is a side scrolling action game built around two main mechanics; instant death and time manipulation. If you've ever heard the phrase "glass cannon" Zero is that concept turned into an actual character. Every hit, from bullets to punches, will kill him instantly. But the same is true for any enemies standing in Zero's way. All enemies die in one hit. From any source of damage. From slashing with a katana to throwing wine bottles. Even the act of opening a door will kill any bad guy standing on the other side. Because Zero doesn't so much as "open" doors as he does "kick the door down with enough force to break the hinges." Zero is armed with a katana (obviously) and any slash with it will kill anything within reach of the blade. You can also use the katana to deflect enemy bullets back at their source, which again, will instantly kill anyone shooting at you. And finally, Zero can pick up certain objects, such as glass bottles, and throw them with enough force to (you guessed it) instantly kill whatever gets hit by said projectile. Because everyone dies so quickly, levels are lightning fast and demand near perfect precision and speed. Every level is timed, but the timer is generous and I never ran out of time during any of the game's ten main levels. The real main challenge of the game comes from the fact that you cannot progress to the next room in a level until all the enemies in the current room have been defeated. But there is a trick Zero has that gives him a distinct advantage over his targets.

So here's a little bit of lore to provide context for the game mechanics. Zero is dependent on an experimental super steroid called Chronos. Chronos supercharges the body and the mind, to the point where Chronos users can straight up see the future with 100% accuracy. And in game mechanic terms, this is both the explanation for how Zero can retry failed levels and how Zero can pull off these superhuman stunts. Every failed attempt at a level is, canonically speaking, just a future vision Zero is having, warning him against an unforeseen danger. But more importantly, if you hold down the left bumper button, Zero can spend Chronos to slow down time, making it easier to react to enemy attacks and other such hazards. Chronos is limited and recharges slowly, so it is best to use this ability only when you have to. One thing I love about Katana Zero is that after every level you get a replay showing the exact route you took to complete the level. What's cool is that any Chronos related stunts you pulled are shown in real time, without the slow-motion effect that Chronos usually has. Because of that, Zero looks a lot more skilled and dangerous on replays than he does when you play as him directly. This is easily one of the best uses of both slow-motion and instant replays in a video game, at least in my opinion.

Speaking of beating the game, my biggest criticism of Katana Zero is that the game is really short. It will take between 2 and 3 hours to beat on your first try. It's basically the length of the average action movie. I would not mind the shortness under normal circumstances. In fact, speaking as a guy who normally plays role playing games (which are 60-80 hours long on average), the fact that you can beat this game in less than a day would be a breath of fresh air. But without spoiling things too much, the ending of Katana Zero is far too abrupt for my liking. But almost as if to compensate for the shortness of the main campaign, you can unlock a speed run mode that lets you replay the whole game but with a little timer in the top right corner of the screen, as well different sword types that don't really change how the game is played (aside from minor stat adjustments like more range or faster slices) but these extra swords add some cosmetic novelty to future playthroughs. You can also unlock a Hard Mode by beating the game, which shuffles some hazards around and adds in additional enemies to each level.

On the subject of enemies, Katana Zero sports a surprisingly diverse roster of enemies to fight. While all of them die in one hit, how exactly you deal with each one varies. You have basic gangsters that throw slow and predictable punches, you have police officers armed with pistols and shotguns, and even automated turrets that you have to sneak around instead of confronting directly. Remembering what each enemy type does is vital to clearing the levels with a half-decent time. The only enemies who don't die in one hit are to the surprise of literally no one, the bosses. But to be fair, almost every boss has a story reason to be so durable. Most bosses in this game are actually other Chronos users/addicts, and since Chronos users can predict the future with 100% accuracy, when two or more of them fight, it's less a duel to the death and more a test of mental willpower to see who surrenders first after seeing an infinite amount of different futures and experiencing an infinite amount of potential future deaths. Mild spoilers here, but the only reason Zero can even beat the final boss in the first place is because said final boss literally gives up because the mental strain of seeing their future selves die so many times in a row was too much for them to handle.

Image found on steamdb.com

One last gameplay thing before we talk about the story in detail. Katana Zero has one of the most unique dialogue options I've ever seen. In between each level are "downtime" sections, where Zero is free to visit his psychiatrist or talk to his neighbors. And how quickly the player responds changes how Zero responds in conversation. Pick an option before the other person can finish talking, and Zero's dialogue sounds ruder and more aggressive. But if you wait long enough for the other person to finish speaking, then Zero sounds calmer and more level-headed. The options themselves don't really change the story in any obvious way, but they do give Zero a chance to express a bit more personality and charm than his profession normally allows him to. And because I don't have anywhere else to put the nightmare section, I want to talk about Zero's nightmares in more detail. With each night, the nightmare gets longer and more detailed, though it always ends before we can learn anything truly revolutionary about Zero's past. It always starts with a child (presumably a young Zero) playing catch with his sister and ends with a scientist (presumably Zero's parent or guardian) running into the room only to get shot from behind by a masked soldier. Without spoiling the meaning behind the nightmare too much, it's one of those things that makes more sense on a second playthrough than on the first.

Alright. Let's talk about Katana Zero's story because this game's narrative was one of the wildest narratives I've ever had the pleasure to experience. For obvious reasons, beware of spoilers from this point onwards. So first of all, the reason for Zero's assassinations. It's eventually revealed that all his targets, consisting primarily in seemingly unrelated celebrities and billionaires, were all involved in either the creation or the distribution of Chronos. The psychiatrist that Zero's been seeing is involved in some kind of government conspiracy, and has been not-so-subtly manipulating Zero's thoughts and memories to mold him into a compliant but highly effective killer. Chronos is also not only highly addictive (as drugs of this nature often are) but it is literally impossible for a Chronos user to "sober up." Why, you ask? Because the withdrawal symptoms are so intense that if a person who was dependent on Chronos doesn't have any in their bloodstream, they become trapped in their own mind and effectively become a vegetable to the outside world. The main villain of this game, a gangster named V, takes full advantage of these withdrawal symptoms and uses Chronos as a method of psychological torture.

While all of this is happening, Zero hears multiple news reports about a rogue samurai serial killer called "The Dragon" going on a rampage in the same part of town that Zero usually operates in. On a first playthrough, it's easy to assume that Zero is the Dragon and the news reports are just recapping things Zero already did prior to the events of the game. But as it turned out, the Dragon was a completely different person from Zero named Fifteen. 28 years ago, Zero and Fifteen were the result of the NULL program, an experiment to create psychic super soldiers. The experiment was almost successful, but then the psychic super soldiers started committing war crimes so horrible that government funding was pulled from the program. As it turned out, getting the public to support psychic superhumans with a known penchant for murdering civilians just for fun was in fact, a PR nightmare. So the NULL soldiers were cast aside and the program was shut down. Unfortunately, the Chronos didn't exactly go away. Now there was an entire underground criminal empire built around recreating Chronos and selling it on the black market. The NULL soldiers themselves turned to a life of crime in order to afford more Chronos, for without it they were as good as dead. And because of all this, Fifteen is motivated entirely by a desire for vengeance. Vengeance against both the criminals exploiting the drug trade for profit, and against the New Mecca government for turning the NULL soldiers into freaks of nature just to throw them away the instant they outlived their purpose.

Speaking of Fifteen, one of my favorite levels in the game actually has you play as him for a spell. Fifteen controls exactly the same as Zero, but with one key difference. Fifteen cannot pick up objects and throw them. But to compensate for the lack of throwing skills, Fifteen can perform a dash in any direction, and this dash attack will instantly kill anyone standing in between Fifteen's starting point and his destination. This dash attack is so fast that on the replay, it looks like Fifteen is straight up teleporting. This one ability makes it clear that Fifteen is much more powerful than Zero, and also looks like it came straight out of an Shonen battle anime. And I mean that as a complement. If Akiisoft and Devolver Digital ever make another Katana Zero game, I would love to see them bring back Fifteen, or at least his move set, because the fact that Fifteen is only playable in one level is almost a crime.

Image found on steamdb.com

While the Dragon is getting his revenge, Zero is still compliant with the assassination orders, but in between each mission he starts to befriend his neighbor's daughter, a small child known only as the Girl. The interactions and banter between Zero and the Girl are a rare moment of levity and wholesomeness in an otherwise very grim and serious game. Speaking of levity, there's also a hilarious gag early on where Zero infiltrates a hotel, and when the secretary asks about his unusual outfit, he can choose to pass his samurai garb off as either a bathrobe or as a cosplay of an anime character. The secretary turns out to be a massive nerd and starts fangirling at the thought of someone being a fellow anime fan. And Zero can double down on this charade and claim to be a "true connoisseur" of fine anime, and then claim that he's too much of a hipster to watch "mainstream" and "popular" anime. Zero is obviously making everything up as he goes along with this route, but the fact that the secretary is completely enthralled with every word he says is highly entertaining. Especially because I've seen people on the Internet unironically brag about enjoying obscure forms of media simply on the grounds that "obscure is good, popular is bad."

The final main story thing I want to talk about (before I talk about the ending) are Tragedy and Comedy. Tragedy and Comedy are two masked specters that haunt Zero's mind and are strongly implied to be figments of his imagination. Alternatively, they are real entities with some sort of supernatural influence on the world. Either way, Tragedy and Comedy are by far the strangest characters in the game. In fact, they are singlehandedly responsible for the all the weirdness that compelled me to call this game a "psychedelic" experience. They don't seem to be real, seeing as how only Zero seems to acknowledge their existence. But if they are real entities and not a figment of Zero's imagination, then they are clearly supernatural in nature. Because again, only Zero can see or hear them. There's even a scene where Zero is cornered by the police, and Tragedy and Comedy drop in out of nowhere in plain view of the entire police squad, but not a single officer so much as bats an eye at the sudden appearance of these specters. And I'm not sure about you, but if two masked men sudden appeared in between me and a rogue samurai, I would at least comment on it. They taunt Zero about his role as an assassin and push him to commit acts of larger scale violence. And there's even a "bad" ending where, at Tragedy and Comedy's prodding, Zero turns himself in to the police. This ending results in Zero being executed for the many crimes committed on behalf of his mysterious employers.

But you know how I said that this game's ending was abrupt? Well, let me explain why. So towards the end of the game, Zero has rediscovered his past as a NULL soldier. His relationship with the Psychiatrist has grown increasingly strained as Zero's "antics" attract unwanted attention from both the criminal underworld and from the New Mecca government. Zero is given one last mission; to infiltrate a bunker housing the last remnants of Chronos development. Zero's orders are simple; Leave. No. Survivors. For most of the bunker level he carves a bloodied path through all sorts of security. He even manages to slay a fellow Chronos user named Head Hunter and destroys the machines needed to make more Chronos. The only problem he ran into was that the bunker was testing Chronos on homeless children. Because of Zero's time with the Girl, along with dormant memories of the past springing back into his mind, he has a change of heart and flees the scene without killing any of the kids.

The Psychiatrist is furious that Zero didn't "finish the job" and threatens to terminate Zero's contract, thus cutting him off from his weekly Chronos doses. At this point, Zero's fractured mind finally snaps and he tries to kill the Psychiatrist. If you met the requirements for the secret bonus boss (done by being as rude as possible to the Psychiatrist and disobeying his orders whenever possible), you get a boss fight against a Chronos-enhanced mutant version of the Psychiatrist. If you don't meet the requirements, Zero just kills the Psychiatrist automatically in a fit of rage. Either way, Zero breaks into the Psychiatrist's personal Chronos stash and injects as much of it into himself as he can. Meanwhile, the player is treated to one last flash back showing the nightmare in full detail. And the big reveal that I said makes more sense in hindsight is that the kid in the nightmare wasn't actually Zero. Turns out he was the masked soldier that shot the scientist and that Zero himself was one of the "problematic" NULL soldiers who committed various war crimes. The nightmares were a result of a guilty conscience mixed with some PTSD from the New Meccan War that happened 28 years before the events of the game. After this, Zero returns to his apartment, only to find that the Girl is nowhere to be found. When Zero asks his neighbors about the Girl's disappearance, they express confusion and bafflement at the idea of a little Girl living in the complex, strongly implying that the Girl was just a figment of Zero's imagination. And then the game just ends right there. It drops two bombshell revelations about our protagonist back-to-back and then says "later, nerds." It does give a "To be continued..." message at the end of the credits, and out of all the games I played this is the one that most deserves a sequel. Because there's still a lot of unresolved plot threads in this game. You never get to confront Fifteen after his introduction. And you never get to learn anything about Snow, the mysterious lady samurai that V works for. Never has an ending in a video game demanded a sequel as strongly as Katana Zero.

In terms of presentation, Katana Zero can be best described with one word. Stylish. The game is portrayed in a pixel-art style, and the pixel-art is some of the best in the industry. Every animation is fluid and full of expression, and each level is distinct both in terms of layout and in terms of aesthetic. From night clubs, to hotels, to movie studios, Zero's missions take him to a wide variety of locales all throughout New Mecca. Expect a lot of neon from this game. Because it's still a cyberpunk game and a staple of the genre is neon lights all over the place. There's no voice acting whatsoever, but the dialogue (delivered through speech bubbles) is just as snappy and expressive as the animations. And going back to the whole "how quickly you respond determines how you respond" thing, a nice detail in dialogue is that if Zero interrupts the other speaker before they finish talking, the speech bubble above their head physically shatters into a million pieces, further emphasized with a glass breaking sound effect. And the music is superb. Katana Zero's soundtrack, composed and performed by Bill Kiley and LudoWic, is mostly synth wave and techno music, though there are some classical songs mixed in for good measure (mostly for the scenes with the Psychiatrist). And the soundtrack is diegetic, meaning (almost) every song exists in-universe. Every level starts with Zero putting on a song on his MP3 player, and every level ends when Zero turns the music off.

Overall, for a game that I went into with hardly any expectations, I was pleasantly surprised by its quality. It is frustratingly short and could easily have at least two more levels to tie up some loose story threads. But if my biggest criticism of a game is "I wanted more of it" is that really a bad thing? The combat is fast, the narrative is engaging, and this game has a wonderfully stylish semi-retro aesthetic. Katana Zero has also joined the likes of Devil May Cry, Hollow Knight and UNDERTALE/deltarune in the great collection of "games with soundtracks that sound better than 90% of all songs on the radio." I give Katana Zero 4 stars out of 5. The only thing keeping it from a 5 star rating is again, the abruptness of the ending. But if Akiisoft and Devolver Digital make a DLC pack or a sequel that retroactively ties up those loose story threads and gives this game a satisfactory conclusion, I would gladly change the rating from 4 stars to 5.

Katana Zero is owned by Akiisoft and Devolver Digital. None of the screenshots used here belong to me. Please support the original creators.

Elden Ring, the game that got me to love the Souls Borne series. A very maidenless review.

2024-05-07T13:50:00.019-04:00

This is my third review of a Souls Borne game. I have already reviewed Sekiro and Bloodborne before this game, and I plan to one day review the entire franchise. But here's a funny story you might not know. None of these games were my first Souls Borne game. That "honor" goes to Dark Souls II. And in hindsight, starting with II was probably a mistake, since that game is needlessly oppressive and counterintuitive. As such, I never finished it, but I might replay it again for the purpose of reviewing the whole franchise. But anyway, I bounced off the series for years after trying and failing to complete Dark Souls II. Then I picked up Elden Ring, and that game was so good that not only did I replay the game again as soon as the credits rolled, but it won me over and converted me into a "real" Souls Borne fan. I started tracking down the other games because I liked Elden Ring so much and wanted more games in that style. So here's a heavily biased review of a game that I will openly admit is one of my favorite pieces of media ever. Quick content warning. Elden Ring is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and thus is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Mostly because of violence. And freaky monster designs. And a subplot where the protagonist gets married to a weird witch lady.

Image found on Wikipedia.org

So what exactly is Elden Ring? It's a medieval fantasy action roleplaying game inspired by Norse and Celtic Mythology that was developed by From Software and published by Bandai Namco, with the story and lore being co-written by Hidetaka Miyazaki (the creator of the Souls Borne series) and George R.R. Martin, of Game of Thrones fame. The game would release on February 24th, 2022 and became an overnight success. Not only was it the best selling Bandai Namco-published game ever made, it was the second best selling game of that year, being second only to Call of Duty 2: Modern Warfare. Which is impressive, since From Software have spent much of their history being a fairly niche developer. It also has a DLC expansion pack planned for release this coming June (at the time of writing), titled The Shadow of the Erdtree.

And now I have to tell you about the story in this game. Something you need to understand about From Software is that they don't tell their stories with traditional cinematics. Sure, cinematics exist, but mostly to hype up certain bosses and show how much of a threat they are. Most of the story is told through details in the environment, optional conversations with the few friendly faces you'll meet on your adventure, and reading the descriptions of collectible items. This vagueness was deliberate by design. One of Miyazaki's quirks as a writer is that he loves seeing people come up with theories and pool their knowledge together into a cohesive narrative, and his stories are meant to be vague and mysterious for this exact reason. And even though Martin's involvement was a big part of the prerelease marketing, the game feels less like a 50/50 split between his style and Miyazaki's style, and more like a 70/30 split in Miyazaki's favor. Granted, Elden Ring is somewhat more straightforward in its narrative than previous Souls Borne games. I didn't do any additional research on the lore during my first playthrough and felt like I had a good enough understanding of what was going on.

So here's a basic summary of the lore. In the world of Elden Ring, there is an island nation called the Lands Between. The Lands Between were ruled by a Goddess named Marika the Eternal, who was given divine power by an artefact called the Elden Ring. The Elden Ring was a gift from an even more powerful god called the Greater Will, in exchange for Marika's loyalty and servitude. Marika birthed several children who, while not gods in and of themselves, are still incredibly powerful and have the potential to ascend to godhood in certain circumstances. These kids are called the Demigods. Eventually Marika got tired of being the Greater Will's poster girl so she smashed the Elden Ring and faked her death. And then her kids started a civil war to fill the power vacuum. Fast forward five thousand years later, and the Lands Between are a post-apocalyptic shell of their former glory. Monstrous dragons burn down villages, undead zombies and skeletons attack roaming travelers and a supernatural disease called the Scarlet Rot is spreading through the land like a plague.

You play as a Foul Tarnished, an undead super soldier brought back to life by Marika's Grace and given a task. Track down the scattered remains of the Elden Ring, repair it and claim the throne of the Next Elden Lord. You are not the only Tarnished on this quest, however. In fact there are potentially hundreds of Tarnished running around. But only one of them can be Elden Lord. So any alliance between Tarnished is temporary at best. And in typical From Software fashion, not even ten minutes after waking up your Tarnished gets thrown into a boss fight that you are supposed to lose. Though you do get a cool sword if you beat it on your first try. After that scripted loss, you wake up in a cave and can go through an optional tutorial that teaches you the controls and basic game mechanics. Said tutorial ends with a boss fight against the Soldier of Godrick, which is a much more reasonable "first boss" than the actual first boss. Granted, the Soldier of Godrick is just a slightly buffed version of the basic undead wretches you've been fighting in the tutorial, so he isn't meant to be too hard.

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Elden Ring has a pretty robust character creator, and I am a sucker for a good character creator. You can customize the hair, facial features, body type, gender and more. But more importantly, the game has a bunch of Classes. One thing I love about this game is that there are a ton of different ways to customize your fighting style. Do you want to swing the biggest and heaviest swords imaginable? You can do that. Do you want to run in and unleash a flurry of lightning fast stabs and slices with a pair of daggers? You can do that. Do you want to cast magic spells and shoot laser beams? You can do that. But keep in mind that nothing in this game is class-locked. As long as you meet the minimal stat requirements to use a weapon or cast a spell, you can use it. Even if you start the game as a Hero (a bulky juggernaut who excels with Strength focused weapons but struggles with spellcasting), you can learn magic spells if you put a few upgrades into Intelligence.

The stats all do more or less what you expect them to. Strength makes the big heavy weapons better, Dexterity makes the fast smaller weapons better. Vigor gives you more health and defense, Endurance gives you more stamina (letting you jump and dodge more frequently) and carry heavier items on you. Intelligence and Faith are both your "magical" stats, with the former making star-themed sorcery better and the latter improving holy incantations. Mind gives you a bigger Focus meter, thus letting you cast more spells before needing to recharge. And finally, Arcane is a weird stat. It makes enemies drop items upon defeating them more frequently, and boosts the power of status effects like Poison, Frostbite and Bleeding. Practically speaking, Arcane is a stat that can be safely ignored if you don't plan on using status effects, since it offers no other benefits to combat. But status effect builds are comically strong. During my second run of the game, I played a Faith/Arcane hybrid character that tore through the game far faster than my original sorcery character did.

The classes mostly exist as a foundation to build off of instead of a railroad you must follow for the whole game. That being said, they do determine what kind of weapons and armor you start the game with, if anything. And it's generally better to specialize than to generalize. A pure Strength build will generally outperform a Strength/Dexterity hybrid. There are exceptions of course. The aforementioned Faith/Arcane build I made was almost comically strong. And the only reason I made that build was because I wanted to make a "dragon" themed character and all the "dragon" themed spells are designed to work with both Faith and Arcane equally. And also in typical From Software tradition, one of the classes, simply called the Wretch, starts with literally nothing more than a wooden stick and a loincloth. The Wretch's only redeeming quality is that it starts with a 10 in every stat, meaning if you can't make up your mind on what to play, the Wretch offers a perfect blank slate that can be easily molded into any play style you want once you find some real weapons and armor. Miyazaki himself has gone on record saying that playing as the Wretch is the closest thing the game has to a hard mode, so maybe don't play Wretch during your first playthrough unless you are very confident in your skills or you don't mind a rougher start.

Elden Ring controls more or less how you expect a Souls Borne to play. I played the game on PS4 and will be using that console's controller as a frame of reference. But anyway, you use the right and left bumper/trigger buttons to attack with whatever weapon is held in your character's left hand and right hand, respectively. The circle button is your dodge, the square button lets you use consumable items like potions or throwing knives. If you have a shield in hand, you can use it to block and parry enemy attacks. You collect a universal currency called Runes that can be used to purchase upgrades for your character, such as increased stats or better quality weapons and armor. All unspent Runes are dropped if you die and must be manually recollected on your next life. All of this is standard stuff. What's new to this game is the ability to JUMP. No, really, this is the first Souls Borne game with an actual jump button. While there was technically a jump in the previous games, it was clumsy, awkward and only worked if you had enough room for a running start. Now, the jump action is tied to a single button and feels actually good to use. You can also attack while jumping. And jump attacks are surprisingly strong. In fact, speed runners who are better at this game than I am discovered that the fastest way for Strength builds to defeat enemies is by doing jump attacks repeatedly. But back on the subject of new mechanics, there's a new technique called a Guard Counter. Basically, if you hit the heavy attack button right after blocking, it charges the normally slow heavy attack instantly. You can also ride around on a magical steed called Torrent, who is not only much faster than the Tarnished but can also double jump. Torrent cannot be brought indoors, sadly, but he does make navigating the outdoors much easier. And the final new thing are Spirit Ashes. Spirit Ashes are magic spells can be cast once per boss battle that summons a ghostly version of certain monsters and warriors, who will assist you in battle automatically. Spirit Ashes are a nice option to have if you've been struggling against a boss and need just that extra bit of Jolly Cooperation to finish it off. Of course, regular multiplayer co-op is still a thing.

After the tutorial ends you are dumped into the Lands Between properly. You are free to explore wherever and however you want. The amount of freedom and exploration in Elden Ring is simply staggering. A lot of people say that Elden Ring is the most "beginner friendly" Souls Borne game. That is technically true. Not because From Software added an "easy mode" or toned down the enemies and bosses. In fact even the basic enemies can obliterate you if you're not careful. But because there's so much freedom in the open world, if you ever get stuck on a boss, all you have to do is go somewhere else and come back later once you get some upgrades under your belt. The previous games were a lot more linear in their level design, meaning if you got stuck on a boss, you had no real choice besides trying to brute force your way to victory. And if you know where to look, you can find some really powerful weapons long before the first "real" boss.

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Speaking of bosses, this game has a lot of bosses. In fact, at 168 named boss monsters, it has the most number of bosses of any Souls Borne game ever. Funnily enough, out of those bosses, only 12 of them are required to actually finish the game. The rest are optional, but usually reward you with a powerful weapon or spell upon defeat. The only thing I can say negatively about is that most of the non-plot-relevant bosses are recycled at multiple points in the game (meaning you fight them more than once). Some more than others. But considering that Elden Ring is supposed to be From Software's "biggest" game, the world being so huge and packed with details means that the only real way to fill out the game world would be to recycle content. But the good news is that all of the Demigods (sans Godrick) are unique and only fought once. And honestly, the Demigods feel like they have the most amount of polish and effort put into them. They all get an intro cinematic hyping them up. They all are fully voiced and surprisingly chatty, with some of them taunting the Tarnished mid-battle. And of course, they are (generally speaking) the most challenging bosses in the game.

On the subject of challenge, Elden Ring's difficulty is a little bit all over the place. Back when the game first came out, no one could agree if it was the easiest Souls Borne, or if it was the hardest. The answer is yes. Yes, it is the hardest. But also yes, it is the easiest. That sounds like an obtuse non answer and well, it is, but hear me out. You remember when I said that the game offers tons of different options for developing a unique fighting style? Not all builds are created equally. Elden Ring has 308 different weapons to collect and 171 different magic spells to learn. And generally speaking, 10% of those weapons and spells are so weak that using them is for all intents and purposes, handicapping yourself. 50% are just good enough to get you through the game, though you might struggle against certain enemies. And the rest are so comically powerful that they turn even the toughest battles into a cakewalk. And those comically powerful weapons can potentially be accessed as soon as you leave the tutorial area. The only thing consistent about the game's difficulty is that there is a huge spike in enemy damage in the final two regions of the game, the Mountaintop of the Giants and Crumbling Farum Azula. The enemies and bosses here do so much damage that you need at least 40 points into Vigor just to survive more than one attack. To put that into perspective, the previous games in the series could be beaten with 25 Vigor or less, and any more than that was the defensive equivalent of overkill.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The most offensive example of Elden Ring's weird difficulty balancing is a boss called Malenia, the Blade of Miquella. She is by far the hardest boss in the game, putting up more of a fight than even the final boss. Her attack patterns and movement are so fast they push Elden Ring's combat to the absolute limit. She honestly feels like she belongs in a different, much faster game than Elden Ring. This is on top of being able to "steal" health from you with every successful slash from her katana. This is a boss that essentially forces you to go the whole fight without getting hit once, because that's the only way to stop her from healing. Even blocked attacks will still heal her. And that's not even mentioning how she has two full health bars AND she adds a poisonous Scarlet Rot effect to her attacks once her first health bar is emptied. Before you jump to conclusions and assume I'm singling her out because I have a "skill issue" or need to "git gud" let me just say this. Malenia took me 13 tries to beat. Every other boss took 2 or 3 tries each. This was with a sorcery build I had planned ahead of time specifically to counter her. My criticisms of Malenia aren't because she's a hard fight. It's that she runs counter to the rest of the game's design, punishing defensive melee builds that rely on blocks and parries for defense and demanding that the player plays this one specific duel to absolute perfection, because anything less than perfect will result in failure. Thankfully, Malenia is an optional boss and the only rewards for beating her are the bragging rights and a replica of her katana. I think my opinion of Elden Ring would sour if she was mandatory.

Ironically, the hardest challenge in the whole game doesn't even come from its bosses or from its exploration. It comes from the side quests. All throughout the Lands Between you can meet various characters that are also traveling on their own adventures. You can choose to help them with their problems, but a lot of the side quests are so cryptic and obscure that you need a walkthrough on hand just to do them properly. And not helping matters is that if you defeat certain bosses before starting the side quests, the characters associated with might just peace out and move to a different location or even leave the game world entirely, thus preventing you from finishing that character's quest. To add insult to injury, there is no way to check which side quests you've found or finished within the game itself. You just have to hope your memory is good enough to revisit past areas. And even if you find the right characters in the right spot, the solution to their problem can be borderline esoteric. Take Boc the Seamster for example. Towards the end of his side quest, he expresses concern for his unsightly appearance and asks the Tarnished if they know of any way to "make him beautiful." There are two ways to end this quest. The simplest solution is to tell him to go visit a sorceress named Rennala of the Full Moon, who possesses the power of rebirth. Only problem is that Rennala still hasn't perfected her rebirth spell yet, so Boc's "beautiful" new body dies just a few minutes afterword. You would think that simply telling Boc that he's beautiful enough as is would persuade him to stay where he is, but no. You need to travel to a completely different region, grab an item called a Prattling Pate, come back to Boc and use that item to tell him that he's beautiful. There is no indication that such an item even exists, much less where to find it. The other side quests work similarly to Boc's. The simple solution will nine times out of ten get the character killed off (or worse) and the only way to save them is to try something weird and out of the box. There is only one side quest that breaks this rule.

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Oh boy, it's time to talk about Ranni the Witch. This character is quite the fan favorite, thanks to a memorable design, distinct Welsh accent and being the only "friendly" demigod. I'd be lying if I said that I wasn't a Ranni fan, myself. She also has the only quest where doing things out of the "intended" order won't ruin it. In fact, the only real way to fail Ranni's quest is to attack her deliberately. The best thing about Ranni is that she straight up tells you where you need to go and what you need to do to complete the quest. Ranni wants to find a special dagger in an underground city and tells you where to go to find said dagger. Ranni wants the demigod Radahn destroyed as part of her plans, and she tells you to go find Radahn and kill him. Her quest is the only one that is this straightforward. Of course, the beautiful simplicity of her quest isn't the only reason why I like Ranni. The other reason is that her lore is fascinating. She was one of the demigods responsible for turning the Lands Between into a nightmare hellscape. Despite being responsible for many of the horrors that the Tarnished encounters, she has a genuine desire to overthrow the gods and give humanity true, absolute freedom. The third reason I like Ranni is the simple fact that her quest ends with her and the Tarnished getting married. And there's a whole alternate ending, heavily implied to be the best ending, that is rewarded for going through with said marriage. Ranni even gives you the Moonlight Greatsword, which is literally From Software's mascot that they put in every game they work on, as a wedding gift. Out of all the games I have played in my life, Elden Ring is the only one to have an actual marriage in it. Granted, it's a political marriage and Ranni makes it clear her main reason for marrying the Tarnished is because she needs a loyal spouse in order to ascend to godhood. Because marriages in this setting aren't just a romantic ceremony. They are a ritual meant to unlock the true power of the divine. But without context, the idea that Elden Ring's best ending requires you to get married is oddly amusing.

In terms of presentation, Elden Ring is by far the most colorful Souls Borne game. This isn't to say that it's all sunshine and rainbows. Just that it leans more into the "fantasy" side of the phrase "dark fantasy." The monster designs are about what you expect from From Software. Lots of horrifying monstrosities with limbs coming out of places they do not belong. In fact, there's a general motif of hands and arms in the character designs. A lot of characters either have more arms than a normal human, or they have something weird going on with the arms they do have. Just to give a few examples, Ranni has four arms tucked into her robe, Godrick the Golden has two dozen arms erupting out of his back, and Rykard fights with a sword made of bloodied arms. And of course, the main mascot boss of this game, Malenia the Blade of Miquella, has only one natural arm. Her right arm has been replaced with a golden prosthetic that has a retractable sword attached to the wrist. The only bad thing about Elden Ring's aesthetic is that it can at times look a bit too similar to the Dark Souls trilogy. I kind of wish it leaned harder into the Nordic Viking/Celtic Mythology vibes, which are present in things like the Erdtree being modeled after Yggdrasil the World Tree and Malenia's helmet resembling those worn by Valkyries, but the Nordic/Celtic influence is nowhere near as obvious as say, Bloodborne's Victorian vibe or Sekiro's Feudal Japanese aesthetic.

But on a more positive note, we got Legacy Dungeons. Legacy Dungeons are special locations scattered around the open world. These areas are designed to resemble the level design from older Souls Borne games. Not only are they gorgeous to look at, the Legacy Dungeons are by far the most complex areas to navigate, with lots of winding paths that loop back in on themselves, hidden shortcuts and traps. The Legacy Dungeons are a true highlight of Elden Ring's art style, with a personal favorite of mine being Raya Lucaria Academy. It's a giant school for ~~witchcraft and wizardry~~ magic users that rests underneath the pale blue light of an magically conjured night sky, complete with a full moon looming overhead. You work your way up the schoolrooms and past a debate parlor, fighting and/or running past scholarly sorcerers and living puppet soldiers. You eventually reach the tallest point in the school, the Grand Library, where Rennala resides.

Another Legacy Dungeon I love is Leyndell the Golden Capital. It is exactly what it sounds like; The capital city of the Lands Between. It is far fancier and more upkept than the rest of the world, looking almost serene compared to the hellscape outside its fortified walls. The roofs of the buildings are golden, the streets are lined with golden bricks, even the enemies here fight with golden weaponry. Also, there's a petrified corpse of a dragon so large that it functions as a platform/bridge you can walk on. And some people who are much smarter than me did some measurements and found this corpse dragon (named in the lore as Gransax) is more then 4 times the size of the Dragon God, a boss from the very first Souls Borne game, Demon's Souls. Keep in mind that the Dragon God was the biggest monster From Software ever created and they have yet to make a living monster that large ever again. One shudders to think what kind of boss battle a dragon of that size could be like. Maybe that's one of the DLC bosses; a dragon as large as Gransax, but actually alive.

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In terms of sound design, music and voice acting, it's all good. The monstrous roars of the various beasts in the Lands Between are disturbing, and the sound of clashing blades is crisp. The music is about what you expect from From Software. Lots of intimidating orchestra with vaguely Latin sounding lyrics. The music only really kicks in when you discover a boss, though there is some ambience in safe zones like the Roundtable Hold or the Volcano Manor. My personal favorite in the whole soundtrack is the Godskin Nobles' theme. It can best be described as "evil Catholic choir music." Which, considering that the Godskin Nobles are a cult that collects the skin of demigods and fashions clothes out of said skin, is weirdly fitting in a morbid way. And since the Godskin Nobles are fought multiple times, you get to hear their theme music more than once. The Ancestor Spirit is another boss with a good theme. It has really pretty and tranquil music, which sounds almost out of place for a battle with an otherworldly animal spirit.

The voice acting is some of the best in the series. One detail I like about the game is that all of the demigods are ancient (being 5,000 years old or older), and as such they all speak in old-timey Shakespearean English (with a lot of "thee" and "thou" and "thy") to show just how old they are compared to the regular mortals, who speak in modern English. Elden Ring is probably the most quotable game in From Software's catalogue. There's a lot of good quotes in this game. You have funny quotes like the White Masked Varre saying "Unfortunately, it appears you are maidenless" at the start of the game. But then you have incredible one-liners like Godfrey saying "I have given thee courtesy enough!" or Malenia saying "You will witness true horror..." I think my favorite piece of voice acting is when you confront Morgott, the Last of all Kings. The scene starts with him walking down a flight of stairs while listing off each and every demigod responsible for the millennia of warfare and violence that has plagued the Lands Between. With each name, the anger in his tired old voice grows and grows. Eventually he explodes with this line; "Willful traitors, all! Thy kind art all of a piece! War lords, emboldened by the flames of ambition! So have it writ upon thy meagre grave... Felled, by King Morgott! The Last of All Kings!" It's a beautifully written and voice-acted speech that conveys all the pent up rage and frustration Morgott feels about his fellow demigods, and how he believes that the Tarnished will become just as bad as Marika if they become Elden Lord. Morgott isn't an antagonist because he's evil. He's an antagonist because he's scared that the Tarnished will repeat his mother's mistakes and has taken great effort to prevent such a scenario from occurring. Morgott's my favorite boss in this whole game, both because he is fun to fight and because I enjoy the lore and narrative surrounding him.

My only complaint on the voice acting has less to do with acting itself and more to do with the translation. You see, From Software is a Japanese company. That means that Japanese is their native language. Obviously. But there's a bit of translation error. And normally, translation errors do happen in From Software games, but they are usually minor and inconsequential details that don't affect the experience. This game's translation error completely changes Ranni's speech at the end of the game, should you go through with her marriage and allow her to become the Goddess of the Full Moon. In English she says that she plans to "bring forth a chill night, of fear and loneliness, without the need to feel ever again." In Japanese she says that plans to "take the chill night far away from here, as I walk the path of fear and loneliness." The former sounds like she is causing another doomsday. The latter sounds like she is sacrificing herself for the betterment of humanity. This is not the fault of Ranni's voice actress, Aimee-Ffion Edwards, but is a little "whoopsies" in the translation. Side note, I really love the sound of Ranni's voice. She could read a phone book out loud and make it sound interesting.

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Overall, Elden Ring is a great jumping on point for anyone new to the Souls Borne series. Is it perfect? No. I still wish that side quests were easier to keep track of, and the game is a bit too similar to Dark Souls aesthetically for my liking. But it's by far the most beginner friendly game in the franchise. And I'm thankful that this game showed me how fun Souls Borne games could be. If you have heard of From Software's work but were scared off by their infamous difficulty, this game, while not being easy per se, is far more accessible than its predecessors. It's definitely one of the better "open world" games out there. I give Elden Ring five stars out of five.

Elden Ring is the property of Bandai Namco and From Software. None of the screenshots featured here were created by me. Please support the original creators.

The Five Nights at Freddy's movie was pretty neat. A very robotic review.

2024-03-06T17:22:00.001-05:00

So when I reviewed the Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection bundle, I said I wanted to wait until I watched the movie before reviewing that. Well, I watched it. And I want to talk about it, because as the title of this post implies, it was pretty neat. This post exists primarily as a sequel of sorts to the Core Collection review. As such, I won't cover the lore of the franchise as extensively here as I did there. And Five Nights at Freddy's is a horror franchise that was built on a foundation of deep lore. So if you want more information on the games that this movie is based on, go read that post instead.

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Here's a very simplified recap of the series for those who need a quick refresher. Five Nights at Freddy's, often called FN@F for short, is a horror game franchise created entirely by one guy named Scott Cawthon. Despite working on budget consisting of shoe strings and paper clips, Scott's quirky little horror series exploded seemingly overnight in terms of popularity, and he become a prominent figure in the world of independent video game developers. Basically, the series revolves around a Chuck E Cheese's style pizzeria that is home to a crew of haunted animatronic performers. A movie based on the games was announced all the way back in 2015 as part of a collaboration between Scott and horror movie studio Blumhouse, but the script went through multiple rewrites before Scott and director Emma Tammi settled on a script they actually liked some time in 2021. The movie would finally release on October 26th of 2023.

Our story follows the life of Mike Schmidt (played by Josh Hutcherson), a down-on-his-luck security guard trying his best to provide for his younger sister Abby (played by Piper Rubio) and solve the mysterious disappearance of his brother Garrett. Following an incident where he violently attacked a man that he mistook for a child predator, Mike is fired from his old job. With his Aunt Jane (played by Mary Stuart Masterson) trying to take custody of Abby away, Mike is desperate to prove he can be a functional member of society and actually hold a job. So he takes the next job that becomes available to him regardless of how sketchy it sounds. Which means he gets a job working the night shift at Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria, the aforementioned Chuck E Cheese's style restaurant. On top of this, Mike's dreams when he sleeps become increasingly weird. Granted, this is deliberate on Mike's part. He is purposely using lucid dream theory (which is a real thing, by the way) to recreate the past and figure out what happened to Garrett. Though, considering this is a Five Nights at Freddy's story, anyone with even a surface level understanding of the lore can guess what happened to him long before the truth is revealed. But most importantly, the animatronic performers start moving by themselves, without any external assistance.

Oh, and Vanessa is here too. Vanessa (played by Elizabeth Lail) is a mysterious police officer that knows an uncomfortable amount of the Pizzeria's history. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, the main reason Vanessa is here is to explain the lore to newcomers. She tells Mike about the Missing Children Incident, in which at least five kids died inside the Pizzeria while Fazbear Entertainment (the Pizzeria's parent company) covered up said deaths and hid them from the public. She reveals the true nature of the animatronics, which are haunted by the ghosts of the dead kids. She tells him about the Spring Lock suits, which are failed prototypes for robot-costume hybrids that can either be worn like a suit or controlled remotely. She even name drops William Afton, the big bad final boss villain of the whole franchise. Literally every bad thing that happens in FN@F can be traced back to William Afton. Which is why the reveal of what happened to Garrett is not surprising in the slightest for people familiar with the lore.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

But now I want to tell you about the best thing in the whole movie, the animatronics themselves. Every monster here is a real animatronic built and operated by the lovely people from Jim Henson's Creature Shop. While they did use human actors for some scenes that were too complex for normal animatronics, the costuming is so good that I genuinely can't tell the difference. All four of the main monsters look like they stepped right out of the games. Most impressive is Foxy the Pirate Fox. He has by far the most complex design due to his exposed robotic innards, and the Foxy animatronic was so intricate that they needed no less than seven people working together just to make it move around (one for the face, one for the neck, one for each arm, one for each leg, and one to make the whole rig lean forward or backward as needed). Honestly, even if you don't care about the lore or the franchise as a whole, the movie is worth watching just for the animatronics. They are a true spectacle to behold. I do wish they gave the animatronics the pitch-black eyes with the pin-prick white pupils instead of the red eyes they used, since it would look both scarier and more lore accurate, but that is a minor nitpick.

The second best thing about this movie is that it is a real love letter not just to the games, but the fans of said games. There are a lot of references and inside jokes that only make sense to people familiar with the series. And there's some really deep cut references here. Just to give a few examples, there's a scene where Aunt Jane and her gang visit a diner called Sparky's. Sparky was the name of a unused animatronic that was rumored to haunt certain copies of the first game. Scott had to clarify that Sparky wasn't real and that the whole thing was a urban myth that spiraled out of control. Another example, when Mike finds the dead bodies of said gang in the backstage, they've been shoved into costumes based on various monsters from the sequel games and even the spin-off lore novels, such as Shadow Freddy, Eleanora the Doll and Fetch the Dog. But I want to draw attention to two of my favorite references. During the end credits, the movie plays an electropop song simply called The Five Nights at Freddy's Song. This song was a fan-made project made by a band called The Living Tombstone. Evidently, Scott heard the song and loved it so much he decided to make it the official theme song of the whole franchise (with Living Tombstone's permission, of course). And seeing fan-made stuff get a seal of approval from the original creator is always going to be awesome.

The other references I want to talk about extensively happen in that same diner scene described earlier. While coming up with a plan to ruin Mike's life, Aunt Jane is pestered by an overly eager waiter played by Matthew "Mat Pat" Patrick. Mat Pat was the main host of a YouTube channel called Game Theory, which was a web show devoted to solving the biggest mysteries in video game history. Mat Pat has made dozens of videos trying to solve the lore of this series, and has become synonymous with the franchise as a whole. And his character somehow manages to find a way to sneak in the phrase "That's just a Theory!" in casual conversation, a catchphrase that Mat Pat says at least once per video. There's another scene where Abby is riding in a taxi with Golden Freddy, and the taxi driver is played by Cory "CoryxKenshin" Williams, who made humorous play throughs for all the FN@F games. Both Mat Pat and CoryxKenshin are commonly cited as major reasons the franchise got as popular as it did, since these two individuals provided the first game with a lot of Internet publicity. Is the average viewer going to understand who these people are or why they are a big deal? No. Not in the slightest. But again, for people who are involved in the online fan community for this series, these cameos and inside jokes are a pleasant surprise.

Image from imdb.com

The third best thing about the movie is the main villain, William Afton. Spoilers abound for this section. William Afton is played by Matthew Lillard (best known for being the voice of Shaggy from Scooby Do). Afton is first introduced as Steve Raglan, a career consular that not-so-subtly pushes Mike to take the job at the Pizzeria. The reveal that Steve was actually Afton the whole time would have been shocking, had it not been for the fact that Blumhouse spoiled their own twist with the casting. They didn't even bother to pretend that Lillard wasn't playing William Afton. Which means that anyone who knows the lore or paid attention to the casting can guess that the job consular is probably evil. This isn't a bad thing per se, because once William Afton reveals his true nature, he puts on a delightfully hammy performance as a villain. Lillard was clearly having fun being the "bad guy" for once. And honestly, the most quotable parts of the movie come from William Afton. Seriously. Afton yelling things like "SYMMETRY, MY FRIEND!" and "YOU ROTTEN LITTLE BEASTS!" is stuck in my head like an ear worm. And unlike the other characters, William's Spring Trap persona isn't an animatronic. That's a proper costume meant to be worn by a human actor. And apparently, Lillard couldn't see out of the Spring Trap mask, so for all of the scenes where he wore the mask, he was quite literally acting blind. Which I got to imagine must've been an awkward experience, but it was worth it, since William Afton's portrayal here is a major highlight of the movie.

If I had to say anything negative about the movie, I didn't really find the movie that scary. Granted, I'm a long time FN@F fan and I think I've become desensitized to all of Scott's tricks and jump scares. I've mostly stuck around for the lore and monster designs. But a common saying you'll hear about the games is that Five Nights at Freddy's is a "baby's first" horror game. And to put things bluntly, this movie is a "baby's first" horror movie. The violence here is surprisingly tame, especially when compared to other horror movies. The animatronics almost never kill anyone on screen, because the camera conveniently looks away right before the killing blow lands. Or we see only the aftermath of said kills. Don't get me wrong, this movie can be creepy and atmospheric. That's another thing the movie does well. The vibes of the Pizzeria itself are perfect. The issue is that the movie feels like it's holding itself back. Like it has the potential to get super gory and gross but it's really trying not to lose that PG-13 rating so it tones itself down enough to be technically family friendly. Like the goriest thing in the movie is when one of Aunt Jane's gangsters gets the upper half of her body bit off by Freddy, but the bite and remains are framed in shadow to not show any of the grisly details. So the lack of violence leaves me conflicted. On one hand, I could probably show this movie to my parents and have them not think I'm a masochistic freak for liking something spooky and weird. On the other hand, if you come looking for a thrill, you'll probably not find it here. It's a fairly "safe" movie, all things considered.

I think the biggest divide on your enjoyment of the movie is your view of the table-fort scene. For context, about halfway through the movie, Abby discovers that she can communicate with the ghosts haunting the animatronics through drawings, and being a 10 year old girl, she uses this newfound power to befriend the animatronics and play games with them. This culminates in her roping in Mike and Vanessa into helping the animatronics build a "fortress" out of tables and party supplies. Depending on your perspective, this is either cute and wholesome or cheesy and lame. I'm of the former opinion, myself. Why, you ask? The animatronics are haunted by the ghosts of children. One of the "rules" the ghosts follow is that will not under any circumstances bring deliberate harm to living children. The only reason the animatronics are hostile in the first place is because they hate all adults on principal, and with the only exceptions being the fourth game and the tenth game, every game has you playing as a "grown-up" employee of Fazbear Entertainment. And even then, there's a lore explanation why the Nightmares from FN@F 4 and the Glam Rocks from FN@F: Security Breach are suddenly attacking a child. The former are the physical manifestation of a coma victim's dying dreams (and thus aren't "real"), the latter are being hacked and controlled by a virus. So the ghost kids using their new mechanical bodies to act like kids is lore accurate.

Image from https://freddy-fazbears-pizza.fandom.com/wiki/Five_Nights_at_Freddy%27s_(Film)/Gallery

So let's answer the biggest question. Is this a good jumping on point for people who are new to Five Nights at Freddy's? Not really, no. This movie carries itself with a "by the fans, for the fans" mentality. It's goal isn't to convince newcomers to invest themselves in the rest of the series, but more so to give long time fans (like me) the cinematic experience they've been waiting literal years for. It does attempt to be newcomer friendly, with things like Vanessa explaining the lore and trying to have a somewhat straightforward narrative compared to the deliberately vague "figure it out yourself!" plot of the games. But there's that signature brand of Scott Cawthon weirdness, like how the drawings work or how the ghost kids can interact/harm Mike directly in his dreams Freddy Krueger style. And indeed, looking at other people's reviews of the FN@F movie, people who are already fans tend to rate the movie more highly than people jumping in for the first time. So I'll give two different ratings, just this once. It's an easy four stars out of five for people who already like Five Nights at Freddy's, but is probably closer to a 3 stars out of five for people who aren't already fans of it. There's enough effort and production quality to prevent the movie from going any lower than that. But again, already being a fan of the series does improve the enjoyment factor.

Five Nights at Freddy's is the property of Scott Cawthon, Steel Wool Studios, Blumhouse and Universal Pictures. None of the images shown here belong to me. Please support the official release.

Devil May Cry 5 is the most bonkers game I've ever played. A very stylish review.

2024-02-29T22:40:00.002-05:00

So here's a funny story. Once upon a time, while browsing the strange and terrifying depths of the Internet, I found a song. A really good power metal song that's almost 10 minutes long. A song so good that still to this day, I listen to it while working on this very blog. Heck, by the time you read this post I have probably listened to this song an additional ten billion times. This song was called Bury the Light, and I wanted to know the story behind the song, because it didn't sound like something that you would stumble across on the radio. After a bit of Googling, I learned that this song was the official theme song of the main antagonist of a game called Devil May Cry 5. Which naturally lead me down a rabbit hole of wacky wahoo pizza man hijinks. And now I'm here to tell you about this game because it is absolutely insane in the best way possible. Quick content warning. Devil May Cry 5 is rated M for Mature and is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Because of violence. And profanity. And an uncensored Michael Jackson dance. All of this is to say that reader discretion is advised.

Image from Wikipedia.org

So what is Devil May Cry 5? It is the fifth game in Capcom's Devil May Cry series. Obviously. But there's a funny reason why this franchise exists. Back in 2004, Capcom was brainstorming ideas for a new Resident Evil game. So their dev team made four game demos, one of which would become Resident Evil 4. But Capcom didn't want to waste the other three demos, so they filed off the "resident evil demo" label and repurposed those demos for different games entirely. This was how the first Devil May Cry was made. Though it is weird that the demo that became Devil May Cry was even considered to be a template for a Resident Evil game, considering that RE is a horror franchise and Devil May Cry is a bombastic, over the top action series. Then again, Hideki Kamiya was the main creative director behind the demo and all subsequent games in the series, and that man is notorious for his love of larger than life action scenes. And we all love him for it, because no matter what is trendy or popular in the video game industry, Kamiya will ignore it and just do his own thing.

Released in 2019, Devil May Cry 5 is the newest game in the franchise and makes frequent reference to the events of previous games. While this does mean that a newcomer jumping in for the first time will lose some context, the game is kind enough to come with a 30 minute mini-movie that quickly recaps the events of the series to get you up to speed. But I'm going to do my own recap, speaking as someone who has never played a single game prior to 5. So basically, Devil May Cry follows the adventures of a boastful demon hunter named Dante, who alongside his friends Lady, Trish and Nero, runs a company called Devil May Cry. Devil May Cry is a demon hunting company, because demon attacks are so common in this universe that demon hunting is a profitable business. Think of Devil May Cry as the Ghost Busters, but instead of fighting ghosts, they fight demons. Dante is also the son of this demon dude called Sparda the Black Knight. Sparda was a demon who decided that being evil was cringe, actually, so he betrayed all the other demons and saved the world. He then fell in love with a human woman named Eva and had two kids, one of which was Dante. Because of his demonic heritage, Dante is leaps and bounds more powerful than a normal human. He has super strength, super speed, teleporting, rapid healing and the ability to master any weapon with only a few seconds of practice. Also, Nero is Dante's nephew and has almost the exact same powers.

In addition to demon hunting, the Devil May Cry crew have to keep an eye out for Vergil, who is Dante's "evil" twin brother. Vergil was the second child of Sparda and naturally has the same powers and Dante and Nero, but became obsessed with power following the death of his mother, Eva. The descendants of Sparda are the guys you play as in the all the games. And as hinted at in the opening section of this review, Dante himself is a very silly guy. He spouts cheesy one liners and taunts in every other fight, he uses weapons that don't make any sense but look REALLY COOL, and he feels the need to show off with everything he does. Dante believes that it isn't enough to *just* beat the bad guys. He turns every fight into a theatrical performance, just to add further humiliation to his enemies. And Nero is following very closely in his uncle's footsteps, since he is also a bit of a show-off himself. Not as much as Dante, but still.

This game's story begins with the crew fighting a mysterious new demon king called Urizen, who has stolen Nero's right arm. As you do. Urizen immediately wipes the floor with everyone, including Dante and Nero. All without even standing up from his throne. And this isn't even a cinematic. The tutorial ends with a boss fight against Urizen that you are supposed to lose. Though you do get a funny joke ending if you manage to beat him earlier than intended. But anyway, following the advice of a mysterious poet named V (yes, the character's name is literally just the letter "V"), Dante stalls for time while the rest of the crew escape. One month later, and local gunsmith Nico builds Nero a prosthetic arm called the Devil Breaker. Lady and Trish have gone MIA in the meantime. So now it's up to Nero, Nico and V to save everyone else from Urizen's clutches.

Image from trueachievements.com

So let's talk gameplay really fast because SWEET MOTHER OF NEPTUNE IS THE COMBAT IN Devil May Cry 5 AMAZING. This game has three (four if you are playing the Special Edition) playable characters. But generally speaking, the main challenge of a Devil May Cry game doesn't come from the enemies and bosses, though they can pose a threat on higher difficulty settings. But the main challenge is getting a good rank. At the end of every combat encounter you are ranked on how stylish you were in battle. This does not equal to how fast you were or how much damage you did with a single move, but it equals to variety. Sure, you can beat the whole game using the same basic three-hit sword swing combo over and over, but you won't get a good rank from doing so. You have to mix and match different weapons and combos together to take down those pesky demons IN STYLE. And getting better ranks gives you more Red Orbs, the main currency of the game, which can be used to buy upgrades for the crew. And each character has an extensive move set that once mastered, let's you do some incredibly cool stunts. So let's go over each character.

Nero is unlocked right from the start. He is the guy you play as in the tutorial, and he is by far the simplest character in the game. Which isn't saying a lot, since even Nero has a complex toolkit that allows a skilled player to do some wild stuff once you learn how he works. He always has a sword called the Red Queen and a revolver called the Blue Rose. The Blue Rose has infinite ammo, so feel free to blast enemies as much as you want. But holding the button down makes Nero load up explosive bullets, which deal more damage and can stun enemies. The Red Queen is a reliable melee weapon that Nero swings around with reckless abandon. But the Red Queen isn't a normal sword. It has a motorcycle engine attached, and Nero can literally Rev Up his sword to add blazing fire to his combos. And finally, Nero has Devil Breakers, prosthetic arms that grant additional abilities. These can range from a electric pulses, whip attacks and homing rockets, among others. My favorite Devil Breaker is called the Punchline. It's a fist-shaped rocket that Nero can ride on like a skateboard. He can even do tricks on it that improve his rank! But Devil Breakers aren't exactly durable, and they will break if Nero gets hit while using one. Or you can manually choose to make your Devil Breaker self-destruct, which doubles as a counter attack. The only thing I don't like about Nero's kit is that the only way to switch Devil Breakers is to destroy the one you got active. But other than that, he's a fun character who serves as a good introduction to the game's overall vibe.

V is the second character unlocked and he is a little bit weird. V never attacks anything himself. Instead, he summons two shadow monsters named Griffon and Shadow that do all the fighting for him. The only time V actually hits anything himself is during his finishing move. You see, V's summons can't actually destroy demons, they can only weaken demons. It's up to V to actually finish them off. He can also teleport to weakened enemies to make getting closer easier. V has the weirdest fighting style and he is very much a "gimmick" character. Despite this, I personally found it easier to get good ranks with V than with Nero. Mostly because V's summons getting hit does not deal damage to V himself. And taking damage not only brings you closer to failure, but it reduces your rank. And when V is chilling on the other side of a room while his summons do all the work, the result is easy A and S ranks on missions. He gets the fewest amount of levels where you can actually play as him, unfortunately. Of the game's 20 main missions, V is playable in only 8 of them. But on a more positive note, he looks like a skinny, tatted up version of Kylo Ren from Star Wars. So he gets bonus points just for that.

Next up is Dante, who is the final character unlocked in the main game and he is by far the most complex. Dante can carry up to eight weapons with him at any time (four guns and four melee weapons), and he can switch between those weapons at any time. On top of that, Dante has four Styles that he can switch between that radically alters his abilities. Trickster Style gives Dante better mobility and speed. Sword Master Style gives him better melee attacks. Gunslinger Style gives him better long range attacks. And Royal Guard Style let's Dante block any attack. Yes. Any attack, no matter how strong, can be blocked with a well timed Royal Guard. And every successful Royal Guard block charges up a special punch called the Royal Release, and this is one of the strongest attacks in the game. The actual weapons tend to be wacky and ridiculous. Like one of Dante's weapons, the Cavaliere, is literally a motorcycle that can transform into a pair of giant buzz saws. Let me repeat that. Dante can beat the bad guys over the head with a MOTORCYCLE THAT TRANSFORMS INTO BUZZ SAWS. Another weapon, Dr. Faust, is a magic cowboy hat that turns Red Orbs into bullets. It's very expensive to use, but you eventually get so many Red Orbs you kind of stop caring about the money. But I think my favorite weapon is King Cerberus, a bo staff/nun chucks hybrid weapon that can be used to control ice, fire, and lightning. Of course, playing Dante effectively requires you to learn the ins and outs of every tool at his disposal. While he is my favorite to play as, I understand why he takes so long to unlock in the main story.

And finally we have Vergil, who is only playable in the Special Edition or if you buy a 5 dollar DLC pack for the base game. Vergil is basically Dante on steroids. He only has three weapons, his Yamato sword, a pair of gauntlets and boots for hand-to-hand combat collectively called Beowulf, and a second sword made of magic called Mirage Edge. Instead of having guns like Dante, Vergil just creates mini Mirage Edges that he psychically launches at far away targets. He can also perform super moves with deliciously edgy names like "Judgement Cut End" and "Hell On Earth" to clear out entire rooms of enemies. Playing as Vergil is less like playing a reasonably balanced action game character and is more like if you played the game as the final boss. And well, spoiler alert, but that's exactly what Vergil is. He's the final boss, and if you unlock him you have all the crazy, overpowered final boss tricks at your disposal. Also, Vergil's theme song is the aforementioned Bury the Light, so without Vergil having an amazing theme song I wouldn't know this franchise even existed. Thanks, Vergil.

Image from trueachivements.com

All playable characters eventually unlock a transformation ability called Devil Trigger. While transformed, every character does more damage to enemies, takes less damage from enemy attacks, and any damage they do take will automatically heal over time. The only exception to this rule is V, who simply summons a third shadow monster called Nightmare instead of transforming. You can only use Devil Trigger when the Trigger Gauge is full, and it fills up with every successful attack. Again, the only exception to this rule is V, because he can literally read poetry books to speed up the charge of his Trigger Gauge in addition to charging it the normal way. Dante has a unique variant of the Devil Trigger called Sin Devil Trigger, where he can choose to convert his Trigger Gauge into energy for an even stronger transformation that completely overhauls his move set. Vergil's Devil Trigger let's him create copies of himself that mimic his movements with a slight delay, so with some planning, you can set up a Devil Trigger doppelganger and launch enemies between the real Vergil and his copy like the world's most dangerous game of Ping Pong. One last thing about all the characters. For the handful of levels where multiple characters are available, if you are playing online, you can see in the background other players playing as whoever you didn't select fighting through their own version of that level. It's not quite a co-op feature, since you can't interact with those other players directly. But it is a nice attention to detail since the these characters are supposed to be heading towards the same goal. It ties the gameplay in with the story, and that's neat.

Devil May Cry 5 is a fairly linear game. Almost all of its 20 missions are straight and narrow paths with rooms full of enemies standing between you and the goal, with only occasional branching paths sprinkled in here and there. There are Secret missions, which are bonus levels found by lining the camera up with spooky sigils hidden in each main mission. And almost every level ends with a boss battle. There's barely any exploration, but that doesn't really matter because the game's combat is so polished that having a straight shot to every fight with the occasional secret mission is not that big a deal. But if you are looking for something with exploration or puzzles, well... I don't know what to tell you. The game is laser focused on having the best dang combat in any video game ever, and in that regards, it succeeds. I know it's an overdone cliché to compare something to Dark Souls but I will say this. Devil May Cry is the polar opposite of Dark Souls, at least in terms of combat philosophy. Dark Souls is precise, weighty and cautious. Devil May Cry is bombastic, over the top and stylish. So if you play a lot of Souls games (like I do), you do have to unlearn that series' lessons to get the most out of Devil May Cry's combat. Normally I wouldn't make such a comparison, but I played this game while doing a playthrough of Dark Souls III at the same time, and bouncing between two games with almost exact opposite philosophies is certainly an experience. One thing I will say about DMC 5 is that the way lock-on works is weird. Instead of toggling it on, you have to press and hold a button to remain locked on your intended target. And switching targets while locked on something requires you to press down on the center of the right analog stick without letting go of the aforementioned "lock on" button. It feels bizarre at first because it doesn't work at all like a "modern" lock-on. But you get used to it after a while.

On the subject of difficulty, Devil May Cry 5 is surprisingly beginner friendly. You start off with two difficulty options, Human Mode and Devil Hunter Mode. Human being the equivalent of easy, while Devil Hunter is intended for intermediate players. Beating the game once unlocks a third difficulty option that's a little bit harder than the previous options, called Son of Sparda mode. Beat that mode and you unlock a fourth difficulty option called Dante Must Die mode, which is the hardest challenge the game has outside of "gimmick" difficulty settings. I actually like that the harder difficulties are locked off by beating the game, because by the time the player has unlocked them, they should be competent enough to actually handle those difficulty settings. The punishment for getting defeated is also surprisingly tame. Or maybe it's standard practice and I'm just used to Souls games harshly punishing you for failure. Anyway, Whenever your character's health hits zero, you can choose to either restart the level, or spend some of your Red Orbs on a revive to keep on fighting. Doing so will let you continue the fight right where you left off, but it will hurt your rank if you do so. There's also an auto assist option in the settings that simplifies the move sets and automates certain abilities, such as changing Dante's Styles automatically. The assist option is basically training wheels. Do you need it to learn the combat? No. Does it make the game easier? Yes. But turning auto assist on hurts your rank, so sooner or later those training wheels are going to have to come off. Almost every level ends with a boss fight, and the bosses are generally pretty tough. I had to restart/revive at least once per boss. Also unlocked upon beating the game is a new game mode called Bloody Palace. Bloody Palace is a gauntlet where you fight every enemy and boss in the game, with no chance to heal between fights. The idea is that it's like a survival mode, meant to test your endurance and skill. I haven't messed around with it too much. But I have seen players who are significantly better at the game than I am do some absolutely absurd things in the Bloody Palace. It's probably the best, spoiler-free way to see what end-game combat is like.

Image from trueachievements.com

Okay, enough gameplay. How's the story? Well... I have to make a few confessions. As previously mentioned, I never played a Devil May Cry game before. That said, because of pop culture references and memes, I accidentally spoiled some rather important plot details for myself. Spoiler warning for the remainder of the post. I already knew that Vergil was the final boss, and I already knew that Vergil was Nero's dad (they play it up as a Darth Vader style plot twist). Granted, I didn't know the entire plot. Somehow, playing the game made the memes both make more sense and less sense. The simplest way to describe the plot of Devil May Cry 5 is that it's like an interactive Shonen battle anime. A menacing villain shows up, defeats the heaviest hitters in the series with minimal effort, and forces the younger heroes to step up and finish what their predecessors started. Meanwhile, said veteran hero goes off for a brief solo adventure to get a big enough power boost to fight said villain on even footing and help out the younger hero. The only thing missing is a martial arts tournament that takes up half a season's worth of episodes.

None of this is a bad thing, by the way. There's a charm to the antics of Dante and his friends. And while the plot is simple (by anime standards), the characterization and character interactions more than make up for it. Half the fun of this game comes from things like seeing Dante's next cheesy one liner, or Nero and Nico's constant teasing and banter with each other, or hearing one of V's silky smooth poems. The only real criticism I have of the story, at least from the perspective of someone who is looking at the series from the perspective of a newcomer, is that they don't really do much with Lady and Trish. From what I understand, those two women were super prominent in previous Devil May Cry games, even being playable in DMC 4. But Lady and Trish spend most of this game being mind controlled by Urizen, and once they are free from said mind control, they kind of just spend the rest of the game chilling in Nico's van. The result is that they can, at times, feel like they are glorified cheerleaders.

One thing that took me by surprise was the relationship between V and Urizen. Spoilers, again. But you know how I said that most of this game's plot was spoiled for me by memes? There's barely any memes about V, so he was the character I knew the least about. And as it turns out, V is actually Vergil. Sort of. Vergil used a magic samurai sword called the Yamato to split his soul in half. The "good" half of his soul became V, the "evil" half became Urizen. V hired the Devil May Cry crew to fight Urizen because V wants to recombine with Urizen and become Vergil again. And the revelation that V and Vergil are (technically) the same person was honestly more surprising than the "Vergil is Nero's dad" reveal. Even if that reveal hadn't been spoiled for me, it is so obvious that Nero is related to Vergil that I am left wondering how only Dante put two and two together. Like, Nero wears almost the same colors as Vergil. Urizen used the arm he stole from Nero to (re)make the Yamato, which is Vergil's signature weapon. Nero has all the same powers that Dante and Vergil have, and I'm not so sure about you, but Dante gives me "goofy uncle who never got married" vibes. This is the man whose first reaction to seeing a cowboy hat is to put it on and do a Michael Jackson dance. There is no way that Dante of all people could sire a child.

Also, speaking of Nero, I actually really like him as a character as well. He's cocky and a bit of a punk, but he is somehow the only person in this franchise that can behave like a functional adult. Mild spoilers here, but it's ultimately Nero that convinces the Sons of Sparda to put their differences aside and settle their rivalry in a nonviolent manner. Despite, you know, smacking them both around in a cool boss fight, because this is an action game and beating things up is how you interact with the world of action games. But funnily enough he takes the whole "Urizen stole my arm" thing surprisingly well. Like, he gets more upset at Dante calling him "dead weight" once than he does at the fact that a literal demon king broke into his house and stole his arm. For context of the "dead weight" thing, Dante wasn't trying to insult Nero. He was trying to protect Nero with some well meaning, but perhaps misguided brutal honesty.

Anyway, the game ends with a two part boss battle against the newly reformed Vergil. And speaking as a newcomer to the franchise, the final boss is really cool. I love that age old trope of "the boss is a human sized duelist with similar moves to your own." And Vergil is, as previously stated, like Dante but cranked up to eleven. At least in terms of fighting style and combat prowess. In terms of personality, Vergil is the exact opposite of Dante. While Dante is silly and flamboyant, Vergil is stoic and reserved. And Vergil is just a really cool antagonist in general. His boss fight was also surprisingly difficult. I first played the game on Devil Hunter mode (I am too prideful to play on the lowest possible difficulty setting) and it took me a good 45 minutes to figure out how to beat him. But during the second part of the fight, the player switches over to Nero, who has literally just unlocked his Devil Trigger form. And for this fight only, Nero's Trigger gauge fills automatically. And even though nothing else about the Vergil fight changes in the second round, it's somehow easier with Nero thanks to him being able to effectively spam Devil Trigger transformations for the whole fight. But within the context of the story, this is Nero hitting the newest peak of his power, and him being able to beat Vergil so easily in the gameplay reinforces the idea that Nero is now much stronger than he was at the start of the game. And I think that's really cool.

Image from trueachievements.com

In terms of presentation, DMC 5 is a really pretty game. It has some of the best looking facial animations in any video game that I have played. The game uses the same graphics engine as the Resident Evil games (at least, from Resident Evil 7 onward). And any game using the RE Engine is going to have good looking faces. The main characters look incredibly stylish in general. Which is the whole point of the franchise. Devil May Cry is all about looking cool in everything you do. And the animations on the weapons look cool too. Everything is highly impractical and not realistic in the slightest, but that doesn't matter because the weapons are REALLY COOL. Honestly, that's the whole vibe of the franchise. None of it is practical or realistic, but everything and everyone is REALLY COOL. This also applies to the voice acting and sound effects. The English voices are surprisingly good. You can tell that everyone involved in the voice acting were having the times of their lives with their given roles. And in what might be the biggest and funniest coincidence ever, Dante (Reuben Langdon), Nero (Johnny Yong Bosch) and Vergil (Daniel Southworth) are all voiced by former Power Rangers. And considering that Power Rangers is another franchise built around the "Rule of Cool" it honestly makes sense why actors from there would show up here. After all, Devil May Cry is as close as we're gonna get to R rated Power Rangers. Or maybe Power Rangers is as close a we're gonna get to family friendly Devil May Cry.

Oh, boy. It's time to talk about the music. DMC 5 has an outrageously good soundtrack. I've already mentioned that the entire reason I sought this game out was because Bury the Light was a fantastic song. All four of the main playable characters get a song associated with them. Nero gets Devil Trigger, V gets Crimson Cloud, Dante gets Subhuman and Vergil obviously gets Bury the Light. And a unique feature of the game is that the music is dynamic. The better you do in any given fight, the more instruments join in. Do well enough and the lyrics kick in. And all four of these songs are bangers. The music in general is like a mix of punk rock and heavy metal. There is some playful irony in the fact that the most aggressive and "angry" sounding song is Subhuman, which is Dante's theme, despite Dante being by far the most cheerful and "jolly" of the four main boys. Crimson Cloud is the most "down to Earth" of the songs (at least in comparison), which fits for the calm, manipulative V. Devil Trigger meanwhile is an absolute ear worm that sets the tone for the whole game well. And Bury the Light is just one of the best songs to come from any video game ever. It is the kind of intense power metal anthem that you listen to while working out or doing chores. It makes you feel MOTIVATED. My compliments go to Casey Edwards, the music composer for this game. Also, fun fact about Nero's song! The female vocals in Devil Trigger were performed by Casey Edwards' sister. That's oddly wholesome for a song called "Devil Trigger." There are other songs in the soundtrack, obviously, but these four are the standouts.

Image from trueachievements.com

Overall, Devil May Cry 5 is somehow both a love letter to everything that came before it while also being a relatively good jumping on point for newcomers. It's got cool combat, cool music, cool characters, cool graphics and is just a cool game in general. Do I think it's for everyone? No. It's cheesy and bombastic like a Shonen anime and the controls take a while to get used to. I like the cheese, but that's because I normally play very dark and serious games. DMC 5's over the top shenanigans are a breath of fresh air for me. And now I want to play the other DMC games. And that's the main thing about this game. If you like Devil May Cry, you will like this game. If you like DMC 5, you'll like the rest of the franchise. But if this game doesn't win you over, nothing else will. I give Devil May Cry 5 a grand total of 5 stars out of 5. "Jackpot!"

Devil May Cry 5 is the property of Capcom. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the official release.

Bloodborne, mysterious, macabre, masterpiece. A very bloody review.

2024-01-31T22:23:00.002-05:00

So let me ask you a question. Have you ever wanted a high quality action horror video game based on the works of classical horror authors like Bram Stroker and H.P. Lovecraft? One that has you fighting against grotesque monstrosities with weird and unusual weaponry? One with a deliberately vague storyline that is open to multiple meanings and interpretations? Well do I have the game for you! Because today, we are reviewing Bloodborne, an action-horror game that meets that exact description. Bloodborne, for the unaware, is part of From Software's Souls Borne franchise. In fact, that's where the "borne" part of the title comes from. The "souls" part comes from the first two games in the series, Demon's Souls and Dark Souls. Other games in the series include Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Elden Ring. I have already reviewed Sekiro, and figured I would tackle the rest of the franchise while I'm at it. So let's continue the Souls Borne review series with Bloodborne.

Image found on wikipedia.org

So what is Bloodborne? It is, as previously mentioned, a Gothic Horror action roleplaying game developed by From Software and published by Sony as a Playstation 4 exclusive. It was released in 2015 and received an expansion pack titled The Old Hunters in 2016. The game was directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, whose prior success with Dark Souls and Demon's Souls led to him being considered a bit of a legend in the video game community at large. A quick content warning before we continue. Bloodborne is rated M for Mature by the ESRB and thus it is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. Additionally, the game can potentially delving into some disturbing subject matter. So reader discretion is advised. Though to be fair, the game is called BLOOD borne. There's going to be blood in a game called BLOOD borne. In fact, almost half of all the collectibles in this game have the word "blood" in their name. Blood Vials, Blood Echoes, Blood Stone Shards, Cold Blood Dew, Pungent Blood Cocktails, and Beast Blood Pellets are just a few examples of all the "blood" themed items in this game.

The story of Bloodborne is a little bit strange in how it is told. Like all games in the Souls Borne series, the story is not told through traditional cinematics. It is told through the flavor text of collectible items, through environmental details that you may or may not notice while playing, and through optional conversations with the few friendly characters you can potentially meet. Bloodborne itself is a story that wrapped in heavy symbolism and double meanings. The game is almost a decade old and people are still discussing and debating its lore and meanings. I've seen the game be interpreted as anything from a metaphor for the afterlife, a cautionary tale against the dangers of unrestricted science experiments, to even a tragedy about the struggles of womanhood and childbirth. Which one of these interpretations is correct? The answer is Yes, because Souls Borne games tend to be open ended enough for multiple equally valid interpretations. The only thing that everyone can agree to is that the game's aesthetic and "vibe" is heavily inspired by the likes of Bram Stroker, the man who (among other things) created Count Dracula, and H.P. Lovecraft, the man who (among other things) created Cthulhu. So lots of unspeakable truths lurking in the shadows, lots of ordinary people hiding terrible secrets in plain sight, and as previously mentioned, a whole lot of blood. What's impressive about Bloodborne is that it somehow manages to justify the existence of game mechanics through its lore. Everything, from multiplayer to enemy placement to even the player's ability to retry failed battles has some kind of explanation in the lore for it.

So let's start at the beginning of the game. You play as a customizable, but mute foreigner who has come to the fictional city of Yharnam in order to receive treatment for an unknown disease. Yharnam is basically Victorian Era England, but cranked up to eleven. And this city is famed for its miraculous healing medicine, capable of treating any illness or disease. The medicine was created and distributed by a religious organization known simply as the Healing Church. There is just one problem with the miracle medicine. It's made with blood. Not just normal blood either. But Old Blood. What is the Old Blood, you ask? I can't really say without getting super deep into the lore, but all you need to know is that the Old Blood gets a little funky when you overindulge in it. And it's described as being highly addictive in nature. To quote the description of the Pungent Blood Cocktail; "In Yharnam, they make more blood than alcohol, as the former is more intoxicating."

Your character wakes up in a clinic after receiving a blood transfusion. Step outside and you will find the city of Yharnam in complete and utter chaos. Angry mobs armed with torches and pitchforks patrol the streets, upper class citizens barricade themselves in their homes with warding incense, and werewolves prowl the backstreets and darkened corners of the city. The angry mobs are quick to accuse you of being a werewolf, and any werewolves caught by them get crucified and burnt at the stake, for those classic "paranoid witch hunter" vibes. You are free to explore Yharnam from here. Though in typical From Software fashion, you can run into an outrageously strong werewolf within minutes of the game starting, and while you can defeat it if you are good at the game, you are intended to get killed by it. Upon dying to this werewolf (or any enemy, really), you are teleported into a safe zone called the Hunter's Dream. There you meet Gehrman the First Hunter. Gehrman is an elderly, retired werewolf hunter who bestows upon your character the title of Good Hunter and gives you your first real long-term goal to work on. To quote Gehrman himself, "Just go out and kill a few beasts! Don't think about it too hard. All you need to know is that this is for your own good."

Image from neoseeker.com

From here the Good Hunter is handed a Trick Weapon and a gun. The game starts for real here. So let's talk gameplay really quickly. Bloodborne is first and foremost an action game. Combat is fast, fluid and leaves very little room for error. The Good Hunter can have two different weapons in use, one for each hand. You can perform fast, light attacks with the Right Bumper, or slower but more powerful attacks by pressing the Right Trigger. You can use Left Trigger to parry and deflect enemy attacks so long as you are holding a "defensive" weapon in your left hand. This is just standard From Software controls. Unique to this game are guns and Trick Weapons. Guns are exactly what they sound like. Ballistic firearms that can be used to attack from a safe distance. But more importantly, guns are how you block and parry enemy attacks. Basically, if you shoot an enemy right before their attack hits you, they will be stunned and the Good Hunter can perform a devastating technique known as the Visceral Attack. Visceral Attacks will straight up kill weaker enemies in one go while removing a massive chunk of health from bosses and other Hunters. There are also special weapons called Hunter Tools, which function as this game's version of magic spells. Hunter Tools can shoot homing lasers, replace your dodge roll with a short-range teleport or supercharge your Trick Weapon with arcane energy, among other things. Both guns and Hunter Tools use up a resource called Quicksilver Bullets, which can be collected from any defeated enemy that had a gun or used magic. If you run out of Quicksilver Bullets, both your guns and your Hunter Tools stop working.

Trick Weapons are a little bit more complicated, but they are easily the most iconic part of the game. By pressing Left Bumper you can transform your Trick Weapon into a different form, which changes the move set, combos and damage type of the weapon. While there are only about 30 collectible weapons total, because every weapon comes with an alternate form, in practice the weapon total is closer to 60. Trick Weapon transformations are effectively this game's equivalent of Dark Souls' stance change system. In that game, you can choose to hold a weapon with either one hand to free up a slot for an extra weapon, or with both hands for stronger attacks. But it is a lot more visually impressive to transform a weapon over just choosing how you want to hold it. And the weapons aren't magic or anything. They designed each weapon so you can see all the moving parts and how they connect to each other. All the grooves and gears and interlocking mechanisms are on display. Some of the transformations are simple. The Saw Cleaver starts as a folded blade with a serrated edge, and all transforming it does is unfold the blade for extra reach but slower swings. Other transformations are incredibly stylish and grandiose. Like the Threaded Cane, which starts as a simple cane, but once transformed it becomes a bladed whip covered in razor-sharp thorns. And you can transform your Trick Weapon mid combo. But everything, from swinging your Trick Weapon to shooting with your gun to dodging, consumes stamina. Stamina regenerates as long as you are not attacking or dodging, and the more stamina you have, the more you can keep doing those actions without pausing.

The Good Hunter can be upgraded using a universal currency called Blood Echoes, which are dropped by all defeated enemies. Blood Echoes can be used to buy items from merchants, or to upgrade your stats (more on those in a moment) and weapons. You drop any and all Blood Echoes on you if you die for any reason, though if you are quick enough you can get back to where you died originally and get your Blood Echoes back upon revival. Again, this is standard From Software fare. But what's unusual is the Blood Gem system. Basically, as you upgrade your Trick Weapons, you open up Gem Slots, which allow you to attach a Blood Gem to your weapon. These gems can do anything from boosting damage to adding additional effects like poisoning foes or giving the Good Hunter gradual health regeneration. The only other game (at least to my knowledge) that features the ability to modify weapons like this is Dark Souls III, which was made after Bloodborne. The last main mechanic that is unique to Bloodborne is the Rally. Whenever you take damage, if you attack the enemy that just hit you fast enough, you can heal and get some of your health back. If you do just right, you can completely negate all the damage you just took. This ability encourages you to keep pressing your advantage and fight as aggressively as possible. The Rally is probably my favorite part of Bloodborne's combat and I wouldn't mind seeing it get brought back in a future From Software game.

Now's let's talk stats, since those are just as important as your weapons. The stats themselves are fairly simple, at least by From Software standards, and they do more or less what you expect them to. Vitality gives you a bigger health bar and Endurance gives you a bigger stamina bar. Strength improves big heavy weapons like the Kirk Hammer and Whirligig Saw, Skill improves small lightweight weapons like the Threaded Cane and the Blades of Mercy. Arcane powers up your Hunter Tools while also increasing the chances of enemies dropping extra items upon defeat. The only "weird" stat is Blood Tinge. Blood Tinge boosts the power of gunshots. This includes your guns and any projectile fired from the Reiterpallach and the Rifle Spear, since these are the only Trick Weapons with a ranged attack. But why is the "make guns better" stat called Blood Tinge? The reason is that technically, from a lore perspective, this stat isn't the "make guns better" stat. It's actually the "make blood in general better" stat. Because Quicksilver Bullets are not normal ammo. According to the their flavor text, they are made with metals pulled directly out of the human body. The Good Hunter even has a neat but mildly disturbing ability where, by pressing "up" on the D-Pad, they can sacrifice a portion of their own health to make a fresh set of Quicksilver Bullets. Personally, there were only three fights in the whole game where I was desperate enough for the extra ammo, but the option is there right from the beginning. And indeed, two late game Trick Weapons called the Bloodletter and the Chikage coat themselves in crystalized blood when transformed. These weapons are intended for Strength-Blood Tinge hybrid builds and Skill-Blood Tinge hybrid builds respectively.

Oh, right, builds. A term you'll hear not just in Souls Borne games, but any video game that has adjustable statistics. The term is so widely used by gamers that most won't even bother explaining what it means. But I know some people that don't even play video games that read this blog, so for them, I'll offer a brief explanation. A build is a combination of stats, weapons and items that enforce a specific fighting style in your character. A Good Hunter with high Strength and Vitality is going to fight differently from a Good Hunter with high Skill and Arcane, for example. As previously mentioned, you can spend Blood Echoes to upgrade your stats. Each upgrade gets gradually more expensive. It might start with a few hundred Blood Echoes per upgrade, but the price can easily reach into the thousands or even millions by the end of the game. So while you can max out each stat and make a Good Hunter that's good at everything, such a goal is unrealistic and it is more cost efficient to specialize in one or two stats. Each Trick Weapon scales off of at least one stat, though the rarer weapons require investing in multiple stats to get any real mileage out of them. Ludwig's Holy Blade, for example, demands that you have an almost perfect split between Strength and Skill to use. Some weapons need only one stat to work with, like the Rakuyo, which needs only Skill. The advantage of the "pure" stat based weapons is that you don't need to invest as many Blood Echoes into your stats for them to work, making them a cheaper investment overall.

Image from rpgfan.com

Bloodborne also has multiplayer, though I have admittedly not played around with it that much. I prefer to play these kinds of games solo. But anyway, you can either summon a friend for Jolly Cooperation or invade another player's world (aka their version of the game) and pick a fight with them. For Player versus Player fights, the game always pairs you up with a player with similar Blood level to yours. Blood Level is a number that shows, at a glance, how powerful your character is. 4 is the lowest, 544 is the highest. Every time you upgrade a stat, your Blood Level increases by one. Several years ago, a bunch of nerds on the Internet decided on the "meta" level, which is 120. This Blood Level was your best bet for getting good fights with other players, since most people would be nearing the end of the game while at this Blood Level. By that point, players would have access to (almost) every Trick Weapon, gun type, Hunter Tool and have the stats needed to use most of these items. Ergo, Blood Level 120 is the most "fair" level for player vs player combat. But more importantly are messages and co-op summons. Basically, you can summon friendly players into your world to help out against a boss you are haven't defeated yet. While it is true that summoning a friend or two will give all bosses extra health, as long as your friends are competent players, every fight in the game will be easier overall. The way you actually summon other players into your world is a little bit esoteric, but this is a problem with every Souls Borne. Basically, if you want to be summoned to help a rookie out with a boss, you need to make a summon sign. You then need to wait patiently for another player to find your summon sign in their version of the game, and they need to click on it. And if you want to do the summoning yourself, then you will burn through a secondary currency called Insight for every person you summon. If have zero Insight, then you can't summon at all, even if you found another player's summon sign. I'll discuss Insight in more detail later, because it is a fascinating concept.

And finally, messages. You can leave messages on the floor for other players to read. You cannot type anything out yourself, however. You have mix and match pre-written phrases to get your meaning across. While these messages can be helpful hints like "Hidden Door Ahead" or "Large Beast, therefore, Try Fire" the community naturally uses this system for dumb jokes. The result is that in addition to helpful messages, you also get messages like "Lover Ahead" in front of literally any female character in the game or "Try Jumping" in front of bottomless pits. Honestly, the messages are my favorite part of Souls Borne multiplayer, because it's a total coin flip. Either a good Samaritan gives you genuinely good advice that helps you through a tough level or boss, or a goofball haves a laugh at your expense. And if a Souls Borne game doesn't have people making messages that are equal parts helpful, funny and stupid, is it really a Souls Borne?

There's also Attire, collectible outfits that change the look of the Good Hunter. While they do provide defense bonuses against certain kinds of attacks, the damage mitigation is low enough to not be worth worrying over. The only time that Attire really matters is if you are going through a level or fighting a boss that causes status effects, like poison or Frenzy. Wearing Attire that resists that status effect means you can stand in its presence longer before taking damage. This is especially important for Frenzy, because if Frenzy activates you lose 75% of your maximum health. Which in practice means that getting Frenzied is an instant kill, because if you get hit while Frenzied, you kind of just die. And obviously, if you have less than 75% of your maximum health, Frenzy will kill you by itself. Thankfully there's only one real enemy that inflicts Frenzy on you, and said enemy can only be found in three places in the game. But anyway, as long as you are not dealing with something poisonous or something that can Frenzy you, you are free to wear whatever Attire set you want. Go full Fashion Souls if you desire.

The last gameplay thing I want to discuss is how healing items work. So normally, in Souls Borne games you have three healing potions that refill automatically when resting at a checkpoint, with the ability to unlock more as the campaign progresses. What the potion is called varies from game to game, but the general idea stays the same. These refilling but sparse potions encourage you to wait until the last possible moment to heal, out of fear of wasting a heal before reaching the next boss. But in this game, you heal with Blood Vials. You can carry up to 20 Blood Vials on you, though once used they are gone forever. Most enemies drop Blood Vials in addition to Blood Echoes upon death, so can get replacements relatively easily. The downside is that if you run out of Blood Vials while fighting a boss and then die to said boss, instead of being able to challenge the boss again immediately you have to go back to a previously cleared area and kill all the enemies there in order to restock on Blood Vials. Which also has the coincidental effect of giving you more Blood Echoes, which can then be used to upgrade your character to make the next boss fight attempt more manageable. While I like both styles of healing, there were times in my Dark Souls III playthrough (which I started right after finishing Bloodborne) where I wished I had Blood Vials again. Because the levels in that game are so long (at least the ones I've seen so far) that I feel like it's easier to run out of healing items before you even reach the next boss. With Bloodborne, the generous nature of Blood Vials combined with the Rally made it very easy to get to each boss with plenty of health remaining.

Okay, let's talk about the lore. Apologies in advanced if I get any information wrong. From Software games are infamous for cryptic and mysterious stories. But anyway, you remember that Insight stuff I mentioned in the multiplayer section of the review? Well, Insight does a lot more than just allowing for Jolly Cooperation. It is a measure of how much knowledge about Yharnam that the Good Hunter has collected. It goes up every time you see a boss for the first time, every time you talk to a friendly character, every time you read a lore note. But in addition to representing knowledge, it also represents madness and insanity. The more Insight you have, the weirder and more bizarre the game becomes. Certain enemies start using strange magic spells that they don't use normally. You start hearing the sound of a baby crying faintly in the background. And if it gets high enough, you will start seeing gigantic, horrifying monsters known as the Great Ones who were previously invisible. One of the many themes of Bloodborne is the idea that knowledge comes with a price. As you learn more about Yharnam, you learn that is not just a simple werewolf infestation plaguing the city. The real problem is somehow even worse. Mild spoiler warning here.

Image from rpgfan.com

So several years before the start of the game, a bunch of ~~nerdy~~ scholars from the College of Byrgenwerth (Yharnam's most prestigious academy) made a discovery. Gods were real. Sort of. They found the Great Ones, alien creatures who were so powerful and so wise that the only word that could accurately describe them is "godly." The scholars of Byrgenwerth became obsessed with these Great Ones, and they aspired to become as powerful as these cosmic beings. And when they learned that a pregnant Great One named Kos (or some say Kosm) was sighted at a fishing hamlet, the scholars launched an expedition to study her. There was just one problem. Kos was dead. It's unclear if Kos was already dead by the time the scholars got there of if the scholars murdered her as part of a cruel experiment. Either way, the scholars desecrated her corpse and extracted her umbilical cord. And then they slaughtered the entire hamlet to keep the knowledge of their sins secret. As the scholars learned more about Great One biology, they more they realized that the human body cannot physically handle the power or wisdom that Great Ones have at their disposal. So they split off into several smaller factions, each with the same goal of trying to bring humanity up to the Great One's level. They just did it in very different and very horrifying ways.

Laurence the First Vicar founded the Healing Church and used the Old Blood, which is the blood of Kos's offspring, to create miracle medicine. Unfortunately, Laurence and his followers became the first werewolves due to their proximity to the Old Blood. Micolash the Nightmare Host created a secret society called the School of Mensis that tried to make their own artificial Great Ones by performing occult rituals and human sacrifices. When the experiments failed, Micolash resorted to surgically attaching stolen eyes to the inside of his body, because natural Great Ones have extra eyes and Micolash figured that the extra eyes was the secret to their power. Queen Annalise stole a portion of the Old Blood for herself, and used it to turn her entire family into immortal vampires called Vile Bloods. But despite her vampiric transformation, she was content to stay in her castle while the rest of Yharnam burned around her. And Headmaster Wellam was disgusted and outraged by the depravity of his peers and retreated back to Byrgenwerth, turning the college into a makeshift fortress. But everyone who used the Old Blood in any capacity is doomed to one day become a werewolf. Heck, even the Good Hunter is doomed to this fate. The blood transfusion they received at the start of the game was done with Old Blood. And this is the canon explanation for why the Good Hunter always comes back after dying. The Old Blood coursing your veins will not let you stay dead, for a Hunter must Hunt, even in death. But the funny/tragic thing about the lore is, despite every faction trying to become more like the Great Ones, the Great Ones themselves barely acknowledge humanity in any capacity. The majority of them are indifferent to humanity's plight. Because one of the biggest inspirations for Bloodborne was H.P. Lovecraft, who popularized the idea of villainous creatures that are dangerous not out of deliberate malice, but cold indifference. Lovecraftian monsters view humanity the same way humans view wild animals, both for better and for worse. Unlike Lovecraft's monsters, the unknowable horrors in Bloodborne can be wounded or even killed by a sufficiently well-equipped Good Hunter. In other words, you can go from hunting simple werewolves to hunting alien gods.

In case it wasn't obvious, Bloodborne is one of the darkest and most depressing stories in all of fiction. No one is having a good time in Yharnam. This setting is equals fascinating to learn about and disturbing to live in. If you have ever heard of the term "Grimdark" Yharnam is a peak example of Grimdark in action. Grimdark, for the unaware, is a term in storytelling and media analysis that describes a cynical setting with no hope, a setting that is meant to serve as some kind of cautionary tale. Usually with the lesson being "Don't let real life society turn out as bad as this fictional society." And the worst/best part of it is, there is very little the Good Hunter can do to help the people of Yharnam. By the time the game starts, the atrocities committed by the Healing Church, the Vile Bloods and the School of Mensis have already caused so much damage that Yharnam is doomed to fall no matter what. In fact, there's a grand total of six named characters who even have a chance at living through the whole campaign, and that's dependent on player intervention. But you can still bring the likes of Laurence and Micolash to justice, right? Well you can, but by the time you meet them they are so far mentally gone that slaying them is akin to putting down a sick animal.

But now let's discuss the main highlight of Bloodborne, the bosses. This is quite possibly the best lineup of bosses in any From Software game, at least of the games that I have played. Literally the only bosses I don't like are the Chalice Dungeon bosses, but I don't mind the Chalice Dungeon bosses because the Chalice Dungeons themselves are optional and not required for progression. Their main purpose is to be semi-randomly generated bonus levels that you can play through to stock up on Blood Echoes, Blood Vials and Blood Gems quickly. Most of the bosses here are basically just buffed up rematches against bosses from the main campaign, alongside some unique bosses that I admittedly don't feel as polished as the main bosses. But there's a lot to like here. Take the two first bosses in the game, Father Gascoigne and the Cleric Beast. The former is a rogue hunter not unlike your character and he uses similar equipment to yourself. The latter is a giant werewolf with a lopsided arm. These are the first two bosses available at the start of the game and they both set a good precedent for what you can expect going forward. And generally speaking, most bosses fall into two categories. Humanoid bosses that fight similarly to the Good Hunter and giant-sized bosses that fight with monstrous flailing, with very few exceptions to this rule.

But in terms of difficulty, Bloodborne is interesting. From Software have developed a reputation for making challenging games that push one's skills to their limit. Miyazaki himself has said that that without struggle, victory is hollow and meaningless. As such, the franchise openly prides itself on its high difficulty. Generally speaking, normal mode in a From Software game would be equal to a hard mode in any other franchise. For a frame of reference, I have already played Dark Souls II, Sekiro and Elden Ring prior to playing Bloodborne. And honestly the game has a good sweet spot of difficulty. It's harder than Elden Ring (which allows you to get comically overpowered very easily) but easier than Sekiro (which I still consider to be the hardest game that I have ever completed). I honestly don't know how I would compare it to Dark Souls II because the last time I played it was three years ago and even then, I never finished it. I have recently started playing Dark Souls III, which I'd say is more or less even with Bloodborne. All of this is to say that Bloodborne is by From Software standards, a fairly intermediate game. If I was reviewing the base game by itself, I'd say it's overall a pretty smooth experience. Most bosses don't take more than three or four tries to defeat, and most of the more annoying enemies are all in optional bonus levels called Chalice Dungeons, which can be safely ignored if you don't care about 100% completion.

But this is not a review of base game Bloodborne. We're doing the DLC while we're at it. The Old Hunters DLC pack (which is included for free in the Complete Edition) adds in five brand new bosses and associated areas, alongside a handful of new guns and Trick Weapons. And the DLC bosses are by far the toughest challenges in the entire game. Based on my experience, the base game bosses take about three or four tries on average. Some, like the Cleric Beast and Father Gascoigne, only took one try. The Old Hunters bosses all took about nine or ten tries before I defeated them. The exception to this was the Orphan of Kos. I legitimately lost count how many times that I died to the Orphan. My total playtime for the whole game was a little bit over 80 hours, but I can promise you at least 20 of those hours were spent on just the Orphan of Kos fight. The Orphan is by far the hardest boss in the game. Even when I did defeat it, I was all out of Blood Vials, Quicksilver Bullets and had less than a quarter of my health bar remaining. It was brutally challenging. But it was still fun, despite it all. In fact, in terms of boss design and lore, the DLC bosses are among the best in the whole game. Anyway, the DLC takes place in the Hunter's Nightmare, a personalized hell designed to punish the Scholars of Byrgenwerth and their various successors for the crime of desecrating Kos's body. It is here that you learn the dirty little secrets of Laurence's Healing Church along with every other faction leader. Honestly, the DLC adds in so much content that elevates the whole experience. Old Hunters takes Bloodborne from a "good" game to a full on masterpiece. So if you can get the Complete Edition, that would be the best way to experience the game as a whole.

Image from rpgfan.com

Actually, you want to know how good Old Hunters is? One of the first bosses in the DLC is Ludwig the Accursed. Ludwig was a character mentioned frequently in the base game item descriptions. Heck, one of the Trick Weapons is literally called Ludwig's Holy Blade, a name that implies that you are using a weapon that belongs to a more accomplished Hunter. Ludwig was described as a paragon, a champion and an inspiring leader. A true hero that all Hunters aspired to be more like. And you get a chance to meet Ludwig in the Hunter's Nightmare. He has been twisted and deformed into a grotesque horse-like monster covered in misshapen limbs, driven completely feral by the curse of the Old Blood. Ludwig's monstrous form is sickening to look at, and his pained growls make you feel pity for him. That is, until halfway through his boss fight. Once Ludwig takes enough damage, he becomes lucid and starts fighting with a greatsword that glows bright blue with moonlight. His whole design unfurls from a chaotic mess with no recognizable anatomy or body plan, into something that actually somewhat resembles a real man. A deformed man to be sure, but a man nonetheless. This transformation turns what would be an instance of putting down a sick animal into an honorable duel, letting Ludwig end his life as the hero he once was and face death with dignity. Not only does Ludwig have the most iconic design and theme song of any boss in Bloodborne, the sword he uses once he becomes lucid is the Moonlight Greatsword (pictured above). This weapon is a sort of mascot for From Software. It is their pride and joy. It is their Pikachu. It is their Mickey Mouse. Every From Software game will find a way to include the Moonlight Greatsword, and having Ludwig be the original owner of such a legendary weapon makes him far more impressive for longtime fans of the Souls Borne franchise. And once defeated, you can use the Moonlight Greatsword for yourself.

In terms of presentation, Bloodborne is a very nasty game. Though this is by no means an insult. The character and monster designs are meant to be weird and bizarre at best and absolutely vile at worst. The Trick Weapons are by far the coolest looking weapons in any From Software game, and it is obvious they put a lot of thought and effort into making the weapons look like somewhat believable pieces of machinery. Attire is also stylish, with lots of fancy hats and long trench coats with the occasional robe here and there. It matches the time period that the game emulates immaculately. Speaking of, Yharnam is my favorite location in a From Software game. It's Victorian Gothic architecture and fashion gives it a unique "vibe" that not a lot of games go for. And of course, there's the blood. Blood splatters with every hit, painting the environment with a thick crimson hue. Heck, the longer you fight, the more bloodstains appear on your character's clothing. If a fight drags on long enough, the Good Hunter might become absolutely drenched in the stuff. But the violence here feels tasteful, since this is ultimately a story about the misuse of alien blood, and a story about blood is pretty much required to show the spilling of it. Like, you can't have a vampire story where the vampire doesn't drink blood. That's the whole point of vampires. But I digress.

The only downside on the visual end of things is that Bloodborne is locked into running at 30 frames per second. This is fine, and the game holds a stable frame rate from start to finish. Except for the fight against the Loran Dark Beast. The Loran Dark Beast is a Chalice Dungeon boss, and thus it is not required for 100% completion. And it's a good thing too. Because the Loran Dark Beast is the worst boss in the game. Not because it's hard or has dangerous attack patterns, but because the PS4 literally can't handle this one boss. It is a large "monster" type boss that moves around quickly, has bounce physics applied to its fur and is covered from head to toe in electric sparks. And as it turns out, the behind the scenes graphics engine has a hard time keeping up with a large, fast, furry monster covered in lightning. The frame rate drops so low that at times, it feels like a slide show. This is the only instance of the game suffering from frame rate issues. Honestly, if it didn't have fur or electric sparks it probably wouldn't hurt the frame rate as much. Thankfully, this is a skippable boss not required for progression, but if it was mandatory, it would definitely sour my experience with the whole game.

Voice acting and sound effects are top notch. Highlights of the sound design include subtle things like the sound of footsteps changing based on the material you're walking on, being softer on rugs and carpets and "clunkier" on hard surfaces like stone or metal. I also like the mechanical whirring and clicking of the Trick Weapons as they switch from one form to another. Obviously, the sounds that monsters make vary between horrifying roars to disgusting gargling. I only listened to the English voice acting and cannot speak for the Japanese voices, but the English voices fit the game's vibe perfectly. Highlights of the game's vocal talents include Micolash's insane occult ramblings during his boss fight, as well as the Healing Church Hunter Alfred's passionate (albeit disturbing) speech about avenging his martyred mentor. But if I had to pick a favorite voice role, it would be for Gehrman. Voiced by Allan Corduner, Gehrman presents himself as a feeble old man bound to a wheel-chair. This is a façade, he is far more powerful and Insightful than he lets on. And rarely, while in the Hunter's Dream, you can catch Gehrman talking in his sleep. And his half-asleep pleading for someone, anyone, to bring the Hunt to an end is one of the most depressing lines of dialogue in any video game I have ever played.

On a more uplifting note, Bloodborne has some of the best music in From Software's catalogue. The Hunter's Dream music is a hauntingly beautiful melody that sounds both peaceful and melancholic, serving as a respite from the horrors of the Hunt. Mergo's Lullaby is a simple music box tune that sounds sinister and foreboding. All of the bosses (except for Mergo's Wet Nurse, who gets a remix of Mergo's Lullaby) get a full orchestra to announce their arrival. And all of the bosses related to the Healing Church get bombastic Latin choirs which have lyrics that (when translated into English) retell the story and lore of those characters. The best song would definitely go to Ludwig the Holy Blade. It starts off like a messy and chaotic war chant, reflecting the decrepit state you find him in. But when Ludwig becomes lucid, it transitions into a graceful waltz. It even uses cymbal clanging to represent the clashing of swords, further solidifying the feeling of an honorable duel. A fitting song for a hero's last stand.

Image from rpgfan.com

Generally speaking, Bloodborne has earned its reputation as From Software's magnum opus. Out of all the Souls Borne games I have played, I consider to be the best so far. As long as you have Old Hunters. That DLC turns a good game into a great game. Again, the Complete Edition is probably the best way to play the game. But even ignoring the DLC, this is still a fun romp through a werewolf infested fantasy version of Victorian England, and that's a good enough sales pitch to stand out on its own. But anyway, in terms of what game is best for newcomers to Souls Borne, I would say it's a tie between this game and Elden Ring. The only truly bad things I have to say about this game is that Loran Dark Beast exists and that as a PS4 exclusive, not everyone will have the ability to even play this game. But overall, I give Bloodborne 5 stars out of 5.

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A needlessly long retrospective of the entire Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection.

2023-12-06T00:05:00.000-05:00

Well, I mentioned it in my Halloween Special for this year so I might as well start covering it while it's fresh in my mind. This is the post where I finally review Five Nights at Freddy's. But in what might be my most ambitious project yet, I am not stopping at the first game. There are 10 games in the franchise, and 8 of those games are canon to the main story and lore of the series. For the sake of not making things overly long, I will review just the Core Collection, a bundle containing the first five games in one package. I will cover the other five games in a different post. And I would like to cover the movie one day, but I have not watched the movie yet, and I would rather not review something until I experience it for myself. A quick disclaimer for the rest of the post. There will be times in the post where I use the acronym FN@F. This is a shortened form of the title. Just a quick heads up so you don't get confused. Also, as yet another horror game review, this review might contain descriptions of disturbing subject matter. The games themselves are surprisingly tame at a T for Teen rating, however. Because of this, the franchise has earned a reputation for being a "baby's first" horror game.

Image found from Wikipedia.org

So what is Five Nights at Freddy's? It's a horror franchise created by Scott Cawthon back in 2014. Mr. Cawthon worked almost entirely as a self-published developer, and up until the fifth game in the franchise, FN@F was a one-man passion project. The series focuses entirely on haunted Chuck E. Cheese style animatronics, with some monsters being exceptions that prove the rule. And there's a funny story as to why Scott made FN@F despite having no real background in horror media. You see, he got his start making puzzle games for kids. One of those games was absolutely torn apart by critics, specifically citing that the cartoon animals looked accidentally robotic and creepy, when they were supposed to be cute and cuddly. Scott took one look at those criticisms and said, "What if I made a game that was robotic and creepy on purpose?" And that was how Five Nights at Freddy's was born. And the overwhelming success of FN@F as well as fellow horror game P.T. (Rest in Peace P.T. fans) would change the face of indie horror games for years to come. Either your indie horror game was a FN@F clone, a P.T. clone, or it did something so unusual it couldn't be compared to either game.

Despite the franchise's humble origins and almost nonexistent budget, it exploded into an overnight sensation thanks to positive word of mouth. Another reason this franchise got popular was thanks to the Internet. No, really. Between viral videos of Internet celebrities recording their "live reactions" to the series' jump scares, to entire groups of terminally online nerds (including me) being dedicated to piecing together a mysterious storyline that was carefully spread out across multiple games. Because of the prevalence of theories in the FN@F fan community, anything I say about the lore should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, everything I say here is not only my personal reading and thoughts on the story, but some details will be simplified or ignored completely for the sake of keeping this review actually readable. Without further adieu, let's begin the deep dive.

Image from MobyGames.com

Let's start with the first game in the series, the original Five Night's at Freddy's. So imagine. The year is (probably) 1993 and you are a security guard hired by Fazbear Entertainment, a megacorporation that owns a fast food joint called Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria. You are tasked with staying overnight at the restaurant, ostensibly to prevent criminals from stealing the company's prized animatronic performers. This is, as you can figure out quite easily, a bold faced lie. You're not there to keep thieves out. You're there to keep the animatronics in. According to messages left by a fellow employee known simply as the Phone Guy (who is voiced by Scott Cawthon himself), the animatronics have a "free roam" mode that they switch to during closing hours. While in "free roam" mode, the animatronics are free to wander the premises to their hearts' desire. There is just one problem. Because of faulty programming, the animatronics view any adult-sized human as an undressed robot endoskeleton. And being an undressed robot is against DA RULES, so if they catch you, they will stuff you inside a costume. Now, this doesn't sound that bad, but the costumes are too tight for human usage. As such, getting stuffed into a costume will squeeze you to death. There was also an event in the company's past called the Bite of '87, though there is sadly no concrete information as to what that is, aside from sounding vaguely ominous and being gruesome enough to shut the pizzeria down for at least three whole years. Also the restaurant itself might be haunted. Again, nothing concrete, but there are hints of supernatural activity.

Gameplay in FN@F 1 is by far the most simple of the series. You spend each Night (Nights are the equivalent of levels or chapters in other games) sitting in the security guard's office. You can see any other room in the establishment through video cameras. You can light up the halls leading into your office to see if anything is nearby, and you close the doors right outside the office. But everything in this game takes power. You start each Night with 100% electricity and gradually burn through that supply as you use your cameras and doors. And you have to use these tools to stall out the animatronics. You cannot leave the office. You cannot fight the animatronics directly. Your only means of self-defense is stalling for time. Because for some reason, the animatronics become docile as soon as the pizzeria reopens. And credit where credit is due, the first game does a good job at making you feel trapped.

Image from MobyGames.com

There are four main animatronic performers that will attack you in this game, but they have predictable patterns to their behavior. Bonnie the Bunny will always approach from the left hall and can be found in any room on the left side of the building. If you observe him through the cameras, he freezes like a statue and won't move again until you switch to a different camera. Chica the Chicken works the same way, only on the right side of the building. Both Bonnie and Chica can be repelled simply by slamming the door in their face once they make to the halls outside the office. But if either of them make it through the office doors uninterrupted, you lose. Bonnie and Chica will always become active at the beginning of Night 1 and Night 2 respectively, and will attack in tandem from Night 3 onwards.

Foxy the Pirate Fox is by far the most dangerous animatronic. While Phone Guy warns you about Foxy's gimmick during the Night 2 message, if you have really bad luck he can become active on Night 1. Foxy always starts in the same room, the Pirate Cove. He will not leave so long as a camera is observing him. But if you go too long without looking at Foxy, he will run full sprint down the halls, skipping over every other room between him and the office. And no, looking at him through the cameras will do nothing once Foxy leaves the Cove. You only have a very brief window of time to close the door. And even then, Foxy will stay for a few seconds and bang on the door, rapidly draining your power. Once he leaves, he will return to Pirate Cove and you have to repeat this song and dance for the rest of the Night.

And last but not least is the big man himself, Freddy Fazbear. He only becomes active from Night 3 onwards and is the slowest animatronic, especially if you look at him specifically. But Freddy is more unpredictable than the others, since he can go into ANY room in the building with no restriction. He can approach from either side. And the doors do not keep him out. If he stays outside the doors long enough, he can just break them down. And if your power hits 0% on any Night (including Nights 1 and 2) then Freddy will teleport straight into the office and taunt you with a song. This song is the Toreador March, a piece of classical music composed by Georges Bizet for the 1875 French opera Carmen. This is such a deep cut of musical theater trivia that no sane person would care about. But now you know what song Freddy plays when he taunts you. Oh, and Freddy will kill you as soon as the song ends, by the way. So this isn't just an excuse Scott to flex his knowledge of classical music. There's a gameplay function behind the song, since it's effectively a countdown to your demise. Fun Fact! There is a rare chance that a Golden version of Freddy will appear in your office. This "Golden Freddy" is a character that is actually really important in the lore, but for now they are just a creepy secret meant to keep you on your toes.

Image from MobyGames.com

Now if you noticed from the monster breakdowns, that the main way of dealing with the animatronics is to look at them through the cameras. But here's the thing. The animatronics don't all start in the same rooms, and it's borderline impossible to get two or more of them in the same room once they start moving. This is important, because in order to do well in this game, you need to decide which animatronic is the biggest threat at any given moment and focus on that one for a few seconds before dealing with the next biggest threat. Generally speaking, your priorities should be Foxy first, then Freddy, then Bonnie and Chica last. One last important note. If you manage to beat all Five of the Nights, you are rewarded with two bonus levels. Night 6, which is the same as Night 5 but even harder, and Custom Night, where you can adjust the aggression on each animatronic yourself for a truly customized experience. Funnily enough, the most difficult Night in the game is the Custom Night if you crank the aggression on all four animatronics up to 20. This challenge has been nicknamed 4/20 Mode by the fan community. But overall, there is a beautiful simplicity to FN@F 1's gameplay loop. The tools you use are simple, the monsters themselves are simple, and at this point there the lore is simple. Things were so much simpler in 2014.

In terms of presentation, FN@F 1 is easily the scariest game in the series. The pizzeria itself is a dark, decrepit shell of its former glory, with cobwebs forming in the corner and food (or blood) stains marking the floor. The lights barely work, and unless the animatronics get right up in the cameras, you can only make out the outline of their silhouettes. The animatronics themselves strike that perfect balance between being cute enough to where you can believe why children in this setting would like them. But they still hit that uncanny valley feeling, with facial features that don't look quite right. Their mouths are too big, their eyes look devoid of life and soul, they slump and shamble like zombies through the halls. They are designed to make you feel uncomfortable. The sound effects add to the atmosphere as well, with haunting ambience and seemingly random noises that exist for no reason than to distract you. Sometimes Foxy starts singing. Why does he sing? Unclear! Sometimes Chica clashes and clangs utensils together. Why does she do this? Unclear! But these sound effects put you on edge when you hear them, which honestly adds to the experience. And of course, the jump scare scream is iconic. Even if you never played the game yourself, you probably heard the jump scare scream at least once while exploring the Internet. But when you combine that feeling of discomfort with being trapped in an office in a rundown pizzeria, you get a recipe for a game that is immensely stressful to play. It is a rather short experience, unfortunately. You could easily beat this game in anywhere between two and five hours. In fact, that's a problem the whole franchise has. These are games meant to be played in short bursts, not lengthy marathons. But overall, if you're only going to play one game in this franchise, let it be this one. I give Five Nights at Freddy's 5 stars out of 5 (one for each Night!).

Image from Wikipedia.org

Next game is Five Nights at Freddy's 2. Also released 2014, now is a good time to mention that the first four games were all developed and released over the course of a single year, with a two or three month gap between each game. As such, Scott Cawthon holds the Guinness World Record for "Most Number of Video Games Released in a Single Year." More useless but kind of neat trivia for you to enjoy. Granted, the only reason he could do this is because FN@F 2-4 use the first game as a foundation. Anyway, lore time! So imagine, you are hired once again as a security guard for Fazbear Entertainment's brand new establishment. But something's different about the animatronics. They're a little bit.. newer. Shinier. Cuter and cuddlier. And there's a lot more of them now. The pizzeria itself is cleaner now as well. It even has actual working electricity, so power management is a thing of the past. So have Fazbear Entertainment cleaned up their act and made a safe restaurant this time? HA. No. Because the year this time is 1987. Get used to me stating years when applicable, these numbers are frustratingly important. But because the year is 1987, the mysterious Bite of 87 has not happened yet, so the establishment and its performers are in their prime in this game. And before you ask, no, we don't get to see the Bite in this game. The Bite happens during the dayshift, and since your character only works the night shift, they weren't around to see the Bite in person.

Phone Guy returns to tell us that these "new" animatronics, officially referred to as the Toy Series, also have a free roam mode. But the Toys have some features that the original four animatronics lack. Namely they have facial recognition tech, and are programmed to apprehend any patron of the pizzeria if they have a criminal record. Why do animatronic performers meant to sing songs and care for kids need these features? Because of an event in the company's past known as the Missing Children Incident. Unlike the Bite of '87, we have plenty of info relating to the Missing Children Incident. Basically, a Man in Purple lured about 6-11 children to the Backstage by pretending to be one of the pizzeria mascots. Once they were out of sight of any reasonably authority figure, this Purple Man "sent them straight into the past tense" and hid their corpses inside of the animatronics themselves. The police didn't get involved until the patronage started complaining about a foul odor coming from the animatronics. And they never found the Purple Man. He's still out there, having gotten away with taking the lives of almost a dozen innocent children. If anything, Fazbear Entertainment did everything they could to cover up the Purple Man's misdeeds to protect their reputation, and the coverups were what allowed the Purple Man to get away scot free. And what's worse is that the ghosts of the Purple Man's victims began to haunt the original animatronics, creating horrific abominations known collectively as the Withered Series. Anyway, the reason why the Toys have facial recognition tech is to make sure that the Missing Children Incident doesn't happen again.

The only thing left to ambiguity about the Missing Children Incident is ironically enough, how many children the Purple Man killed. It's either six, one for each "classic" animatronic plus Golden Freddy and a new character called the Marionette, or it's eleven, one for each previously mentioned animatronic in addition to the Toy Series. It mostly depends on whether or not you believe Fazbear Entertainment was telling the truth about the facial recognition tech, or if you believe the Toys are just as haunted as the Withered Series. I personally believe it's eleven because it wouldn't be the first time Fazbear Entertainment lied about their animatronics' capabilities. That, and I'm pretty sure that facial recognition tech didn't exist in 1987. But I like to imagine that Fazbear Entertainment deliberately hires Night Guards with criminal records so they have an alibi ready in case the animatronics kill anyone. The only thing disproving this theory is the fact that later games give names to only six of the victims, not eleven.

But ignore all that Purple Man business, let's talk about the gameplay. In FN@F 2 you have a new office that has no doors whatsoever, and three different paths from which the animatronics. The cameras are nowhere near as helpful in this game, since the animatronics still move around even when observed now. Now the cameras serve as a remote access to a music box. So I know what you're thinking. "How are you supposed to defend yourself this time!?" The answer is with a flashlight, a mask and the aforementioned music box. I'm letting you know now that FN@F 2 is nowhere near as scary as the original game. But it is a whole lot harder, due to needing to juggle three different tools and needing to remember what each animatronic is weak to. Basically, if you see any version of Bonnie, Chica or Freddy (all of whom come in both Toy and Withered forms), you use the mask to scare/fool them away. The same applies if you see a new animatronic called Balloon Boy coming. Balloon Boy is the first "gimmick" monster in the series. Instead of attacking you directly, if you don't scare him away in time he will disable the flashlight. Speaking of the flashlight, if you see Withered Foxy, you flash your light at them. And you must keep the music box going at all times, because if the music box stops, a new character called the Marionette wakes up. The Marionette cannot be deterred by the mask nor can you flash your light at her. If she wakes up, you are dead. No exceptions.

More lore time! The Marionette and Mangle are two new characters and I absolutely love them, they are two of my favorite monsters in the series. But on a serious note, the Marionette is heavily implied to be possessed by the ghost of the very first victim of the Purple Man, and is the first animatronic to be explicitly shown to be supernatural (besides Golden Freddy). In fact, it's all but stated that the Marionette is the one calling the shots at the pizzeria. Not only do the other animatronics treat her as their leader, there are secret flashback minigames unlocked by dying to specific animatronics during specific Nights. These flashbacks show the Missing Children Incident and the immediate aftermath. But more importantly, it shows the Marionettes "giving gifts" to each of the victims. The animatronics only come to life after they have been "given a gift." I like to think of the gifts as a metaphor for souls. If you had any doubts about the animatronics being haunted, I feel like this explicitly confirms there is ghostly involvement going on, at least in some capacity.

Image from Wikipedia.org

Mangle, on the other hand, was meant to be a Toy variant of Foxy. But a bunch of kids didn't like how Toy Foxy was redesigned to look "softer" and more "girly." So they did the reasonable thing and tore the poor thing apart. And when the dayshift staff put her back together, the kids broke him all over again. This continued for several days. Eventually the dayshift staff got tired of repairing Toy Foxy all the time, so they repurposed her as a kind of Build-A-Bear style attraction, letting patrons rearrange his body parts in new and disturbing positions. So now the newly renamed Mangle is a horrid mess of mismatched body parts, looking more like a metallic pretzel with a fox head crudely shoved on one side than an actual robotic animal. Somewhere along the way, Mangle was given a gift by the Marionette and began to move around despite her horribly misshapen form. That's it. That's all the Mangle lore. I adore this character despite the fact that they are perhaps the least important monster in the series. And before you ask why I keep changing Mangle's pronouns, the reason is because we literally do not know whether Mangle is a boy or a girl, and the subject of Mangle's gender was a hotly debated subject among longtime fans. One side says that because Mangle is a Foxy variant, and the original Foxy is male, then Mangle should be male by process of association. The other side says that Mangle's costume (or what's left of it) is designed to look feminine and girly, with exaggerated eyelashes, bright-pink makeup and lusciously red lipstick. Not helping matters is that as a series wide joke, Mangle is referred to with different pronouns in each game the character appears in. They are called "he" in one game, "she" in another, a third game switches back to "he" and the cycle continues. Some games in the series take things further by changing the pronouns every single Night, or even in the same sentence. For what it's worth, Scott Cawthon himself made an official statement on whether Mangle was supposed the be a boy or a girl. And the answer is "Yes." Just "Yes" with no further elaboration. I can respect that kind of answer.

Anyway, a lot of what I said about the first game rings true here. If you beat all five Nights you unlock an extra hard Night 6 and a Custom Night. And the presentation is more or less the same as the first game. The pizzeria is cleaner and more pristine, which does diminish the scare factor somewhat. Like, you don't feel trapped the same way that you feel trapped in FN@F 1. I do think that the jump scare scream in this game is more alarming, due to being a deep voiced cry of "FREEDOM!!!" as opposed to the high-pitched "REEEEEEEEEE!!!" of the first game. Though the first time I heard the FN@F 2 scream I thought it sounded like "HOWDY YALL!!!" at first, and now that I put that mental image in your head you can't unhear it. But honestly, I kind of prefer FN@F 2 for gameplay and monster designs, even if I think the game is less scary overall. Like, once you get the "rhythm" down and can cleanly transition between the mask, the flashlight and the music box, it feels almost therapeutic. Plus, this game has some of the best monsters in the franchise. The Marionette, Mangle, Withered Bonnie and Toy Bonnie are all delightfully frightening fan favorites for good reason. So I give Five Nights at Freddy's 2 5 out of 5 stars. The franchise is now 2 for 2 with perfect ratings.

Image from Wikipedia.org

After that is Five Nights at Freddy's 3. This is a game I personally have mixed feelings on. Moving towards the year of 2023 (which was the future when the game first released), you are once again hired as a security guard for Fazbear Entertainment. But something's different once again. The pizzeria is so filthy and rotten it looks less like a pizzeria and more like a junkyard. It makes the FN@F 1 pizzeria look pristine in comparison. But here's the thing. It's nasty on purpose. Because Fazbear Entertainment thought to themselves, "You remember the Missing Children Incident and the Bite of 87? Let's make a Haunted House ride out of the very real crimes we hid from the public! This is a perfectly sound business decision!" But that's beside the point. The newly rebranded Fazbear's Fright is a haunted house attraction decorated with old memorabilia from the first two establishments, set to appear in a fancy amusement park a la Disney Land. But the star of the show is one single, half-rotten rabbit animatronic known as Spring-Trap. And this is the reason why I (and other fans of the series) feel so divisive about this game. The only hostile animatronic in FN@F 3 is Spring-Trap. While it is true that he can summon Phantom animatronics to distract you, the Phantoms are literally just palette swaps of characters from the first two games, so they don't really feel like new monsters in and of themselves. And these Phantom animatronics can't kill you either, since their only game purpose is to distract you from whatever Spring-Trap is doing. So your enjoyment of the third game is dependent on how much you like Spring-Trap, because this is Spring-Trap's game, not Freddy's or Foxy's or anyone else's game.

As you can imagine, your tools have changed yet again. Cameras are back to being actually useful, since you need to keep an eye on Spring-Trap at all times and you can safely ignore the Phantoms. But you also have audio lures, little devices placed in each room that can be accessed remotely through the new office. These audio lures will play a sound that will, well, lure Spring-Trap into that room. He cannot hear a lure unless it's in a room adjacent to whichever room Spring-Trap is currently in. Basically, if you want to guide him into a specific room, you need to figure out which rooms lead to where and use the lures in the right order to get Spring-Trap in that specific room. The doors return, but with a twist. You don't have a door for the office itself, meaning once Spring-Trap gets there, you're pretty much out of luck. But new to this game are vents. Spring-Trap will sometimes climb into a vent and try and get you from there. You can close off the vents to block out Spring-Trap, but you can only close one vent at a time. So you have to pay attention to which vent Spring-Trap climbs into.

And finally, the equipment this time consists entirely of old, beaten up hand-me-downs from other establishments. Because of this, your tools will literally break down at random intervals, requiring you to manually reset your cameras, audio lures and vent doors to use them again. There are also retro flashback minigames that come in two types. If you complete a Night for the first time, you see the Purple Man return and destroy the original four animatronics. But there are also secrets that can only be accessed by clicking on certain things on certain Nights. And when I say hidden, I mean "so obscure there is no way to find this without following a walkthrough." Which begs the question of how the walkthrough authors found the secrets, but the Internet can solve any mystery if it puts its hive mind to it. These secret minigames unlock an alternate ending where the ghosts of the Missing Children Incident victims get their Happiest Day, meaning they're ready to go to Heaven. Which is surprisingly wholesome for a franchise about haunted robots. Also Fazbear's Fright burns down, causing Spring-Trap to disappear into the night. FN@F 3 is the only game in the series (besides Security Breach) to not have a Custom Night, because again. Spring-Trap is the only new animatronic. So there's not much to actually customize. In its place is Nightmare Mode, which raises Spring-Trap and the Phantoms' aggression up to eleven, so to speak.

Image from Wikipedia.org

Lore time! You might be wondering why Spring-Trap is such a big deal. Why does this zombie rabbit robot get his own game, and why can he summon Phantoms modeled after the previous animatronics? And the answer is because Spring-Trap is the one exception to the animatronic monster rule. You see, Spring-Trap is not an animatronic per se. Instead, he is a Spring-Lock Suit, a type of experimental costume Fazbear Entertainment made that could switch between being a wearable suit and an autonomous robot. The robot parts aren't removed from the suit, just pushed to the edges to make room for a human. There is just one problem with this. If the suit switches to robot mode while the human is still wearing it, all the bits of machinery will perforate their body. Simultaneously squeezing you to death while pumping your body full of holes. This obviously was a safety violation, and only two suits were made. And Spring-Trap is one of those two suits. The other suit became Golden Freddy.

But there's more to Spring-Trap than being a failed prototype robot suit. Not only is he human, but Spring-Trap is the Purple Man himself. As shown in the flashback minigames, sometime between 1993 and 2023 (we don't know exactly when) the Purple Man returned to the Pizzeria. There, he destroys the monsters he created, though why he did this is unclear. But then the ghosts of his victims start attacking him directly. And in what might be a case of karmic irony at its finest, the very suit he used to lure children to the backstage switched to robot mode while he was still wearing it. The Purple Man died, as he perhaps rightfully deserved, but his soul didn't move on to the afterlife. Instead, his ghost just possessed the very suit that just killed him, and adopted the Spring-Trap persona with the full intent of continuing the murders as an undead rabbit monster. A common joke among FN@F fans is that the Purple Man "ALWAYS COMES BACK." This is because no matter what happens in the story, the Purple Man just refuses to stay dead and the consequences of his misdeeds haunt the future generations of this universe far more than the literal ghosts that antagonize the Night Guards.

In terms of presentation, FN@F 3 is very green. I get the intention was to show an establishment that was even more rundown than the original, but the lighting in this game makes everything look aggressively green. Heck, Spring-Trap himself looks green. He is not green. He is supposed to be golden. But the rotting decay on his body combined with the lighting make him look greener than intended. I personally find this game the least scary, but I do like the concept of Spring-Trap's design, being an unholy fusion of a rabbit costume, a robot, and a mummified human corpse. It's definitely the goriest thing in the franchise. Aside from the Scooper in the fifth game, but that's a whole other can of worms. Anyway, as previously mentioned, I don't particularly like the Phantoms because their designs are just palette swaps of previous animatronics. And the jump scare scream in this game is the weakest, being just a loud hiss instead of a proper scream. All that being said, I really like the ideas of this game. I like Spring-Trap, I like audio lures, and I like having to repair your equipment every so often while keeping an eye on one singular, but very dangerous foe. So in terms of gameplay, it's actually pretty fun. So I give Five Night's at Freddy's 3 4 stars out of 5. At first I thought about giving it 3 stars, but upon further reflection, I think I prefer this game over the next one. Speaking of...

Image from Wikipedia.org

Alright, Five Nights at Freddy's 4. Oh boy. This game. I have a lot to say about this game. So lore time! You play not as a security guard working at a Fazbear Entertainment facility, but as a small child. In fact, this is the only game in the series where Fazbear Entertainment have no involvement whatsoever. Instead, this game takes place in a fairly average suburban house. Like imagine the home of a stereotypical middle-class American family. That's the kind of house we're dealing with. And this small child is being plagued by Nightmares. And when I say Nightmares, I don't mean bad dreams. I mean the animatronics in this game are literally called the Nightmare series. And the Nightmare animatronics have followed this kid home. And also some pieces of furniture seem to magically change into medical equipment before flickering back into what they were originally. But I'm sure that's fine and is in no way symbolically foreshadowing something important.

The only means of self-defense this time are a flashlight and a pair of doors. You can only keep one door closed at a time, since the kid needs to physically run over to the door to close it. You also need to check the bed behind you every so often, as well as light up the closet with your flashlight every now and again. Unlike every previous game, sound plays an integral role in figuring out what the animatronics are doing. Basically, if you hear any creaking, gasping or moaning at the doors, close them until the noise stops. If you don't hear any noise, shine your flashlight down the hall. There are seven animatronics in FN@F 4. Nightmare Bonnie and Nightmare Chica work exactly as there FN@F 1 counterparts did. Bonnie approaches from the left and Chica from the right. Nightmare Foxy starts in the closet as a cute little plush that slowly transforms into a more monstrous creature. If he is in "monster mode" you have to close the closet doors shut until he is back in "plush mode." And Nightmare Freddy sends out tiny copies of himself that climb up on the bed. Simply shining your light at the copies will scare them away, but if you ignore them, then the real Freddy will teleport behind you and give you the "Nothin' Personnel, Kid!" special.

Image from Steamdb.info

The final two main animatronics are Fredbear and Nightmare (just Nightmare, no extra words). Both of these animatronics are palette swaps of each other and work in more or less the same way. And these two can approach from ANY entry point into the room. Basically, Fredbear is the first four animatronics rolled into one, while Nightmare is an even more aggressive version of Fredbear. And then there's Plush-Trap. Plush-Trap is a tiny version of Spring-Trap and has a very strange gimmick. Basically, at the start of every Night, you can play "red light, green light" with Plush-Trap by turning the flash light on and off repeatedly. If you win by getting Plush-Trap to stand on a X mark on the floor, you skip the first two hours of the next Night. This makes things both shorter and easier for you. If you lose (either by taking too long or letting Plush-Trap jump scare you), you just play through the Night normally. So if you get really good at Plush-Trap's minigame, you can breeze through the Nights with impressive speed. I actually really like the idea. Especially since this is probably the hardest game, or at least it's tied with FN@F 2 for difficulty. This is also the longest game in the series so far, with eight playable Nights as opposed to 5 main Nights and a few bonus Nights here and there.

So let me preface something about FN@F 4. This game's lore frustrates me to no end. Not because of what's in the game itself, but because of something Scott said a few years ago that makes this game's story needlessly messy. So first a little context. Throughout the game you learn that your character, the Crying Child (yes, that's their canon name) is a victim of bullying from their brother. This kid is so scared of Fazbear animatronics that the mere sight of them is enough to make the kid burst into fearful tears. Except for one. A plushie version of Fredbear, who offers reassurance and cryptic pep-talks. Some of the things this plush says are in all honesty ominous. Things like "Tomorrow is another day" or "I will put you back together." The game ends with something that I am going to put a hard spoiler/content warning on. If you don't want to learn about arguably the most gruesome thing in the whole franchise, feel free to skip ahead. At the end of the game the brother and his friends torment the Crying Child on their birthday. They thought it would be "real funny" if they picked the poor kid up and shoved him, headfirst, into the mouth of Fredbear, who is in fact the original version of Golden Freddy. And well... CHOMP. We then learn that the whole game was from the perspective of the Bite of '87 Victim first mentioned all the way back in FN@F 1. More specifically, everything our character was experiencing were the last moments of the Bite Victim's comatose mind succumbing to the brain damage caused by the Bite. The medical equipment appearing and disappearing was the Victim's mind briefly becoming lucid and realizing that their body is dying before descending even deeper into the Nightmare. It's also why the Nightmare animatronics look like demonic versions of the original four animatronics (plus Golden Freddy), since those were the only animatronics that were active at the time of the Bite.

Finally. We got to see the Bite of '87. Turns out it was a prank gone wrong and had nothing to do with the Missing Children Incident or the Purple Man. There's something poetic about the first mystery in the series having finally been solved, and turned out to be a case of bullying taken too far... Is what I would like to say. But this game, according to Scott Cawthon himself, takes place in 1983. Scott claims his intention with this scene was to reveal that there were multiple Bite victims, and the Bite of '87 wasn't a one-time occurrence. But if that was his intention, he did a bad job at showing that this was meant as "there were multiple Bite victims" reveal, since the only victim we see is the Crying Child. Honestly, the whole scene feels like it was meant to be the Bite of '87, but Scott moved the goalpost, so to speak, to keep the mystery going. Don't get me wrong. I still like the story being told so far and I still respect Scott as a story writer and game developer, but this one instance rubs me the wrong way. But no matter what, whether this was the Bite of '87 or an unrelated incident, bullying is never okay and if you don't learn to treat your peers with respect, you might repeat the mistakes of the brother. There's my Public Service Announcement. Don't do bullying, or you might shove your younger sibling into a robot bear's mouth and accidentally cause them to die of severe brain damage.

Image from neoseeker.com

One last lore thing. FN@F 4 saw the introduction of the Box. Basically, the Box held something within it that would "solve everything." Scott would only open the Box (via updating the game) if the community could accurately guess what was inside it within a three month time limit. Apparently, nobody found the answer to the Box in time, and it was never opened. At least, not in the games. In the FN@F lore novels (which exist to flesh out the lore and make it less confusing), the Box contains the body of Charlotte Emily, the first (named) victim of the Purple Man, whose ghost would go on to haunt the Marionette. While I have been trying to ignore the lore novels at first, they do contain a lot of information simply not available in the games themselves, and for better and for worse, they do help with deciphering the more confusing aspects of the franchise's story. And from this point onwards, the lore novels are more or less inseparable from the main games. I will mention them when it's relevant, but I won't cover the books in their entirety. Otherwise, this post would get even longer than it already has.

In terms of presentation, FN@F 4 is the second-scariest game in the Core Collection, following close behind the first game. It's one thing if you're a security guard in a stressful or dangerous situation. You kind of expect danger in that kind of profession. But there's something about a kid, no older than seven years old at the most, being hunted by robotic monstrosities specifically designed to torment him. What's worse is that because there are no cameras whatsoever, you have to rely on sound to tell what the animatronics are doing in any given instance. Which unfortunately means this game isn't really that handicap accessible. If you have any kind of hearing problem, you might want to skip this game. I do like the jump scare scream, since it combines the first three games' screams together to make a deep, bellowing roar. It's not as iconic as the first two screams, but a definite improvement over the hissing from the third game. I also like the design of the Nightmares, in fact Fredbear is another one of my favorite monster designs in the series. The Nightmares look edgy and borderline demonic compared to their previous incarnations, featuring sharp conical teeth and jagged spikes all over their bodies. Their designs would look almost comically "try-hard" or "extra" without the context that they are the manifestations of a dying child's fears as their body falls into a coma. But with that context, they kind of work.

But the most unique thing about this game's presentation is the Halloween Edition. Basically, if you play FN@F 4 during Halloween, all of the Nightmares are replaced with Halloween palette Swaps. Nightmare Bonnie and Chica are colored orange instead of their usual colors, to make them look like Jack O' Lanterns. Nightmare Foxy is replaced with a Nightmare variant of Mangle, which is great in my book because any new Mangle content is good. Plush-Trap is replaced with a Nightmare variant of Balloon Boy (another character first introduced in FN2F 2) and Nightmare (the character) is replaced with a Nightmare variant of the Marionette known as the Nightmarionne. This is one of two games in the franchise that have Halloween themed bonus content, the other being a VR game released in 2019. But overall I give Five Nights at Freddy's 4 3 stars out of five. The lack of handicap accessibility and the 1983 nonsense brings it down for me personally. Maybe I'll warm up to the game eventually, but right now I prefer FN@F 3 over this game, and I prefer FN@F 2 over both 3 and the original game.

Image from Wikipedia.org

And finally, the fifth game in the series and the last game to be included in the Core Collection. Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location. This is the first sequel game to not be numbered, and none of the games after this are numbered either. I like to imagine that Scott named this game Sister Location because he thought "Five Nights at Freddy's Five" sounded irredeemably stupid. But more importantly, I LOVE this game. This game is tied with FN@F 2 for my favorite game in the Core Collection. Is it perfect? Oh, heavens no. This game marks the franchise's shift from supernatural horror into more conventional science fiction, and your enjoyment of the game hinges on how much you like the genre shift. But I have a serious soft spot for this game, and it's the one FN@F game that I feel is the most polished. Both in terms of gameplay and in terms of presentation. Which makes sense since by this point in Scott's career, he has not only acquired an actual budget thanks to the runaway success of the first four games, but he made a point to keep this game in development for two whole years, with the game releasing in October 6, 2016.

So lore time! We don't actually know what year Sister Location's story takes place in. However, it is commonly believed to take place shortly after the Bite of '87 forced the main Pizzeria to close down. So it's somewhere between 1987 and 1993. Anyway, you play as a technician hired by Afton Robotics. That's right. You're not working for Fazbear Entertainment anymore. You're working for a new megacorporation. Afton Robotics, named after its founder and CEO, William Afton, was the company that built Fazbear's animatronic performers in the first place. So technically, the Bite was their fault for building a robot with enough jaw strength to crush a human skull. But I doubt that the engineers at Afton Robotics thought that some snot-nosed brat would shove their little brother into a dancing robot bear's mouth as a prank, so I'll let it slide. Anyway, you are sent to go clean up and repair the Fun-Time series of animatronics. And the Fun-Times are simply put, clowns. They are animatronic clowns. Why are they clowns? You see, Afton Robotics intended to open up their own pizzeria to compete with Freddy Fazbear's. This was known as Circus Baby's Pizza World. Circus Baby's Pizza World was forced to shut down after just one day of being publicly available. Fazbear Entertainment bought out Afton Robotics following the catastrophic failure of Circus Baby's, which is why Afton Robotics now builds animatronics for one of their former competitors.

However, the animatronics from Circus Baby's were never destroyed. Instead, they were repurposed as rental performers. Basically, you could pay Fazbear Entertainment to send one of the Fun-Times over to your house and personally attend to your kids. Serving both as an entertainer and as a babysitter. So does that mean that they are harmless? HA. No. The Fun-Times are some of the most dangerous animatronics in the whole franchise. I'll explain why in a moment, but first, some gameplay. Sister Location is unique in the sense that each Night has a different task to perform, and pairs you up against a different threat. Night 1 you don't have any real problems, aside from the facility briefly shutting down long enough for Circus Baby (the main animatronic of this game) to talk to you. And because this is the first big budget FN@F game, Scott managed to hire multiple voice actors to bring his characters to life. In the case of Circus Baby, she is voiced by Heather Masters. Anyway, Circus Baby is unique among the Fun-Times for she is not only sentient, but is capable of speech, something that no other animatronic could do. She promises to keep the technician safe, but something about her calculated and methodical speech sounds... Manipulative. Like she's telling you exactly what you want to hear, rather than what you need to hear.

Image from Wikipedia.org

A rare moment of comedy in the franchise in the introduction of Hand-Unit, a primitive AI companion that tries to help you solve problems. But Hand-Unit is for lack of a better term, an imbecile. As such, any advice that Hand-Unit tells will get you killed, but anything Circus Baby says will keep you alive. For example, on Night 2, you have to crawl through the stage of a Fun-Time animatronic called Ballora. Hand-Unit tells you run as fast as you can. Circus Baby tells you to take things slow and steady, but make sure to come to a complete stop as soon as you see or hear Ballora moving and let her pass by. Guess who's advice actually works. And this is generally how each Night progresses. Something in the Afton Robotics facility malfunctions, you go there to fix it while dealing with each Fun-Time individually. In fact, it's basically impossible for more than one animatronic to attack at the same time. But no matter what, Circus Baby is always right, and Hand-Unit is always wrong. That is, until Night 4.

During Night 4, your character gets shoved inside a Spring-Lock Suit by Fun-Time Foxy, at the behest of Circus Baby. The suit thankfully is not in robot mode... Yet. But the locks keeping the suit from switching are slowly becoming undone. And small dolls called Minireenas are climbing all over you. You have to wiggle around to shake the Minireenas off, but wiggling loosens the locks, and you need to keep the locks on if you don't want to share the same fate as the Purple Man. And if you ignore the Minireenas, they will kill you anyway. This Night was so difficult that Scott released a free update specifically to tone down this Night's challenge. This is the only time that Scott nerfed something in his games, at least to my knowledge.

Anyway, Night 5 rolls around and now you aren't quite sure if you can trust Circus Baby. After all, she openly admitted to putting you in the Night 4 Spring-Lock suit. But the only time she was 100% honest was during an optional conversation in Night 3, where she confess the real reason why the Pizza World was shut down after just one day. Basically, Circus Baby murdered a girl named Elizabeth Afton, who coincidentally was William Afton's daughter. She has been locked away in the Afton Robotics facility ever since that day. But more importantly, Circus Baby didn't gain sentience until after committing a murder, and she herself doesn't understand why she did so. She also refers to William Afton as "daddy." The implication here being that Elizabeth's ghost possessed Circus Baby, or at least it combined with her programming. This is an important detail for later.

Image from neoseeker.com

Much like FN@F 3, Sister Location has multiple endings, though the endings here are much simpler. In the "real" ending (aka the one that is treated as canon), you follow Circus Baby's instructions to the letter. Baby guides you into the Scooper Room, and betrays you at the last minute, as you might have expected her to do. Specifically, she uses the Scooper machine, designed to tear apart animatronic endoskeletons, to rip out all of the bones from the technician's body. Baby then discards her own costume and shoves the hundreds of wires and cables making up her real body inside your corpse. She then wears your skin as a disguise to escape Afton Robotics and go live among the humans. But something goes wrong during this plan. Your character's skin starts to rot and decompose. Soon, Circus Baby is forced to abandon her disguise and retreat to the sewers. But despite having no bones and no working organs, the technician stands back up, and their body turns a familiar shade of purple...

The Fake ending, meanwhile can be acquired by disobeying Circus Baby on Night 5. Do so correctly, and you wind up in an office and get a glorious boss battle against Circus Baby herself, who has already discarded her costume and assumed her wiry "Ennard" form. Ennard combines the mechanics of all four games into one package. You have limited power, like in the first game, you have audio lures, like in the third game, you have to swap between three different tools, like in the second game, and you have to pay attention to the sounds that Baby/Ennard makes, like in the fourth game. This is just a really cool boss fight that pays loving tribute to everything that came before it.

There's a third ending unlocked upon beating the Custom Night, which reveals a speech from the technician. He clarifies that his real name is Michael Afton, son of William Afton. William sent Michael down to the Afton Robotics facility to confirm whether or not William's "experiment" worked. Which is to see if an Afton Robotics animatronic can collect the souls of the recently deceased. The fact that Circus Baby became sentient after absorbing Elizabeth's soul proved the experiment to be successful. Not only that, but there's the revelation that the Fun-Times were deliberately designed, by William himself, to kidnap and murder people so long as there are no witnesses to the event. This is why the Fun-Times are the most dangerous monsters in the franchise. The other animatronics, advanced as they may be, are only designed with entertainment in mind, and are only dangerous because of the ghosts haunting them. The Fun-Times were meant to be killers from the moment they stepped off the assembly lines. And these are the same animatronics that people can rent out for private parties. Michael isn't happy at the fact that his father was designing killer robots (and that said robots somehow turned him into a purple undead monster man), and swears bloody vengeance against him.

So book lore time! The books just come right out and say that William Afton is the true identity of the Purple Man, just straight up. In the games, it's left ambiguous if Michael was the Purple Man or if William was the Purple Man. Michael's line "They thought I was you" implies that the two of them look similar enough to where you could mistake the former for the latter, or vice versa. Heck, it's possible they are both the Purple Man. Purple Men, plural! But the books say that William is the Purple Man who was responsible for the Missing Children Incident, and the reason he murdered so many people was to perform experiments on their ghosts. Which is... Look, this is what I meant when I said the franchise takes a hard shift from horror to sci-fi. Honestly, I'm still not sure giving the Purple Man a motivation or a backstory at all was worth it. I think whatever backstory Scott gave the Purple Man would hurt the mystique and fear factor of the character no matter what he did. But still, the fact the main villain of this franchise went from a disturbingly realistic depiction of a child predator to a mad scientist experimenting with souls is more than a little jarring.

In terms of presentation, Sister Location is overtly sci-fi in its aesthetic. The main facility is an underground bunker full of advanced technology and machinery. The Fun-Times themselves look even more pristine than the Toys did. They are also clowns. Just straight up robot clowns. Heck, the coloring on their masks was done to resemble clown make-up. Only two animatronics return for Fun-Time designs, Freddy Fazbear and Foxy. And Fun-Time Foxy is literally just Mangle if Mangle was never turned into a metallic pretzel. Fun-Time Freddy has a cute little Bonnie hand puppet that he affectionately calls "Bon-Bon!" which is a nice touch. The new animatronics include Circus Baby herself, who funnily enough never attacks in her base form and as such is the only animatronic that doesn't have a jump scare animation. And Baby is exactly what she sounds like. A giant mechanical toddler clown. The other animatronic is Ballora, a tall ballerina animatronic that is blind for the simple reason that her mechanical eyelids are jammed shut at all times. Ballora is the most human-looking of all the animatronics, and she definitely feels the most "uncanny" of the bunch. I love Fun-Time Foxy and Fun-Time Freddy's designs, but I do acknowledge that they aren't really that scary. They fall more on the "cute" side of the "cute-to-creepy" ratio for animatronic monster designs, and you need to be closer to the middle to pull it off properly.

The only thing I truly dislike about the game is the setting. The Afton Robotics underground bunker doesn't really stand out on its own, especially compared to the pizzerias from the previous games. Like, there's no real sense that it's owned by a fast food chain, which I feel is critical to the Five Nights at Freddy's experience. I was willing to give the fourth game a pass because that game takes place in an abstract nightmare. In terms of sound, this is the first game to have multiple voice actors, as previously mentioned, and everyone involved did a good job. Circus Baby sounds mysterious and cunning, and the way she speaks sounds like she is deliberating choosing her words to get the exact reaction she wants out of you. The other Fun-Times speak exclusively in "pre-recorded" quips and one-liners, which helps sell the illusion that they are meant to be entertainers for children. And Hand-Unit says everything so casually that he sounds accidentally sarcastic. At least until he switches into an alternate voice type, where he suddenly becomes a stereotypical moody teenager. Which is hilarious. But anyway, I give Five Nights at Freddy's: Sister Location four stars out of five. The only thing holding it back from being truly perfect is that I find the bunker's design to be a little bland compared to the locations from the previous games. If it looked more like the property of a multimedia megacorporation, I think I would like it more. But as it stands, it's "just" a sci-fi bunker.

And that's it. We did it, dear readers. This is a comprehensive review of every game included in the Five Nights at Freddy's Core Collection. Overall, it's a pretty good bundle of horror games. The Core Collection is available on just about every system ever. Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Switch. You can get each game individually on not only the previously mentioned systems, but also on Steam and even on iPhone and Android. Yes. You can play these horror games on your phone if you are so inclined. These are not complicated games. That being said, the Core Collection does not include Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator (aka Five Nights at Freddy's 6), which is a missed opportunity, since that game is probably the best game in the whole franchise and is the last canon FN@F game to use the Clickteam Fusion engine. But overall, the Core Collection gets a total rating of 21 out of 25 stars. That's a lot of stars.

Five Nights at Freddy's is owned by Scott Cawthon and Steel Wool Studios. None of the images used here were created by me. Please support the official release.

The Halloween Special: A very spooky review of Little Nightmares II

2023-10-31T17:59:00.000-04:00

Halloween and horror games. A truly iconic duo. There's just something special about playing a spooky game during a spooky holiday during a spooky month. And I was planning on doing a review of Five Nights at Freddy's since that's a very popular horror franchise that just released a theatrical film. But I also never did a review of Little Nightmares II, which is one of my favorite horror games ever. And I feel like Little Nightmares is more fun to talk about because it is such a strange and surreal experience unlike anything else in the genre. Don't worry, I'll cover FN@F eventually. But today we're doing Little Nightmares II.

Image from https://www.behance.net/gallery/88698867/Little-Nightmares-II

So what is Little Nightmares II? Developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco, Little Nightmares is a horror game franchise focusing on a world of giants. And when I say "giants" I mean everything is bigger than the humans(?) you play as. Heck, even something as simple as a wooden stool is so big that your character can barely climb up on top of it. The games focus on using platforming skills to navigate environments that would be considered mundane, were not for the literally gigantic proportions of both the furniture and the monsters living in said environments. Released in 2021, Little Nightmares II is a direct sequel to the 2017 original. I personally considered Little Nightmares I to be an excellent game, it being such a surreal and unique experience both as a horror game and as a platformer. Though in my review of the first game, I made the argument that it doesn't "count" as horror due to a lack of traditional jump scares. I now regret making that claim, since the notion that a game is only "horror" if it has jump scares was ignorant of me. After all, any work of art that seeks to disturb and unsettle is horror, even if the means to cause that reaction differ from the "standard" methods used by similar works.

Little Nightmares is unique among horror games for two main reasons. The first reason is the game is played in a third-person perspective, meaning you can actually see your character moving around. Most horror games are played in first-person, making you see directly through the eyes of the protagonist. But the third-person perspective calls attention to the characters you play as, which considering the "true nature" of one character in particular, is rather fitting. The second reason is that, with the exception of some tie-in comics and a debatably canon series of audio plays that Bandai Namco released on their YouTube channel, the Little Nightmares series tells its story without so much as a single word of dialogue, instead letting body language and environmental details do all the narrative work. As such, Little Nightmares is a story that is as mysterious as it is open to speculation. But it's not mysterious in the same way that Five Nights at Freddy's is. That franchise is mysterious because it hides story-relevant information from the player in increasingly elaborate ways, but the information itself is fairly simple. Little Nightmares doesn't hide information, it just gives you information that only makes sense with the benefit of hindsight. Basically, you don't have to go digging through three different lore novels or solve a riddle hidden in the source code of the creator's website to the understand what's going on. The only information that is not (to my knowledge) in the game itself are the names of the two main characters, Mono and Six. But the story still works even without knowing their names, you would just get used to calling them the Boy and the Girl respectively.

So do you need to play the first Little Nightmares to understand the sequel? Well, yes and no. Some scenes don't hit as hard narratively without experiencing the original. After all, what significance can a newcomer expect to gain from the scene where a little girl dons a bright yellow rain coat? But considering the wordless story and overall mysterious vibe that the series is going for, knowing what happened in the first game is not required. That, and it's entirely possible that Little Nightmares II takes place before the first game. Maybe. Because of the ambiguity of this title, I will be judging it primarily on its own merits and only bring up comparisons to the original game when it is relevant to do so. One little warning before I explain the game any further. While Little Nightmares II is rated T for Teen by the ESRB (thus it is intended for ages 13 years or older), it is still very much a horror game and as such there might be disturbing imagery and subject matter too intense or macabre for more sensitive audiences. Continue reading at your own discretion.

Now, Little Nightmares II is a rather short game. You could beat this game in about 10 hours or less. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that the short length is good for a "bite-sized" experience, or if you want to try speed running, then this is a good game to start speed running for. The curse is that if you really like the game, you might finish it earlier than you were expecting and are left feeling mildly disappointed at the short length. Because of the game's short length, as well as its level structure (the protagonists go to giant-sized version of a seemingly normal place, they encounter the giant living in said place and either destroy it or escape from it), I will going over the broad strokes of all five main levels, as well as some fun facts here and there. I won't discuss every single thing, like every puzzle or every chase scene, but I will give the general vibe of the level.

Our story begins with a vision of a hallway with an ominous looking door at the far end. This hallway is important for later, so keep it in the back of your mind. Once the vision ends, our protagonist wakes up in a forest filled with broken television screens. The main character of Little Nightmares II is a young boy wearing a paper bag mask that Tarsier named Mono in promotional material, but given the wordless nature of this game's storytelling, you would have no way of knowing Mono's name otherwise. Anyway, Mono moves through the forest by solving physics based puzzles, like pushing boxes around to form a makeshift staircase or swinging on a rope to cross a gap that's too wide for him to jump over. Even before we meet the main monster for this level, we encounter human(?) sized beartraps and hunting nets filled with rotting carcasses. There is something in these woods that appears to be hunting humans (and possibly other giants) for some purpose. Maybe for sport? Or for satiating a depraved appetite? It wouldn't be the first time Little Nightmares tackled the theme of a monstrous hunger driving people to committing acts of extreme debauchery.

Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-88

Mono comes across a cabin in the woods, clearly built with a giant in mind. In there he finds a young human(?) girl trapped in the basement, with several tally marks implying that the girl has been stuck down there for at least 55 days. The Girl's only comfort being a music box playing a haunting melody pulled straight from the original Little Nightmares. So Mono frees her by grabbing a nearby human-sized hatchet and breaking down the door The Shining style. While this girl is reluctant to cooperate with Mono at first, the two of them soon find a series of obstacles that are impossible to overcome by themselves, and so they decide to work together for the foreseeable future. This is the main "gimmick" of Little Nightmares II. From this point onward the player with have a companion that will automatically assist with certain puzzles, such as helping to push heavy objects around or giving them a boost to jump up to an otherwise out-of-reach ledge. There's also a dedicated "hold hands" button that allows you to manually control both Mono and the Girl at the same time, by making them hold hands together. Which is surprisingly cute and wholesome for a game filled to the brim with ghoulish horrors.

Fun fact! Tarsier originally intended for the whole game to have a two-player co-op mode, with player one being Mono and player two being the Girl. Unfortunately, The co-op mode was sadly scrapped early on in development because Tarsier couldn't figure out how to get it to work properly. And this is an interesting tidbit because Bandai Namco recently announced Little Nightmares III, and that game's main gimmick is that it has an actual, genuine two-player co-op mode like the one that this game was originally planned to have. So even though Little Nightmares III is being developed by Supermassive Games instead of Tarsier, it's nice to see one of Tarsier's unused ideas get (hopefully) fleshed out in a future project.

Mono and the Girl escape the cabin and head into a nearby workshop where we are introduced to our first enemy, the Hunter. The Hunter is a giant responsible for setting up those traps seen earlier in the Forest. The Hunter covers his face with a primitive mask made from a burlap sack with a single hole for him to see through. A common theme across the Little Nightmares franchise is that almost everyone living in this world hides their real faces with masks and other pieces of headwear. Even Mono and Six cover their faces, the former with a paper bag and the latter with a raincoat hood. So the idea of hiding one's face behind a mask is clearly important. But the other giants' masks looked "better quality" for lack of a better term. Either being a stretched out faux-skin material or a ceramic Kabuki mask like the ones used in Japanese theater. But the Hunter's mask looks homemade, which means he either can't afford a real mask or he has rejected giant society by making his own. He also has an uncanny interest in taxidermy, since his cabin is filled with stuffed humans(?) posed to look like they are having a "normal" family dinner.

The rest of the Forest level is spent either running from the Hunter in exhilarating chase scenes or sneaking around him in tense stealth sections. Funnily enough, the Hunter is the least supernatural monster in the whole series. Every other monster has stretching limbs, heightened senses or straight up reality warping magic. But the Hunter is just a big guy armed with nothing more than a double-barreled shotgun, a handful of beartraps and a lamp. There's some beautiful simplicity in that. Anyway, because of his shotgun he is the only monster capable of attacking Mono and the Girl from a distance. So if they are being chased, they need to duck behind cover to avoid getting blasted, then they must run to the next piece of cover while the Hunter is reloading. The level ends with Mono and the Girl reaching a shed at the edge of the forest, and using the spare giant-sized hunting rifle inside to kill the Hunter with a point-blank shot. Overall, the Forest level is an excellent first level that introduces all the core game mechanics that the rest of the game builds upon. Running and jumping, pushing and pulling objects around, climbing up certain walls and swinging on ropes. This level also serves as an introduction on how the Girl works as a companion. Additionally, the Forest sets the vibe of the whole game. You know you are in for a wild ride when you find a net full of rotting carcasses (that may or may not be human) hanging from a tree within thirty minutes of starting the game. It establishes that this is a bleak, uncaring world where monsters will kill humans by the dozens if they are given the chance to do so.

After escaping the Forest, Mono and the Girl cross a lake(?) using a giant door as a raft. Here we are properly introduced to the main setting of this game, a location that we will just call the City for the sake of simplicity. The City is for the most part abandoned, the only indication that people lived here are piles of discarded clothing. The buildings themselves seem to curve and look downward on our two protagonists, as if the City itself is watching their every move and judging them for it. And from this point on in the game, each main level is spaced out with a brief trip to the City streets until you head back indoors. Each trip to the City streets ends with Mono finding a working television set. Every time a TV turns on, Mono is drawn to them, like a moth to a flame. And interacting with said TVs allows Mono to catch a glimpse of that ominous door at the end of the hall that was teased at the start of the game. Before he can see what's on the other side, the Girl will pull him away from the TV as it shuts down once more. Again, all of this is important for later, so keep it in the back of your mind.

Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-61

The next level is the School, which is a level that I admittedly have mixed feelings on. First a little context. A feature that's new to Little Nightmares II is that Mono can pick up certain objects, such as wooden sticks and giant-sized utensils and use them as improvised weapons to attack minor enemies. The Forest doesn't really have any enemies besides the Hunter, who is clearly too big and strong to attack directly. So the School introduces the Bullies, the students of the School and the first enemy type that can be harmed with said weaponry. As such, if the Forest was an introduction to puzzle solving and Jolly Cooperation, then the School is the introduction to the combat system. The problem is that Mono's attack animation is rather slow, which makes sense since he is at best an adolescent human using tools meant for giants. But because of the slow attack animation, you basically have to time your attacks perfectly to defeat the Bullies, because if you swing your weapon too early or too late, they will kill Mono with one grab. The fact that Mono dies in one hit combined with his slow attack speed forces you to "git gud" as the saying goes, because this game's combat mechanics leave very little room for error. This is the only real criticism I have of the game, that the combat is just a little bit too unforgiving. What's worse is that (mild spoiler alert!) the enemies in the next level are nowhere near as aggressive as the Bullies, and if the Bullies' aggression was reduced slightly it would not be anywhere near as bad as it is currently. Like, I have beaten Little Nightmares II dozens of times. I've gotten every collectible possible and even tried my hand at just for fun speed running. But the School trips me up every playthrough precisely because of the unforgiving combat.

But on the subject of things I do like about the School, it has my favorite monster in the whole game, the Teacher. The Teacher is a female giant who, aside from her wrinkled "face" and stiff body movements, appears to be relatively normal. Then her neck starts stretching and slinking around the School like a demented serpent. The Teacher is the scariest monster in the game, because her design and abilities make you feel viscerally uncomfortable just from looking at her. And the Bullies, which devolve into rowdy degenerates when left to their own devices, shrivel up in fear when the Teacher is hosting a lesson. The whole School seems to fear the Teacher. Speaking of, while I dislike the combat sections with the Bullies, I do like the design and aesthetic of the School. Having such a mundane setting be twisted into a giant maze of bookshelves, desks and school supplies is peak Little Nightmares level design. And honestly, if it weren't for the combat sections with the Bullies, the School would have been my favorite level.

Anyway, early on in the level the Girl gets kidnapped by the Bullies, forcing Mono to fight his way through the School on his own. After spending almost the entire Forest level together, this is the first time our protagonists have been separated. As such, you do feel a little handicapped in your options, on top of the worry you feel for the Girl's well being. You get her back towards the end of the level, which leads to one of my favorite scenes from the whole game. So imagine. Mono and the Girl have been reunited, they're sneaking through a School corridor, and there is a lone Bully absentmindedly scribbling on the floor. There's a sledgehammer that you can grab. So your first instinct is to grab the sledgehammer and bonk the Bully before they can notice you. That's how you dealt with the Bullies before. But before you even have a chance to pick it up, the Girl runs over to the Bully and grabs them in a stranglehold. And then she breaks the Bully's head open with just her bare hands. If it wasn't for the Bully's head being made of porcelain instead of flesh and bone, this kill would have earned the game an M for Mature rating. It is genuinely one of the most disturbing sights in the game. For newcomers, seeing a child do something so brutal is not only harrowing, it's a hint that there is more to this girl than meets the eye. For veterans of the first game, this is your first clue as to the Girl's identity, which I won't spoil just yet.

So Mono and the Girl escape from the School and return to the City streets. Curiously, the Teacher is the only giant in the game that never gets killed on screen. In fact, Mono and the Girl don't do anything that prevents the School from making more Bullies. So no matter what happens next, just remember that the Teacher is still out there. But more importantly, it's now raining in the City. Mono is unaffected, but the Girl is visibly shivering from the coldness of the rain. So while exploring the streets, the Girl finds a bright yellow raincoat, which she equips immediately. Newcomers won't get what the big deal with the raincoat is, but anyone who played the first game knows why. Basically, the Girl putting on the raincoat confirms once and for all that she is the protagonist from the first game, a human(?) girl named Six. Again, because of the wordless nature of the story, you wouldn't know Six's name unless you looked at promotional material. So from here onwards, I will refer to the Girl as Six. Anyway, the reveal that Six was the Girl you were traveling with the whole time would have been a pleasant surprise, if it weren't for the fact that it was really obvious who she was from the moment she first appeared. First of all, the music box at the beginning of the game is playing a song from the first game called Six's Lullaby. Second of all, there's the aforementioned scene where the Girl smashes a kid's head open, and anyone who played the first game will tell you that Six is incredibly ruthless and prone to acts of extreme violence. And third of all, the Girl has literally the exact same model as Six, just without a raincoat. And finally, Six (complete with raincoat) is literally on the box art of the game, standing front and center alongside Mono. None of this is a bad thing, of course. It's just mildly amusing that the game treats the raincoat reveal as some shocking twist despite how obvious the whole thing is.

Anyway, after getting the raincoat and heading indoors, Mono and Six find themselves at the next main level, the Hospital. And the Hospital is the level where the game proudly says "I'M NOT GONNA SUGERCOAT IT!" and stops going easy on the player. The puzzles here are more complicated and require visiting multiple rooms to solve. There are minor enemies in the form of the Living Hands, which are exactly what they sound like. Living, disembodied hands that crawl around like spiders. These can be squished with a well-timed weapon strike from Mono, and they are as previously mentioned, nowhere near as aggressive as the Bullies. Overall, I think the combat in this level is better than the School because even Mono still dies in one hit, the skittishness of the Living Hands makes them easier to deal with. It's still not perfect, but I'll take the Living Hands over the Bullies any day. There are also multiple giants in the form of the Patients. The Patients are mannequins made with a mixture of cloth, wood and flesh. They only move when in complete darkness, so long as the lights are on they are as still as a statue. This level introduces the flashlight, a tool Mono can use to freeze the mannequins. While I don't consider the Patients to be the scariest or even the best monster in the game, they are definitely the most stressful to deal with. And also the scene where Mono is running down a hall while hundreds of Patient hands erupt from the walls is iconic. On par with the Dinner Guest scene from the first game.

Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-35

The Hospital is probably the longest level in the whole game, with the first half being Mono and Six trying to power up a defunct elevator by installing new fuses in the generator, and needing to solve a series of puzzles to get those fuses in the first place. The second half of the level is spent working your way downwards to the Hospital's morgue, where you encounter the main giant of the level, the Doctor. Insert Doctor Who joke here. Anyway, the Doctor is an obese slug-like giant that crawls on the ceiling and navigates the morgue while upside down. The Doctor can be seen experimenting on the Patients, taking them apart and putting them back together as crude abominations. However, the most interesting thing about the Doctor is that you can see the masks worn by every other giant encountered so far in his office. He even has the masks of the giants from the first game on display. So now we know who is the one in charge of making the masks and handing them out to the rest of the giants. What purpose the masks serve is still unclear at this point. Anyway, the Doctor chases Mono and Six through the rest of the morgue, but he gets trapped inside a cremator. You can either spare the Doctor's life by leaving for the elevator immediately or you can kill him by turning the cremator on, burning the Doctor alive. This is the only time in the game where the player can choose whether a giant lives or dies. It doesn't really impact the rest of the game as the Doctor never returns regardless of your decision. As sadistic as it sounds I prefer turning the cremator on, if only because it plays an animation of Six warming herself up with the cremator's fire. It's a cute animation that is made hilariously morbid with context.

The fourth and penultimate level is the City itself. Just the entire rest of the City. Mono and Six platform their way across the rooftops and sneaking through abandoned apartments. And surviving at least one collapsing building. They also figure out what happened to the rest of the City's population. They all got turned into the next main enemy type, the Viewers. The Viewers are the giant citizens of the City who having seemingly turned completely feral, despite ironically looking the most human of all the giants encountered so far. The only thing keeping their animalistic impulses in check is their addiction to TV. To give you an idea how desperate the Viewers are for any kind of stimulation, they will literally throw themselves off cliffs just to get a better look at a working TV. They will drag the TVs they do have into the shower with them so they can continue watching while bathing. They are so addicted they will put themselves, and anyone caught in their path into very real danger. Now I don't want to get too political here, but I'm pretty sure the central theme of this level is that too much media consumption is bad for your health. Especially since the only thing that the Viewers seem to watch is static. They aren't watching funny children's cartoons, or compelling romantic dramas, or even simple game shows. The Viewers are being stimulated with nothing more than meaningless lights and the pointless drone of static.

Now is the point where I am going to tell you to beware of spoilers. From this point on, things get so wild that it would be a shame to not experience the game for yourself. If you want to know my opinion on the rest of the game without spoiling it too much, I consider this level and the final level to be pinnacle of Little Nightmares' art and storytelling style. And as previously mentioned, Little Nightmares II is one of my favorite horror games ever. So if you have any interest in playing this game, you can pick it up on literally any modern gaming system. Steam, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, etc. Without further ado, let's get into spoiler territory.

So you know how I said that every time Mono finds a working TV he is drawn to it, and how he always gets pulled away before the door at the end of the hall opens? Well, in the fourth and final visit to the City streets, he finally got to see what was on the other side of the door! It was the Thin Man, a sharply dressed giant with unnaturally long limbs. The Thin Man then reaches out of the TV and into the real world and grabs Six, leaving nothing behind but a shadowy specter. Much like the School, the rest of the City level has Mono completely alone. There are two main threats in this level, the Thin Man himself and the Viewers.

The main gimmick of the City level is that Mono has learned to do his own version of the Thin Man's ability to travel into and out of television screens. And Mono has to use this new ability to escape from Viewer hordes and reach areas that would be otherwise inaccessible. It's a really clever and creative gimmick that makes up the majority of this level's puzzles. The Thin Man himself only appears sporadically throughout the level. You cannot really hide from him the same way you hide from other giants. You either run when you see him appear, or it's back to the checkpoint with you. One detail I like is that the closer the Thin Man gets to Mono, the slower the world around him moves. So if he's right behind Mono, the whole game goes into slow motion. It's an effect that makes him both more unsettling and more dangerous than the other giants. Anyway, after enduring several injuries and losing all of his tools, Mono finally removes the paper bag mask and confronts the Thin Man directly. Mono then somehow steals the Thin Man's magical powers and destroys him with his own magic. It's an awesome scene, and the music and frame adds a sinister edge to it. Especially when you remember the first game's ending, where Six stole the Lady's magic and used her new power to slaughter hundreds of giants at once. But now that the Thin Man is dead, there are only two things left to do. The first is rescue Six, obviously. The second is track down the source of the TV transmissions that the Viewers are addicted to and destroy the signal.

The final level is the Signal Tower, inside of which is a freaky nightmare realm with looping halls and furniture floating around in zero gravity. Nothing about the Signal Tower's interior makes logical sense. Because it's a nightmare that operates on "nightmare logic" In fact, one might say that the Signal Tower is A LITTLE NIGHTMARE. Insert "bad-um ting!" sound here. And once again, spoiler alert! I mean it this time. If the City was a good enough level to deserve a spoiler warning, the Signal Tower deserves a super spoiler warning. Because not only does this section spoil the final level of the game, it also spoils some late game stuff from Little Nightmares I. Understood? Good! So Mono reunites with Six. But something is... off about her. Something... Distorted. She's now a giant, with long arms that stretch and bend at painful looking angles and mismatching legs that are grossly longer on one side than the other. And mirroring the beginning of the game, Six is sitting alone in a room, her only comfort being the music box. Mono has grown to care about Six during their time together, and possibly in a misguided attempt to help his friend, Mono breaks the music box. Which sends the distorted Six into a frenzy. This is the final boss. It's not an exciting confrontation with whatever villain designed such a horrid City. It's a young boy trying to save his friend from a fate worse than death. There's something beautifully tragic about it.

Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-79

So Mono trashes the music box completely, restoring Six to her original form. But the Signal Tower begins to collapse. There is one last chase scene, where Mono and Six run through the falling ruins of the Signal Tower itself. But no matter how well you play, Six will always outpace Mono, and Mono will always fail the last jump. The only reason he doesn't die is because Six turned around and caught his hand. Now, a little bit of context here. Throughout the game, about once per level is a "Leap of Faith" spot. These spots are gaps that Six can get across, but not Mono. In order to get past these spots, Mono would have to jump across and trust that Six will catch him. The whole game was building up to this exact moment. This was the final Leap of Faith spot. And well... You know that scene in The Lion King? The one where Mufasa is hanging on the ledge and Scar starts to pull him up, only to say "Long live the King!" and throw Mufasa down to his death? Yeah. Six just drops Mono down into the Signal Tower ruins. Why did she do this? There's a lot of theories. Maybe she was always planning on betraying Mono once he outlived his usefulness to her, maybe it was an act of petty revenge. After all, Six has been beaten, chased, tied up and hanged upside down, shot at, and had a building collapse right on top of her since she first met Mono. Perhaps she blamed Mono for all the bad parts of their adventure. But if she did, why did she stick around for so long? She could have left Mono the moment they reached the City, but chose to stay anyway. Maybe her hand slipped and dropping Mono was a genuine accident. But if it was an accident, while did Six act so calmly about it? Either way, Mono falls into the ruins while Six returns to the City to do as she pleases. The final scene of the game is Mono growing old and transforming into the Thin Man before locking himself away behind the door at the end of the hall shown at the start of the game.

One thing I neglected to mention earlier. There are two kinds of optional collectibles hidden in each level. The first are hats, which allow you to customize Mono somewhat. Most of these hats are goofy jokes, like a teddy bear hat and a bucket helmet. But the other collectible are Shadow Children. Shadow Children are spooky ghosts that disappear when interacted with. If you grab every Shadow Child in the game, the ending is altered to show one additional scene. In this new ending, we see Six experiencing one of her infamous hunger pains, just like in the original game. She then looks over an advert for a submarine-based restaurant called the Maw. Which is the location from the first game. And the place where Six will succumb to hunger-induced madness and become a cannibalistic sorceress. Which means there is a very good chance that this game is a prequel. Actually, I suppose the fact that Six went the whole game without using her sorceress abilities is a bigger piece of evidence for this game being a prequel, since she only gains those powers in the first game's ending. But this ending does solve one mystery from the first game, which was why was Six in the Maw in the first place. Before, it was safe to assume she was a captive or perhaps she was born there. But this ending implies she went to the Maw of her own volition with the express goal of finding something to devour. So there's that mystery solved.

So what does this ending mean? Lots of things. Firstly, the fact that Six is still experiencing her hunger pains (or perhaps, this is the origin of said hunger pains) means even if Six saved Mono at the end and the two lived happily ever after, Mono would eventually be attacked by Six once her hunger drives her to cannibalistic madness. In such a scenario, Mono would be forced to kill Six in self defense, or else Six would devour her only real friend. Therefore, Mono's days were numbered the moment he freed Six from the Hunter's basement. This isn't to demonize Mono. Not at all. I believe he was doing what he felt was the right thing. But more importantly, Mono became the Thin Man. Which means a few things. Most obviously, that "normal" humans can transform into giants, meaning all the monsters encountered in the Little Nightmares universe could have been innocent people who were twisted and contorted into monstrous parodies of their former selves. Secondly, it means that Mono is probably trapped in a Groundhog Day style time loop. Starting quite possibly as early as the Forest, freeing Six, narrowing escaping the giants, killing his future self, and being betrayed at the last minute. Only to be released by his younger self and doing everything again in a loop. Either that, or Mono was just yet another victim in a long line of different Thin Men. Each doomed to wait in a lonely room at the end of a hallway that only seems to exist in TV signals until some other poor fool repeats their mistakes and sets them free.

And there you go! A review of all five levels in Little Nightmares II. Spoilers are over, by the way. As for presentation, this is a game that rides that fine line between being hauntingly beautiful and deliberately disgusting. The closest thing I can compare it to would be something like The Nightmare Before Christmas or The Corpse Bride. In fact, the art style is reminiscent of Tim Burton movies in general. The camera is fixed at a single angle for the whole game, which gives the vibe that the player is peering into a deranged dollhouse or a sinister stage. And again, most of the locations are relatively mundane places in theory, like a school or hospital, but the gigantic and warped proportions of the buildings and furniture makes everything look uncanny. And the monsters are all excellently designed and animated. I especially like the detail they put into their "idle" animations. When the giants aren't attacking the kids, they can be seen doing normal everyday tasks around their respective facilities. The Hunter can be seen cleaning and stuffing a recent victim, the Teacher plays piano in between lessons, and the Doctor washes his hands before and after every experiment. It gives them all a little bit more personality outside of being angry murder monsters. This was something that was true of the first game's giants as well. I played the Nintendo Switch version of the game, and while I can't speak for other systems, I never encountered any kind of glitches or frame rate drops whatsoever. The whole game runs smoothly from start to finish.

The OST was composed by Tobias Lilja. And as far as this game's music goes, it bears repeating that Little Nightmares II rides that line between beautiful and disgusting. Some songs in the OST, like Six's Lullaby or Togetherness are peaceful piano melodies, while other songs like Boots through the Undergrowth or Captive Audience sound less like music that you would willingly listen to for leisurely purposes and more like an alarm going off to warn you of incoming danger. This is not a bad thing, in fact it the "stressful" songs add to the experience. Nomes in the Attic is probably one of my favorite songs from the OST because it sounds eccentric and whimsical. Fun Fact! The music that plays when Mono fights the Bullies in the School is called Crackheads. I am not making that up. Whoever came up with the OST song names needs to be given a raise for that pun.

Now, sound effects! You already know what I am going to say. Fine line between beautiful and disgusting. The sounds of things like footsteps and Mono hitting something with a weapon are clean and crisp. The sounds the giants make come in varying flavors of uncanny. Like the sound of the Teacher's skin straining as her neck stretches is yet another disturbing element of her design. The sound of the Hunter's gunshots do a good job conveying just how much force and power he packs into his weapon. And one thing that I appreciate, which is both an audio thing and a visual thing, is that there are no actual jump scares at all in Little Nightmares II. It has enough confidence that its surreal and grotesque world and monsters are scary in and of themselves that it never resorts to cheap surprises to catch you unaware. In fact, the giants are well, giant, and as such you always see and hear them coming from miles away. But this doesn't detract from their ability to frighten, but it instead enhances it. Every scene with the giants is a tense game of cat-and-mouse. You are the "mouse." in this analogy. And you will be filled with dread as you hope that the "cats" don't notice you while you're sneaking around right under their noses. And when the "cats" finally notice you, that feeling of dread is transformed into adrenaline as you run for your life.

Overall, Little Nightmares II is a masterclass of horror. Its world is macabre, its denizens monstrous, and the whole experience is magnificent. I cannot recommend this game enough. If you like horror games, or want to dip your toes in the genre without diving headfirst into something more explicitly gruesome, then Little Nightmares II is a great place to start. I give it an easy 5 stars out of 5.

Little Nightmares II is owned by Bandai Namco and developed by Tarsier (who are no longer working with Bandai Namco at the time of writing). None of the screenshots used belong to me. Please support the official release.

Subnautica, finding beauty and terror in the deep blue sea. A review

2023-09-15T22:16:00.000-04:00

You may not know this, but I like horror games. Five Nights at Freddy's, Little Nightmares and Bendy & The Ink Machine were my first real exposure to the horror genre, and I've enjoyed the thrill of these kinds of games ever since. But you want to know the scariest game I have ever played? The one that gives me overwhelming dread and terror every time I play through it? That game is called Subnautica. Which is funny, because that isn't even a real horror game. At least, not in the conventional sense. So let's talk about it!

image from Wikipedia.org and Giant Bomb

Developed and published by Unknown Worlds Entertainment, Subnautica is a charming survival adventure game released back in 2018. The game sold 5.3 million copies and is often considered a must play for survival game fans. Basically, think Minecraft or Terraria but underwater and with a smoother art style. Anyway, you play as a space traveler named Ryley Robinson. Ryley was a crewman of The Aurora, an enormous Star Trek style space cruiser that has sadly crash landed on an alien planet. This planet, given the rather clerical name of 4546-B, has a surface comprised of 90% water. In other words, almost the entire planet is one big ocean. You are then dumped into Riley's shoes and told to find a way to escape, while also looking for any survivors of the crash. Your only companion for most of the game is the PDA. The PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) is an AI Program designed to keep you alive in this foreign, presumably hostile environment for as long as possible. It also doubles as the in-game tutorial, teaching you basics of exploration, crafting, and building management. The story is admittedly a simple tale of one man trying his best to survive an alien environment, but the fact that this game even has a story at all is a big deal. Most survival games don't even have a story, or named characters, or an explicitly stated goal to work towards. Normally they just dump you in a metaphorical sandbox and tell you that you need to "make your own fun!" For having a story, and a competently written one at that, Subnautica already gets points for originality.

The bulk of your time is spent swimming around in an alien ocean, collecting resources and finding new technology blue prints to build with. Most creatures in the game are not truly hostile to you, though some like the Stalker and Crash Fish will attack if you provoke them first. They are, after all, just regular animals, at least by this planet's standards. The only exception to this rule are the Leviathans, but they deserve their own section of the review. When you first start the game, you have nothing to your name except for some protein bars and a bottle of drinking water. Everything you want, you have to make yourself. Want to swim faster? You got to make yourself a pair of fins to boost your swim speed. Want to stay underwater for longer? You got to build an oxygen tank so you don't drown. Want a place to store your belongings and admire the oceanic views in piece? You need to build a habitat. While some items can be crafted as soon as the game starts (assuming you have enough resources) most items require you to find the associated blue print for that item beforehand. Blue prints can be found either in abandoned bases left by the other survivors or by scanning debris from the Aurora with the scanner tool.

Image from trueachievements.com

All of these things cost resources, which you collect simply while exploring the ocean. And some resources can be turned into other resources. For example, kelp can be made into fibers, and copper ore can be made into either batteries or wires. And unlike every other survival game in existence, Subnautica does NOT have procedural world generation. What this means is that instead of letting an automatic generator create the world from a randomly chosen number, the world has been handcrafted by the developers themselves. And honestly, the ocean is wonderfully designed. Every biome, every bit of coral and every branch of kelp was placed deliberately for the best possible experience. You always start in the Safe Shallows biome, which true to its name, is the safest and shallowest area in the game. It's the only place in the game where you can reliably build above sea level, and the wildlife here is mostly docile.

But I know what you are thinking. "Spencer, this doesn't sound that scary! This game sounds pretty chill, actually!" That's because of how Subnautica is balanced. You need to leave the Safe Shallows eventually, either because you ran out of resources to work with or because you want to progress the story. And the further away from the Safe Shallows you go, the more danger you will find. The animals get more territorial and aggressive. The water pressure makes swimming without specialized submarines impractical. Even the sunlight itself darkens to pitch black if you dive deep enough. While the Safe Shallows are a good safety net, it is impossible to beat the game without taking that plunge into the dark, unknown abyss. And the biomes get progressively creepier as you descend.

And sooner or later, you will face a Leviathan. Leviathans are the game's main mascot monster. There are a few variations of these enormous life forms, some being more peaceful than others. The Reef Back Leviathan is a giant whale-like creature that is completely docile, even letting you mine ores off its back. The Ghost Leviathan is a blue serpent that only appears if you somehow go outside the ocean's borders, and it attempts to scare you back in. And then there's the Reaper Leviathan. The Reaper is an apex predator that will hunt you down to the ends of the ocean if it catches your scent. It can destroy entire submarines with just one or two attacks, patrols several areas that are critical for story progression, and announces its presence with an unsettling roar. The threat of Reaper Leviathans is so great that whenever I head to any area they frequent, I try to speed-run my way past them, because the less time you deal with Reapers, the better.

Image from ausgamers.com

But the Reapers by themselves aren't the main reason I consider this game to be scary. They are the most dangerous fish in the entire game, that much is true. But the reason Subnautica is scary is because of the ocean itself. It grows darker and darker as you descend, it hides its treasures in caves and tunnels hundreds of miles below the surface. You have no clue what is down there, and you have no idea what might be looking back at you. So imagine, going so deep underwater that you can't see the sunlight anymore. You have no idea what time of day it is. You go into a cramped underwater cave. You get mixed up in the cave system, and can't find your way out. Your equipment is low on battery charge. You start to panic as your oxygen depletes. You know if you don't get out now, you will drown. You frantically kick around, trying to find an exit point. You find a hole in the ceiling. Hope fills your heart as breathable air leaves your lungs. "I can make it!" you think. You swim as fast as you can, and as you make it out of the cave, you hear it. A blood curdling roar in the distance. Where is it coming from? You can't tell. Your only concern is getting some air in your lungs. As you kick and struggle against the watery abyss, you realize as your oxygen runs out completely and the Reaper approaches from the pitch-black abyss... You never stood a chance. Even if you made it back to the surface, you couldn't outrun the Reaper. Or vice versa.

That is why Subnautica is scary. It is a game that perfectly captures that feeling of terror and desperation that comes with the danger of underseas exploration. It is a known fact that humanity has explored more of outer space than our own oceans. You know why? Because the deep blue sea is an environment completely alien to the human experience. We as a species do not belong that deep underwater, either because the water pressure would destroy us, or we would encounter a sea creature that exists far beyond human comprehension. Something within us knows that fact deep down, even if we would never admit it. And Subnautica manages to recreate these feelings using a fictional, alien ocean and fictional alien fish. In that regard, Unknown Worlds has my respect.

This isn't to say that Subnautica is always scary all the time. This is just a specific scenario after all, and the majority of a playthrough is spent just taking in the wonder and majesty of this strange, but beautiful underwater world. In fact, the game has a surprising amount of humor, mostly delivered through the PDA and collectible logs you can read for lore. I think my favorite joke is that the PDA reminds you that any resources you collect are legally the property of the Alterra Corporation (the company Ryley works for), and that anything he crafts he owes back to the company. There's also another joke about how one of the survivors managed to kill themselves accidentally by waving a distress flare around an exposed gasoline leak, thus triggering a deadly explosion. That sounds horrible, but the context makes it clear this was more of a moment of avoidable stupidity than anything truly tragic.

On the subject of difficulty, Subnautica offers three main difficulty options. Freedom Mode is the easiest, Survival Mode is moderate, and Hardcore Mode is as hard as it sounds. In Freedom Mode, the hunger and water gauges are disabled, meaning you no longer have to worry about collecting food or drinking water to survive. In Survival Mode, you do have to worry about hunger and thirst, and you will drop a random assortment of items upon death. Hardcore Mode is exactly the same as Survival Mode, but with a caveat. If you die in Hardcore Mode, your save file is automatically deleted, forcing you to restart the entire game from Day One. There's also a variant of Freedom Mode called Creative Mode. Creative Mode turns you completely invincible, and free to build whatever you want with a infinite supply of resources. In other words, it's exactly like Minecraft's Creative Mode. The difficulty is sadly locked into the save file, which means if you want to adjust the difficulty you do need to play the game again from scratch. I personally played through the game on Survival Mode, since the sales pitch is "survive in an alien ocean" and I wanted the full survival experience. But I'm also not good enough at the game to beat it in one go, so Hardcore Mode is a pass for me.

There's also base building. That's what the habitats are for. They allow you to store all of your belongings, and can be outfitted with specialized rooms for additional utility. Say you need to find a specific resource for your next project. Scanner rooms (which are like giant versions of the scanner tool) can highlight that specific resource within a 50 meter radius so you can find it more easily. If you need a reliable source of food, indoor planter boxes let you grow edible plants as long as you have enough room for them. If you have a submarine with a low battery charge, The Moonpool can automatically recharge your sub as long as as the habitat has power. Speaking of power, there are two main things to keep in mind when building your habitat. The first is power, and the second is structural integrity. Let's talk power first. You need electricity to keep things running. But where does one get electricity? There are a lot of ways, though their effiency is dependent on the location you built the habitat in. Solar panels generate power from sunlight, obviously. But if your habitat is so deep underwater that you can't even see the sun, solar panels stop working entirely. Thermal Plants generate power as long as you build near a large source of heat, such as a geyser or undersea volcano. In colder regions they are pretty much useless, but in warmer waters they surpass all other options. Bio Reactors convert dead fish and kelp into power and can function just fine in any location, but Bio Reactors can burn through your surplus supplies if you're not careful. Nuclear Reactors are far stronger than the other three options combined and works just about anywhere. The problem is that Nuclear Reactors produce nuclear waste, which is both useless and potentially dangerous. Use whichever form of power is best for the kind of habitat you want to build.

Now let's talk structural integrity, the second main thing you need to worry about for base building. Basically, every time you add an additional room to a habitat, the structural integrity will lower. If it reaches below a certain threshold, your habitat will break apart and start flooding. This is bad, for obvious reasons. While you can repair any damage done to your habitat with the appropriate tool, it is better to prevent this from happening altogether. You can do this by raising a habitat's structural integrity with foundations, reinforced walls, and bulkhead doors. All of these solutions are fairly expensive in terms of resources. So it is generally better to build small to medium sized habitats with reinforcements here and there than to try and make a massive mega base. That said, if you are dead set on making one big mega-base with multiple floors and dozens of rooms, you can do that as long as you use enough reinforcements to keep it from collapsing. Habitat building requires you to have enough planning and foresight to both keep the base powered as well as making it structurally sound, while being flexible enough to make something that looks aesthetically pleasing. It's a simple, but engaging base building system.

You know how I said that Subnautica is one of the few survival games to have a story? Throughout the game, you find audio logs from the other survivors of the crash. And even some logs from the crew of an entirely different spaceship that crashed on this same planet several years before you did. Through these logs you learn that the planet is under quarantine. There is a water-bound bacteria that infects all living matter with a deadly virus. This virus wiped out the intelligent life forms on 4546-B, leaving only the fish who developed a natural resistance to it. And this was why the Aurora crashed; it was shot down by an automated anti-air cannon to prevent the virus from spreading to the rest of the galaxy. Your new goal from now on is to find a way to cure the virus and disable the quarantine system, because even if you manage to build a one-man spaceship to get back to human civilization, you will just be shot down again if you don't cure the virus before launching. One thing I really like about this storyline is how you learn you were infected by the virus. At the beginning of the game you are given the option to scan yourself with the scanner tool. The first time you do this, Ryley's vitals come back normal. But after a few days, if you choose to scan yourself again, you'll hear an alert about a bacterial infection in Ryley's body. Let a few more days pass, and the next time you look at your bare hands, and you might see grotesque tumors forming on your skin. There's no fancy cutscene for this reveal. You could easily miss these details if you aren't looking for them. But I appreciate when devs try to tell story through game mechanics instead of traditional cinematics. Of course, this game pulls a Batman: Arkham City when it comes to the idea of the protagonist being infected with a virus. No matter how long you take to beat the game, the virus will never kill you because the rate at which it spreads in Ryley's body is tied directly to story advancement. Ryley will always survive "just" long enough to cure himself, even if the virus has been eating at him for in-game months or years. This might be immersion breaking, but I view as a quality of life thing. After all, it would really suck if your Hardcore run was stopped because you took too long to find the cure.

In terms of presentation, Subnautica is definitely a good looking game. It has a clean, almost cartoony aesthetic. Most of the technology in this setting is smooth and pristine, when it's not being ravaged by wildlife. The creature designs are also excellent. Even though they are fictional alien fish, most of the animals here have enough biological consistency that they could believably exist in real life. They move like believable animals and they act like believable animals. Like, I could totally see National Geographic doing a nature documentary on these creatures. And the biomes are all distinct from each other, using wildly varied colors and lightings to make each one stand out. And because of that, you can reliably guess where in the world you are just by the colors. Just to give a few examples, the Safe Shallows is a coral reef so close to the surface that parts of it jut out above the water, and it uses a lot of blues and greens to look safe and inviting. The Jelly Shroom Cave is an unground cave system filled with bioluminescent mushrooms, and it uses pinks and purples to convey a sense of wonder and mystery. And The Crash Zone is a dead, barren wasteland consisting entirely of sickly yellows and browns. Every other biome follows this pattern of being tied to one or two distinct colors that immediately showcases the "vibe" of the biome in question.

There are only two bad things I have to say is that this game, one of which is a problem that almost every survival game experiences; if you move too quickly through the world, the game starts having a hard time loading in terrain and associated textures in time with your movement. Basically, if you move too fast, the sea floor might disappear for a brief moment until the game can load it back in. And with the sole exception of Terraria, every survival game I have ever played has a problem similar to this. Heck, even Minecraft, a game that was hailed as one of the best survival games ever made, has this problem. I played the game on PS4, and I do not know if this a console problem or a problem with the game itself. But this is not really a deal-breaker, because again, every survival game has this issue. It just breaks immersion a little if it happens to you. The second main issue with Subnautica is that the controls for walking on dry land are a little bit clunky and awkward. Which also isn't a deal breaker because you spend so much of your time underwater, and it is clear that the devs prioritized getting the aquatic movement right over the land movement.

The game's sound design is impeccable. Its music, composed by Simon Chylinski, is ethereal and mysterious. The music invites you deeper into the ocean while simultaneously making you feel trapped by it. The simplest way to describe Subnautica music is that it is the soundtrack equivalent of a siren's song. Fitting for a game about undersea exploration. The only exception to this rule is Abandon Ship!, a song in the OST that only plays when your submarine is critically damaged. This song can best be described as an intensely urgent techno rave. It's not bad, in fact it's one of the best songs in the whole OST. But again, it only plays when your sub is critically damaged. And it blows my mind that the best song is played during a situation the player would rather avoid. On an unrelated note, the sound effects are also great. The Reaper's roar is intimidating, the soft hum of the submarine's engines give a sense of power, and the voice acting is actually really good. Which, again, is surprising for a survival game, since these games typically don't have voice acting at all. The PDA speaks in a comically monotone voice that feels accidentally sarcastic. The Sea Emperor (who holds the cure for the virus) sounds equal parts majestic and regal, but also ancient and tired. Which fits for a creature that predates the virus that killed all the land-dwellers in the first place. And the audio logs you can collect do a good job showcasing the stress and despair the other survivors felt in their final moments.

Overall, Subnautica is a beloved icon of survival games for a reason. It manages to be just as, possibly even more scary than actual horror games while being a fun underwater exploration experience. I consider this game, Minecraft and Terraria to be the "Holy Trinity" of survival games, for these three games set the standard for which all other survival games should be judged against. So if you like Minecraft or Terraria, you will probably like Subnautica. Even if you haven't played a survival game before, Subnautica is a great place to start. For these reasons, I give Subnautica a perfect rank of Five Stars out of Five.

Subnautica is available on PS4, PS5, PC, Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series S/X. Subnautica is the property of Unknown Worlds Entertainment and their parent company, Krafton. Please support the official release.

An extremely late review of the hardest game I've ever played: Sekiro

2023-08-17T18:20:00.005-04:00

Hey there. Long time no see. I haven't posted anything in over a year and that's no good. Why was I gone for so long? To make a long story short, I lost motivation to work on the blog. For a very long time. So this blog kind of became a zombie blog. No new content but somehow still getting views. In the meantime I started writing my own original stories, but none of them are at a state where I feel comfortable sharing them on the Internet. So until my original work is complete, I am going to try and revive the blog. And I am going to attempt to stick to a monthly/bi-monthly schedule, so something like this doesn't happen again. With that spiel out of the way, I want to introduce you to one of, if not the single most difficult game I ever played... Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice.

Image from Wikipedia.org

Sekiro was developed by From Software and published by Activision (before they were bought out by Microsoft), and was released in 2019. To say From Software is a one trick pony is to do them a disservice. They are more like a one trick unicorn. They only really make one kind of game (that being Gothic Horror adventure games with deliberately steep learning curves and mysterious storylines that the player has to figure out themselves), but they have gotten so good at that one style of game that they have refined that one style to near perfection. Of course, the problem with this is that if you don't like From Software's style, you're probably going to find their entire catalogue off putting. And no game embodies the "one trick unicorn" mindset better than Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Now, I love the From Software games. They are true artists, with a clear passion for their work. And indeed, I consider Sekiro to one of their finest works. It's not their best game, but it's definitely in the top three. But explaining why I like this game is complicated. Hence, the purpose of this review. Quick content warning, though. This game is rated M for Mature by the ESRB, meaning it is intended for audiences 17 years old or older. The review itself will keep things (somewhat) family friendly, but this is not the kind of game you want to give Little Timmy to keep him distracted for five minutes. Not unless you want a broken controller. Or nightmares about undead monkeys.

So what exactly is Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice? Sekiro is an action-adventure game created and directed by gaming legend Hidetaka Miyazaki, who is most well known for his work on the Dark Souls trilogy. This game is technically considered a part of the Souls Borne series, but it is often regarded as the black sheep of the series. This is due to its more straightforward narrative and lack of series standard features, such as multiplayer or character customization. Despite its status as the "black sheep" of From Software's catalogue, Sekiro was their first game to win the Game of the Year Award, cementing the developers' status as legitimate titans in the video game industry and not just a niche studio.

Taking place in Sengoku Era Japan, you play the role of a Shinobi known only as the Wolf. In case you're unfamiliar with Japanese history, the Sengoku period was regarded as the darkest and bloodiest time in the country's history. It was almost a hundred years of nonstop civil warfare, bloodshed and violence. But while this war wages on, the Wolf is tasked with protecting a small child named Kuro. And protecting Kuro is important because he possesses the power to grant immortality to anyone of his choosing. In other words, Kuro is a walking Fountain of Youth. Despite taking place in a real historical setting, Sekiro has a lot of fantasy elements, so don't expect the game to be historically accurate.

Anyway, Kuro and Sekiro planned to flee the country to keep the power of immortality out of the wrong hands. Unfortunately, a samurai named Genichiro blocked their escape route. The player is then dropped into a scripted boss fight that a first time player has no chance of actually winning. And this is done to teach the player one valuable lesson: You are going to fail in this game. A lot. And that's okay. Sekiro is a game that has earned a reputation, rightfully so, as one of the most challenging video games ever made. But with enough time and practice, you can defeat people like Genichiro without breaking a sweat. But back on topic. Genichiro chops off the Wolf's left arm and kidnaps Kuro. The Wolf did not die, for Kuro's immortality blessing was protecting him. But he was now missing an arm. So a mysterious elder called the Sculptor gives the Wolf a wooden prosthetic that can be customized with a wide array of gadgets. The game starts for real here.

The plot for the first half of the game is surprisingly simple. The Wolf is honor bound to rescue Kuro by any means necessary. But he is free to explore the world however he wishes as long as he works towards that goal. And one of the biggest departures from From Software's usual storytelling style is that the Wolf is an actual character. Normally, Souls Borne protagonists are mute but customizable heroes, serving as self-inserts for the player. But the Wolf is a predetermined protagonist, with his own personality and motivations. And your enjoyment of Sekiro is going to come down to whether you are okay with playing as an established character instead of a self-insert. I personally really like the Wolf. He's very serious and uptight, only speaks when spoken to first and even then, he keeps conversations brief and to the point. The Wolf has lived an extremely hard life, being an orphan adopted by Japan's most dangerous assassins, and the only thing keeping him sane is his determination and loyalty to Kuro. And for From Software's first attempt at a predesigned hero, the Wolf works well. He fits the gloomy, Gothic Horror inspired worlds that From Software are known for while having a journey that feels more personal because he has a very clear goal to work towards and a very clear villain to stop.

Speaking of villains, the main villain of this game is Genichiro, the samurai from the start of the game. Genichiro is a man with a surprisingly sympathetic motive. He was adopted into a family of samurai warriors called the Ashina Clan. Genichiro genuinely loves the clan like the family he never had. And he will commit any atrocity he can to save his family from the war. This is why Genichiro kidnapped Kuro in the first place. He wants Kuro to bless his army with immortality so they can outlast their enemies in a battle of attrition. Kuro refuses to cooperate because every time someone is blessed with immortality, a random person in the world is infected with a deadly disease called Dragon-Rot. So blessing an army would cause a plague. Genichiro knows this, and doesn't care. He is so desperate to win the war he is willing to cause a global pandemic.

You fight Genichiro multiple times throughout the story, and I'm going to be honest, Genichiro was the boss that got me to like this game. Up until the second duel with Genichiro, I had very mixed feelings on Sekiro. Sure, I liked the samurai aesthetic and the combat against regular enemies, but the first few bosses were frustrating to deal with, and I had to take multiple breaks to calm down in between each attempt. I pushed as far into the campaign as I did more out of stubbornness than actual enjoyment or fun. But Genichiro redeemed the game in my eyes. He was the best showcase of Sekiro's combat up until that point, and I didn't even mind losing to him because he had a perfectly polished duel. Utilizing swordsmanship and archery in equal measure to keep you on your toes. He's fast, but predictable. His attacks have a good rhythm that makes learning how to deflect easier the longer the fight goes on. But most importantly, fighting him was actually fun! And the bosses that came after Genichiro's second duel were even better! The only reason why I consider Elden Ring (another Souls-Borne that won Game of the Year) to be a better game than Sekiro is because the bosses before the Genichiro rematch are too annoying and frustrating for their own good. If Sekiro had a better early game experience it would surpass Elden Ring in my eyes. That isn't to say that Sekiro is a bad game. Both of these games are excellent showcases of From Software's talent and passion. I just feel Elden Ring is a slightly better experience overall because of its more beginner friendly early game.

The game's story takes a weird turn when you finally reunite with Kuro. You see, Kuro has grown to resent his immortality powers. So he starts cooking up a plan to erase the very concept of immortality from reality. At this point the Wolf's goal changes from simply rescuing Kuro to helping him complete a ritual known as Immortal Severance. From here, the story can branch off into one of four endings, based on which version of the ritual you perform. These endings play out in the typical fashion for Miyazaki stories. Here's a mild spoiler warning for the remainder of this section of the review. There's a bittersweet ending where your journey's end mirrors the beginning in a cyclical manner, a more positive ending where the hero sacrifices themselves to give the future generations a better future, and a weird ending hidden behind an elaborate puzzle. There's also a bad ending choice that can be made halfway through the game, which ends the story early and locks you out of the entire second half of the game. Personally I liked most of these endings, though I feel that the "heroic sacrifice" ending is the one that stays truest to the Wolf's characterization. But I did get the weird ending on my first playthrough simply because this game's weird ending is called the Dragon's Homecoming, which is the coolest sounding name for anything in any video game ever. Like, I saw the names of the different endings (which are vague enough to not spoil their contents) while looking at the PS4 Trophy requirements, saw "Dragon's Homecoming" and decided I would go for that ending simply because that sounds cooler than all the other options combined.

Image from sekirothegame.com

But that's enough for the story. What about gameplay? If I had to describe Sekiro in one word, it would be "speed." This game is fast. Very fast. The Wolf moves remarkably faster than any other Souls-Borne character, at least so far. But almost every enemy in the game can match that speed or even surpass it. So how do you defend yourself against such foes? Deflecting. Now, a quick history lesson for anyone unfamiliar with From Software. All of their Souls-Borne games had a deflect ability. And in every game besides Sekiro, it was (in my opinion) too risky to use because it was impossible to tell what could be deflected and what could not unless you looked up that information ahead of time. Sekiro solves this problem with two very simple solutions. First, almost every attack can be deflected. And second, the few attacks in the game that can't be deflected have a clear visual and audio telegraph warning you ahead of time. These are known as Perilous Attacks. If you hear a violin shriek or see a red Japanese symbol floating above your head, that is your cue to get out of the way. But aside from Perilous Attacks, everything in the game can be deflected. Regardless of size, speed or power. You can deflect a charging bull, throwing knives from other Shinobi, body slams from a King Kong sized ape, and everything in between so long as it not a Perilous Attack.

And you want to be deflecting as much as possible. Every time you deflect an enemy's attack, you deal damage to the enemy's Posture. Think of it as a second health bar for enemies. If an enemy's Posture is completely broken, the Wolf can perform a one hit KO move called a Shinobi Deathblow. Generally speaking, it is often both faster and safer to break enemy Posture with deflections and finish them off with a Deathblow than it is to defeat the enemy with normal attacks. Especially since some enemies don't give you any time to attack directly, meaning you have no choice but to use deflections to break through their Posture. And when you are deflecting a seemingly endless barrage of blows and finally pull off that Deathblow at the end, you feel like a master swordsman. In that regard, Sekiro might have the best sword duels in video game history. Just keep in mind that the Wolf also has Posture of his own, and yes, if the Wolf's Posture is completely broken then he too becomes susceptible to a Deathblow. There's also a stealth system that lets you sneak past enemies or slay them quietly, though it is a very simple system and said enemies will lose track of you just mere minutes after spotting you. One cheeky thing you can do is use stealth to sneak up on certain bosses and perform a free Deathblow on them, which skips over the entire first half of the boss battle. This sadly doesn't work on every boss. But when it does work, it feels cathartic.

One of the biggest points of contention among From Software fans is that the Wolf cannot be customized. The rest of the Souls-Borne series have a huge selection of weapons, armor and magic spells that let you handcraft your character's fighting style to your exact liking. Sekiro doesn't offer any of these options. You start the game with a katana and you end the game with that same katana. There is some customization in the form of the Shinobi Tools and Combat Arts, but these are supplements to the main fighting style, not replacements or alternatives. Shinobi Tools are gadgets that can be attached to the Wolf's prosthetic arm, and you equip up to three of them at one time. Each one is custom-tailored for specific threats. For example, The Loaded Axe can break through enemy shields while the Flame Vent can be used to set foes on fire. All Tools use a limited ammo source called Spirit Emblems, which make it so you cannot use the Tools recklessly. The only exception to this rule is the Grappling Hook, which not only has infinite uses, but is always equipped to the Prosthetic no matter what. This sounds overpowered, but the Grappling Hook is used almost exclusively for traversal, so it balances itself out. Combat Arts are special attacks that can be performed by pressing the attack and deflect buttons at the same time. These are special attacks have some additional utility on top of doing damage. For example, "Double Ichimonji" restores the Wolf's Posture with every use, while "High Monk" can be used to jump over certain Perilous Attacks. You can only have one Combat Art equipped at a time.

Image from sekirothegame.com

But there is one thing I have to address in this review. The difficulty. Sekiro is a hard game. There is no easy mode, or any equivalent thereof. And unlike the rest of the Souls-Borne series, there is no co-op mode that lets you team up with other players if you get stuck. And to add insult to injury, if you die multiple times in a row, a random friendly character or merchant will get infected with Dragon Rot, pausing any storyline or business that character is involved in until you find a cure. Combine all this with the limited customization, you get what is often considered the hardest game From Software has ever made. The biggest flaw with this game is that its difficulty feels very frontloaded. You start the game with only one healing potion instead of the series standard three potions, and the items needed to upgraded the Wolf's health and defenses are locked behind some deceptively tough bosses. The first three or so areas feel much harder than the rest of the game for these reasons, but if you can push past those grueling first areas and get some upgrades, the rest of the playthrough becomes much more manageable.

Fun fact! I rewrote this section more than any other part of the review, because every time I try and explain my thoughts on the difficulty in a concise manner it always devolves into me complaining about the Chained Ogre and Blazing Bull bosses. I'm pretty sure those two bosses killed me more times than the actual final boss. But with the benefit of hindsight, the Blazing Bull wasn't that bad. You just have to turn off the "logical" part of your brain when you deflect it, because the Wolf deflecting a charge from a giant bull covered in fire does not look like it should be physically possible. But it isn't considered a Perilous Attack, so despite all logic and reason, you can deflect the Blazing Bull's charges. The Chained Ogre has the opposite problem. Almost everything it does is considered a Perilous Attack. And the Ogre is fought early enough in the game that a new player might come to the conclusion that dodging is more important than deflecting, when the opposite is true. If they toned down the number of Perilous Attacks the Chained Ogre has, or maybe moved it further into the campaign when Perilous Attacks become more frequent, then it wouldn't be that bad. But if anyone quit the game because of Chained Ogre or Blazing Bull, I wouldn't blame them.

But on the subject of bosses I actually like, The Great Shinobi Owl is a personal favorite of mine. He is the Wolf's father, and as such he fights with all the same Shinobi Tools and Combat Arts that the Wolf uses. Shuriken, firecrackers and poison bombs are just a few examples of the stuff he can pull out at a moment's notice. He is a cunning and manipulative trickster, and at one point he even feigns surrender just to get some cheap hits in. Owl is as close as the Wolf gets to fighting a clone of himself, which makes this fight even more brilliant. And his theme music is so good I was literally stunned in real life by how good it was. And thanks to what can best be described as time travel shenanigans, the Wolf can challenge Owl to a rematch in the distant past, and a good fight got only better because this Owl is in his prime. As such, he moves faster, he has new combos and weapons to deal with, and he can even summon ghostly owls to assist him. And his theme music somehow got even better!

And of course, you can't talk about Sekiro without talking about the Sword Saint. Most discussion of this game online is about the Sword Saint. Spoilers again, since the Sword Saint is literally the final boss. The Sword Saint is Isshin Ashina, Genichiro's surrogate grandfather and the greatest swordsman who ever lived. Earlier in the game Isshin winds up dying of a terminal illness. Genichiro gets his hands on a magic sword called the Mortal Blade, which can bring one deceased person back to life as an immortal being, at the cost of the user's soul. So Genichiro uses the Mortal Blade to revive his grandfather, sacrificing his own life to do so. Isshin agrees to fight the Wolf, not because he wants to, but to honor his grandson's dying wish to protect the Ashina Clan and win the war. And you get a glorious, one on one duel between two immortal swordsmen, throwing everything they got to put the other down. The Sword Saint is one of the best boss battles I've ever seen in any video game ever, right up there with Nightmare King Grimm from Team Cherry's Hollow Knight. He tests your skill with every aspect of the game's combat. He has fast katana strikes that need to be deflected, and wide reaching Perilous attacks from a giant spear to test your dodging skills. He has a flintlock pistol that he can use to take potshots at you from a distance. He'll even use heretical magic to supercharge his weapons with electricity, requiring to perform deflections in midair to avoid getting zapped. And you fight him in the same open meadow at the start of the game, where you first fought Genichiro. And when you land that final Deathblow on him, Isshin's reaction isn't rage or despair, it's respect. His last words to the Wolf are congratulating him for being a splendid warrior, with no hard feelings for everything that happened. Everything about the Sword Saint, from the spectacle to the music to the actual fight, is a perfect climax to end your journey.

Image from sekirothegame.com

On the subject of presentation, Sekiro is definitely one of the best-looking games in From Software's catalogue. While it does have traces of the Gothic Horror flair that the developers are known for, it's mixed in with this Feudal Samurai aesthetic that lets the game stand out among its peers. Some areas, like the Senpou Temple, are simply gorgeous to look at with bright colors and an almost serene atmosphere. Other areas, like Mibu Village, are decrepit shells of their former glory. And a personal favorite area of mine is the Hirata Estate, a once prestigious palace engulfed in flames. One thing I noticed is that their is a stronger focus on verticality in Sekiro compared to previous From Software games, with lots of multi-story buildings and steep cliffs. This is partly to give you places where you can reliably use the grappling hook, and partly to induce a sense of grandness and overwhelming scale. The enemy designs are also some of the best in From Software's catalogue. Surprisingly, there's not a lot of incomprehensibly twisted monstrosities, like a normal Souls-Borne game. Instead, most of the enemies are humanoid, and their designs are generally cleaner to look at. Considering the strong emphasis on sword duels, the enemies had to have these cleaner designs so you could actually tell what they are about to do and respond accordingly.

One of my favorite bosses in terms of spectacle is the Guardian Ape due to the transition between its first and second forms. Mild spoilers, but when you defeat the Guardian Ape for the first time, the Wolf decapitates it. You get the "Shinobi Execution!" message that marks the end of a boss battle. But the gate to the next area is still closed. And the Ape's body stands back up, grabs its severed head, and keeps on fighting like nothing happened. It's a good scare that lures you into a false sense of security, especially because the "Shinobi Execution!" message makes the fake out feel more authentic. And the way the Ape's undead form moves around like a puppet being guided by invisible strings is not only unnerving, but its a hint to the Ape's true nature as a victim of one of the Senpou Temple parasites.

There is only one critique I have with the game's presentation, and that is the frame rate. Now, Sekiro has a frame rate of 60 frames per second on PS4 (the system I played it on). This is a fine framerate for an action game. But one area in the game, Ashina Castle, causes problems. Ashina Castle is by far the biggest area in the game, being a massive, well, castle that must be climbed from bottom to top and back again. Because of how big this area is, and all of the moving enemies within the castle and around its perimeter, this area causes the frame rate to slow down. The framerate does correct itself after a few seconds, but the framerate dips happened often enough in this one area that I couldn't ignore it. What's weird is that this the only area with framerate problems, the rest of the game runs just fine. This is most notable during the third and final visit to the Castle, where Central Ministry forces are added on top of the Ashina Clan enemies already in the Castle. While it is cool to see the two villain factions duking it out, the chaos they cause together is what really brings down the game's framerate. All of this is of course, not a deal breaker, just something to be aware of.

The sound design is excellent. The sound effects for the clashing of steel is clean and crisp, especially if you deflect multiple attacks in a row. The mechanical whirs and clicks of the Shinobi Prosthetic add a satisfying flair whenever you use a Shinobi Tool. But the highlight of the sound design is the sound effect for Perilous Attacks. It is a shrill violin shriek that immediately grabs your attention and alerts you to incoming danger far sooner than the red symbol that accompanies it. Whatever From Software's next Souls Borne game is, I sincerely hope they bring back Perilous Attacks just so they can add a sound effect just as iconic as that violin shriek.

I played through the game with the Japanese voices, despite there being an official English dub. The reason I did this was because the Japanese voices were enabled by default. I'm not a "Subs over Dubs" kind of guy, but after looking up clips of the English voice acting, I can say the Japanese voices sound a lot better. Except for Gyoubu Oniwa, the first named boss you fight. His introductory speech in English is much more entertaining than it is in Japanese. In Japanese he sounds like a stern but refined soldier just trying to do his job. In English he sounds like a bloodthirsty demon screaming loud enough to wake up the dead. And because of that, the English version of Gyoubu's speech became an overnight meme back when the game first released. But the weird thing is, this is the only character I feel sounds better in English. No knock against the Japanese voice actor, for they did a splendid job. But the two takes are so wildly different that they make the same character have a completely different vibe.

Sekiro also boasts an impressive soundtrack, composed by Yuka Kitamura. Most of the music is done with traditional Japanese instruments, such as Taiko drums and Shamisen. As previously mentioned, Great Shinobi Owl's theme music is by far the best song in the game. It starts off with a slow yet intense melody, like a showdown between two skilled assassins. And then when Owl feigns surrender and hits you a cheap blow, the song speeds up and becomes more chaotic, almost as if even the orchestra itself is shocked at Owl's underhanded tactics. Another great song is the music for the Corrupted Monk boss. For the first stage of the boss the music is a fast paced flute solo, but as the fight progresses, more instruments get added in and the song grows more theatrical and menacing. And of course, the Sword Saint's theme music is a triumphant choir mixed with Taiko Drums and (what I think are) flutes, the perfect send off to your journey.

In conclusion, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is a great game, though it is admittedly not for everyone. The game is legendarily hard and the early bosses leave a bad first impression, but if you stick with it, Sekiro has some of the best sword combat in the history of action games. Honestly, if you combined this game's deflections and speed with the weapon variety and exploration of Elden Ring you would have the perfect From Software game. But it still stands on its own as a really good ninja game, as long as you are willing to sit down and practice. And even if you have no desire to even touch this game, the Sekiro speed-runs are pretty cool to watch. I give Sekiro 4 out of 5 stars.

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice is owned by Hidetaka Miyazaki and From Software. All of the screenshots featured here do not belong to me. Please support the official release.

XCOM 2, skillful tactics and deadly luck: A review

2022-01-28T00:43:00.003-05:00

I actually wrote a completely different review of X-COM 2 over four years ago, and never published it. I never will, since it was incredibly poor quality and I am a professional with standards. So I'm writing a new review for XCOM 2 and doing it better than I did originally, if only to do this game justice. So with that out of the way, let's begin.

So what is XCOM 2? Well, it's the sequel to XCOM: Enemy Unknown, which in turn is a reboot of X-COM: UFO Defense. From what I understand the whole franchise was published by 2K Games, but only the "modern" XCOM games were developed by Firaxis. This game got a pseudo-sequel spin-off game titled XCOM: Chimera Squad. While Firaxis has not currently said anything official on the matter, rumors are spreading that a hypothetical "XCOM 3" game is in the works. Even though Firaxis is currently working on a licensed strategy game titled Marvel: Midnight Suns at the moment. That much is public knowledge. Anyway, the concept of the franchise is simple. You play the role of the leader of a private military organization called XCOM, which is dedicated to protecting humanity from extraterrestrial and supernatural threats. Basically, think of XCOM as being the unholy love child of S.H.I.E.L.D. from the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the Men in Black. Unfortunately, the only game I have played is XCOM 2, so I cannot speak for the quality of the other games in the series.

XCOM 2 takes place 25 years after the events of the bad ending of XCOM: Enemy Unknown, but don't worry, you don't need to play the first game to understand the story so long as you know the basic concept (bad guy aliens took over Earth, take it back). But let's do a more detailed recap anyway, for prosperity's sake. In XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM mounted a secret war against these psychic aliens led by these creatures called the Elders. In that game's bad ending, XCOM fails to stop the invasion from becoming public, and the Commander (that's your character, by the way) is kidnapped by the aliens. 25 years later, the aliens, now calling themselves ADVENT, have successfully taken over the entire planet. Every global superpower either surrendered to protect their people or were destroyed outright for resisting. But the dream is not dead, for a small group of rebels (most of whom are either survivors of the first game's war or are said survivors' now grownup children) plan to rebuild XCOM from scratch. But every rebellion needs a Commander. So Central Officer Bradford (who was your second-in-command before everything went to the pits) mounts a rescue operation to save the Commander, who was being psychically tortured this whole time, forced to relive the war over and over in a loop for 25 whole years. How the Commander is even sane at this point is beyond me. What's worse was that ADVENT was using your character's military genius to augment their own soldiers, hence why the rebellion struggled to gain any real footing prior to your rescue.

The rescue op is actually the game's tutorial, walking you through the basics of combat. XCOM 2, like all other games in the series, is turn-based. You move across the map on a board-like grid. Every character in the game has two actions they can perform. They can shoot, move, reload, or use a class-specific skill or ability. Unless an ability explicitly states that it requires both action points, you can use your two actions in any combination you like. You can move and shoot, shoot and reload, use an ability and run away, move twice, or any combo you'd like. The blue outline pictured above shows everywhere the currently selected soldier can run to, using only one action. Moving your cursor outside that outline brings up a second, yellow outline. This shows everywhere you can run to if you use both actions. If you end your turn directly behind certain objects in the environment, you will get a cover bonus. This bonus will make you harder to shoot and reduce the damage on enemy attacks. How much of a cover bonus you get is based on the size of the object in question. A bench for example only provides a half-cover bonus, so it won't protect as well as, say a wall or the side of a truck. Make sense? I hope so, this game can get pretty complex pretty fast, but that's honestly part of the charm.

The rescue op/tutorial is scripted so that two of your soldiers will get killed off by the end, leaving Central Officer Bradford, starter-character Jane Kelly and yourself as the only survivors. And this is where the XCOM franchise's infamous reputation comes in. This game is hard. Because it's a roguelike. It's difficulty is a selling point. But most importantly, if any one of your soldiers' health hits zero, they are dead, and will stay dead for the rest of the game. Even if you win the battle. The only saving grace is that you can eventually unlock an upgrade for your soldiers called "Stay With Me" which will allow your soldiers to survive one lethal attack with a single hit point remaining (Stay With Me works only once per soldier, per battle, so any lethal attacks after that first one gets blocked will kill). So you have to accept the possibility that one wrong move, one bad strategy, or even just a stroke of bad luck can take away your favorite characters, FOREVER. Is it stressful? Yes. Is it fun? For me, the answer is yes, because I live for that kind of high-stakes strategic combat. It makes your close calls more meaningful, and your losses sting more than they would have if this game was easy. You can adjust the difficulty at the beginning of each playthrough, but keep in mind that it cannot be changed after the fact. If you go in on easy mode (called Rookie mode here) and decide the game is too easy, well too bad, you're going to have to start a whole new playthrough if you want to change it. A major inconvenience, but again, this is a roguelike. But I personally like the high-stakes nature of XCOM 2. It results in some awe-inspiring moments that sometimes feel straight out of an action movie. I still remember this one incident when my Sharpshooter (basically a sniper) got knocked off a three story building and barely survived the fall with one hit point remaining (meaning one more attack from anything will kill), only to get attacked by a very dangerous enemy type known as a Lancer. Despite having every possible advantage, every possible opportunity to kill her, the Lancer somehow missed his attack, and my Sharpshooter was free to limp to safety while the rest of the squad gunned the Lancer down. The mere knowledge that had things played slightly different, my Sharpshooter would be dead where she stood, that's the real magic of XCOM. You care about your soldiers, either because you made them all yourself, or because of scenarios like this. You know these guys aren't invincible. You know that all it takes for one of your soldiers to go down is one mistake; one missed shot, one wrong turn around the corner. Yes, even a stroke of bad luck outside of your control can wipe away your whole squad. The best you can do is prepare for the worst, and pray it never comes to pass.

The soldiers you use, with the exception being Jane Kelly since she's a premade character, are randomly generated and customizable. You can create your own characters and put them into the game, changing their skin tone, gender, hair, facial features, fashionable accessories (such as sunglasses and masks) and even their language/accent, nationality and personality. There's even a biography option, letting you write custom backstories for all of your characters. I love this system. It's simple, but allows for some distinct character designs. My Ranger (a laid back and carefree Australian woman with a wolf tattoo and stylish headband) didn't look or act anything like my Specialist (who was a stoic British man who kept his hoodie up to hide his scar-covered face). And when you're making four-to-six man teams, you want them to be distinct from each other. And if your characters survive a certain number of missions, they can get tattoos and battle scars to show how far they've grown since joining the rebellion.

Every soldier in your rebellion is assigned a class. Classes determine what kind of weapons and abilities a character can use, but when leveling up your squad (done by completing, or at least surviving missions and killing enemies), you're always given a choice between two new skills. Because of this, two soldiers of the same class might have radically different fighting styles because took different sets of skills while they were training. While the skills can be mixed and matched to your heart's content, some skills are meant to be used in conjunction with others. For example, Rangers get to choose from a list of skills that enhance either their stealth abilities or their swordsmanship. The Blade Master skill for example boosts the power and accuracy of all of your melee attacks. Blade Storm allows your Ranger to make a free melee attack at any enemy that runs towards you. And yes, the Blade Storm ability does receive the damage and accuracy boost from Blade Master. And then there's Reaper Stance, where a Ranger can get a free Action every time they kill an enemy with a melee attack (meaning, so long as you keep killing with melee attacks specifically, your Ranger can keep their turn going essentially forever). Again, if you plan on using Reaper Stance, you might as well grab Blade Master to make your melee attacks deadlier. The other classes are balanced this way as well. Well, except for one.

The Psi Operative is the most unique class in the entire game, and is completely overpowered once it gets going. And yes, this one class is such a show stealer that it needs its own section in the review. This class is not available right away, but once you build a Psi Lab for your base (more on that later) you can start training your soldiers into becoming Psi Operatives. Now, this class has two main gimmicks. The first is that you have access to all the crazy psychic powers that ADVENT has been using the whole game, letting you give the aliens a taste of their own medicine, so to speak. And the second, which makes this class potentially better than all others combined, is that you don't need to put your Psi Operative in any real danger to level it up. You see, the Psi Operative can continue training from within the safety of the Psi Lab as long as you want with no penalty. Leave them in the Psi Lab long enough, and they can eventually learn every single possible skill that is available to them, all without even once setting foot on the battlefield. The other classes have to spend (in-game) months, sometimes years being beaten and hardened by the brutality of warfare to become powerful. The Psi Operative just has to soak in a funky psychic jacuzzi for a few weeks to not only reach that same level of power, but surpass it. Psi Operatives don't abide by the rules of the other classes, and are obscenely strong because of it. It takes a great amount of restraint and discipline to not just turn every available recruit into a Psi Operative and run several teams of just Psi Operatives once the option becomes available.

One criticism I will make of the game's combat is that the way accuracy is calculated is rather odd. Basically, XCOM 2 does not calculate the accuracy of your weapon by distance. It instead calculates it by the following factors. Whether the soldier taking the shot can physically see the target, whether or not the target has any kind of cover bonus, the soldier's own Aim stat, any kind of accuracy bonus granted by being in stealth (or using a weapon with a scope attached), any kind of Dodge stat that the target may or may not have and finally, whether or not you have a flanking bonus (shooting from the side or from behind). Because of this, you get odd situations where point-blank shots defy the laws of physics and somehow miss their target completely simply because something in the calculation was in the target's favor. Basically, moving closer to your target will NOT boost the accuracy of your next shot, but doing things like flanking or destroying enemy cover with explosives will.

Combat and character customization are only parts of the game, and the last major component of the gameplay is the base management. You see, the rebellion is based inside a mobile fortress known as the Avenger. The Avenger has several rooms flooded with debris and wreckage. You can spend a few in-game days clearing the rooms out, and then build various facilities to further aid your squads. These facilities include an infirmary (which speeds up the rate at which soldiers recover from injuries), the aforementioned Psi Lab (which is used to create and train Psi Operatives), and Communication Relays. What do Communication Relays do? They allow you contact additional resistance groups across the globe. Which is important, because not only do resistance groups provide resources and potential recruits every month, but they will offer additional missions and operations that your existing soldiers can go on. Another thing to keep in mind about base management. Your resources are limited. The main currency of the game is Supplies, which represents everything a ~~Viking~~ militaristic rebellion needs to survive. Food, water, medicine, ammo, that kind of thing. At the beginning of every in-game month (marked by you getting a progress report from the mysterious Councilman, who is your essentially your boss) a Supply Drop will be placed somewhere on the globe (but always within rebel territory). Taking a quick detour to grab those Supplies while they last is always a good idea. Supplies can be used to build new facilities in the Avenger, buy utility items like flashbangs and med kits, and start crafting specialty armor. You can also have Dr. Tygan and his research team perform autopsies of all the different ADVENT creatures to learn more about them and to unlock even more items to craft. And finally, you can rearrange the Avenger's engineering crew to improve any of the facilities you built. Like say you desperately need to make contact with a new resistance group. but your Communication Relay is maxed out (each Relay can only stay in contact with three rebel groups at a time). You can place an Engineer in the Relay room to manage it manually, allowing you to contact more rebel groups (how many more I don't remember).

But naturally, most missions aren't as simple as "kill all bad guys." They usually have some kind of additional objective to work on. These can be anything from escorting a VIP to an evacuation point, to hacking a computer, to rescuing a group of rebels trapped in the middle of an ADVENT purge. The vast majority of the missions introduce some kind of time limit to encourage the player to be more aggressive, which is a design choice made in direct response to a criticism of Enemy Unknown. You see, in that game, the best, most optimal strategy was to sit in a corner of the map and play very cautiously and defensively. There was nothing stopping you from doing so and and as such, "turtling" (as this tactic was called) was the safest way to start any and all combat encounters. The enemy had to fight on your terms, not theirs, and you had the advantage of getting better terrain bonuses (such as high points for Snipers). But because of all the time limits in the vast majority of XCOM 2's missions, you basically have no choice but to be aggressive and push your advantage whenever possible. Heck, the entire campaign itself is on a time limit, since you only have so long before ADVENT completes it's mysterious Avatar Project (which will eradicate all human life). You can buy XCOM more time by attacking Alien Facilities. Alien Facility Raids are pretty much the only mission type that are NOT timed in any way, so you can be as cautious and defensive as you want for once. How much time you buy is dependent on how long that specific Alien Facility has been running. So it can add anywhere between a week to a year depending on how long you let that Facility run.

But ADVENT isn't sitting on its laurels while you're out building up a resistance force, for they will improve their own forces over time. Gradually introducing newer, more advanced enemy types. Such as the Vipers, snake women who can immobilize your soldiers by constricting them, or the Archons, angelic cyborgs that fly around and attack from above. There's a plethora of different enemy types, and not only do they all look distinct from each other, but each type requires a different strategy to deal with (Vipers let go of their victims if they get blinded by a flashbang, Archons are free target practice for Snipers). And then there's Dark Events, where ADVENT can place an upgrade on preexisting enemies or hamper your squad out of combat in some way. You can stop these Dark Events by taking on Guerilla Ops, but there will always be at least two Ops available, and you only have enough time to attempt one. So it winds up as a "pick your poison" mechanic where you have to learn which Op stops which Dark Event from happening, figure out what you can live with them getting away with, and prioritize the Op that would counter whatever the more dangerous Dark Event is. Like the Dark Event that makes new recruits 25% more expensive to hire is really mundane next to the one that lets them add twice as many enemies to all mission types. Or the one that lets them speed up the progress of the Avatar Project.

And you want to know the best thing about all this? XCOM 2 has some post-release DLC (downloadable content) that further changes up the game. Sometimes, to the point that XCOM 2 with DLC feels like a completely different game than it does without DLC. To explain the DLC simply, the first one is titled Anarchy's Children. This one adds additional hair styles and outfits to customize your characters. That's it. Frankly it's the simplest DLC of the bunch and unless you somehow aren't happy with the options already provided, this DLC can be safely skipped over. After that is Alien Hunters. This DLC adds three new bosses, all of whom are crazy superpowered versions of fan-favorite enemy types from the base game (so Vipers, Archons, and Berserkers). These bosses, known as the Alien Rulers, have a chance to show up randomly in every mission. They have a literal mountain of health (and more than enough firepower to send whole squads to the infirmary, if they survive at all), but any damage dealt to them is permanent, so if you run into them in future battles, they'll start with less health. Your reward for defeating the Alien Rulers is some custom weapons and armor that emulate their abilities. This DLC is pretty neat, but it makes a hard game even harder, because you know, super bosses that can show up randomly on what should be a relatively chill mission can be a real problem. After that is Shen's Last Gift, a DLC that adds a new story mission that exists to bring closure to Lily Shen, the mechanic whose dad was killed back in Enemy Unknown. It adds a new soldier class, the SPARK. The Spark is a remote controlled robot, and is the textbook definition of a Jack of All Trades, Master of None. It fights primarily by using watered down versions of the other class's abilities, and mostly exists to fill gaping holes in your team after you've suffered a significant casualty.

And last but not least is War of the Chosen. This DLC gives a massive overhaul to the ENTIRE CAMPAIGN. New enemy types and bosses to fight. New soldier classes to play with. A new intro cinematic that explains how Bradford's resistance cell managed to track down the Commander. A new poster mechanic that allows you to make nifty propaganda posters Uncle Sam style to encourage people to join the rebellion. A new fatigue system that forces you to rotate your teams around so that everyone is trained up equally, instead of you power-leveling the same handful of soldiers you started with. New rebel factions to try and ally with, each with their own intricate cultures, lore, and philosophies. There's a new bonding mechanic where two soldiers become soulmates (whether this means they're a romantic couple or just best friends is up to your imagination) and receive a wide variety of bonuses and abilities when they fight together. There's also a new mechanic that lets you send your soldiers on solo missions that they'll do automatically while the rest of the rebellion is doing something else. And those new bosses I mentioned? They are the Chosen, the strongest aliens ADVENT can throw at you. They update their strengths and weaknesses with every encounter, forcing you to try a new strategy to take them down every time. War of the Chosen is massive, and to be honest, it changes so much of the original game that it makes you wonder why Firaxis didn't release War of the Chosen as a separate game entirely. Seriously, with just some tweaks to the overall plot, War of the Chosen could very well be the fabled "XCOM 3" in and of itself.

In terms of presentation, XCOM 2 is a good looking game. Now, it doesn't have a crazy art style and it isn't so hyper realistic that you could mistake it for real life. But the animations on your soldiers and especially the ADVENT aliens themselves are very clean and polished. I like how whenever you deal the killing blow to an alien the game switches from its usual isometric camera angle to give a more cinematic view of the attack. And the cinematic camera angles can give some downright breathtaking scenes. Imagine, one of your soldiers is badly wounded and about to die, and one of the ape-like Berserker type aliens comes barreling at your weakened soldier. But your Sniper was in Over-Watch, and they flip their rifle around and shoot the Berserker right between the eyes, causing its skinless body to tumble and flop like a pathetic fish from the momentum of its charge, and saving that wounded soldier's life. This sounds cool on paper, and the cinematic angle switch makes it even more impressive. There's also some little details that I adore, such as when attempting to shoot through a window your soldier will smash the glass with the butte of their weapon before making the shot, or how if you move indoors but forgo stealth, you squad literally kicks the door down before charging inside. There are some visual oddities however, like the aforementioned physics-defying point blank shots that can still miss their target completely. But I think that's more on the mechanics of the game not really allowing point-blank shots to be useful in general than it is a fault of the animators. I will say that I did play on PS4, and I did notice some mild performance issues, namely the framerate would stutter occasionally. Never in the middle of actual gameplay, but whenever the game finished a loading screen the frame rate would notably dip before correcting itself moments later. I'm not sure if this a problem with the PS4 port specifically or if the game itself has frame rate issues. It's hard to tell when a game obviously designed with PC in mind is then brought to consoles. But over the course of my 70+ hour campaign the only major glitch I noticed was when my game crashed. Thankfully, I had several spare save files so I didn't lose much progress. I've been told by the XCOM fandom that it's always a good a idea to have multiple save files in case the game crashes.

In regards to sound, the music is pretty inoffensive, if somewhat forgettable. It can be heroic and triumphant at times, but notably, when a mission goes horribly wrong (either you fail the objective or the squad is wiped out) the victory music is silent, letting you and the surviving soldiers reflect on their mistakes and shortcomings. The sound effects are great, such as the sound of gunfire and the otherworldly cries of the various ADVENT creatures. The voice acting is generally decent. Bradford sounds exactly how you expect him to sound like; a hardened militaristic man who just wants this war to be over already. It's a shame that his mission banter gets rather repetitive. But out of all the important characters, my favorite in terms of voice acting is the Councilman. The Councilman is voiced by none other than Jon Bailey (who is most well known for his role as the Epic Voice Guy from Honest Trailers) and steals the show with every line. He portrays the Councilman with this deep, guttural baritone that is simultaneously intimidating and hypnotic. And because of his distinct voice, his compliments when you do well in the campaign feel more genuine than they do from everyone else. Likewise, his criticisms of you for performing badly are especially impactful since you really want to stay on this man's good side, and his voice conveys that sense of power over you perfectly. I also enjoy the banter between your custom soldiers. An especially nice touch is how the soldier's accent, mannerisms, and dialogue actually change based on their assigned personality and nationality. Like the way my laid-back Australian Ranger would coyly ask "Impressed yet?" after taking down a powerful enemy with a well-placed slice from her sword will never not be charming. Or how my bubbly and energetic German Psi Operative would cheerfully say something in actual German before blasting a poor schmuck's face off with her mind. But these custom voice lines also have the power to be heartbreaking, since the soldiers have special voice lines for just about everything. An enemy sniper narrowly misses the Medic by a hare? He yells out "I'm pinned down over here!" One of the aliens try mind controlling the Grenadier? He frantically screams "Get out of my head!" And yes, they even have special voice lines for when they get injured or are even killed outright.

In conclusion, XCOM 2 is a great strategy game. It can be rough around the edges at times, but its still an enjoyable experience. Just don't go in expecting a cakewalk. And remember, there's no shame in save scumming. But if you do save scum, you kind of owe it to yourself to at least attempt a legitimate playthrough one day. The game is very much a thrill ride at its core, and for those looking for a high-stakes roguelike, you can't go wrong with this one. But here's an interesting question. Would I recommend the DLC for this game? The answer is simple. If you really enjoyed what the base game has to offer, go for it. It's your money after all. But I would recommend doing a playthrough of XCOM 2 without War of the Chosen before playing a campaign with that DLC specifically. Not because it's a bad DLC (out of all of them I feel like it's the most worthwhile), but because it changes so much that it makes the base game feel more bare bones and watered down in retrospect. So XCOM 2 gets a "This close to Greatness!" rank from me.

I feel like I owe long-time readers an apology, really fast. Sorry for disappearing for almost two months without a trace. The truth of the matter is that I've been feeling burnt out. It's hard to work on this hobby of mine without motivation, and as such, I tend to put off working on the blog for perhaps unreasonable lengths of time. 2021 was my least active year in a while, and I have nothing to blame save for my own procrastination and self-doubts. With that being said, I hope you enjoyed the review.

XCOM 2 is the property of Firaxis and 2K games. All images were found on Google Images. Please support the official release.

Metroid Dread, a return to form from a beloved classic. A review

2021-10-26T13:38:00.001-04:00

Imagine, the year is 1986. Nintendo has kickstarted the entire gaming industry, and now everyone is trying to get a piece of that video game action. So along comes Metroid, a game that stood in sharp contrast to Nintendo's usual fare. Instead of a bright and colorful fantasy adventure, like in Super Mario or Legend of Zelda. Metroid was a dark, menacing sci-fi series heavily inspired by Alien. But nonetheless, Metroid rose to the heights of similar classics of the time period, thanks to its unique sense of exploration and atmosphere. It also became well known that if you completed the game within a certain time limit, you would get an alternate ending that revealed that Samus Aran (the main protagonist of Metroid) was a woman the whole time. Keep in mind that female playable characters weren't really a thing at the time. So having a female protagonist (even if the game itself did everything it could to hide the twist) was a really big deal. Nowadays everyone with an Internet connection or a copy of Super Smash Bros knows about Samus' true identity, and as such the more recent Metroid games don't even bother keeping the secret anymore.

Anyway, the Metroid series enjoyed a plethora of highly praised sequels, such as Metroid 2: Return of Samus, Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and the Metroid Prime Trilogy. The series as a whole redefined exploration and character progression, and in case you couldn't tell, Metroid was one of the two games that helped create an entire genre of videogames known as the Metroidvania (the other is Castlevania). Which is coincidentally my favorite genre of video game. Shantae, Hollow Knight, Ori & the Blind Forest, all of these games (and many more) have all pulled inspiration from Metroid and without Metroid's success, those games wouldn't exist. But despite Metroid's impressive legacy, the series is not flawless. Case in point, 2010's Metroid: Other M was so controversial that it temporarily killed any interest Nintendo had in expanding the Metroid universe. That was until 2017 saw the release of Metroid: Samus Returns, a remake of Metroid 2 developed by MercurySteam, which was a big enough hit that Nintendo contacted MercurySteam and basically asked them, "Hey we heard your remake was really good, but wanna try making a brand new game from scratch?" And so MercurySteam was tasked with effectively catching lightning in a bottle twice, and started work on Metroid Dread. Fun fact! The creator of the Metroid franchise, Yoshio Sakamoto, actually had the idea for Metroid Dread's plot all the way back in 2006. The reason why Dread didn't start development back then was because at the time, there wasn't a Nintendo game system that had the kind of technical power behind it to support the scale and ambition he had in mind. So he kept putting the idea on hold... for almost two whole decades. When he got the news that MercurySteam were working on a brand new Metroid game, Sakamoto (who was brought on the project as a designer) took the opportunity to FINALLY put the plot idea he cooked up 14 years ago in action. Guess good things come to those who wait, eh?

Metroid Dread takes place some time after the events of Metroid Fusion, and serves as a kind of grand finale to all the lore and story arcs that have been going on. That said, the game still prioritizes making the actual gameplay as high quality as possible, and the game can generally be enjoyed even if you're unfamiliar with Metroid lore. Though if you want that lore anyway, here's a quick recap. Samus Aran was a little girl that was orphaned at a young age. She was adopted by the Chozo, a race of cool and mysterious crow people who also happen to be warrior-poets. The Chozo discovered a parasitic lifeform known as the X, which can mimic the appearance and abilities of any creature it assimilates. Given the X's ability to spread across an entire planet's ecosystem within minutes, the Chozo were naturally freaked out at the galaxy-ending potential the X possesses. So using their knowledge of genetic manipulation, the Chozo tribes banded together and created the Metroids, a race of jellyfish-like monstrosities that are not only immune to the X, but can also straight up eat the X to become stronger.

But then the Metroids went rogue, and ironically became an even bigger threat than the X ever did. Metroids were designed to be the perfect beast of war and thus had no natural counter in the wild, and the Chozo tribes were slaughtered by Space Pirates before they could design something to defeat the Metroids. So armed with the last remaining weapons and armor of her people, Samus Aran hunted the Metroids to extinction and became the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy. But then these guys called the Galactic Federation discovered the Metroids' existence, and basically said, "Hey! Why don't we clone this perfect beast of war with no natural counters for our own morally dubious purposes?" So the Galactic Federation started cloning Metroids, and said clones were stolen and released by Space Pirates (the same ones that wiped out the Chozo). So Samus was hired to hunt the new Metroids to extinction again, since she's already done before and is the most qualified warrior for the job. And Samus got to avenge her space crow family while she was at it, and killed all the Space Pirates on her way out.

Now that the Metroids are officially deader than dead, the X parasite came back, and attached itself to Samus, nearly killing her. The only reason she survived was because she was injected with a vaccine made with the last remaining trace of Metroid DNA in the entire galaxy, giving her access to the Metroid's immunity to the X. And since Samus was given Chozo DNA to help her survive on the Chozo's home planet, Samus is technically a three-way hybrid between a human, a Chozo, and a Metroid. And the unique thing about Samus's armor, is that it was designed to update and redesign itself to accommodate any biological changes in the wearer. So when Samus got that vaccine, her armor began to mutate as she adjusted to her hybridized form. And this is the official explanation for why Samus's armor design changes every other game. So anyway, Samus hunts the X parasite to extinction (are you noticing a pattern?), and destroys the research station that was cloning Metroids while she was at it. Everything I just described was the plot of the original four Metroid games (the Prime series are treated as side-adventures and can be safely put just about anywhere in the timeline and still make sense, and Other M is being ignored entirely, for obvious reasons).

Fast forward to Metroid Dread, where we get a quick primer recapping most of the lore literally five seconds after starting a new playthrough. Some time after the events of Metroid Fusion, the Galactic Federation receives a mysterious video message showing there is at least one X parasite still at large, stranded on a planet labeled Z.D.R.. So the Galactic Federation... doesn't hire Samus to deal with it. They instead send in the E.M.M.I. (pictured above), special androids designed for exploration and research, to go deal with it. And guess what? They lose contact with the E.M.M.I. just mere moments after landing on the planet, and Samus is hired to investigate the disappearance. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, it turns out the E.M.M.I. were compromised. Somebody hacked them, and now they are spooky killer robots that can easily overpower Samus Aran herself if she's not careful.

To make things harder for Samus, she gets ambushed by a mysterious, rogue Chozo warrior five minutes after arriving on the planet. And the fact that a Chozo is alive and well at all is a big deal, since they were wiped out by the Space Pirates years before Dread takes place. Samus puts up a good fight, but said Chozo warrior eventually knocks her out, and strips her armor down to all but the most basic functions. Basically forcing Samus to start from square one as she tries to escape the planet. It's here that the game officially starts, with Samus having only a simple energy blaster, some basic missiles, and a melee counter. You control Samus with some classic side scrolling, run and gun platformer/shooter gameplay as you slowly work your way back to the planet's surface, collecting upgrades for Samus's armor as you progress. And in typical Metroid fashion, you often need to revisit older areas that you already explored when you get a new ability, since there are usually secrets to be uncovered with that new ability.

And I have to say, the movement and shooting in this game is great. Samus runs surprisingly fast for her size (she's over six feet tall, or just under two meters for readers more familiar with the Metric system). And when you combine Samus's speed with her wall jump, she starts off with tons of mobility that makes navigating the various biomes of ZDR a delight. And her mobility only improves as she gets more upgrades for her armor. You can aim Samus's various weapons in one of two ways. The classic way, where Samus shoots straight forward or straight up. This method can be used while running. But the method I prefer is with Free Aim Mode. Basically, if you hold down the left bumper on the controller, a laser sight within Samus's gun will activate, allowing you to aim in any direction 360 degrees. This allows for much more precision than normal aiming, which makes hitting targets much easier. The only downside of Free Aim is that Samus cannot move while the laser sight is active. You can also perform a melee attack, which if timed right, can stun an enemy and let you get some free hits in. New to this game is a dash attack, that basically lets you punch enemies while running without sacrificing your momentum, which in turn reinforces the emphasis on mobility and speed that the game is running with (pun completely intended). Your options for combat, puzzle solving, and exploration expand tremendously with each upgrade. Samus as whole just feels speedy and powerful, and the controls are silky smooth to boot... Except for one puzzle that requires you to swing around with the Grapple Beam ability like Spider-Man. The Grapple Beam itself is fine, and there are some great puzzles and areas that use it creatively, but this one puzzle was admittedly a little janky if you do it as intended. Although it might just me being bad at the game, but I did find it difficult to aim the Grapple Beam while in midair. I still can't tell if this a controller issue, my own incompetence, or the fault of the game. I'll give MercurySteam the benefit of the doubt and say the problem was probably with myself rather than the game, simply because the other controls work so fluidly it seems unbelievable that this one puzzle would expose a flaw in the control scheme itself.

Despite Samus's power and mobility, she is completely helpless against the E.M.M.I. robots. There are seven of them in total, and with the sole exception of one, they are all formidable opponents. The E.M.M.I. can kill Samus with one attack, and though that one attack CAN be countered with Samus's melee move, the timing is so strict that doing so is a last resort and an act of pure desperation. Instead, you have to use stealth to sneak past them, like in the picture above. And I love the E.M.M.I. myself. The way they're animated is so unnerving, the way their limbs twist and contort as they squeeze through gaps seemingly too large for their body. The way the E.M.M.I. move and climb around the environment honestly reminds me of the Xenomorphs from Alien. And given that Metroid borrows a lot of inspiration from Alien anyway, I have a feeling the resemblance is at least somewhat intentional. And the E.M.M.I. get progressively more dangerous as you progress, starting out slow and dull, and gradually becoming faster and more intelligent. The only way defeat the E.M.M.I. is to get a temporary upgrade known as the Omega Cannon, and even then only a perfect headshot will put them down permanently. The only saving grace is that the E.M.M.I. can only enter certain rooms, all of which are marked by spooky, pixelated entrances, so you always have a rough idea of where to expect them to be. The E.M.M.I. are an intimidating foe, and I find myself "dreading" every encounter with them (pun also intended).

The highlights of the game (at least for me) are the boss battles. Almost every boss battle in the game is a spectacle. From a giant Space Pirate locked up in a volcano, to a scorpion-like monster that turns invisible, to X parasites mimicking fallen Chozo warriors, this game has a ton of bosses. And they all feel tough, yet fair, with hard hitting attacks but fairly obvious patterns you can dodge through. And if you pull off the melee counter successfully, you can start these interactive cinematics called Grab Sequences, where Samus grabs ahold of the boss's weak point and you are free to fire missiles into it point blank for free damage. And the animations for the Grab Sequences are some of the coolest animations in the game and help remind you that Samus isn't just a bounty hunter, she is the greatest warrior in the whole galaxy. The only boss I wasn't a fan of was Escue, a giant X parasite beetle with lightning powers. The only reason I dislike Escue is because the boss coats itself in a lightning aura periodically, rendering it invincible. The only way to get past the invincibility is to wait for it to wear off naturally, which takes a surprisingly long time. And I personally don't care for bosses who can become invincible with no manual way to remove said invincibility. That kind of boss design just stretches what would be a decent fight out to a point where it feels monotonous. But the fact I only disliked one boss speaks volumes to the boss battle quality over all. Every fight feels like a deadly dance as you slowly learn your opponents patterns and gun them down when the opportunity arises.

I also enjoyed the story. I won't spoil anything, especially since Metroid Dread isn't even a full month old yet (it was released on October 8th). But I did enjoy the story, and it did wrap up story arcs from the lore pretty nicely. And again, without spoiling anything, Metroid Dread's final boss is one of the best final bosses I've seen in a while. I'd rank it as being on par with the Nightmare King Grimm battle from Hollow Knight, which is high praise considering how amazing that fight was. But I can't think of a good way to segue into my next point, but I'm bringing it up anyway. Metroid Dread can, at times, be a difficult game. It's never unfair, but the tutorial is fairly minimalistic. MercurySteam have clearly designed the game working under the assumption that the player is capable of figuring out everything by themselves. As such, you're never pointed in a specific direction aside from the Adam AI's vague instructions to reach "the surface." And if you ever get stuck, keep in mind that Metroid as a franchise LOVES putting hidden passages that only reveal themselves if you shoot specific parts of the terrain, and Metroid Dread is no exception. Destructible terrain will usually have some minor visual differences to make them stand out more, like being a shade of color brighter than the rest of the room, or having small cracks in them. So basically, search every nook and cranny you can, and you will (usually) be rewarded.

In terms of presentation, Metroid Dread is (at least in my opinion) gorgeous to look at. The early game areas are bleak, cold caves and sterile laboratories, but as you get closer to the surface, the colors and location design grows warmer and more inviting. It starts off dark since MercurySteam is trying their hardest to instill the sense of dread that the game is named for, but as Samus gets closer to her goal, the sense of dread fades and is replaced by a sense of wonder instead. The creature design is also top notch. The alien monsters Samus contends with walk a thin line between sleek and grotesque. And the lighting is amazing. Like there's a section in the third major area where Samus enters a pitch-dark facility, and the only light in the building is the green glow of her armor, and the red eyes of the alien monsters, shining faintly in the darkness. It was a really cool idea, one that I liked a lot. And Samus herself looks great. This is probably the best design for her armor yet, sporting snow white accents that somehow synergize with Samus's usual colors. Honestly it looks so good that seeing Samus without the white accents now looks a little strange. And credit to the animation team. Samus goes through the entire game barely any dialogue, and yet her animations convey so much emotion and personality. And they did an excellent job at making Samus look cool. Like her reaction to seeing a giant Space Pirate named Kraid show up is to silently stare at him dismissively. She entered the room fully expecting a fight (and entered a battle stance as soon as she stepped inside), and she relaxes her guard once she realizes she has to kill yet another Space Pirate. This is just another day on the job for Samus, and a lone Space Pirate (especially one that's been chained up) is so far beneath her that she doesn't treat him as a threat at all. This isn't the only moment where Samus's body language does all the talking, this is just the most prominent example I can give without delving into spoiler territory. Also, even though we don't get to see Samus's face often, the few times we do, they manage to convey a lot of emotion in just her eyes, and I think that's impressive.

In terms of sound design and music, Metroid Dread is pretty good. The most distinct sound in the game is definitely the various beeps that the E.M.M.I. use while searching for you. They sound almost cute without context, but those beeps are nerve-wracking when you're trying to sneak past them. What makes it worse is that the beep will often be the first thing you hear when you enter an E.M.M.I. room, and you can use the loudness of the beeping to figure out how close the E.M.M.I. are to you. The music in general is moody and atmospheric, so while it's great to listen to while exploring the depths of planet Z.D.R., it isn't the kind of soundtrack you listen to by itself. Not that it's a bad thing. MercurySteam wanted the music to set the tone for the adventure, one of intensity and "dread", and the soundtrack succeeded in pulling that vibe off. I will say the fanfare when you get a new item or start a new playthrough is always a joy to listen to, and is by far the most heroic sounding piece of music in the whole game. The voice acting is few and far between, but what little there is, I enjoyed. The most talkative character that actually speaks English in the game is Adam, the AI companion that guides Samus on her journey. And his voice is literally a text-to-speech program, so there isn't a lot to comment on in terms of vocal performance. All the other voiced dialogue is in the (fictional) language of the Chozo (yes, even Samus herself only speaks in Chozo, because, you know, she was raised by them). And I must give my compliments to the voice actors for making the Chozo language sound like a believable language that could potentially exist in real life. You know your fictional language is good when it sounds like something a real person can speak in. They put Tolkien levels of effort into designing a fictional language, and I can respect that.

Before I finish with my overall conclusion, I want to mention something about Metroid Dread. The game does have some hidden unlockable secrets as a reward for certain milestones. For example, you can unlock bonus artwork for collecting every item in a given area, or from beating the game on higher difficulties, or from beating the game within a certain time limit, or any combination of the above. Metroid Dread is a relatively short game, taking me only 11 and a half hours to play through the entire game casually. And I can see the short length being a turn off for some people. And indeed, this game made me think about the "value" of video games. Dread is currently priced at $60. And there are Metroidvania games out there just as long, if not longer, than Dread with a much cheaper price. Hollow Knight is a massive game, with roughly 70 hours of content to go through (most of it is optional), and yet that game is sold for $15. But here's an interesting debate. Is a game inherently better if it has more content to go through? I'd say no. In my mind whether a game is worth its price is dependent on the quality of the experience, rather than the quantity of the content. And in my opinion, Metroid Dread definitely feels like it's worth the price with how well made the game is. And the short length might be a blessing in disguise, since it makes the game easier to speed run, if you're interested in the hobby.

In conclusion, Metroid Dread is an excellent return to form for the franchise. It's an intense, heart-pounding adventure that manages to strike a nice balance between being heroic and uplifting, and spine-chillingly spooky. It's a delight to navigate its sprawling world, and the game is tough without ever feeling unfair or poorly balanced. The fact it manages to wrap up 30+ years of lore in a satisfying finale is also rather impressive. Honestly, given everything Dread manages to accomplish, it might be my vote for Game of the Year. With that being said, Metroid Dread gets a "This is Beautiful!" rank from me. Or five out of five stars for normal people.

Disclaimer: All images were found on Google Images. They are not mine. Metroid and Metroid Dread are the property of Nintendo and MercurySteam.

deltarune, UNDERTALE's true successor. A review (of the first two Chapters)

2021-10-01T12:28:00.005-04:00

2015 was a special year. Why? Because it was the year in which a gentleman by the name of Toby Fox released one of the most prominent indie video games of the decade. UNDERTALE was born, and immediately garnered a following in pop culture thanks to its charming world and lovable characters. The game was an overwhelming success, which is especially impressive when you remember that Toby Fox had a very small team and even fewer resources to work with. Fast forward to 2018, and Toby Fox was becoming increasingly prominent in the gaming industry. He got to make music for Game Freak (the guys in charge of making Pokémon games) and even managed to convince Masahiro Sakurai to include Sans the Skeleton (UNDERTALE's unofficial mascot) in Super Smash Bros as a Mii costume. Then one day, he made some spooky posts on his social media accounts and then casually released AN ENTIRELY BRAND NEW GAME, FOR FREE, on Halloween, without warning. And given Toby Fox's reputation as a trickster and goofball, I can safely say that him just dropping a new game out of nowhere on a national holiday is perfectly on brand for him.

The game that was released was deltarune: Chapter 1. And as the title implies, this first chapter is just the first entry in a very ambitious project Mr. Fox has been working on. deltarune is currently planned to be a seven-part series (Chapters 1 and 2 are already available), with each Chapter being about 6-7 hours long. Oh, and Toby Fox himself admitted he's been planning out the main storyline for deltarune since 2012. But shortly after Chapter 1's release, Toby realized that his team is too small and it might take far too long to finish the project, so from Chapter 2 onwards he'll be working with a larger dev team. But anyway, deltarune is a story-driven RPG with a focus on comedy and solving problems in creative, nonviolent ways. So, basically, just like UNDERTALE. deltarune takes place in the same universe as UNDERTALE, but Toby Fox has stressed that it is NOT a sequel or a prequel. It's an alternate timeline where certain events played out differently. And I should warn you, you should probably play UNDERTALE before playing this game. Why? Because the game literally warns you straight up that knowledge of UNDERTALE's story and lore is pretty much required. And you know what that means, right? IT'S RECAP TIME, BABY!!! *ahem* If you never played UNDERTALE, basically your character gets trapped in the Underground Kingdom of Monsters. The Monsters themselves are not actually evil and are mostly benevolent, but are trapped because of a war they lost centuries ago. You either become an impromptu therapist for the monsters and help them out with their problems as they try to escape to the surface, or kill them all in a bloodthirsty rampage. Oh, and there's also some time travel shenanigans since the act of saving your progress and manipulating save data is an in-universe ability that your character stole from the main villain, and not just a gameplay convenience.

deltarune meanwhile takes place in an alternate timeline where the war that wounded up banishing the Monsters seemingly never happened, letting the Monsters live full and happy lives in the surface world. And deltarune wastes no time in establishing the biggest difference between it and its predecessor. You see, when you first boot up the game, a mysterious voice instructs you to create a body for your character. No matter what options you pick, your creation will be discarded and replaced with a premade character, a teenage human named Kris. The voice says that no one can choose who they are in this world, and the whole game tries to reinforce this one central theme; That your actions don't really matter that much, and you just have to roll with whatever life gives you. Which is pretty much the exact opposite moral of UNDERTALE, which is every choice you make will have consequences and you can't run away from them.

Anyway, Kris is the adopted child of Toriel, the kindly goat-like Monster Queen from the first game, who is running a school in this timeline. And while driving to said school, Toriel casually remarks about Asriel (Toriel's biological son and Kris' "brother") is supposed to be back from college soon. The fact that Asriel is even alive in this timeline is a very big deal, since his death kickstarts the entire plot of UNDERTALE. And honestly I love seeing all the little hints into this timeline's Asriel's life. Because we never really got to see what Asriel was like when he was alive (the closest we got to that was a brief conversation with his ghost/spirit), and the fact that this version of Asriel is described as that perfect Christian kid that got straight A's in school and goes to Church ever Sunday is oddly heartwarming. Also, fun fact, there's some dialogue and flavor text in Chapter 2 that implies that Asriel has a thing for dragon girls. So, uh... That's a thing.

Anyway, Kris arrives in school and is late for class. And since they were planning out group projects, Kris has to "choose" a partner. Reinforcing the "you have no control over these characters" theme, no matter who you choose, you'll be paired up with Susie, the school bully. And Susie herself tells Kris to their face that they shouldn't bother answering her questions precisely because Kris (and by proxy, the player) have no real agency in the project. But once the teacher's chalk goes missing, Susie and Kris are sent to the supply closet to get more... Only to get pulled into another dimension known as the Dark World. Which is inside the closet. Cue the Chronicles of Narnia jokes. The bulk of the first Chapter is spent exploring the Dark World, with Kris and Susie meeting new friends like the adorable yet secretive Ralsei and the wacky and cartoonish Lancer. Ralsei also informs Kris and Susie that they are (probably) the heroes described in a prophecy, predestined to save both the Light World and Dark World from certain doom. Susie, being an edgy rebel, refuses to partake in the prophecy and beelines for the exit. And indeed, up until the very last area of the Chapter, Susie will not listen to the player's commands, and prefers to do her own thing. …Which is kicking tail and chewing everything even remotely edible. And she's all out of edibles.

The only way to exit the Dark World (at least initially) is to track down these places called the Dark Fountains and close them up, which is something that only Kris can do. So Susie reluctantly cooperates. At least until she befriends Lancer, who is the son of the King of Spades, the main villain of this Chapter. Lancer tries very hard to be a villain himself, but his idea of "evil" is comedic and harmless, and he and Susie form this kind of Team Rocket style dynamic. And honestly, not only are Susie and Lancer's antics hilarious, the friendly bond they form is rather heartwarming. Eventually Lancer switches sides once he realizes that Lightners (the catch-all term for creatures born in the Light World) aren't that bad, but his loyalty to his tyrannical father leaves him conflicted. So Lancer decides to imprison his new friends for the sake of their safety. Susie does not take kindly to this, and we get this super intense showdown between Susie and Lancer. And I love the showdown scene. Lancer refuses to back down despite Susie's intimidating demeanor, but he doesn't willingly harm her at all during the ensuing boss fight. And Susie can't bring herself to kill Lancer, despite lashing out violently against every other enemy she faced up until this point. Lancer reveals the reason he trapped the Lighteners was to protect them from his father, who has a murderous hatred of everything from the Light World. And Susie learns that sometimes, brute force isn't necessary and from here on out, she'll actually listen to the player's commands.

So our heroes go to confront the King, and in a franchise all about compassion and mercy, the King of Spades lacks both of these. He's pretty much the only antagonist that cannot be reasoned with or talked down, nor does he have any characteristics that make him sympathetic or relatable. He's a despicable monster in every sense of the word, and that is a breath of fresh air. All of the villains up to this point (and even back in UNDERTALE) are either tragic anti-villains with legitimate reasons for their actions, or comedic goofballs who weren't that evil to begin with. The King, meanwhile, wants to commit a literal genocide and uses his own son as a meat shield. And when he's weakened enough, he feigns surrender so he can take a cheap shot at the heroes. Once he's defeated, Susie and Ralsei have a surprisingly meaningful conversation that I think delivers the main moral of this Chapter; That while trying to solve problems with peaceful solutions is preferred, there are some people in the world who are sadly too dangerous to be reasoned with, and have to be confronted with force.

Anyway, Kris and Susie seal the Dark Fountain in the King's Castle and return to the Light World. Their adventure took up most of the day, so all the students are returning home at this hour. And to my surprise, you can actually explore the town and talk with all the major residents before returning home yourself. Most of the conversations are lighthearted and jokey, but there is some meaningful lore stuff in there as well. Like the fact that Sans the Skeleton has returned, this time running a grocery store. And during the conversation he makes a joke about "befriending" Kris' mother... So that argument I had with my friend many years ago about whether Sans and Toriel were romantically involved have now come full circle. Thank you, Toby Fox. Very cool. Anyway, we also get snippets of Kris' backstory through their interactions with the various residents of this quiet rural community. Namely, they were apparently a rather mischievous prankster before we took control of them, playing morbid pranks on their neighbors. They also used to be quite talented with the piano, but it appears that they can't play it well when influenced by the player. And I bring all this stuff up because in UNDERTALE, the player was supposed to be a separate entity from your character. You're not supposed to self-insert in this universe. You are attached to the main character, but you aren't literally them. And deltarune is making a similar connection. Kris is a person with a preestablished history and personality, you're just using their body to interact with the game. And in both this Chapter and the next, when you make certain dialogue choices the other characters will react to any implied inconsistencies between your desires as a player and Kris's desires as a person living in this world. And I think that's cool, personally. Because no other game series tries to make the player themselves into an important entity in the story. And it makes the final scene of Chapter 1 that much more... Concerning.

This next section contains massive spoilers for the end of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, so feel free to skip. So in the final scene of Chapter 1, just before Kris goes to bed, they rip out the Player Soul (which you've been using to control Kris's body this whole time) and brandish a knife. In the real-life three year gap between the release of Chapter 1 and Chapter 2, there were hundreds of theories of what this ending was supposed to mean. These ranged from Kris simply freeing themselves from the player's influence while they go cause mischief in the night, to Kris secretly being Chara all along (Chara being the narrator of UNDERTALE, who potentially turns evil if you complete the No Mercy Run). Personally, I gravitated to the "Kris is Chara" theory because Kris looks like an older, more mature Chara (they even have the same color scheme when in the Light World). And Chapter 2 answers these questions, with a lighthearted joke about Kris sneaking out to eat some pie behind Toriel's back. Somehow, Toby Fox turned a genuinely unsettling cliff hanger ending into a joke. And then he turned around and revealed that "free" Kris is an actual danger to the universe, since the Chapter 2 ending strongly implies that without a Player Soul stopping them, Kris is the one creating the Dark Fountains in the first place. Which is bad, because if there's too many Dark Fountains in the universe, these creatures called the Titans will awaken and destroy everyone, Lightner and Darkner alike.

Okay, spoilers over. Overall, I enjoyed Chapter 1. It was a great introduction to a new cast, and the main characters are just as enjoyable, possibly more so than UNDERTALE's cast. I love Ralsei and how he manages to be simultaneously cute and wholesome and yet so knowledgeable of the greater world around him it's actually kind of concerning. He teaches you the controls and mechanics, and in any other franchise I wouldn't bat an eye at this but this is a Toby Fox game, and I know he likes to turn mundane game mechanics that players take for granted into canon in universe abilities (for example, manipulating save data is treated as in-universe time travel). So anyone showing even the slightest hint of knowledge towards game mechanics in this franchise has me concerned. On a lighter note, I also really enjoyed Susie's growth from a violent bully to a proud protector of her new friends. The writing and dialogue are as great as ever, with that signature wit and borderline surreal commentary that Toby Fox has become known for. And the combat system has dramatically improved from UNDERTALE. It still has the Fight/Spare system (while you can fight by attacking with your weapons repeatedly, you can instead have Kris use context-sensitive commands called Acts to calm enemies down peacefully), but now with the addition of additional party members and the ability to cast magic spells, there's a lot more variety in your options and in some cases, there's now more than one way to Spare enemies. The Bullet Hell sections (where you have to avoid enemy attacks by maneuvering a little cartoon heart around various obstacles) have also been improved, with more diverse attack patterns and even Bullet Hell traps that activate outside of combat while exploring.

But if you think we're done talking about the story, boy are you wrong! That's right, I'm covering Chapter 2. You can technically start your playthrough from here, but I wouldn't recommend it. Not only do you miss out on some story context (like Susie's character development or Ralsei's true form), but despite the game telling you your choices don't matter, there actually is some carryover from certain actions taken back in Chapter 1. Like in Chapter 1, you get "tricked" into designing a robot for Susie and Lancer (you can customize the robot's appearance), and in Chapter 2, a flamboyant puzzle maker named Rouxls Kaard (pronounced "rules card") uses that exact same robot during his boss battle. In fact, Chapter 2 seems to have more branching choices that actually have a consequence. I mean yeah, the ending is still roughly the same no matter what, but while Chapter 1 had virtually no difference between a Pacifist Run and a No Mercy Run (the only difference is what kind of reward you get from the bonus boss; Armor for Pacifists, and a new weapon for the Merciless), Chapter 2 has a unique Snow Grave Run. Which is somehow darker and more disturbing than anything you did in UNDERTALE's No Mercy Run. But more on the Snow Grave Run later. Chapter 2 picks up one day after Chapter 1, with Kris being sent to school once more. Only this time, Susie showed up on time and is no longer bullying everyone else (the worst she does now is some lighthearted banter). We get (re)introduced to two class mates in particular who made cameo appearances in Chapter 1; Berdly and Noelle. The former is a cocky and arrogant bluebird and the latter is a sweet but timid reindeer. I bring them up because if Susie and Lancer were the stars of Chapter 1, Berdly and Noelle are the stars of Chapter 2.

Noelle walks in on Susie and Kris just as they try to reenter the Dark World for a new adventure, but rather than causing trouble for our heroes, she invites the two over to the local library so they can all work on their group projects together. But why Kris and Susie specifically? Simple! Noelle has a positively enormous crush on Susie, and Noelle's been looking for an excuse to hang out with her specifically. But guess what? The library has been consumed by a new Dark Fountain, transforming into a new Dark World. And while Chapter 1's Dark World is themed around various card games and board games, this new Dark World is themed around technology and the Internet. And thus a new adventure begins, this time in the Cyber Dark World. And I LOVE this chapter. It's wild, wacky, and brings in new lore. For everything. And I really like the two new additions to the main cast. Noelle is a sweet yet awkward nerd, and her interactions with the other characters (especially Susie) are adorable. And Berdly is an absolute buffoon. Arrogant to a fault and hilariously inept. And honestly, Berdly gets some of the best jokes in the whole Chapter (even if most of them are made at his expense). From building a statue of a much manlier version of himself, to confessing his love for Susie upon realizing that she is a TRUE GAMER(tm). The dude is literally every "neckbeard" stereotype rolled into one, and the whole thing is played for laughs. Honestly, I was half-expecting to see him refer to himself as an "Alpha Male" unironically.

But I have to talk about the best character in the entire Chapter; Queen. Queen is a chaotic mess of computer terminology and Internet "lol so random" meme-humor, and I absolutely adore her. Because Queen is literally an anthropomorphic personification of the Internet. She started out as a peaceful program only wanting to make people happy, but has been twisted into a toxic and misguided tyrant, and has in turn converted the Cyber Dark World into a crazy theme park of madness. Also, she gets the best jokes, from customizing her prisoners' cells based on their search history or demanding Kris pick up bananas that appear inexplicably in the middle of the street. Queen steals the show with every scene she's in, and she is by far my favorite antagonist in the whole franchise. It also helps that she has one of the most unique and interesting boss battles so far, with her using a brainwashed Berdly as a weapon in the first phase and changing the entire combat system to a loving homage to Punch-Out! in the second phase.

But this Chapter in particular has a bit of a dark side. And that is mostly relegated to the Snow Grave route. …Which is officially called the Weird Route in the game's source code, but the fandom has collectively decided that "Snow Grave" describes it better and sounds a lot scarier. But what exactly is the Snow Grave route? To make a long story short, it's the equivalent of a No Mercy Run, but somehow darker and more disturbing. In this optional story line, you help Noelle become strong enough to defend herself... By turning her into your obedient attack animal. Despite the fact that you wind up with a smaller body count than the No Mercy Run, it's still disturbing in the sense that you are manipulating and mentally abusing a sweet and innocent high schooler into committing mass murder on your behalf. It even culminates in you forcing Noelle to murder Berdly with the titular Snow Grave spell, which instantly kills him by freezing him solid. And Berdly's death is the point of no return. No matter how many enemies you Spare afterwards, you can't undo the blood on your hands once you kill Berdly. And it gets worse. Once Noelle realizes that she killed her closest friend, she tries her hardest to convince herself that everything was just a bad dream. And then, when you return to the Light World in the epilogue, you can give her a quick little reminder that the events of the Snow Grave Route were real, which only serves to traumatize her further. The whole route is dark, and is quite possibly the creepiest thing Toby Fox has ever put into a game. Of course, I haven't even touched the Snow Grave route myself (can you believe I actually LIKE being a good person in video games with branching morality?), and I doubt I will until all the remaining Chapters have been released, so that we can see the full consequences of this storyline. I mean, I appreciate the fact that the Snow Grave route exists, since I can't really think of a game that lets you alter the course of a main character's growth and development in such a drastic (and frankly horrific) manner. But I also like that you don't HAVE to go down this path if you don't want to. You can either corrupt Noelle and turn her into a weapon, or support Noelle through her struggles and help boost her self-confidence in a positive and healthy manner that DOESN'T involve murdering her best friend in literal cold blood. The Snow Grave Route is completely optional, and is so well hidden that it is literally impossible to stumble across by accident, since the requirements to start it are so specific.

Overall, Chapter 2 was amazing. It's significantly wackier than Chapter 1, and has some of the most creative puzzles and boss battles yet. It also has the nightmarish Snow Grave Route that exists to remind us all that Toby Fox really likes putting creepy alternate storylines in his goofy games about quirky creatures and pacifism. But the locations were great, the comedy was great, the story was great. Great times all around. I'm not entirely sure how Toby's team could top this Chapter, simply because it has set such a high bar for future Chapters.

As for presentation, in terms of artwork, deltarune just looks better than UNDERTALE ever did. Yeah, it's still fairly simplistic pixel art meant to invoke the imagery of 90's era games like Earthbound, but the sprites are cleaner and more detailed. They have more expressive animations and there's some very distinct color choices for the locations and characters. I especially like the new character designs. Every single character is unique and instantly recognizable, and even though the generic enemies are mostly goofy and comedic (most of them being walking puns), there are some enemies with legitimately cool-looking designs. Namely the Were Wires from Chapter 2. The dialogue portraits for the Lightners (such as Susie and Noelle) are still monochrome, like in UNDERTALE, but Darkners (like Ralsei and Lancer) get fully colored dialogue portraits. Personally I would prefer having everyone's portraits be fully colored, but at least there's an easy visual distinction between the two races. And on a darker note, the animation for the Snow Grave spell does admittedly look really... "Cool." One could say it's a "chilling" animation. Oh, don't give me the "cold" shoulder, you "snow" these jokes are so n(ice). In all seriousness the Snow Grave spell's animation is very impressive and honestly looks like an attack animation from a more traditional RPG. Unfortunately, deltarune is anything but traditional, and you can't fully enjoy the spectacle of Snow Grave without being hit with the reality that you mentally abused a reindeer just to get a neat magic spell, then forced her to murder her best friend with said spell.

In regards to music and sound... haha... HAHAHA!!! Do you really think I can get through a Toby Fox game without gushing about the music!? Toby Fox is a master at making catchy music that fits the scene perfectly. He even brought back some remixes of songs from UNDERTALE. Although I find the fact that Sans' theme song sounds exactly the same as it did in the original game with no changes whatsoever to be amusing. After all, Sans being too lazy to change anything about his own theme song is perfectly in-character for him. But on the subject of new tracks, I loved Field of Hopes & Dreams, which plays early on in Chapter 1. It's punchy and heroic while also somehow being full of whimsy and playfulness. And Rude Buster (the song that plays when fighting generic enemies) is leaps and bounds better than its UNDERTALE counterpart, Enemy Approaching!. Queen's theme is gaudy and pretentious, invoking the imagery of a prideful noblewoman. And of course, the theme songs for the two secret bonus bosses are also fantastic and catchy. The Chapter 1 bonus boss, Jevil has The World Revolving as his theme, and it's this insane carnival track that has the chaotic clown energy of Jevil himself. The Chapter 2 bonus boss, Spamton NEO, gets BIG SHOT for his theme, and is much more techno compared to the rest of the soundtrack and has this deliberate glitchy effect on it. Makes sense, since Spamton NEO is a malfunctioning robot. The sound effects are also charming. That little "beep" when you navigate the menus is oddly soothing, if that makes sense? Oh, and also Lancer's cartoon "Splat!" noises are hilarious for how unexpected they are.

In conclusion, deltarune manages to be a worthy successor to UNDERTALE, and in some ways it manages to surpass the original game. With a cast of colorful creatures, a soundtrack full of catchy and memorable songs, and some pretty neat lore going on in the background. And yet, deltarune is forever linked to UNDERTALE, so it's difficult to judge one without comparing to the other. But does it stand on its own? The answer is... Kind of? Not really. This game's entire premise is that it takes place in the same world as UNDERTALE and operates on the same "rules", but it follows the adventures of a different cast of characters and some events in the timeline played out differently. Basically, if you ever watched Marvel What If...? then you have the basic idea. And because of that, if you don't know anything about UNDERTALE, you likely wouldn't understand the changes deltarune makes fully, or why those changes are a big deal. Like I said, Asriel is alive in this timeline, and his death is literally the incident that kickstarts the plot of the original game. The monsters are already living on the Surface World, implying that either the war the Monsters lost never happened or that the Monsters won and defeated humanity (I think it's the former rather than the latter myself, if only because it more easily explains why a family of Monsters would adopt Kris, who is clearly a human). Mettaton and Dr. Alphys never meet in this timeline, meaning the former never became a celebrity thanks to the latter's technology. And that's just the changes I can think of off the top of my head. But anyway, if you enjoyed UNDERTALE chances are you'll enjoy deltarune because of how connected the game's are. If you haven't played UNDERTALE but are still interested in deltarune, my advice is to try it out. And if you like it, why not track down UNDERTALE so you can see just how far Toby Fox and his team have come? With that being said, deltarune: Chapters 1 & 2 get a "Oh, this? This is Beautiful!" rank from me. Now all we have to do is wait another three real life years for the next Chapter. But before I finish this review, I just want to point out that the word "deltarune" is literally just an anagram of "Undertale" (meaning that the two words are spelled using the exact same letters, just with the order of said letters changed around). Just a neat bit of trivia.

Disclaimer: All the images used in this post I found on Google Images. They are not mine. deltarune and UNDERTALE are owned by Toby Fox.