Reviews – DJMMT's Gaming (& More) Blog (2025)

A few weeks ago, I got to play the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds (CW) closed network test. While this won’t be a formal review, as this was both a pre-release build and a very limited option test that only had one of the presumably multiple gameplay modes that will be available in the final game, there are several things about my experience playing this build that I felt compelled to discuss in a post.

Let me start by saying that I am not an active fan, or even participant, of the Sonic racing franchise, which is actually extremely difficult to even quantify. There are a lot of Sonic themed racing games, but they don’t all necessarily fall under the same franchise of racing games. Yet they do all sort of piggy back on each other. And there’s also games, like Sonic Heroes (2003), which have a multiplayer racing mode, but don’t necessarily count as Sonic racing games. Like if you want to get really technical, the first Sonic racing game is probably Sonic Drift (1994), which I have not played. The oldest Sonic racing game that I can remember playing for an extended period of time, not counting Sonic Heroes, was Sonic Riders (2006); and that’s not a kart racer.

The first Sonic kart racer I can remember playing seriously was Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (2012). And honestly, I haven’t played another Sonic racing game for more than an hour since then, until this beta. So, I’m not well versed in the current Sonic kart racing, or even just Sonic racing in general, franchise standards and expectations, as there have been several Sonic racing games released both before and after 2012. Meaning that it’s very possible there are things in CW that stood out to me that shouldn’t have, because they may very well have been part of previous Sonic racing games and are considered standard features for the franchise at this point. When you read this post, be aware that I’m writing it as an outsider to the franchise.

I don’t have a problem admitting that I went into this beta comparing it to Mario Kart. In fact, I’m confident most people who aren’t hardcore Sonic racing players are having similar thoughts about this game. I don’t think it’s an accident that very soon after Nintendo soft announced Mario Kart 9, for the Switch 2, we got both an announcement and a playable beta for CW. It’s not ridiculous to assume that SEGA has been working on this game for at least a year or two and that they absolutely do not want the sales of this game to be impeded by Mario Kart 9, which we all know, and hope, will dominate the kart racing scene, as Mario Kart 8 rightfully has for literally the past decade. I have been waiting for Mario Kart 9 since I got the 100% completion in Mario Kart 8 on the Wii U back in 2014. That is the best kart racer that has ever been made, and it was before they even released all the DLC content, which I have not played, because I refused to repurchase the game on Switch. But I have no problem admitting that I will be buying Mario Kart 9 on day one. And if there’s a Deluxe edition with a DLC pass at launch, that’s the version I’ll be buying. So going into CW, my mindset was very much focused on the question of “Is this entertaining enough to compete with Mario Kart 8, and by extension my expectations for Mario Kart 9?” Sadly, the answer to that question is no.

I did enjoy playing CW, which I tested for more than six hours across multiple play sessions, but it was not entertaining enough for me to want to purchase it so close to the presumed release of Mario Kart 9. Furthermore, for all the things I did like about CW, there is at least one major gameplay design issue that really turns me off the idea of playing this game seriously. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

First of all, I want to make it clear that this is a solid game overall. The graphics are great. The sound effects are very good. The music works well. The character selection, though mostly hidden in the beta, will offer at least 28 characters, with a note saying there will be many more. The cosmetic car customization options seem to be very good. Again, the beta limited what was available and shown, but it implied that a lot more would be there in the final game. More importantly, unlocking things of that nature were all earned via in-game currency that you can earn by playing. And you can earn it without winning races as well. Just playing gets you more currency. Winning simply increases the amount you earn at a given time. Most importantly, the game runs well. Over the course of the three day test, I had exactly one error. I was thrown out of a lobby before the race started and thrown back to the top menu. Otherwise, I didn’t experience any lag, long waiting times to enter lobbies, or any other performance issues.

I liked the level design, in general. It’s a kart racer with levels that sort of reference Sonic related stuff, while also taking liberties and placing characters in funny settings that don’t necessarily make sense but also aren’t problematic. Like, there’s a level where you’re racing in a museum. It’s very reminiscent of Mario Kart levels like Coconut Mall. The menus look and navigate just like Mario Kart. And that’s not to imply that SEGA is copying Mario Kart. It’s to imply that kart racers all follow similar formulas of design and function, because that’s what we as players have come to expect. My point is that the minimum standard for a solid AAA kart racer is more than met by CW. Like if you just want a solid kart racer, because there hasn’t been a new one worth playing since maybe Disney Speedstorm (2023) or Chocobo GP (2022), neither of which I’ve personally played, then CW is a fine choice. There are no objective problems with this game. However, there are design choices and mechanics that I personally take issue with, which I’ll go into detail about later on in this post.

The major selling point of the game is the CrossWorlds concept. Basically, and I do really like this concept, no race is as simple as mastering one course. In the basic three-lap structure, which is standard for this genre, only two of the laps in CW take place on the same course. The second lap, at least in the online world ranking mode, which was the only mode available in the beta, always takes place on a different randomly selected course. You never know what your second lap is going to be until it starts. And, to make it even more difficult to predict, the game actually lets the player in first place at the end of the first lap make the final selection for that second lap course. The game always offers two choices. The choice on the left is a stated course, while the course on the right is a random course that is not shown until you’ve entered it. Whoever is in first place gets to decide which way everyone is going for the second lap. After the second lap, you return to the original course for the final lap.

This is a cool mechanic. It keeps the races fresh and the players from getting complacent. Because you might know the main course really well and have a big lead, but the second lap course might be a course you suck at. And the positions are super volatile in this game. I went from 12^th to the top 3 countless times during the beta. It is not hard to jump several places with a single item. You’re basically never winning by enough to get sloppy. I lost first place in the final stretch with a solid lead so many times. I consider this good design for a kart racer. Every second of every race should be engaging for all people in the race; and CW absolutely accomplishes that. Not only because of the shifting courses, but also because of the items.

The selection of items is very standard, but I appreciate how effective a large number of them are. There is more than one that can quickly propel you forward several places, and they all make references to Sonic games. My favorites are the items from Sonic Colors (2010). Several of the items are Wisps with different abilities. These are by far the best items that were available in the beta, and they were commonly occurring. I don’t actually feel like I got every item available in the beta, because there were certain ones I believe I saw but never got. But the volume of good items I was getting, regardless of my position in the race, was very good, in my opinion. A big reason for that is the gadget system.

In CW, every player has a personalized card, referred to in game as a “gadget plate,” with six available gadget slots. You start with three slots and have to unlock the other 3, but unlocking them is a very fast, simple process. You literally just have to participate, regardless of the results, in a total of less than 30 races to unlock the other three slots. There’s a large number of gadgets that you can select from to fill those slots. Gadgets have costs ranging from 1 – 3 slots, allowing each player to customize their racing experience. I have two major complaints about the gadget system. The first is that your gadget slots are comprised of two sets of three slots rather than a total of six. What this means is that you can’t have three two-cost gadgets equipped at the same time. At most, you can have two two-cost gadgets and two one-cost gadgets at the same time. I’m sure there’s a balance argument for this, but I don’t agree with it, based on the gadgets that were available in this beta. My second complaint is that the gadget costs aren’t balanced very well.

The three gadgets I ultimately settled on were “Boost Item Chance UP,” “Collision Boost,” and “Larger Attack Glove.” This was a combination of a three-cost, a two-cost, and a one-cost gadget. Boost Item Chance UP increases the likelihood of getting boost related items from item drops. I don’t know why it’s a three-cost gadget when “Attack Item Chance UP” is a one-cost gadget. Those should both be the same cost. And that cost should be two slots. Many of the gadgets in this game have costs that don’t feel balanced to me. The system in general makes sense, and I assume many more gadgets will be added in the full game, but there does probably need to be some tweaks to the costs.

A major issue with the gadget system is that people in the beta were very clearly gravitating to specific gadgets, such as “Collision Ring Steal.” Basically, when you collide with another player, you steal some of their rings. Rings matter in the fact that they increase your top speed, but you can only carry up to 200 of them at a time, they’re very easy to lose, and I don’t feel that they give you enough of an acceleration bonus to warrant taking that seriously. However, rings are most likely the reason that you often end up losing a head-to-head in the final stretch. In general, I don’t have a problem with the Collision Ring Steal gadget as a concept. My problem is with a majority of players using the same gadget. At that point, it shouldn’t be a gadget. It should just be a mechanic that everyone has. Or it shouldn’t exist at all. But ultimately, that’s my issue with a gadget system in general. I’m on the fence about the inclusion of such a system in a kart racer, because the thing that’s great about cart racers is how balanced they tend to be.

The thing I like about Mario Kart, among most kart racers, is that when you’re good you’re good. I tend to play heavier characters, like Donkey Kong, and have since Mario Kart 64 (1996), which was still my favorite Mario Kart until Mario Kart 8. But even though I prefer heavier characters, the differences between characters in Mario Kart is so miniscule that I could easily win against players below my skill/experience level with any character. You could give me Toad, Yoshi, Mario, Peach, or any other character, and I’m still going to place pretty well in any Mario Kart race. Especially if I already know the course. Because the game is generally balanced across all characters and stages. In my opinion, that’s how a kart racer should be. Everyone, regardless of their character or vehicle, has the same chance of winning, based on their skill level and knowledge of the course.

Personalized gadget builds ruin that balance. Especially when you consider that gadgets have an unlock component tied to them. As in, you unlock more gadgets by increasing your ranking. Additionally, the beta didn’t feature but did imply that tickets, the free in-game currency, could be used to unlock gadgets in the full game. While tickets are free and easily earned, this does create an additional balance barrier between new and long-term players. Because now, no matter how good you may or may not be, you might not have the necessary gadgets equipped to beat the other players in the lobby. You might not even have access to them yet. While I do think the gadget system is interesting, I’m on the fence about whether or not I think it’s a good thing for this genre. And I’m happy to acknowledge that it’s nothing new to competitive online games. Injustice 2 (2017), a 2D fighting game, has gear. Personalized gameplay settings can be found in every competitive genre at this point, including plenty of other racing games. I won’t say it’s a problem, but it does change a lot about the genre.

Characters don’t affect the gameplay at all in CW. They’re purely cosmetic, which I do prefer. What does matter is the car type. There are four types of cars in CW: speed, acceleration, handling, and power. These car types all feel very different. Power is way too slow. Speed is very fast, but not too fast, once you understand the drifting system. Acceleration and Handling are probably the two most balanced car types, with handling having a slightly more forgiving drifting system. Overall, I think power is the only car type that feels unbalanced. It’s a bit too disadvantaged, given that it doesn’t offer much in the way of advantages, because of the gadget system. With power types, you can race through other players, but skills like Collision Boost and Collision Ring Steal negate that ability. Because the collisions for those skills are neutral. Meaning that any collision, whether you’re the aggressor or the victim, activates the skill. So if you’re in a power car and try to knock a speed car off balance, you may end up giving them a boost or some of your rings in the process. The other three car types feel fine.

My major complaint about the gameplay, and ultimately the reason that I absolutely will not buy this game, is the drifting system. Drifting in a kart racer is nothing new. In Mario Kart, drifting has been a major mechanic since at least Mario Kart Wii (2008). Drifting feels especially great with the motion controls in Mario Kart, which is my preferred way to play. But the important thing about drifting in pretty much any casual, fun-focused racing game, including those that are not kart racers, is that drifting has always been optional. Drifting is supposed to be a mechanic that mastering gives you an edge over the competition. It gives you an extra boost that shaves time off your turns and propels you forward faster. It has never before, in my experience with kart racers, been a mandatory mechanic just to keep yourself from crashing. In CW, it’s not anywhere near optional. The turns have been intentionally designed so that you have to drift in order to not hit the walls; and it’s extremely difficult to do well.

Even after hours of play, I was still not confident enough to say I had mastered the drifting. I definitely got much better at it from my opening races. But it never felt good. It’s way too sensitive and can’t be ignored as a mechanic. You can drive through pretty much every single Mario Kart course, going all the way back to the original Mario Kart (1992), without drifting at all and never crash. And that’s not just at 50cc. You can do that in 150cc, almost never taking your metaphorical foot off the gas pedal. In CW, even when you stop accelerating, you will crash into the sides of the course without using the drift mechanic; and I hate that.

Drifting isn’t passive in this game, like it is in Mario Kart. It’s an actual button you press that activates a drift meter that tells you how much drift boost you’ve charged before releasing it. I’m not going to say that it’s broken, but it’s definitely not fun. It absolutely adds a new skill component to kart racing gameplay, but not in any way that I find enjoyable. Even with the much slower power type cars, I found myself crashing all the time when trying to drift. To be clear, you’re not spinning out or running off the road, most of the time. You’re just bumping the walls. But bumping the walls hurts your momentum and causes you to lose rings, which again lowers your top speed. It would be one thing if it was me trying to drift unnecessarily, in order to get an edge over the competition, and failing. But making drifting mandatory, with how difficult it is, sucks.

Additionally, drifting, which is extremely sensitive in this game, also differs by car type. Meaning that once you master drifting with a specific type of car, you have to relearn it each time you change car types. This unofficially locks players into sticking with a specific car type long-term, because you don’t want to have to remaster such an important and annoying mechanic over and over again. It discourages you from varying up your gameplay experience. It really turned me off what’s otherwise a pretty solid kart racer. I would be devastated if they handled drifting this way in Mario Kart 9. In fact, I think SEGA might have made this decision to try to add a bigger skill component to the gameplay in hopes of trying to differentiate CW from Mario Kart 9. But for me this just pushed me farther away from CW and makes me even more comfortable waiting for Mario Kart 9.

The final thing I want to talk about is the ranking system. CW uses a passive XP based ranking system, which is always my preference. You start as an E rank and then increase your rank by playing. You gain points every race, regardless of your position. Placing better gets you more points faster, but all races move you towards “Legend” rank. I didn’t see anyone higher than A rank during the beta, and I only managed to reach C rank before it ended. I like this system, but it was already apparent to me in the beta that a passive ranking system like this will hurt frequent casual players. The ranking system seemed like a way to keep races balanced, by trying to put players of similar rank in the same lobbies. However, with the limited number of players in the closed test, the lobbies filled with whoever was available. At rank C, I was racing against rank A players regularly. I don’t personally have a problem with this, because I’m pretty good at kart racers. I could feel the improved skill level of A rank players versus lower ranked players, which should be the case. But a passive ranking system means that eventually all players that keep playing, no matter how casual they are, will reach rank A, or higher. But casual players at that level won’t have any chance of winning against serious players.

Obviously, this won’t be a huge problem early on in the game’s lifespan, but over time it will become more and more off putting to people who just want to have fun but still feel like they at least have a shot at winning. Additionally, with a passive level up system for ranking and crossplay between PC and console, there’s going to be a ton of bots. There’s no drawback to getting last place. Your rank and tickets will just keep increasing, no matter how terrible you place. I don’t have a solution for this problem, but it is going to be a problem. Because there are rewards for increasing your rank and acquiring more tickets.

Overall, I think the major problem with Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds is that SEGA really wants it to be seen as a serious competitive racing game, but that’s not really the purpose of IP driven kart racers. Is there a competitive Mario Kart scene? Of course. But that’s less than 10% of the Mario Kart market. Most players just really enjoy playing Mario Kart. It’s fun to play. It’s fun to learn all the different courses. It’s fun to get first place in all the tournaments. It’s fun to play against your friends and randoms from around the world. It’s just a fun time. Some of us do take it a bit more seriously, but it has never been the same as competitive games like CSGO, Madden, or even Smash Bros. Kart Racers are inherently silly, because almost none of these characters have any business driving cars. Sonic the Hedgehog driving a car is like Superman traveling via airplane. It has happened before in the canon, but it doesn’t make any sense. It’s just funny. I think CW needs to take itself less seriously, but doing so pits it directly against Mario Kart, which is a battle it could never hope to win. If Mario Kart 9 was years away, that would be an easy victory for SEGA. But with the next best kart racer less than a year from release (fingers crossed), I don’t envy SEGA’s position with trying to sell this game. My personal gripes with the drifting aside, it’s not a badly made game by any objective criteria. That said, there’s no scenario where I buy it instead of just waiting for Mario Kart 9.

Freddy Farmer (Farmer) is a retro style 2D collectathon platformer developed by Catcade Games. Thank you, as always, to the publisher, Flynn’s Arcade, for providing the key for this review. Farmer is inspired by retro titles like Donkey Kong Jr., Bubble Bobble, and probably a bit of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse (1990) as well. In fact, both narratively and visually, that’s a perfect title for comparison.

Visually, Farmer gives off a 1980’s arcade vibe. I was reminded of games like Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (1988) both for the art style and the thematic aesthetic this game is going for. It’s a fantasy setting complete with typical fantasy game locations including forest, cave, snowy mountain, cemetery, and castle. The monsters, including the massive final boss dragon, feel like they were plucked right out of the games of my childhood. Walking mushrooms, goblins, zombies, wolves, armored knights, and I could go on. The only truly surprising enemy I found in the game was the wendigo, which was the most impressive enemy, in my opinion, both visually and gameplay wise.

I really liked the graphics in this game. It runs very smoothly on Nintendo Switch, with no lag or performance issues. I especially like the performance in handheld mode. But there’s also a lot of really nice attention to smaller details. For instance, the main character, Freddy, has a bunch of situational animations that have little to no effect on the gameplay but really add a layer of complexity to the experience. When you stand still for too long, he falls asleep. When standing too close to an edge, he stands on his toes and leans to try to keep his balance. There are also several different situationally specific death animations. The different worlds/regions in the game all have a very specific and highly differentiated visual style. I also liked the many different types of collectibles that vary from level to level. Though this does mean you have to reorient yourself visually at the beginning of every stage, because it’s not always obvious what the collectibles are at a glance.

Something I really appreciated was the ability to choose between a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio. While the default is 16:9 with large, albeit not the standard black, bars on both sides, I was able to play the game properly on my 55” TV in full screen with the 4:3 setting. It does look slightly stretched at first, but I think it’s a way better gameplay experience overall. However, in this game, there is a reason you might prefer to play in 16:9 regardless of the size of your screen. The bezel provides the list of collectibles you need and have already collected in a much bigger view than the standard top of the screen HUD. You can get all this information in the 4:3 aspect ratio without the bezel as well, but it’s harder to see, because it’s much smaller and at the top of the screen. Giving players the ability to choose their preference was the right move here.

The cutscenes use still images above text, which feels exactly like the introduction to classic games like the aforementioned Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse. And again, narratively they’re basically the same as well. The story of Freddy Farmer is that an evil dragon has kidnapped his daughter, Sarah Farmer. Desperate to save her, Freddy goes to beg a powerful wizard for help. The wizard says that in order to save his daughter Freddy must collect special ingredients to cast a certain spell. And that’s basically the premise of the game. You play as Freddy in a quest across five regions to collect magical ingredients in order to open the doorway to the evil dragon’s layer, in hopes of rescuing his daughter. It’s a simple story, but it works perfectly for a game like this. Additionally, the game has two endings, labeled “good ending” and “bad ending.” So they did put more effort into the story than I would have expected for a game like this. I should note that you choose to play in English, Spanish, or Japanese.

The audio experience in Farmer is pretty solid. It has a nice chiptune soundtrack with a different song for each world, plus some gentle, yet effective, ambient music at the title screen. Each world has its own track that gets a bit more intense than the last one. The sound effects are good too. There are sounds for collecting, jumping, scoring points, dying, and even walking. But what I really appreciate is that the walking sound effects are very subtle, so they don’t become annoying. The menu navigation sound effects are great as well. A lot more effort was put into them than I would have expected. I think the music is a bit too loud at the default setting, even in handheld mode, but you can set the music and sound effects levels by hand from 0 – 100 in 10-point intervals. Both sound settings default to 80. That’s fine for the sound effects, but you could probably lower the music to 60 for a better audio mix.

The core gameplay is pretty stand, and it works fine. If you read my Super Spy Raccoon review, which was also published by Flynn’s Arcade, it’s pretty much the same at the foundational level. The levels take place within a fixed 2D space the starts and ends on the screen in all four directions. Each level has a slightly different layout, based around Freddy’s ability to jump. That is the only thing he can do, and there are no enhancements to that ability within the game. This is a game about strategic collecting by avoiding enemies. You cannot fight or kill enemies. Your only means of dealing with them is to avoid them, run from them, or jump over them where possible. However, many enemies are too tall to jump over. Some levels also have the Pac-Man path transitions where when you go off screen in one direction you appear on the other side of the screen at a specific gateway point. And yes, enemies can make use of these gateways as well.

All you have to do to complete a stage is collect all five collectibles and then reach the cauldron. While there is a points bonus and story reason for why you should collect the items in a specific order, the game will let you progress for managing to collect all five items in any order. Each stage has a 3-minute timer. If you fail to collect all the items and reach the cauldron before time runs out, you’ll lose a life. When you lose a life, for any reason, you respawn at the start of the stage, but you get to keep all the items you’ve already collected. In the normal difficulty, each world consists of five stages. You must clear all five stages with three lives, plus any extra lives you manage to grab. Failure to do so will cause you to have to restart the entire world. But if you use a continue, which are unlimited, you get to keep your progress of any other successfully completed worlds. That’s worlds not levels within them.

It’s really nice that you can play the worlds in any order you want. You can choose them at your discretion from the map screen. And you can quit levels and return to the map to try other worlds at any time, but your progress for the world you were in will be lost. And your lives will not regenerate. Only getting a game over and using a continue will do that. While it might make sense to do them in order, there is a good chance that you will get stuck on at least one of them. Each world uses the same core gameplay, but they have different qualities that can affect your gameplay performance. While the first world, ‘The Forest,’ is without a doubt the easiest world, the other four are harder to put in order from least to most difficult. Enemy types vary by world and have different abilities which may or may not hinder your progress. Some enemies can attack from a distance. Some follow you. Some can’t be jumped over. Some can fly or climb ladders. Some will wait for you at the bottom of ladders. The ability to try other worlds instead of just being perpetually stuck at the same one is quite a relief. Because honestly this game is a bit harder than it should be.

While the core gameplay is easy to understand, I have my fair share of complaints about the overall execution. It’s way too easy to get trapped in a dead end. Three lives isn’t really enough to deal with five stages that have so many easy ways to get killed layered on top of each other, for the casual player. You should be able to drop down platforms, like in most 2D platformers. Your jump height should not be restricted by platforms above you, for the same reasons. And ladders are annoying, because you can’t stop on them and you often get stuck trying to climb them, which wouldn’t be so important if you weren’t constantly barely avoiding touching enemies, and/or the things they throw. It’s single hit deaths with no way to destroy enemies. But honestly, the biggest issue is the continues. If they had made it so that using a continue keeps you on your current stage, I’d probably have no complaints. The game would still be challenging, but not to the point of being annoying. That one change would make this game way more accessible to more players.

As it is now, only people who really care and don’t mind being frustrated by having to replay the same five levels over and over again will be able to finish this game in its entirety. And the items move locations in the stages with each continue. In fact, some of the collectibles are alive and will run away from you while you’re already trying to avoid enemies. You also can’t save and quit. I think the overall gameplay is solid, but making a few QoL tweaks could make it a much better game for a much larger group of potential players.

Farmer has a surprising amount of replay value. On top of the normal difficulty, which consists of 25 stages plus a final boss fight, there are also “hard” and “mirrored” difficulties, which can be unlocked by beating the normal difficulty. The hard difficulty adds two additional stages to each world, for a total of 35 stages plus a final boss fight. There are also 35 in-game achievements and five mini-games to unlock. And again, there are two different endings. Plus, there’s an online leaderboard for high scores, if you care about that sort of thing.

While I do think the $5 price tag is fair for this one, I think the lack of being able to save your progress or continue from the stage you died in makes this game a questionable purchase. It’s fun. But it’s not fun enough to justify the amount of frustration and wasted time most people will spend with such an unforgiving continue system and the lack of ability to save across multiple play sessions. Technically speaking, the game is built to take you a maximum of about 80 minutes on the normal difficulty. But the chances of never getting a game over in a single run is very low; and that wouldn’t be a problem if it didn’t mean having to then replay an entire world again. If this game had saving, it would be much better. And if you could continue at the stage you got a game over on, it would be even better than that.

Overall, I liked Freddy Farmer, but I can’t say I loved it, given the lacking QoL features. It feels like they made a really good game that was simple, fun, and not too long, but then they wanted to pad it out, so they chose to make it more irritating to play. Ultimately, this is going to be the experience for a majority of players. You will start the game and take an interest in the story. The opening cutscene, which is skippable, isn’t too long and does a great job of filling you in quickly. Then you’ll play the first world and get one or two game overs while trying to figure out how things work; and that will be fine. It won’t frustrate you much at all. Then you’ll beat the first world and feel really great about the idea of beating the rest of the game. This is where things will start to go downhill. You’ll try the second world and get a ways in. Probably to stage three or four. Then you’ll get a game over. This will irritate you, but not frustrate you. You’ll use a continue and try world two again. You might end up beating it, but you probably won’t. After several failed attempts, you’ll decide to try world three and come back to world two later. A similar thing will happen, eventually pushing you to world four and then five. In the long run, you’ll find yourself back to world two with lots of time wasted but literally no progress made.

At this point, you’ll start to question if the game is really worth the hassle. You’ve already tried all the worlds, except the final boss fight, because it’s locked until you beat the five worlds. You might try world two a few more times, but eventually you’ll decide that it’s more trouble than it’s worth to beat a game that’s meant to be short and sold at such a casual price point. You’ll eat at the $5 and probably never pick it up again, because of the bad taste the back to back game overs with no progress made left in your mouth. And that could all be fixed with the simple change of having continues apply to stages instead of worlds. It a shame to see this in a game that gets basically everything else right. Ultimately, I give Freddy Farmer a final score of 7/10, because it’s objectively well made, even if it’s not perfect. But sadly, I can’t recommend that you buy it with its current continue system. If you are interested, you can find Freddy Farmer on both Nintendo Switch and Steam. But note that the Steam version doesn’t release until March, while the Switch version drops this week.

Telebbit is an indie title from IKINAGAMES that I came across during Taipei Game Show this year, when I met the publisher, HYPER REAL. Let me start by thanking them for providing the key for this review. While this game is described as “a fast-paced action platformer,” I actually think it’s more informative to describe it as “a lightning-paced puzzle platformer.” The truth is that while there is a small amount of combat in this game, it’s the puzzles, and your execution of them, that will have you stuck. Note that I played the Switch version of this game, but I have also played the demo build on Steam.

This is a 2D side-scroller with a graphics style that looks like it’s trying to emulate Super Metroid (1994). While that style does work for this game quite well, it does admittedly have a bit of a cheap quality to it, because the environments aren’t nearly as detailed as those of Super Metroid. Other than in a few world-building set piece areas, it’s a very bare bones visual experience. That said, I think it really works for the gameplay. Because of how fast paced and difficult the levels are, the less visual distractions you have, the better. My only real complaint about the graphics is the color palettes chosen in later areas.

The bulk of the level design across all stages is comprised of two types of surfaces. The game describes them as “even” and “uneven” surfaces. The important thing about them is that you can teleport, which I’ll go into more later, to even surfaces, but not uneven ones. What this means is that it’s very important to be able to differentiate between the two types of surfaces while moving at breakneck speeds. In the first region of the game, the color contrast between these two types of surfaces is very pronounced. Uneven surfaces are dark blue, and even surfaces are white. Most importantly, the edges of them do not blend together in your peripheral vision. In the second region, the white surfaces are replaced with a shade of grey that’s still very distinct from the blue unteleportable surfaces. But once you reach the third region, the color scheme changes to two closer shades of green. To be clear, the two greens are distinct when looking at them head on from a static position. But when you’re actually maneuvering through the levels at the standard pace of the game, the edges of those surfaces start to blend together. Which is really a problem for a game that requires such tight levels of precision to succeed.

All the dialog is done through text boxes, which use a very readable, but also very stereotypically retro looking font. Most of the text is white, but sometimes different colors are used in dialog to emphasize certain things, such as the names of bosses. The in-game menus are very simple. Like the rest of the game, there’s little in the way of superfluous design elements. You have an extremely simple map, which only shows you the number of rooms in the specific area you’re in, which rooms have collectibles, and the name of the specific area. The weapon tab shows you your current upgrades, which are all story-based and can’t be customized, and a sketch of what the weapon looks like. I do think it’s cool that the game takes the time to highlight the specific elements of your weapon upgrades as you scroll through them in the text list on the same page.

The pause menu is pretty uninspired. Rather than appear over your current gameplay screen, it uses a static image of the hub world area with three text options. If you choose the settings option, the background remains the same, but a new list of options appears. In my opinion, the settings menu is too simple. It lacks elements that forced me to test things to be sure of them. For instance, you can set the volume levels of background music (BGM) and sound effects (SE) separately with lines of 10 dots. This means that the setting for volume goes from 0 – 9, rather than the standard 0/off to 10. It’s an easy thing to test, but it wasn’t immediately clear to me if the first dot meant off or lowest volume, given that there are only 10 dots, when 10 is usually the highest volume setting in games. And since the menus aren’t dynamically reactive, you actually have to confirm the volume level change before you can verify the changes made in the menu. Interestingly, the default setting for BGM is the fifth dot, and the default setting for sound effects is the ninth dot. I haven’t felt the need to change these defaults during my playthrough, as they’re mixed very well, but the music can get pretty loud in general.

While the graphics in Telebbit are very simplistic overall, I do want to acknowledge that they have made some really cool effects with the art style. Specifically with deaths. When characters die, both the player and organic enemies, the game leaves a very colorful blood splatter. In gameplay, this helps you to see your progress in your last attempt to clear a level. But in cutscenes, this just looks really badass in the context of what’s happening in the story. For example, the main character blows an enemy apart from the inside, leaving an epic splatter of tie dye colors in his wake. While I won’t say the graphics are impressive overall, I don’t think they hinder the gameplay experience enough to make a huge fuss about it.

I should note that this game runs very well. Even on the Switch, there’s no lag. And this game runs fast. The gameplay and respawns are all instant, with no pauses or loading between them. Play never stops, unless you want it to, whether you’re succeeding or dying. And that really helps with making the gameplay experience work. If you had to do a reload every time you died, you’d probably give up before reaching the end of the first world, because it would absolutely ruin the pace of the gameplay, which is very much built around the idea of leveraging muscle memory.

The overall audio experience in Telebbit is way better than I would have expected, given the simplistic visuals. For starters, the music is top notch. The entire soundtrack is really good hardcore techno beats that compliment the gameplay perfectly. This is a fast-paced game set in a cyberpunk dystopian setting; and the music really brings that point home. And it starts as soon as you load up the game. Before you’ve even pressed start at the title screen, you’re in the thick of it audio wise. Each of the game’s regions has its own epic track. However, if you go to the hub world, which is meant to be a place to relax and take a break, you instead get very soft ambient music that you almost won’t notice, given how gentle it is compared to the music in levels. Also, the music gets more intense as you progress through the game, with each track being more pulse-pounding than the last; and this compliments the events of the story very well. I would absolutely listen to this soundtrack while working out or even playing other games. Frankly, I’m surprised they didn’t offer the soundtrack as a separate DLC purchase, like a lot of indie games do these days.

As for the sound effects, they’re equally good. Teleporting, jumping, killing, dying, shooting lasers, grabbing collectibles, and everything else all have really specific effective sounds to go with them. Put another way, everything sounds the way it should. The only thing that there isn’t an effect for is walking, which I think is fine for the gameplay that has been designed here. With the large number of deaths you incur while playing, I would have expected to get tired of the sound effects, but I think the music kept that from happening, because of how well it’s all mixed. Overall, I give Telebbit full marks for sound.

Most games in this genre have a story, but the writing is often not handled with the level of seriousness that it should be. And this has been true going all the way back to games like Contra (1987). There is a story there. But the only text you get in the entire game, if memory serves me right, is at the very end. If you manage to beat the game, you get three lines of text, two of which are about congratulating the player rather than any actual plot. Plus, the stages have names that add context to the settings used. Not so with Telebbit. Let me be clear, this is not Cyberpunk 2077. You won’t be hanging on the edge of your seat for the story beats in this game. But there is a full story with major plot points, more than one subplot, and interesting character development.

Telebbit tells the story of a dystopian future where a fascist regime uses force and scientific advancement to control the population, stamping out any dissent from among the rank and file labor force. A major part of their science program makes use of animal testing to develop new weapons. One of these weapons was a teleportation device that would allow users to travel shorter distances in an instant. One of their animal test subjects, a rabbit, survives the tests and manages to break out of its cage, having developed a nearly human level of intelligence. Hell-bent on revenge for the many animals that have been tortured and killed in these experiments, this rabbit decides to use this weapon to reach and kill the evil scientist that oversees this research. What is most interesting is that this rabbit is not a hero. While he does claim to be a revolutionary, he is very aware that he must do terrible things to liberate his animal comrades and accepts that he must become a monster to achieve his goals, even stating outright that he has given up hope of ending up in heaven.

I must admit that I went into this game with zero expectations about the story. I would not have been surprised to find that there was only a few lines of text for background at the beginning of the game followed by continuous gameplay through to the end. But Telebbit takes its story seriously. There are cutscenes, NPCs with changing dialog as you progress through the stages, character deaths (not just enemies), and a fair amount of world-building dialog that doesn’t directly affect the main character’s story. If you manage to get that far, you will care about the plot by the time you reach the end of the game. That said, this game is so difficult that you probably won’t get that far; and that’s the true shame of this game.

Telebbit’s gameplay is built around a very simple concept that I absolutely adore and knew that I would after watching the Steam trailer. Puzzle platforming built around the concept of real time instant teleporting. This is a game for people who love things like Portal (2007), Magrunner: Dark Pulse (2013), and to a lesser extent Ghostrunner (2020), but in 2D. I honestly don’t play this genre in 2D much anymore, because there’s just so much shovelware released in this space, but Telebbit is definitely not shovelware. The problem is that it’s not worth your time if you’re looking for anything less than a hardcore gameplay experience. This gameplay is hard. It’s not just challenging. It’s very, very hard. And misleadingly so at that. The first region, which you get a sample of in the free demo, is very accessible. It lulls you into a false sense of confidence. But by the halfway point of the second region, you’ll be wanting to tear your hair out.

On paper, the gameplay is quite simple. You have a very basic teleportation mechanic that lets you travel instantly in straight lines to specific surfaces. These surfaces can be facing any direction, but gravity will take effect after you’ve teleported. So, if you teleport to a vertical surface, such as a wall, you will fall downwards after teleporting. If you teleport to a horizontal surface above you, you will fall downwards after teleporting. You can aim your teleporter up, down, left, or right. You can teleport from either a standing or mid-air position at any time, provided you have aimed your teleporter at a valid surface. Finally, you cannot aim downwards from a standing position. Meaning that you must jump before teleporting to a surface below you. That’s the basic gist. But there are so many additional mechanics that the game adds as you progress, coupled with some truly insane ways to make use of teleporting.

Teleporting is not infinite, but it can be used up to five times without having to reset it by coming to a resting position. Five times is fine. There are very few moments where the issue for you will be not enough teleports in a single obstacle. The issue you will face is figuring out how to use those teleports, as in where and when to aim them, coupled with executing the commands you want to after figuring out what you’re supposed to be doing. Playing this game reminded me a lot of Guitar Hero (2005). Specifically, when you decided to move up from the four-button difficulty to the five-button difficulty. You know what you want your hands to do, but your fingers, specifically your pinky in the case of Guitar Hero, just won’t get with the program. When you’re playing Telebbit, you will struggle with trying to figure out what to do for no more than a few minutes per stage. But your hands will struggle with executing the required commands for a much longer period of time, in a great many cases.

The thing that makes Telebbit so difficult is the required level of precision to complete the stages. There are many obstacles that require long chains of commands with no margin for error in terms of timing, direction, order, and aim. You don’t just have to do things quickly, you have to do things in rapid succession without missing the intended target. And often, you miss by very miniscule amounts of distance. And that’s ignoring the fact that sometimes you want to aim left but you end up aiming right, because you’re either getting ahead of yourself or you’ve lost control of your fingers altogether. I can only play this game with a proper controller. Even with the joy-cons, I felt like I couldn’t be accurate and fast enough to succeed by the time I reached the third region. You need mouse precision, but you also need controller movement. Honestly, I think the game needs a bit of grace. That could take place in different forms, but currently it’s not a game anyone other than the most dedicated or seasoned players of the genre will be able to complete in any sort of reasonable amount of time. I happen to like this genre, and have since my childhood, but even I finally gave up on completing it after dying in the same stage more than 50 times with little in the way of progress being made. I was getting stuck as early as the second region and thinking that I wouldn’t ever be able to pass some of those obstacles. Ultimately, I gave up a little over halfway into region three, after four hours of total play.

A major reason for why this game is so difficult is the speed at which you’re expected to do things. The puzzles are not just fast-paced, they’re faith-paced. What I mean by that is there are some puzzles that require such a fast sequence of movements that your hands literally can’t keep up with your eyes trying to process what’s on screen quickly enough to then react to what you’re seeing. You basically have to figure out what the order you need to do something is and then just execute it with the belief that it will work correctly. And it does work, when you have the correct solution, but it’s still very annoying to have to play based on the belief that something is being done correctly rather than the ability to actually see it happening in real time. There are puzzles where only by watching a replay of what I did in slow motion could I truly appreciate just how complicated the sequence of movements really was. Honestly, I don’t think that level of difficulty should be considered good game design, because it’s very inaccessible to anyone who struggles with outside the box thinking. But it’s certainly not broken in its execution.

If the game wasn’t hard enough already, there’s also optional collectibles scattered throughout the stages. I made it a point to try to get all of them, but I finally gave up at about the same time I decided to quit playing the game. You cannot use teleportation to grab them; and if you die after grabbing them, you have to get them again. They only count as collected if you manage to grab them and complete the stage in the same run. Yes, you can replay stages.

While Telebbit is quite difficult, it has a very good save/continue system. You have unlimited lives. You can checkpoint up to three different locations and move freely between them, via the hub world, at any time, and you can replay any previously completed regions whenever you want. That said, you cannot use the hub world to reach specific rooms within regions. Only manual checkpoints can be used for this. Meaning that if you missed a collectible on the fifth room of the second area of the fourth region, you will not be able to return to that room, without having set one of your three manual checkpoints there, without re-beating the first four rooms of that area.

One of the first upgrades you get is the ability to shoot a laser. However, your use of this is very limited. You must collect energy, by either destroying robots or touching energy generators. You can only hold up to two laser charges at a time. Like all the upgrades the game has, lasers add new components of movement to the gameplay, allowing for puzzles that are highly difficult in a diverse combination of ways. Each region adds new components to the gameplay, constantly pushing your limits to even higher, more frustrating levels. And all of this would be great if it wasn’t difficult to the point of being off-putting to players.

Finally, there are boss fights. At the end of each region, you use your teleportation skills and upgrades to kill a boss by using your laser to destroy its life bar. Bosses seem to always have four hits worth of HP. These fights are the only time the player is given a life bar, which also allows you to take damage four times before dying. The rest of the game is instant death when you take any damage. I was very impressed with how IKINAGAMES managed to use the teleportation and accompanying mechanics to create a pretty diverse collection of boss fight experiences, from the two I managed to reach. The second boss feels almost entirely different from the first. Sadly, the gap in difficulty between them is quite large as well. It’s a major spike that I was not happy with, even though the second boss didn’t actually take me that long to defeat. But it’s another example of making the game highly inaccessible to a large number of casual players.

Overall, the gameplay works quite well, performance wise. It doesn’t have any bugs or lag or other objective flaws. While I often felt like the game wasn’t responding the way I wanted, this always felt more like it was user error rather than a performance problem with the game. The major problem with Telebbit’s gameplay is that it just doesn’t feel like it was designed with the player in mind. It feels like designing levels that were difficult but technically possible was the goal, rather than designing levels that made the player feel enjoyment while playing them. And that does suck. It’s not a design philosophy conducive to making a game people enjoy. Kind of like when a movie is objectively well-made, and maybe even worth watching, but it’s not entertaining.

Assuming you don’t skip the collectibles in your first run, there’s not a ton of replay value in Telebbit. If you manage to even get that far. And there’s only eight collectibles per region, save for the first region, which only has four. So, you won’t have to spend time in every stage trying to grab them, if you care about them at all. For the most part, obstacles only have one solution to get past them. And once you do manage to get past them, you don’t really want to do it again. This game always leaves me feeling very similar to how I did when I finished Celeste (2018) after play sessions. I was proud of myself for having completed it, but I would never ever want to replay it for a second time. It’s just too difficult and too frustrating. There is a time trial mode, but I don’t really see the value in redoing the exact same thing with the added stress of a timer.

It’s hard to even try to quantify how long it will take you to beat a single playthrough of Telebbit. As far as the number of stages is concerned, I haven’t managed to finish the game, but there seems to be a total of six regions with two areas of stages each. The number of stages in each area varies. But there are always more than 10 rooms in an area, from what I’ve seen in the first three regions. So, that’s a minimum of more than 120 stages. Rooms only take a couple minutes to beat, in a successful run. But the number of attempts it will take you to clear each room is impossible to estimate. Some rooms took me a couple tries. Others took me tens of tries to barely make it through. I finished the first region in almost exactly an hour. After more than three hours, I still hadn’t completed the first area of the third region.

I can see this game taking more than 10 hours, but the current $10 price tag feels a bit too high for this one. The Taiwan Steam price of $5.68 seems about where this game should be. But honestly, it feels like a waste of money for most players, because you’re probably not going to finish it. It needs a major QoL update, like Celeste did eventually add, to make the gameplay more accessible. I should acknowledge that there is this mechanic to temporarily slow down the game to 0.5 speed, but it’s very short and not particularly helpful in the way it’s implemented. Really, the game needs a permanent 0.5 option in the settings menu.

Overall, I was very impressed with this game. It gets most things right and the things it gets wrong are subjective in nature. However, it’s definitely not a game for everyone, because it’s just going to be too hard for a large number of players. If you are not looking to commit, I highly doubt that you will be able to beat this game. It’s OK to design games like that, but it also relegates the game to a very niche group of players. Again, the demo is very misleading. It was the demo that ultimately made me want to review this game, but it absolutely did not prepare me for the level of difficulty required to actually beat it. So, if you are hardcore for this genre, I highly recommend it. If you’re not that into this genre, you should definitely pass, or at least wait for a hefty discount, because you absolutely will not get the most out of your purchase. I struggled a lot with choosing my final score for this game, because I do really like it on paper, and I don’t think there are objective flaws in the final product. But it’s difficult to the point of not being fun. For a game of this size and scope, it should not be giving a person who plays games as much as I do Dark Souls level frustration. Sadly, I hesitantly give Telebbit a final score of 6.8/10.

First, I stopped calling these “Micro-Reviews,” because the posts aren’t actually shorter than my normal game reviews. So from now on I’ll just call them Retro Reviews. It’s been a minute since my last classic Final Fantasy review. I published my review of FFIV back in October. It’s not that I haven’t been playing FFV. It’s that it took me that long to beat it. One of the things I’ve praised FF I – IV for is how much they respected my time. I was able to clear all of them in under 25 hours, even with some padded grinding in FFIII and FFIV. But FFV took me just north of 41 hours to complete. Honestly, this is the first game in the series that has felt more in line with the modern JRPG that Square Enix was instrumental in developing the model for.

While a little grinding here or there occasionally occurred in the first four games in the series, FFV is all about grinding. It’s basically a requirement to beat this game. Especially if you plan to do the extra stuff, like get all the summons and beat all the optional bosses. I read somewhere that FFV has more than 50 bosses. I didn’t even beat them all and I still spent about double the time it took me to beat any of the previous games to beat this one.

I think it’s important to note that while grinding is a key component of this game, which I’ll touch on more later, there are actually multiple justifiable reasons for why this game is so much longer than its predecessors. For starters, there are way more dungeons you need to visit and sometimes revisit in FFV. In more than one of the past games, you end up traveling to a second world. Sometimes, it’s the moon or a floating continent and so on, but from a level design standpoint it’s a second map. More often than not, this second map is pretty simple compared to the first one. In this game, the second map is just as detailed as the first, in terms of accessible locations. On top of that, the first and second maps end up merging later in the game and then adding additional locations to that new map as well. So, there’s just a lot more places to go and dungeons to crawl.

Another reason FFV is so much longer is the writing. The first four Final Fantasy games do a decent amount of character development for the main character, occasionally the villain, and sometimes one or two other party members to help compliment the main character. FFV develops way more characters over the course of the narrative. Not only do all four party members get way more character development, but also several NPCs. The villain gets so much character development that you could literally pitch a second game as a prequel to this one and you’d already have the groundwork and principal characters ready to go. Even some of the creatures in this game got a ton of character development, and they didn’t even have any human dialog. While it made the game considerably longer, it also made it considerably better than the previous titles, from a storytelling standpoint. I care a lot more about the characters from this game than most of the ones from the first four games. And that’s because the game took the time to help me get to know them much better.

While still pixel graphics, as the name of the collection suggests, the graphics in FFV are considerably better than those of the previous four games. Even the ending credits were a straight up flex from Square Enix at the time of original production. I would watch an animated series done in the art style of FFV’s credits. But the whole game just looks way better and more detailed. Early on, there’s a sequence where the characters washed up on a beach, and I was stunned by the water. I literally stopped just to admire how good it looked, while still being done in pixel graphics. Character faces, including those of NPCs, are way more expressive in this one. So much of the storytelling and character development is done visually rather than text in FFV, and it considerably improves the narrative experience. The same can be said for much of the game’s humor. While combat still looks much the same, they did step up the visuals for magic and summons. And since summoning was such a huge part of this game, you really notice the graphical improvements that have been made here.

The audio experience has only improved with each game. That said, I tend to play these games while listening to music on the subway, so I’m admittedly not getting the full audio experience with these classic FF titles. The little bit of music I took the time to listen to in this one was quite good, as is to be expected from this franchise.

If you read my FFIII review, then you know I gate the jobs system. FFV brings back the jobs system again. It’s still annoying, but it has been considerably reworked and improved since FFIII. The jobs system in FFV is a little convoluted, but it’s not too difficult to understand. Basically, while character levels exist in FFV, it’s actually job levels that really matter. There are 22 jobs in this game. 21 of them have their own individual levels that are specific to the character using them, and they all start at 0. What this means is that you have to level up each character individually for each job you want them to unlock new abilities for. Specific abilities are tied to certain job levels, regardless of which character is using the job.

The easiest way to explain this is with the Blue Mage job. Blue magic is interesting in this game because it represents spells that have been learned from enemies throughout the game. Anyone with the “Learn” ability equipped can learn any blue magic spell that has been used on them. Once a blue magic spell is learned, any party member using the Blue Mage job or Blue Magic ability can cast the spell. To acquire the Learn ability, one must reach Blue Mage level 2. You don’t level up jobs with XP. XP only applies to basic character stats. Jobs are leveled up with ABP. This is basically a new form of XP that applies specifically to job levels and accumulates way slower than it has any right to. ABP is determined by the enemies you defeat. Encounters are all over the place with some giving you 0 ABP for victory and others as much as 20. Or at least 20 was the largest single ABP drop amount I remember seeing. It’s especially annoying how many bosses don’t drop any ABP. Blue Mage level 2 requires a total of 30 ABP to reach. Meaning that if you want multiple party members to unlock the Learn ability then you have to accumulate 30 ABP with each of them, while they currently have the Blue Mage job activated. Sadly, ABP cannot be shared or distributed to different party members or inactive jobs.

The important thing about jobs is abilities. Each job, save for Freelancer, which has no levels, has special abilities that you can then equip without having the job active. While every job, again save for Freelancer, has a fixed ability in your first ability slot, you can equip any unlocked ability in the second ability slot. Again, each character only has access to the abilities they’ve personally unlocked. As Freelancers have no fixed abilities, using that job allows you to equip two abilities of your choosing and equip whatever weapons you want. This is important, because every other job has equipment limitations, as has been the case for all the previous games, save for FFII.

FFV’s jobs system allows you to create some dastardly combinations, if you’re willing to put in the grind time to unlock the required abilities. For example, by the end of the game, one of my characters had Black Magic Level 6 in their first ability slot, Dualcast in their second ability slot, and wore Hermes Sandals (haste ring), a high damage sword, and an ice shield. This character was not a physical attacker, but they could be if I needed them to in specific situations. Black Magic Level 6 allows a character to cast high level magic, such as Firaga, Flare, and Osmose. Dualcast allows a character to cast two spells in the same turn. It does not have to be the same spell. This meant that I could spam Dualcast and use Osmose to siphon MP from an enemy in the same turn that I cast heavier magic spells. Specifically, I would default to Firaga for groups and Flare for solo enemies. By the end of the game, this character was doing the bulk of my damage. The ability to steal MP and attack entire groups in the same turn meant a never-ending supply of high-level spells while dawning great armor to whether attacks. However, getting to the point where I could use such an effective character build required me to reach Red Mage Level 4 and Black Mage Level 6 with the same character, requiring a total of 1,439 ABP. And that’s on top of the other job levels I needed to acquire for other abilities that were necessary along the way to the end of the game. That’s a lot of grinding.

I did more grinding in this game than I have for any of the previous Pixel Remaster Collection titles. And the grinding was intentional at multiple points throughout the game. I needed certain abilities at certain times to progress. While a lot of the grinding was also organic, because the game just is that long, I absolutely had to spend time getting that ABP. I can honestly say that I never once worried about my XP leveling from start to finish in FFV. It never even occurred to me to think about it. I beat the game at level 43, but I couldn’t say if that matters or not. What I can say is that my job levels were instrumental in my success. I beat the boss of the game on the first try. I don’t know if I was over leveled, under leveled, or right where I was supposed to be. But I can say that it was my ability to double cast Flare every turn of the first phase and Firaga every turn of the second phase that made that victory possible.

The thing about the jobs system that I found most irritating was that you only have two ability slots. If you were given three for each character, I probably would have considered it a perfect system. It’s very annoying to have to continuously swap back and forth between abilities, or even jobs in the early stages of the game, between battles to do things like heal. For example, only Black Mages can cast Osmose, for some stupid reason. Which means only Black Mages can generate additional MP without using items or resting at inns. But only White Mages can use healing magic. So I ended up unlocking Dualcast, Black Magic Level 6, and White Magic Level 6 all for the same character. They would fight having Black Magic Level 6 and Dualcast equipped, but they needed to have White Magic Level 6 active in order to heal the team. And since only Black Magic Level 6 users can use Osmose, it only made sense to have them heal, as they could keep generating more MP while in dungeons. So every time I needed to heal, which could sometimes be after every battle, I had to go to the ability menu, swap the Black Magic Level 6 ability for the White Magic Level 6 ability, navigate to the magic menu, cast whatever healing spells I needed to use, navigate back to the ability menu, swap White Magic Level 6 back out for Black Magic Level 6, save, and then continue on my way. If you could just equip three abilities, it genuinely would have saved me hours of total time by the end of the game.

Another aspect of the jobs system that is annoying, but also might be intentional, is that it forces you to constantly avoid committing to a build that works for you. Jobs have max levels. Meaning that once you’ve reached the max level of a job any additional ABP you acquire is wasted, because that ABP could have gone to a different job. Since you can’t distribute ABP, even after a job has been mastered, I often found myself pushing my builds into odd directions, just to not waste any ABP. This also meant that I had to keep checking a guide to see what abilities different classes offered. Because some abilities were absolutely useless to me, so grinding those jobs would have been pointless. It’s also really annoying how many jobs are basically useless save for a single ability that you don’t unlock until hitting the max level for that job. Ranger is a great example of this. It’s an archery job that has basically no useful benefits while using it. However, if you max it out you get the Rapid Fire ability; and that’s a top tier ability, when used with a different physical damage job. In my case, I used it with a Knight wielding a Blood Sword. Rapid Fire lets you do four consecutive basic attacks in one turn. The Blood Sword siphons HP from enemies based on the damage dealt. This meant that every turn I could heal that character for the equivalent of four attacks worth of damage. And by combining it with the “Two-handed” ability via the Freelancer job, this meant double the damage for every attack, which in turn meant double the HP stolen from enemies multiplied by four per turn. But that meant accumulating 820 ABP just to unlock that one ability; and that really sucked, because the Ranger job is terrible.

One major issue I noticed about FFV in comparison to the previous games is that it’s way stingier about money. By the end of an FF, you’re usually swimming in Gil. Before heading off to the final dungeon, it’s customary to blow thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, to buy whatever gear and items you want. FFV is great in the fact that you really can buy just about whatever gear and items you want, save for legendary weapons and a few one of a kind/super rare items. But it’s terrible in terms of the price of things and your speed of accumulating money. For example, you can buy as many elixirs as you want. But they cost 50,000 Gil each. And that’s not chump change in this game, until you actually reach the point of no return and can’t access shops anymore. Thankfully, elixirs can easily be acquired from enemies, especially if you unlock some Thief job abilities, so I went into the final boss with 30 of them ready. But in general, the economics in FFV suck. It was the least JRPG feeling thing about the game.

The last thing I think is really worth mentioning about this installment of the series is all the bonus content. The previous games did have the occasional extra boss, optional summon, or bonus dungeon, but FFV had all of it in large quantities. I was depressed to learn that I missed one of the summons, but there were so many great ones that I probably wouldn’t have even wanted to use the one I missed. There were 12 legendary weapons that required you to complete multiple optional dungeons to obtain. I acquired them all. Truly, this is the first game in the series that feels more in line with a modern JRPG. Or at least a modern turn-based JRPG anyway.

I really liked FFV. While I don’t like the jobs system in general, this game handled it better than any of the previous games that featured it. It also upped the bar for storytelling, graphics, and even replay value. It had enough bonus content to rival the lengths of entire previous installments in the franchise. Whether I prefer FFV or not to previous Final Fantasy titles, it’s objectively a superior game compared to FFI – FFIV. It’s the best of the Pixel Remaster Collection so far. I said this about FFIV as well, which means the franchise is improving with each sequel, not counting FFIII, which I truly hated. I can say that I’m really looking forward to playing FFVI, given how impressed I am with FFV. As per usual, I’m going to rank all the mainline Final Fantasy games I’ve beaten as I continue to progress through them. As of right now, here’s my current ranking.

1. FFX

2. FFV

3. FFXII

4. FFIV

5. FFII

6. FFI

7. FFVII

8. FFXIII

9. FFIII

10. FXV

Heroes of the Seven Islands (H7I) is a turn-based RPG from one-man development team, Rap2h. Thank you to him for providing me an early access key for the demo. The best way I can describe this game is that it’s a streamlined version of the classic JRPG. If you took any of the first three or so Final Fantasy or Dragon Quest titles, distilled them down to their core mechanics, and produced them with hand drawn art, that would essentially give you an idea of what H7I is.

As I said, the art style has a hand drawn feel to it. I would not be surprised to learn that the elements were all produced on a Wacom drawing tablet. This is not meant to be a criticism, as I think the art style works very well for the experience Rap2h is going for. I do think that the text font used for everything is a bit too casual for a video game, but it’s highly readable and works well in multiple colors, so I won’t say that it doesn’t get the job done. It’s just that it makes the game feel a bit cheap. But it does work with the hand drawn aesthetic of the art style very well.

What I find interesting about this game’s visual design is that it’s not trying to mask what the experience is. It feels very much like you’re playing a table-top RPG in that the gameplay window isn’t a landscape or map area with a HUD built over it, like with most games. Instead, the landscape is a section of the screen, in the top left corner, with different static HUD elements placed around it. There are also many text-based prompts that appear above and on the landscape area for various occurrences. My point is that the graphics, for lack of a better term here, aren’t the most important part of the gameplay in H7I. They’re a piece of it. And it’s barely a majority piece, as that portion of the screen is only about 40% of the gameplay window.

Below what I guess I’ll refer to as the map area is your party list. Each of your four characters has their own permanent section of the screen complete with an avatar, HP bar, MP bar, name, and class. To the right of the map area, you’ll find the info hub and menu. At the top, you can always see your current location, your reputation in that location, the day count, and the hour count. Below that, you can access seven menu screens that will appear in the map area when clicked: statistics, inventory, spellbook, map, rest, quests, and menu. Finally, in the bottom right corner of the screen, you’ll find your total gold, food rations, and XP. During combat, the screen stays the same, but the right-side menu changes to a slightly different list of options. Specifically, map changes to attack, rest changes to prayer (if you have a healer), and quests changes to run away.

The final thing I’ll say about the graphics is that there’s a great deal of variety. You can choose the avatars for your characters, as an example. There are so many different avatar options that I lost count. As race doesn’t play a factor in the gameplay, you can choose from a long list of species for strictly cosmetic reasons. This includes many different types of animals, dinosaurs, insects, and probably other things I missed. In general, assets aren’t being reused a ton in this game, save for enemies, which are region/island specific.

As for the sound, it’s basically all ambient music and a sparing amount of sound effects. While some of the ambient music is pretty solid, overall H7I delivers a pretty lackluster audio experience. Given the 2D art style and miniscule levels of graphical movement, audio would have been very helpful in bringing this game to life. A narrator, a la Baldur’s Gate III, would have been perfect to help improve the atmosphere of the experience. Sound effects should play a much bigger role in this game than they do. While playing it, I was reminded of the Voice of Cards series. It’s also a turn-based JRPG with mostly static elements and a lot of numbers management. But that game leverages sound heavily to bring the cards to life. While I did like more than one of the music tracks I encountered while playing, it’s just not enough to satisfy the game’s lacking audio elements. You do have full audio volume control with separate bars for music and effects, each set at 8/10 as the default setting. I think the mixing is good, even if the overall audio experience is forgettable.

I was very happy with the storytelling I encountered in this demo. I was only given access to two of the seven islands your party is charged with exploring, but that was enough to show me that the writing is one of the strongest aspects of H7I’s entertainment value. It’s done in a way that’s easy to digest, ironic, and silly but not stupid. As soon as the game starts, you’re told exactly why you’re playing the game. An evil entity from another dimension is destroying the land and your party of heroes must travel across the region to acquire the keys needed to unlock the means to stop this evil. It’s a classic fantasy story. The keys are all held by the kings of the region’s seven islands. You must travel to each island and convince the king to give you his key. Usually, this is done by completing a quest for the king in exchange for the key.

The writing shines with the character interactions. For example, one king told me to go rescue his daughter from a pack of goblins that kidnapped her. Once you rescue her, you find out that she left home willingly and became the queen of the goblins and refuses to return home. Her father, the king, still gives you the key after reporting this back to him. It’s a funny turn of events, but it works well for what this game is. However, there is nothing in the way of party dialog and character development. After you create them at the start of the game, they have no on-screen interactions. Their identities exist simply to justify the gameplay. Again, I point to Voice of Cards. The gameplay is much the same, everything is presented in text form and 2D cards, yet the characters get a great deal of development by the end of the game, via the narrator.

The combat is a traditional turn-based RPG battle system. You have four party members and can face enemies in groups of up to at least six at once, from what I encountered. Each party member has their own HP and MP bars, with accompanying numbers, while enemies only have HP bars. It’s unclear to me if enemies can run out of magic, but I don’t think they can. Something I liked was that the game tells you the turn order of battles before starting them. However, this information disappears when you start the battle, so you have to remember it on your own, or take notes, I guess. You can run from battle beforehand or during with no repercussions. Even nicer is the fact that when you run mid-battle any enemies you already defeated will still be dead when you return to that battle. The default combat difficulty is set to 5/10, but you can change this whenever you want. I kept it at 5 during my trial of the game, but I can see some people turning it down slightly. The combat isn’t unbalanced, as the game tells you difficulty levels of battles before you start them and has unlimited anytime saving and reloading. That said, some of the battles you encounter early on are harder than they should be, given that you don’t have a ton of battle options at that point in the game.

H7I doesn’t have random encounters. Each area on the map either has a battle or it doesn’t. Once that battle is won, the enemies don’t respawn for 15 in-game days. Or you can sail to a different island and then sail back to speed up the process. Honestly, time doesn’t really make sense to me in this game. There are various mechanics that use time, such as resting and sailing, but time doesn’t really seem to matter in general, other than that enemies respawn in 15 days. But that’s so much time that I never had enemies respawn without me making it happen by sailing during my entire 2-hour playthrough.

What I like about H7I’s gameplay is how barebones it is. It’s a streamlined JRPG experience that really works. There’s classes, leveling, gear, magic, special skills, and quests. The game has everything and manages it in a way that’s very accessible. Though it does lack clear tutorials. This was especially true for me when it came to upgrading skills. The system is not complicated, but you do need to figure it out without having your hand held. Basically, there are many special skills in the game. They are class specific, while also having stat requirements. Equipping armor, learning and casting magic, and lockpicking, just to name a few, are all skills you acquire and improve by learning. Basically, there are vendors scattered throughout the world. Some are skill vendors. When you have a party member of the right class and stats, you can learn a skill at the vendor of the correct type, such as lockpicking. This will allow you to open basic locks. To open stronger locks, you need to improve your lockpicking skill. This process is done exactly the same way, but the gold and stat requirements for upgrading skills increases with each upgrade level. That same party member would need to increase their dexterity to a certain level and then spend more gold to upgrade to more advanced levels of lockpicking.

Lockpicking, as an example, is clear in how upgrading affects the gameplay. You will find randomly locked things all over the game. This can be chests, doors, and a few other things. Unlocking them is as simple as clicking them. But you can only open them if you have a party member with a high enough lockpicking skill for that level of lock. The update feed above the map area will immediately tell you what level a lock is if you weren’t able to open it or what you got if you did open it. The system works, and it works well. However, the gold component is quite annoying for unlocking/advancing skills.

My one major gripe with this demo was the economics. Everything costs money, and the vast majority of things are too expensive. I hope this was simply to limit what you could access in the demo, because some of the prices were obscene, given how hard it is to make larger sums of money. I ultimately stopped playing the demo because I hit a money wall. You can only access two of the seven islands in the demo. After getting the keys on both islands, there was still a path that I could access, but it required me to unlock a levitation spell to reach. That cost 2,000 gold. I only had like 300 gold left over by that point in the demo, just from buying required things. For instance, leveling up your party, which requires you to amass XP and then visit a tavern, costs 25 gold. Weapons and armor in shops at the start of the game costs around 200 gold. And you’re only getting gold from winning battles, which don’t respawn randomly, open chests, and completing available quests. So you’re really struggling to make money; and winning battles, at least early on, don’t net you that much money. I wanted to unlock that levitation spell, but the amount of time it would have taken just wasn’t worth it to me. Obviously, we can assume that money becomes more accessible the farther into the game you get, as it does for most RPGs. But tying absolutely everything in the game to a gold cost was quite annoying.

As for replay value, there’s a lot of it. You have seven classes to choose from with parties limited to four members. You can choose which skills to learn and develop at your discretion. Gear consists of five pieces plus a weapon. You have the ability to change the gameplay experience with each playthrough, if you so choose. Even if each island only takes an hour to beat, which is about where my demo playthrough landed, that’s 7 – 8 hours per run with several variation options between runs.

While I like how simple and accessible H7I’s gameplay is, I found myself unfulfilled by the overall experience. I don’t mean that the game feels unfinished, as this was only a demo in pre-launch form. Of course it’s unfinished. What I mean is that something about the game feels lacking. I can’t put my finger on it, but it might be that by distilling the classic turn-based RPG down to its barest form that the magic is gone. By letting me see behind the curtain, even though I already know what’s behind it and have for years, it no longer feels like an epic fantasy adventure. It just feels like balancing numbers on a spreadsheet. There’s nothing about this game that’s particularly different from Final Fantasy I – III on paper. Yet those left me with a sense of awe and satisfaction by the end of them. I hate to say that it’s production value, but it really might be. Because I did like the writing in this demo. I liked the graphics. I liked the balance. For the most part, I liked the mechanics, save for the economics and slow enemy respawns. But I felt hollow about this game after playing the demo. I know it’s not a bad game. In fact, it’s a solid game overall. But something was lacking by the time I stopped playing the demo.

By the time this review was published Rap2h made the demo public, so you can try the Heroes of the Seven Islands demo for free on Steam right now. The release date of the full game is scheduled for Q2 2025. As this was only a demo for an unreleased game, I will not give a numerical score for this review.

When I was young, I used to love point and clicks. I fondly remember playing the genre, including indie titles like 1954 Alcatraz (2014). Somewhere along the way, I grew bored with them. I couldn’t say exactly why, but I suddenly couldn’t stand to play them anymore. Unless you count Telltale Games titles, which I don’t, I couldn’t tell you the last point and click I completed, before this review. I can say that the last one I tried to play was Monkey Island, and I was so bored trying to play it that I didn’t even get past the second area before I quit. So, take my opinions on a new point and click adventure game with a grain of salt.

Cave Hikers is a recently released point and click adventure game by Studio Spektar in conjunction with Porcupine Parkour. Thank you to Studio Spektar for providing me with a review key. The first thing that needs to be said about this game is that it’s weird. The world and the creatures that inhabit it are odd. It’s difficult to even describe them, because they’re so abnormal. The three main characters are an octopus inspired female character, a fuzzy critter with horns, and I guess I’d say something based on an anteater. But there are countless other odd-looking creatures, structures, and objects as well.

The art style is a seemingly hand drawn, almost psychedelic experience that makes use of an extremely vibrant and diverse color palette. One of the things that really impressed me is the sheer number of interactive objects on screen at a given time. While not everything is relevant to progressing forward, basically everything has some level of interactivity. From pretty much the beginning of the game, you find yourself in a world where everything from the living things to the inanimate objects offers some level of direct response to being clicked. It should also be noted that the transition between gameplay and cutscenes is completely seamless with no difference in art style or graphical performance, which I guess isn’t too surprising for a point and click game in 2024?

While the art style works in its own way, the UI is terrible. For whatever reason, the studio saw fit to make a menu with no text. It’s all just pictures that you’re forced to interpret via trial and error. And not every one of the symbols used is clear. For example, I kept restarting the game, unintentionally, thinking that the save system was terrible. Instead, it turned out that what I thought was the continue button was actually the start new game button. And that’s kind of a theme throughout the game. It does a horrible job of explaining what you’re supposed to do and how to do it. Which is ironic, because the very first thing you’re supposed to do at the start of the game has a voice prompt to push you into clicking the right thing to progress the narrative. This basically doesn’t happen again for the rest of the game. But it would have been so helpful if it did.

The audio in Cave Hikers is about what I would have expected for a point and click. The interactive elements make sound effects that are relevant to what they look like/are and your contextual interactions with them. There are of course also contextual sound effects, such as when characters do things during cutscenes. The narrator, which can be set to one of nine different languages or turned off completely, has a clear voice that is mixed quite well with the rest of the game’s audio. Or at least this was true of the English narrator anyway. Music is interesting in this game, because it’s used sparingly. Sometimes there’s no background music at all and other times the music is taking place within the world of the game. There was one particular sequence that I got stuck on where some characters were playing music. I got so fed up with hearing the loop that I finally turned the music off in the settings menu. I should note that you can’t change volume levels in this game, but you can choose to turn music and narration off as independent settings.

The writing is a bit difficult to judge. On the one hand, it’s very easy to follow. This is a simple, straightforward story about three friends traveling through a cave and dealing with obstacles and challenges as they journey forward. On the other hand, a number of weird things that don’t really make any sense just sort of happen over the course of the game. This is especially true for the game’s ending. You go through this long sequence with multiple challenges across multiple areas in order to gain the characters the ability to fly. Then something happens and you fail to obtain the ability to fly, so instead the characters jump through a hole that appears in the ground. There’s no real reason given for why they jump through the hole. It’s just that a hole appeared, so why not jump through it? As I already said, this game is weird. But it’s hard for me to decide if it’s weird in a good way or a bad way.

The one absolutely positive thing I will say about the writing is that I really enjoyed how the narrative at the end of the game ties back to the narrative at the start of the game. I won’t spoil it, but the way it’s done is very poetic in both a tragic and beautiful way. I won’t say that it’s necessarily worth it to have played through the whole game for that final moment, but it’s worth acknowledging that it was a very powerful, well-written moment.

Cave Hikers is not particularly long. It can be beaten in about an hour, but it took me about four hours to complete, because I kept getting stuck in random places, due to it not being clear what I actually needed to do to move forward. The best example of this is a sequence where you need to collect five crystals. I easily found all five crystals, but the final one wouldn’t pop. It turned out to be that I was doing the right thing in the wrong order. But the game gave me no indication of this.

I found the game’s lack of directions very annoying, because for a point and click the gameplay experience in Cave Hikers is surprisingly diverse. They managed to deliver several different types of activities that could all be done with just your mouse. Puzzles and minigames of varying mechanics and levels of difficulty will test you as you venture through the caves. I have to say that I was truly impressed with how fresh the gameplay remained from start to finish. It was a much different experience from the point and clicks I used to play in my youth. However, the game’s lack of clear directions often left me knowing what I was supposed to do, but not how to do it. The game never tells you if you’re supposed to click, double-click, drag, or something else. And all of those different types of click scenarios are needed at different points in the game. So you’re constantly having to guess and check your way through the mechanics, often having the right idea but the wrong execution. Furthermore, the narrator doesn’t help you at all.

I mention the narrator’s lack of assistance only because the game starts off by implying that the narrator will be assisting you as you progress through the game. The very first playable moment in the game is that you have to click to enter a house. It’s the only thing on screen, so it’s very obvious, but you do have to actually click the house to enter it and move forward with the game. If you don’t do anything for more than a few seconds, the narrator will flat out tell you that you’re supposed to click the house. I thought that this was the game subtly informing me that the narrator would help me in times of need. In reality, it was just the game informing me that clicking is the way you do things in this game. That was the only time the narrator actually advised me on how to progress. His role for the rest of the game was purely story driven.

While this game has a very diverse set of gameplay mechanics, my major issue with the gameplay is that just about every activity overstays its welcome. This is apparent from basically the beginning. The first puzzle/activity you do is find three hidden items. This is great. It’s exactly what I would expect and want from a point and click. But that number quickly grows to unnecessary proportions. The very next activity has you locate six hidden items. That’s not terrible, but it’s double the last activity that took place just a couple minutes earlier. Or even seconds if you’re rushing through the story beats. Then immediately after that, you’re required to find 17 hidden items. And that right there is the problem. In a matter of minutes, I’ve done the same activity three times and had to find a total of 26 hidden objects. Even more annoying is that the last 17 objects are ultimately useless. You find them believing that they will have some significance later in the story, but it’s really just a joke, because all the stuff is lost in an accident almost immediately after you collect all of it.

This issue of the activities being too drawn out is rampant throughout the game. The mechanics are creative and work well from a technical standpoint, but they all go on longer than they need to. To a point where there’s a sequence that has you remove rocks from on top of a creature by double-clicking them only to have you realize that even after the creature is completely uncovered you still need to keep removing rocks until all of them are gone to progress the story. I constantly felt like the minigames were taking too long, even though the game only takes around an hour to complete. So while I would say that I liked the gameplay design, I can’t say that I liked the management of it.

As there’s basically nothing in the way of customization or changing of paths forward, there’s not really any replay value in Cave Hikers, save for the collectibles, which have no actual bearing on gameplay or story. You can collect playing cards scattered throughout the world. It’s a standard bicycle deck of 52 cards. Cards can appear under things, hidden in things, and even fly wildly across the screen during active sequences. Honestly, a lot of them are pretty annoying, because you try to click them and it doesn’t count them as having been clicked, because of the hit boxes on moving objects. Since you can’t rewind, you basically have to quit the game and hope the checkpoint takes you back far enough; or you have to replay the whole game and hope you don’t miss it the next time around. As you can probably figure out, I did not collect them all.

Overall, Cave Hikers was a pleasant experience, but only because of how short it actually is. A longer form of this would have almost certainly irritated me. It has great ideas, but there are issues with the implementation. And the lack of guidance coupled with the confusing UI would only become more of an issue the longer I played the game. For the currently listed $10 price tag, I’d have to say wait for a sale on this one. However, there’s a free demo available on Steam right now, so you can definitely check it out if you’re into point and clicks.

I recently managed to beat Final Fantasy IV (FFIV), in the Pixel Remaster Collection, so it’s time for another micro review. If you read my FFIII review, then you know I went into this one a bit sour/worried on the franchise. I abhorred FFIII and was very concerned about what lessons would be taken into FFIV. I’m happy to say that while I still enjoyed the overall gameplay in FFII more, FFIV was incomparably better than FFIII. Interestingly enough, what I loved so much about FFII was the vast amount of freedom you have in developing your party. FFIV goes in the opposite direction and offers little in the way of customization, outside of a limited, character specific selection of gear. Yet it works very well for the story this team ultimately produced.

First of all, there’s real progress as far as visuals are concerned between FFIV and FFIII. I commented in my FFIII review that I felt like there was pretty much no graphical progress between the previous two games in the series. FFIV, on the other hand, is a real graphical leap forward compared to its direct predecessor title. And it’s immediately apparent as well. From the opening cutscene, it was clear to me that Square Enix (formerly Square) really stepped up to make this one. Things like water have so much more effect to them. The cutscenes were way more impressive, with genuinely surprising dynamic visual elements. It really is just a great-looking game. And the final boss may exemplify this best of all with how many different forms it has and the level of detail that went into making some of them.

I usually don’t say much about the audio experience in these micro reviews, because I’m usually playing these retro Final Fantasy titles on the subway during my morning commute, but I did end up playing a far greater amount of this game with sound than I have earlier titles in the franchise. I have to say that I was quite impressed with the music and sound effects in this game.

Without a doubt, the thing that I liked most about FFIV was how well written it was. The first three games mostly center around a villain trying to use the power of darkness to take dominion over nature for personal gain. Nature then pushes back in some form by giving the player a blessing and sending him on his way to save the world from a catastrophe. FFIV doesn’t do any of that. It’s a completely different story that changes up the formula almost beyond the point of recognition; and the game is better for it.

In FFIV, you’re not a victim trying to survive after the destruction of your home by an evil emperor. Nor are you the chosen one, destined to save the world. Instead, you start out the game as one of the bad guys. You’re a higher-ranking soldier tasked with helping spread the king’s imperialistic ambitions. While your character is clearly unhappy with the things his king is requesting of him, he serves with loyalty and efficiency, literally burning a village to the ground as part of his orders. Finally, your character has had enough and sets out to make things right and fight against the kingdom that ultimately created him. From there on, the story takes numerous twists and turns, with instances of betrayal, lost allies, and even the introduction of an alien race.

This game also adds a lot in the way of developing other characters, both in and out of the party. There are several sub-plots, with each of them getting addressed and wrapped up at the end of the game. Honestly, I might even have to rank this one above FFX for story, and that’s saying a lot, considering how high up the list I rank FFX. I will say that this game also falls into the trap that FFII did of having party members join and leave the party, ultimately messing up your strategies. However, this game did a great job of keeping the difficult balanced. So while you do notice these changes, which happen less often than in FFII, they aren’t nearly as troublesome to deal with.

FFIV takes the classic turn-based gameplay and tries to make it seem more active and engaging by trying to visualize turn order without actually visualizing turn order. Each character has what I guess is the turn-based equivalent of a stamina bar. The bars fill continuously and independently from each other. When a character’s bar fills, it’s then that character’s turn to take one action. It can be any action, such as attacking, casting a spell, or using an item. Then, you have to wait for that character’s bar to recharge, before they can take another action. While this is happening, the enemies have their own stamina bars, but you can’t see them. And they seem to move way faster in some cases, with some enemies, like bosses, getting to attack multiple times before your party gets their next round of attacks in. On top of that, the system is misleading, because commands don’t always happen immediately when chosen. Certain commands have major delays. This is especially true for magic and summoning. You enter the command, but then they still have to ready the spell, often causing other party members, and often the enemies, to move first, even though you already waited to refill your stamina bar. This is especially annoying when you cast a healing spell that doesn’t happen quickly enough to heal a character before they are killed.

One of the things I hate most about this system is that enemies can keep attacking you while you’re trying to pick your tactics. So you don’t have as much time as you would to calculate your actions and outcomes, but you also have to deal with lots of command delays, causing the whole combat experience to feel a lot more stressful than it needs to. What’s most annoying about this design choice is that it’s still turn-based combat. It’s just suffering from the fact that the developers couldn’t be happy with leaving something that works fine alone. It feels like an attempt at innovation with no real need for innovation on the combat. On the flip side, this is the first Final Fantasy in the series that really made me care about and use summoning. Summoning was a huge part of FFX, so I’ve always loved summoning, but it hasn’t been useful, or sometimes even available, in the first three games. In previous games, it was more trouble than it was worth, because it was being treated like magic spells, but with systems that didn’t treat magic properly. FFIV still treats summoning like magic, but it handles magic generally better than FFI or FFIII.

One of the things I really hated about FFIII was how they ruined the airship by severely limiting where it could go. In FFIV, they not only fixed this but made it part of the story. As you progress, the airship gets upgrades that give you access to more and more places. By the end of the game, you can travel anywhere and reach most points directly. However, you do have a restriction on landing. The ship can’t land just anywhere, which has also been true in past games. But in FFIV they fixed this limitation by adding a second, smaller ship that you can carry with your first ship. You can drop this ship when you need to and then pilot that smaller ship to get to areas the regular airship can’t land. It’s an elegant solution that adds to the experience, but like the submarine function in FFIII, it’s not utilized enough in the overall map design. I think I used the mini-ship only once after unlocking the regular airship.

Magic development is very hands off in FFIV. You gain new spells simply by leveling up. You can’t choose when or which spells are learned by which characters. They just learn them as you progress. I liked this system, as it makes magic management easier, but it has some flaws. First, as is always the case in FF games, I don’t use a majority of the available spells. I tend to use the same ones over and over, once learned. When you have to learn every spell and can’t customize their order in the menu, you spend a lot of time scrolling through menus to find the spell you’re looking for. It would have been nice to at least have a recently used sort option for magic. I really hate that there’s no neutral magic in Final Fantasy games, because some spells are just necessary for all types of mages. Like Osmose. The ability to steal MP from enemies shouldn’t be considered black magic, when MP is such a finite resource in these games. It’s annoying that they don’t just put ethers in shops and sell them at potion prices. I found myself using healing items more in this one than probably any other FF, because a lot of the dungeons were just too long and didn’t have rest points.

What I did appreciate about FFIV’s dungeon design was the presence of camp sites. Though rare, there were points in dungeons where you could stop, use tents or cottages, and hard save. This was very helpful. It would have been nice for dungeons to have shops like in FFIII though. The final dungeon especially could have used an inn/item shop somewhere between the last save point and the final boss.

Overall, FFIV is extremely well balanced and for the most part well-paced. I reached the final boss at about 15 hours and level 55. I didn’t have to do any grinding at all to reach that point. I’ve said in my previous FF micro reviews that any time I can clear a retro RPG in under 20 hours I’m happy. And that was so close to being the case with FFIV. Sadly, they ruined the entire experience by creating a terribly overpowered final boss, which honestly isn’t surprising for this franchise.

Because of the inconvenient level design of the final dungeon, the boss was like four or five large floors away from the last save area. Meaning that you have no way to refill your HP and mana near the boss door, since your white mage can’t use Osmose to steal MP. When I reached the final boss the first time, I was way too weak to defeat him. Even though I had made it through the rest of the game just fine, I was getting one-shotted by the final boss. My whole team was crumbling after one or two attacks. This meant that not only would I have to waste time grinding, but I would also have to make my way back to the save point so I could heal myself during the grinding process without wasting my in-battle consumables that I would potentially need for the final boss. The recommended level for the fight, as listed online, was about 65. That meant taking the time to grind 10 levels. But I didn’t want to risk having to make my way back out from the final boss area a second time, so I farmed XP until my entire party was at level 70. This took me an additional five hours, on top of getting back to the boss fight, winning the boss fight, and concluding the game. Putting my completion time up from a lean 15 hours to an acceptable but not ideal 22 hours.

I very much enjoyed FFIV compared to the previous three titles. It’s the best of the Pixel Remaster Collection so far, with FFII at a close second. While I consider FFII to have better combat and dungeon design, FFIV is better written and still has pretty acceptable combat design. And the added rest spots in dungeons help level it out on that front. While FFIII left me worried about moving forward with the series, FFIV has made me really excited to start FFV. As per usual, I’m going to rank all the mainline Final Fantasy games I’ve beaten as I continue to progress through them. As of right now, here’s my current ranking.

1. FFX

2. FFXII

3. FFIV

4. FFII

5. FFI

6. FFVII

7. FFXIII

8. FFIII

9. FXV

I have now played Black Myth: Wukong for just shy of twenty hours. I have lost count of how many bosses I’ve defeated, as it’s well over 10, and I have a pretty good understanding of the character development and crafting systems. That said, I do not feel that I have played enough of the game yet to write a full review, as I’ve only just reached chapter 3 at the time of writing this post, so instead I wanted to do a post sharing a random assortment of thoughts, tips, and discussion points that seemed worth addressing while the game is still relatively new. That is to say, this post will kind of be all over the place, and a bit longer. So I’ve broken it into sections with headings to make things easier to read.

Performance

While this isn’t a formal review, I wanted to share a bit about my experience playing the game on PC with an NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU and 65GB of DDR5 RAM. Before starting the game, I ran the benchmark tool. I ran it at maximum settings both with Ray Tracing off and on. When off, my system got an average of 124FPS. When on, my system got an average of 96FPS. I was happy with both sets of results, so I decided to start the game with Ray Tracing on. Sadly, when on, I have noticed small bits of stutter at times. This is especially true during cutscenes. So, I decided to turn Ray Tracing off and have had no problems since.

The game runs well. Occasionally, I feel like my healing doesn’t work on command, but I think it’s more a gameplay mechanics issue than a bug. Unless you unlock an upgrade that lets you heal while sprinting, you can’t sprint and use your potions at the same time. In the heat of battle, you’re often reflexively sprinting, so I’m assuming it’s this rather than broken gameplay. I need to unlock that skill and see if I continue to have this problem. Also, as your number of remaining potions isn’t denoted with an actual number, it’s easy to think you have more heals left but actually don’t. That might sound a bit weird, so let me explain.

Your “estus flask” is a gourd. Rather than show a number to convey the number of drinks/heals left, the UI shows you the gourd filled to a certain level. When you take a drink from the gourd, that level lowers. Visually, this is a nice idea, but a number would be much more reliable. Especially when you consider that the number of drinks can be upgraded. So unless you take the time to really study the gourd levels, which I haven’t and most likely won’t do, you never know how many heals you have left. Obviously, this can have grave consequences in a boss fight.

On the flip side, I really appreciate how often this game lets you refill your gourd without having to rest at shrines and respawn all the enemies. If you’re playing smart, the game does a great job of making sure that you can refill your heals at a very natural pace while exploring. So far, I haven’t ever struggled to reach the next shrine do to a lack of healing resources. It’s usually that I get killed by a single encounter that was just very challenging or caught me off guard.

This is a beautiful game. The atmosphere is great, the graphics are nice, and the setting is exactly what I wanted. It’s a dark, gritty Dark Souls or Nioh inspired game in an ancient Chinese setting. The architecture, wildlife, and characters all give off this very culturally specific, but highly accessible vibe. The game runs well, isn’t buggy, and so far I’ve had no frame rate drops, stutters, or freezes, again, after having turned Ray Tracing off. It’s really nice to play a new game that actually works without errors.

This is NOT a Soulslike

I, like most people, spent the last several years expecting Black Myth: Wukong to be a soulslike. The gameplay footage seemed like that’s what they were going for. However, weeks before the game launched, Game Science publicly stated that this game is absolutely not a soulslike. That actually made me happy, as I literally just beat Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Star Wars Jedi: Survivor back-to-back. That said, since this game launched, I’ve seen countless people, including media and well-known gaming content creators, as well as legitimate game retailers, refer to Black Myth: Wukong as a soulslike. Let me state clearly for the record that Black Myth: Wukong is absolutely NOT a soulslike.

The key component of a soulslike is the souls mechanic, thus the name of the game that started the genre, Demon’s Souls, and thus the name of the genre. The one thing that makes a soulslike a soulslike is the relationship between currency/experience and risk. If you die in a soulslike, there’s a repercussion. You lose all, or at least a significant portion, of the currency you’re carrying. Usually, soulslikes offer you a chance to recover your lost currency, but I don’t even think that’s a requirement for a game to be a soulslike. It just has to have a souls style currency that acts as experience points for character development; and you have to be able to lose a significant portion of that currency when you die. That’s what makes a game a soulslike. They don’t have to be called souls. In Nioh it’s amrita. In Lies of P it’s ergo. But they have to work the way souls work in Dark Souls.

This is actually one of the reasons I was on the fence about calling Star Wars Jedi: Survivor a soulslike. When you die in that game, you only lose the XP you were carrying since your last level up. Even if not spent, you won’t lose any fully acquired levels of XP when you die. It’s only the current level you’re working on earning that’s lost. But it is lost and can be recovered if you reach your spot of death before dying again, so it still functions almost exactly like a soulslike. It’s just a less grueling punishment system. Black Myth: Wukong doesn’t have a punishment system for dying, other than the fact that you respawn at shrines (the equivalent of bonfires in Dark Souls) and most, but not all, of the enemies respawn. That’s not Dark Souls. That’s just a checkpoint system. Final Fantasy works pretty much the same way, and no one would call the games in that franchise soulslikes. When you die in Black Myth: Wukong, you lose nothing. You keep all the XP you’ve gained up to this point. Meaning that you really can just grind it out like any RPG and don’t even have to worry about dying. And currency and XP aren’t the same resource, so you can level up to your heart’s content without worrying about saving up money to buy things.

Black Myth: Wukong is simply an action RPG with a stamina bar. A stamina bar absolutely doesn’t make a game a soulslike. Plenty of games have stamina bars that aren’t soulslikes. There are things in the game that are often used in soulslikes, such as the equivalent of a bonfire system, respawning enemies, and a shortcut discovery based map design. But none of these are what makes soulslikes soulslikes. They’re just design mechanics commonly used in the genre. This game is not a soulslike; and if the reason you haven’t picked it up is because you don’t want to play a soulslike, then have no fear, because this game isn’t a soulslike.

It’s Not That Difficult

Black Myth: Wukong has no difficulty level, which I’m fine with. But before you get scared, remember that I just said that it’s not a soulslike. This game is incredibly well balanced, and honestly it might be a bit too easy. At least for me anyway. While this game isn’t a soulslike, the combat is very clearly based on a Nioh inspired combat system. You have a stamina bar, but your movement is very fast paced. You also have magic, focus, and special moves to help you. At it’s core though, it feels like a soulslike when it comes to combat. Meaning that if, like me, you play a lot of soulslikes, then you’ll excel at this combat system.

Of the more than 10 bosses I’ve already defeated, only one of them has taken me more than three tries. It was the first optional boss in the game, and it’s so difficult, when faced early on, that there are literally articles about just that one boss fight. Funny enough, I discovered that this fight is actually pretty easy, if you do it after defeating the third mandatory boss (counting the introductory tutorial boss), which is literally right past it. I’ll go into this in more detail in my tips section. None of the other bosses have taken me more than three tries, and many, if not most of them, I’ve beaten on the first try. It’s not a hard game. It’s just a game that requires smart character development and gear management.

I will admit that I have an advantage in the fact that I almost never block in soulslikes. It’s a mechanic I rarely use, because of my dodge focused approach to combat in most games. In Black Myth: Wukong, at least in the early stages of the game, the block is shit. Other than when deflecting projectiles, which mostly consists of arrows, it’s pretty useless. Since I already don’t block, I’ve taken to the gameplay like a fish to water. While things often seem intimidating, as there are a great many bosses, both optional and mandatory, most of them are pretty straightforward and not too difficult.

Tips for Beginners

I wanted to end this post with a list of tips that I think will make the game much easier for players that are intimidated by the gameplay. As I said, this game has been pretty easy for me so far, but there are things you should know that will make it way more manageable early on.

1. BUY THE DELUXE EDITION

This is literally the first time that I’ve ever bought a more expensive edition of a game that didn’t include DLC content or physical swag that I really wanted. I only did it because I was willing to pay the full $60 for the game but was able to get the Deluxe Edition for $48, because I purchased it through the Taiwan Steam store, which has lower base pricing. I actually wanted to buy the physical Deluxe Edition for the swag, but, sadly, they cancelled that edition.

The Deluxe Edition grants you a set of armor that you can use from the very first shrine. This is probably the only time that I’ve ever felt the bonus armor in a game was actually good from the time you can use it. Usually, when games have Deluxe Edition armor that isn’t purely cosmetic, you can’t access it right away. And when you can finally use it, the gear is often weaker and uglier than whatever gear you’ve unlocked by that point. Because you can start with this armor, it’s totally worth it. The way armor works in this game is similar to the newer God of War games. Armor is broken into four pieces that comes in sets, complete with set bonuses. You get new armor by crafting it with collected materials. You unlock the ability to craft new armor when you defeat certain bosses. I have unlocked the ability to craft four sets so far. That’s in addition to the base set you start with and the Deluxe Edition armor.

The reason the Deluxe Edition armor is so good, and worth it in my opinion, is that it’s comparable, stat wise, to at least the second set of unlockable armor. On top of that, the set bonus helps you amass currency, known as “Will,” faster. This means that you can start the game with armor that’s as good as you’ll unlock after defeating two mandatory bosses and I couldn’t tell you how many optional bosses. And even after you get that second set of armor unlocked, you can still ride out the Deluxe Edition set for some time. Eventually, I did reach a point where it just wasn’t good enough anymore, but that was after getting to the fourth armor set. And even now I try to use it where possible, to amass extra currency faster. I never use it in boss fights anymore though, as it’s just too weak now. To be clear, the Deluxe Edition armor is very good and makes the game a lot easier early on, but if you don’t want that handicap, then there’s no reason to spend the extra money to get it.

2. KILL WANDERING WIGHT ASAP

Wandering Wight is the first optional boss in the game. He’s very difficult to beat when you first encounter him. However, if you run past him and defeat the third mandatory boss, Wandering Wight becomes very easy. This is because Lingxuzi, the third mandatory boss, gives you a major health increase after defeating him; and he’s not nearly as difficult. Wandering Wight kicked my ass four times before I gave up and decided to face Lingxuzi instead. I beat Lingxuzi on the first try. Then, after getting the health upgrade, I managed to beat Wandering Wight on the next try.

Wandering Wight is the first “lost spirit” you can collect. Basically, Black Myth: Wukong copied the soul cores system from Nioh 2 where you can instant transform into a monster you’ve defeated and do a single special attack. In the game, these are called lost spirits. The important thing about lost spirits is that you can only equip one at a time. They aren’t just an attack, however. Each one also carries a buff. Wandering Wight’s buff is, so far, one of if not the best in the early game. His buff gives you an extra 24 points to your defense stat, and that makes such a big difference. Even after having now unlocked 13 other lost spirits, more than one of which seems like a better attack, I’m still rocking the Wandering Wight, because of the increased defense.

3. DON’T MISS GUANGZHI

Black Myth: Wukong has several optional bosses. Some of which are much more important than others. Wandering Wight is a good example, but it’s arguable that Guangzhi is even more important. Right before you reach the third mandatory boss, Lingxuzi, both Wandering Wight and Guangzhi can be found in the vicinity. You can’t miss Wandering Wight, as he’s walking around in front of the path to Lingxuzi. Guangzhi, on the other hand, is off to the left in a hidden grove. It’s easy to miss. I only found him because a friend asked me if I had beaten him yet and I had no idea what he was talking about. That told me that I had missed an important encounter, so I backtracked until I was able to find him.

While Wandering Wight gives you a lost spirit, Guangzhi gives you a spell. This spell, called ‘Red Tides,’ lets you turn into Guangzhi for an extended period of time and wield his fire staff. Basically, this spell is kind of like going into god mode. It’s a transformation that lasts until the special bar runs out where you can deal a lot of fire damage and don’t have to worry about your core HP. And you can totally miss it. You can backtrack to get it at any time, but the point is that if you don’t know it’s there you might never get it, and the sooner you get it the better. It’s very helpful for boss fights and groups.

I can’t speak to when you should go for Guangzhi relative to Lingxuzi and Wandering Wight, because I faced him after those two. He was easy for me, because I already had the health upgrade from Lingxuzi and the defense buff from Wandering Wight. I beat Guangzhi on the first try. However, I’m sure that Red Tides would have made both Wandering Wight and Lingxuzi easier. So approach these three bosses in whatever order you think makes sense. They’re all in close proximity to each other, and near a shrine, so you can experiment. Lingxuzi is very easy, so you can definitely take him down without either Wandering Wight or Red Tides. And the health upgrade he gives you is extremely helpful for both of those fights.

4. SAVE YOUR WILL

XP is different from currency in Black Myth: Wukong, because, again, it’s not a soulslike. You need currency, called Will, to craft new gear, buy upgrades, and purchase items. You will quickly hit the cost wall, assuming you don’t get stuck and have to grind a bunch, by the third or fourth armor set. As the game isn’t particularly hard. At least not for the first 10 or more bosses anyway, there’s no reason to waste Will on items. Don’t waste your money on potions and temporary buffs. Save it all for upgrades, crafting new armor, and purchasing specialty items.

5. DO THE SIDE QUESTS

Black Myth: Wukong is split into chapters. Each chapter has a special side quest that grants you a special item, called vessels, for the final boss of that chapter. This item will grant you a large amount of elemental resistance against the attack type of that chapter’s final boss. For example, chapter 1’s final boss use fire. The chapter one side quest item is called ‘Fireproof Mantle,’ and it does exactly what you think. It gives you a large amount of fire resistance, making the boss fight way easier. While these are optional, they definitely make the chapter bosses way easier. Skipping them is a bad move.

6. BOSS FIGHT ORDER OF OPERATIONS

I’m not going to say that this will be true for the entirety of the game, but so far I have been able to use the exact same strategy for every boss fight, optional or mandatory, that has taken place past Lingxuzi, the third mandatory boss, to the end of chapter 2. You might get bored and want to vary it up a bit, but this strategy works, and it works consistently.

At the start of the fight, get up close and immediately use Immobilize. This is the first spell you get, and it can’t be missed, as you get it during the second mandatory boss fight. This spell freezes an enemy, including bosses, in place temporarily. It can be used at any time and doesn’t miss, assuming you have locked onto the boss. Immobilize will allow you to land multiple combos before it wears off. The reason you should start with this spell is that it has a long cooldown. By starting with this spell, you immediately start recharging it and give yourself the best chance to use it a second time during the same boss fight.

After finishing Immobilize, use your lost spirit attack. Make sure that Immobilize has worn off before you do this, as it’s wasted damage to use it when the boss can’t move anyway. Your lost spirit attack doesn’t cost mana, but it recharges via landed attacks. Meaning you have to land several hits before you can use it again. In my case, I use Wandering Wight, so I need to get up close to the boss to use my lost spirit attack, but you should use whichever lost spirit attack you are most comfortable with using. For the record, I often miss the Wandering Wight attack, because of how short its range is.

After using your lost spirit attack, immediately use Red Tides, as described in tip 3. This is a spell that doesn’t use mana but it does still have a long cooldown. While the fight should be over before you recharge it, it’s good to begin the recharging process, just in case. Red Tides is great because you don’t take any damage while it’s active. If you use it intelligently, you can keep it active for quite some time and do a solid amount of fire damage.

After Red Tides ends, the fight really begins. At this point, you just lean heavily on your dodge and watch your stamina bar. If your mana is high enough, depending on how you’ve developed your character up to this point, you may end up getting to use Immobilize a second time. I suggest you save it for when you’re in a tight spot, or at the end of the fight, when you know the duration of Immobilize will be enough time to kill the boss. This strategy has worked for every boss I’ve faced since unlocking Immobilize, Wandering Wight, and Red Tides, through the second chapter of the game.

Those are my early impressions of Black Myth: Wukong. I’m having a ton of fun with this game, and it’s absolutely living up to the hype. It’s easier than I expected, but that’s not a bad thing in my book. I don’t enjoy getting stuck in games. I enjoy beating them. I highly recommend picking this one up, and since it’s already sold 10 million copies, I’m sure a lot of other people agree with that opinion.

Before we properly kick off this review, there’s a few things that need to be said. The farther into the modern comic book movie genre we progress, the more we are forced to ask questions about what level of viewing loyalty should be expected of the audience. When it comes to actual comics, reading loyalty was always expected. It’s basically how the medium has survived for as long as it has. A majority of the time, comics aren’t expanding readership so much as retaining it. This meant and continues to mean that you can write comics that assume advanced levels of knowledge about previous stories as part of the experience of reading a particular story. At the same time, there’s always been a bit of leeway there when jumping between comics starring different characters and different runs featuring the same character(s). It’s helpful to have read one Batman run to appreciate later ones. But it’s usually not required, unless a run is being touted as a direct sequel to another one. But is it fair to expect this same level of loyalty and previous knowledge when it comes to movies and TV?

TV is interesting, because in many ways it works like comics. You can watch Arrow to better appreciate The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, Black Lightning, and some other things. However, you don’t have to have watched Arrow to enjoy any of those other shows. But you will miss a lot if you haven’t watched Arrow and each of those other shows. But crossovers in TV have existed long before comic inspired TV was a thing. So maybe it’s not necessarily a problem to expect that from TV audiences. However, I would argue that TV is not movies. The MCU, now, requires that viewers have prior knowledge of more than 30 different movies plus several TV series to fully understand and appreciate everything that’s going on. While this is normal for comics and to some extent TV, there is no other film franchise in the history of cinema that requires a viewer to have watched this much previous content. Not even Star Wars. Star Trek is certainly getting up there though. And unlike many other film and TV universes, many projects in the MCU literally cannot be understood and properly enjoyed without prior knowledge.

The Marvels, for example, which I do not consider a bad movie, requires at a minimum that you have seen Avengers: Infinity War (2018), Avengers: Endgame (2019), WandaVision (2021), Captain Marvel (2019), Ms. Marvel (2022), and Secret Invasion (2023) at a minimum just to fully understand the plot. To clarify, this one movie that was objectively a flop, because it did not break even at the box office, requires that at a minimum you’ve watched three other movies and three other TV shows, none of which are direct prequels, just to fully understand the context of what’s happening in the movie. And to understand two of those movies and one of those TV shows, you have to watch several other movies and/or TV shows. You can’t casually walk into the MCU anymore. It’s impossible. And because of the nature of film and how it’s already cutting story exposition as much as possible, they often don’t fill you in when you don’t know what’s going on. If you did not watch WandaVision, you will not understand why Spectrum has powers in The Marvels. It’s really that simple. If you did not watch Ms. Marvel, you won’t understand why Nick Fury is allowing a high school girl to fight alongside Captain Marvel to stop the genocide of an alien race. It’s kind of important that you’ve seen those other projects, and that’s a lot of screentime when you add it all together. And again, I go back to the question, “Is this a fair expectation for film viewers?” Especially when we’re talking about movies like Deadpool & Wolverine that aren’t taking themselves that seriously anyway.

The second thing I want to discuss before officially starting the review is my own history with Deadpool. I love Deadpool. And I love Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool. I even like Ryan Reynolds as Deadpool in X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). Though I will happily acknowledge that the character was not given justice in how he was written in that movie. I still consider Deadpool the video game from 2013 to be the funniest game I have ever played. In fact, I genuinely believe that video games are absolutely the best medium for Deadpool content, because of the character’s interactive nature and how that translates perfectly to a medium that perfectly blends movies and viewer participation into a single experience. I also like the first two Deadpool movies. I consider the first one to be a solid comic book movie in general, Deadpool or not. I happily give it a 7/10. I don’t love the second one as much, but it does have several moments I really liked; and I can give that one a 5.5-6/10 easily. So please understand that my low score for Deadpool & Wolverine is not fueled by hate for the character or a dislike of Ryan Reynolds. Nor is it the product of Marvel fatigue or some other bullshit excuse to just automatically give low scores to things. This review is my genuine assessment of this movie in comparison to other movies, comic book or otherwise. Now that all of that is out of the way, let’s actually start the review.

Let me begin my actual review by stating directly that I found this movie extremely entertaining. I laughed pretty much the entire time. My wife, on the other hand, did not. In fact, she fell asleep during part of the movie. She got bored; and that happened because she couldn’t fully follow and appreciate many of the jokes and events happening in the movie; and she’s an MCU fan. My wife has watched every MCU movie. She has watched pretty much all of the currently canon TV shows. But she hasn’t watched much Marvel content that predates the MCU. And that’s the problem with this movie. It requires way too much back knowledge to fully enjoy it. Not just knowledge of Marvel movies going back to Iron Man (2008). You have to have seen just about every Marvel movie going back to Blade (1998) to fully appreciate all the jokes, references, and cameos in this movie. I was born in 1989 and I’m a comic book movie/TV nerd. To the best of my knowledge, I got every joke or reference in the movie except two; and one of them I had already seen the movie it’s from. I just couldn’t remember it, because I haven’t watched it in nearly two decades.

MANY SPOILERS AHEAD

The one bit I did not understand and had no reference for was why Channing Tatum was cast as Gambit. It wasn’t until after I saw the movie that I learned, from a friend, that Tatum had actually been cast to play Gambit in a solo movie that was announced and then cancelled. My point is that even comprehensive comic book movie knowledge isn’t enough to fully understand and appreciate this film. You also have to have behind the scenes Hollywood knowledge, which my wife, who again is not a casual MCU viewer, does not have. Even with my 30 years of hardcore nerdiness, I have to admit that there was one movie referenced in Deadpool & Wolverine that even I haven’t seen before. For better or worse, I have never seen Elektra (2005). I absolutely recognized Jennifer Garner as the character Elektra Natchios as soon as she appeared on screen, because I’ve of course seen Daredevil (2003), but it was clear that her part in this movie couldn’t fully be appreciated if you haven’t seen her movie. I never watched it, because the reviews were so bad. It currently has an 11% on Rotten Tomatoes. So again, I ask, is it fair to expect viewers to have seen three decades worth of content across multiple mediums, much of which was literal trash? I don’t think it is. And if it is, I don’t think it should be.

Deadpool & Wolverine is to comedy what Avengers: Endgame is to drama. If you are dedicated to watching an obscene amount of content, the payoff is phenomenal. However, pretty much all of the payoff is not earned in movie. It’s earned by all the other movies, TV shows, and comic books required to understand everything that’s happening in the movie. It’s cheap laughs that weren’t earned through any sort of talent shown by the credited writers Ryan Reynolds, Rhett Reese, and Paul Wernick. The laughs were earned by the countless writers, producers, directors, and actors that came before them. For example, Chris Evans cameos as Johnny Storm aka Human Torch from Fantastic Four (2005). It’s an amazing moment built around the fact that Chris Evans is Captain America in the MCU. When he shows up, Deadpool thinks it’s Captain America, as does the audience. Then he reveals himself to be Human Torch, and Deadpool, like the audience, is super surprised. Then Human Torch quickly gets beaten/neutralized by Pyro, played by Aaron Standford from X2: X-Men United (2003) and X3: The Last Stand (2006). It’s a very funny sequence when viewed through the lens of 21 years of nostalgia. I saw all three of those movies in theater. But if you haven’t seen those movies, like my wife hasn’t, you’re just sitting there unsure of why Captain America can fly and shoot fire. And that’s pretty much the entire movie. It’s a slew of references and cameos, including many from actual comic books, that are required to actually enjoy the movie. While entertaining for people in on the jokes, like me, I don’t think it’s good film making. Especially when we’re not even limited to a single interconnected universe of films.

At the very least, the MCU is the MCU. It’s a defined collection of works, all of which can be found on Disney+. You cannot find all the movies and TV shows required to appreciate Deadpool & Wolverine on one streaming service. I’m not even sure if you can find all the content available via streaming in general. And that doesn’t even cover the comics. There’s an amazing sequence where Deadpool hops through multiple universes looking for a Logan to work with that’s a montage of famous iterations of Logan/Wolverine. I don’t read comics. I got a lot of the references, having seen them randomly in things like Marvel Snap before, but I didn’t know all of them. There’s a scene where like 100 different versions of Deadpool show up. I was aware of several of them, but not all of them. This is a ton of required, often obscure, knowledge, just to appreciate one scene multiplied by two hours and seven minutes of scenes.

What’s nice about Deadpool (2016) and Deadpool 2 (2018), but to a lesser extent, is that you can just watch them. Yes, you might miss some jokes, but they are contained movies that function fine on their own, like all movies are supposed to. Deadpool & Wolverine doesn’t do this. You cannot follow the events of that movie dry. It’s not even worth trying. And it’s for that reason that I rate it lowest of the trilogy, even though I personally laughed a ton while watching it and would probably watch it again at home. For the record, I have never rewatched Deadpool 2.

Make no mistake, Deadpool & Wolverine does have a narrative. There’s a clear motivation, two villains, real stakes, and character arcs. It’s a real movie. It’s just not a movie you can hope to fully understand or appreciate within the world of that movie. At the very least, you have to watch both seasons of Loki to understand what’s at stake for Deadpool, plus the previous two Deadpool films to understand why he cares. But you’re still not going to understand how the things that happen make any sense if you haven’t seen all that other content that’s referenced in the film. You’re not going to appreciate Wesley Snipes saying that there’s only ever been one Blade and that there’s only ever going to be one Blade if you haven’t seen Blade, Blade II (2002), and Blade: Trinity (2004). Not to mention, you also have to know that Marvel already announced an upcoming Blade movie starring Mahershala Ali set in the MCU that has been in development/production hell for like three years. And you can’t really appreciate that joke if you also don’t know that they actually made a Blade TV series back in 2006 that was terrible, starring Sticky Fingaz, the rapper, as Blade.

I do think there’s value in making a movie like this once every several years to poke fun at the comic book movie industry from an endearing place of genuine fandom. This movie was clearly made by nerds who are passionate about Marvel movies. And that is why I enjoyed watching it. But I do not want to see this style of film making/writing become the norm in the MCU. I’ve seen discussions about how to add Deadpool to the MCU as a recurring character, and I don’t want that if that means content like this seeping into other MCU projects. It would not work to have Deadpool disrupting the pacing and tone of a Black Panther movie to make fun of Thor. It would not work if you had to have watched a bunch of non-MCU content to understand a bit in Doctor Strange 3. I don’t think that would make the MCU better for a majority of viewers. But if every 6 – 10 years they made a movie that comedically recaps all the flaws of the last decade of comic book movies and TV shows produced by Marvel, that would be fun.

To conclude, if you are a Marvel movie nerd, definitely go see this movie. You will laugh and appreciate the many nostalgic references to past works that you’ve seen over the years. But if you are a casual Marvel viewer, you will almost certainly not enjoy this movie. And it is for that reason that I gave it a 4/10. It’s a highly passionate, but wildly inaccessible viewing experience.

So, I finally beat Final Fantasy III (FFIII) for the first time, in the Pixel Remaster collection of course. I say finally, because even though it only took me 22 hours, which is less time than it took me to beat FFII, this game couldn’t have ended soon enough. If you read my FFII review, then you know that I absolutely loved that one, save for one glaring flaw. Sadly, just about everything about FFIII feels like a step backwards from FFII in an attempt to recreate FFI. As I said in my FFI review, I really liked that game for what it was at the time it was made and as the originator of the franchise. But it had lots of issues that were only forgivable because it was the first game in the series and in many ways the start of a genre. FFIII does not have these caveats to prop it up. It’s just a game using bad mechanics that Square Enix had already moved past in the previous installment of the franchise. Not to mention that the major new mechanic in FFIII, the jobs system, is absolutely horrendous. More on that later.

Visually, FFIII feels like basically no progress has been made since FFII in terms of core gameplay, but the cutscenes have expanded quite a bit in length and scope. There are much longer cutscenes in this game compared to the previous two entries. There are some minor improvements to higher level spell effects in battle. A bit more flare, such as with the addition of summons. But not enough to notice if you’re not actively trying to find visual improvements between titles. And the menus have not changed or evolved since FFI. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, I guess. All in all, I definitely don’t have anything bad to say about the graphics in FFIII. The game runs flawlessly on the Nintendo Switch, as would be expected.

I’m of two minds about the writing in FFIII. On one hand, the general plot feels like a rehash of the plot of FFI. The world has gone through a cataclysmic event, causing the light of the world to recede. So nature has called four warriors of light to be its champion and save the world from darkness. While this game does more with that concept, such as introducing warriors of darkness as foils of the four heroes from another world, as allies rather than villains, it’s still the same general plot. Additionally, this game goes back to the unspecific main characters model. You can name your four party members and their appearance is based on their active job, which I’ll touch more on later. The characters don’t really have their own personalities like they did in FFII. The NPCs do. There are multiple sub-plots about different NPCs and their role in the larger story as well as their own personal motivations. This was done better than in both previous games. But the way your characters interact with the world and other characters is very lazily done, basically always having your first character speak on behalf of the entire party.

I will commend Square Enix for correcting my major complaint from FFII. In this game, you still have people join and leave your travelling party randomly, but they are never playable characters. They follow you on screen, but never participate in battles. You don’t have to waste time and resources leveling them up only to have them abandon the party later. You keep your four party members for the entire duration of the game. However, they created such a broken leveling system for FFIII that I would have preferred the rotating party issue from FFII instead.

For me, the worst part about FFIII is the resource management. It feels like all the lessons Square Enix learned from FFI to make FFII were forgotten. They went back to the same garbage tiered magic system, made even worse by the removal of ethers and the ability to drain MP with Osmose. The only ways to restore your MP in FFIII are resting, magic springs, and elixirs; and of course, you can’t buy elixirs in this one. However, they are slightly easier to find compared to in the previous games. They also had the nerve to make changing jobs remove all MP from the character, unless it’s between magic capable jobs.

Jobs are the most irritating mechanic the franchise may have ever produced. Basically, it’s hot-swappable classes with less restrictions, but the trade off is that each job has its own limitations on what gear they can use coupled with their own individual level for each character. Additionally, this version of the game has odd gear limitations that aren’t clearly explained or stated. For example, the Black Mage job can wield bows, but certain bows are off limits. I don’t know why this is; and the game doesn’t explain it. I was using a Black Mage with a bow, and I was very happy with the damage output. Then I found a better bow and my Black Mage couldn’t equip it. This stalled my Black Mage’s weapon’s progression, so I changed to a rod. Similarly, there are multiple classes that use rods, but they can’t all use all the rods.

Jobs range considerably in what they can do. Most of them have special moves or techniques that can be used in key scenarios. The Thief can open locked doors. Otherwise, you need to purchase keys. The Viking can draw enemy attacks, but it’s not a sure thing. The most important thing about jobs is what gear they can use. But there are so many jobs. There are more than 20 jobs to choose from, again, each needing to be leveled individually. Though it is on top of basic character leveling, so it’s not as if you go back to zero when you change jobs. It’s a messy, annoying system that I absolutely hated. Because it’s hard to determine what the best job to change to is from your current active jobs. I started with a Black Mage. As you progress through the game, there are several magic jobs, but they don’t all make use of magic the same way. Ultimately, you’re just trying to unlock the final two classes: Sage and Ninja. These are the best, because almost all limits are removed.

Sages can learn and use any type of magic, including summons. Summons are just grandiose magic attacks. With the Sage job, I was finally able to have a Black Mage with healing spells and a White Mage with attack spells. Similarly, Ninjas can use any type of gear. Ultimately, I used two Sages, a Ninja, and a Dark Knight for the boss of the game. And the only reason I didn’t change the Dark Knight to a Ninja is because you unlock the class so late that I didn’t want to have to regrind that character before heading to the boss of the game. However, I would have changed that Dark Knight to a Ninja if he hadn’t already been able to use one of the best weapons in the game.

While I was really unhappy with both the jobs and magic combat systems, I will say that this game felt pretty balanced. I didn’t do much grinding, as opposed to in FFII where I did relatively a lot. I was able to beat pretty much every boss in a reasonable number of attempts. The final boss only took me two tries. I think the inclusion of ethers, super potions, and megalixers would have done a lot to make me happier with the experience. I hope they all return in FFIV.

Finally, they somehow managed to ruin the airship experience. You get an airship relatively quickly in FFIII, compared to the other two games. But it’s severely nerfed in what it can do. Airships can’t go over mountains, even after you get the most upgraded airship in the game. Airships aren’t generally upgradeable. Getting upgrades and a better model is all part of the narrative. They tried to create navigation puzzles by putting these limits on airships, but they aren’t fun. It’s just another annoyance you’re forced to deal with. I will give them credit for adding two new concepts to airships, but I don’t feel that they were leveraged enough.

The first new thing about airships that doesn’t suck is that one of them can be used as a submarine. It was really cool to go underwater and open an entirely new map. It felt like going to the depths for the first time in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. Sadly, you really only need to go to one place underwater in the entire game. You can grind there, if you want to. And I believe a different version of the game has a secret optional dungeon down there, but you basically just take one short trip under the sea and then never talk about it again. Even dumber is the fact that the bigger, better ship you get later can’t go underwater. So, if you want to go back, you have to fly to the older ship, change ships, and then use that one to go underwater.

The second thing they got right about airships is that once you get the most advanced ship, you can save, rest, and buy items and gear on the ship itself. This was truly a game changer for grinding. But the inability to fly over mountains absolutely made the entire experience worse. And the upgraded ship is gigantic. The fact that it can’t fly over mountains, given you can do that with much smaller ships in the previous games, is really annoying and honestly jarring. I was shocked when I realized that was the case.

All in all, I have to say that I did not like Final Fantasy III. It feels like a step in the wrong direction for the franchise in just about every way compared to FFII. It was really disappointing and a bit scary, because now I’m not sure what to expect for FFIV. Am I going to get an evolution of FFII that plays great and maximizes my ability to build the team I want? Or am I going to get another iteration of FFI without the novelty of it being the first game in the series? The one saving grace of FFIII was that it was still pretty short for a JRPG. It definitely ranks near the bottom of the list for me. As I said in my FFI review, I’m going to rank all the mainline Final Fantasy games I’ve beaten as I continue to progress through them. As of right now, here’s my current ranking.

1. FFX

2. FFXII

3. FFII

4. FFI

5. FFVII

6. FFXIII

7. FFIII

8. FXV

Let me start this review by saying the gaming industry is broken. I say that because I know that I’m about to present a review that does not paint a positive picture of what is/was probably Ninja Theory’s most highly anticipated game of all time; and I feel bad about that. Why do I feel bad about that? Because I like Ninja Theory. I loved Heavenly Sword (2007). I really liked Enslaved: Odyssey to the West (2010). I had never played a Devil May Cry game before DMC: Devil May Cry (2013). I loved it so much that I went out and bought all the other games in the series, none of which I’ve actually taken the time to play yet. But I’d play a direct sequel to that game immediately. Finally, I really liked Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (2017).

All that is to say, I don’t want to see Ninja Theory shuttered by Microsoft. If a company like Tango Gameworks can make a highly acclaimed, almost universally loved (me being like the only exception) low budget title that actually did well (if we count downloads on Game Pass as a metric the way Microsoft claims to) and reviewed well and still get shuttered, then I fear for Ninja Theory. However, I’m not going to lie in my review. I’m not going to pretend that Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II is better than it is. Because, as I’ve said many times, I fight for the user. The system is broken, because I’m genuinely worried that giving bad reviews to this game could lead to the studio being shut down. I don’t think that’s right. I don’t think one mediocre game, that does have its merits, should mean the closure of a studio owned by a major first party publisher. But it feels like that’s how it is today.

I don’t want to imply that I think my blog is so important that a bad review from me spells doom for a studio. Not at all. It’s the aggregation of many unflattering reviews that ultimately leads to a studio dying. But my negative review is still part of that aggregation, so I do feel the weight of my words on my conscience when a studio I’ve given a negative review gets shut down. Especially if I personally like the studio and don’t want to see it shut down. So with that, here’s my review of Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II.

First of all, can we talk about the naming in this franchise? The first game is called Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. If you played that game, you know the title makes perfect sense. The game is about the main character, Senua, going on a journey to find the Hellblade and the sacrifices she must make along her journey to achieve her perceived goal. The plot has plenty of room for interpretation, but the broad strokes make perfect sense with that title. This sequel’s title is terrible by comparison. For starters, they changed the structure of the title. The game should have been called “Hellblade II: Senua’s Saga,” to stay in line with the naming of the first game in the series. Second, the hellblade, for whatever reason, isn’t actually in this game. Sorry for the spoiler. Why is it even mentioned in the title, if it’s not even going to be the first part of the title as in the previous game? They clearly wanted to leverage the “Hellblade” recognition from the first game, but didn’t want to commit to it fully for some reason. In my opinion, it’s a branding blunder, but let’s move on.

Hellblade II, which is what I’m going to call it, ironically, for the rest of this review, is one of the most visually impressive games I have ever played. You can really see the value in Unreal Engine 5. It’s an absolutely stunning game. The details are crazy, the render distance is insane, and the fidelity between gameplay and cutscenes is like something out of my childhood fantasies. I mean this is a truly phenomenal looking game. However, it does have its performance problems. My PC has an NVIDIA RTX 4090 GPU, 64GB of DDR5 RAM, and a high-speed Gen 4 M.2 SSD with a read/write speed of 7,400/6,800MB/s. If anyone should be able to run this game on maximum settings with no problems, it’s me. When I started up the game, as I do with every game I run on my PC these days, the first thing I did was go to the settings menu and turn everything up to maximum performance. I paid for that privilege, and I’m going to use it. This game has 4 custom upscaler settings. As I’m using an RTX 4090, I chose to use NVIDIA DLSS. The first session of this game I played, which probably lasted a bit over an hour, the game ran fine with this setting. However, in my second session, the game struggled. It crashed on me twice in less than five minutes. Then I changed the upscaler from DLSS back to the default TSR setting, which is the standard for Unreal Engine 5. From then on, the game ran smoothly and didn’t give me any more problems for the rest of my playthrough. That said, running the game with DLSS was giving me 120+ FPS. Running it with TSR dropped that to 60+ FPS.

I’m no graphics snob; and even if I was, this game still looks phenomenal at 60+ FPS with the TSR setting. Again, it’s one of the best looking games I’ve ever played. But if a game is going to offer a setting, and the system the game is running on has the specs to manage that setting, I expect the game to run properly on that setting, which this game did/does not. I still give this game full marks for graphics, in comparison to other titles, but to say this game runs flawlessly is just not true. Another thing to consider about the graphics is that while they’re impressive, there isn’t too much going on in this game. It has beautiful landscapes based on real world natural environments of Iceland, but it’s mostly just rocks, some trees, and lots of water. I’m not knocking the setting, nor the studio’s presentation of that setting. But I definitely think it’s easier to make a game look this good when you have pretty much no wildlife in the game, no technology more advanced than swords and lanterns, and mostly small numbers of NPCs populating the screen at any one time. This game looks great, but it was clearly at the cost of being more interesting.

The one aspect of this game that I might have been more impressed with than the graphics was the sound. While I would say Hellblade II is only one of the best looking games I have ever played, it is without a doubt the best sounding game I have ever played. The audio experience of a game is often lost on me, if I’m being honest. It’s the reason I’m so comfortable playing games on my handhelds while watching TV or listening to music. While I don’t play AAA titles like that, there are a lot of games where I just don’t really feel that affected by the audio experience of it, outside of the voice acting. While the thing that makes Hellblade II such an impressive audio experience is the voice acting, the more impressive part of the experience is the locational aspect of the voice acting. When you start the game, it tells you to play with a headset for the best experience. While I do have more than one good quality gaming headset, I actually rarely use them outside of multiplayer scenarios. I did play the first game with a headset, but I was streaming it, so I spent a lot of the game talking, meaning that my audio experience was negatively affected while playing. As such, I don’t really recall much about my experience with the audio in that game, other than the fact that I was really impressed with the father’s monolog towards the end of the game.

With Hellblade II, I played it with a headset, and I did not stream it. The audio experience in this game blew my mind. I’m not exaggerating. I actually felt like I might be losing my mind while playing the game. The voices in Senua’s head being projected with locational audio via headset was amazing. It felt real. The voice acting was good, as it was in the first game. The sound effects were excellent as well. But the truly impressive part of the audio mixing in this game was the positional projection. The direction of sound and how that affected my perception of the experience made this the best, most memorable audio experience I have ever gotten from a game. Not the soundtrack. That was fine, but nothing to write home about. The claim to fame here is the gameplay audio and how it’s presented. I would love to see more studios put in that much effort with sound. I would make playing games with a headset a habit at that point.

While the graphics and audio are the absolute top notch of the field, I cannot say that about any other part of Hellblade II. Honestly, I was unhappy with the writing. The first game has a very well presented and executed plot. While Senua’s psychosis makes you potentially question whether or not the events of the game actually happened, the narrative of the game makes sense as presented within the world of the game. The same cannot be said for Hellblade II. The major problem with this game’s narrative, other than the fact that it’s incredibly boring in comparison to its predecessor, is that they try to continue with the ambiguous nature of the first game’s presentation of reality, while including other human characters. Senua is the only living person in the first game, so it doesn’t really matter if the events shown are real or not. In this sequel, there are several villages worth of people all interacting with the same information as Senua, and pretty much none of them are presented as suffering from any sort of psychosis. So, when the game introduces literal giants, you have to assume that they are real. There are people killed by them. Objects are destroyed by them. People fear them, and rightly so. However, the final boss sequence implies that the giants might never have been real. But if that’s true, the plot of the game doesn’t make sense. Did that many people suffer mass hysteria at the same time? This issue is never really addressed in a satisfying manner.

Even if we ignore the broken logic of Hellblade II’s plot, it’s also just a boring story. The setup isn’t bad, but the execution is really slow. The first game felt way more active by comparison. This is a lot of exposition and walking. Even with the fair number of fast travel transitions to speed up the plot, it still feels like most of the game is just walking around while people say things. And many of those people aren’t even on screen while they’re talking. I’ve seen people say the plot is nuanced, but that’s just a kind way of saying it lacks any real complexity. And why isn’t the Hellblade in this game? It’s in the title. Not to mention the fact that a blade that can supposedly slay gods would be really useful against giant monsters that many people in the game state are the equivalent of gods. It’s just bad writing at that point.

I would describe the gameplay similarly to how I described the writing. It has as much depth as a puddle. You press forward on the left stick for 7 – 8 hours with a few repetitive fights peppered in for good measure. And the combat feels worse in this game as well. Somehow, they managed to take the already simple, but effective, gameplay in the first game and make it feel unsatisfying and inconsistent, even though it wasn’t complicated to begin with. The visual puzzles carried over from the first game aren’t nearly as cool or integrated into the landscapes as they were in Senua’s Sacrifice. The puzzles in this one still require you to see past the face value of the environments, but it’s much more straightforward with a very heavy-handed approach in the presentation of said puzzles. The only really fun gameplay was during the two fights against giants, and those were very short. Like I would have enjoyed a game with many more sequences like that.

The best way to describe how bored I got while playing this game is that even though I beat it in under 10 hours, I still ended up falling asleep multiple times while trying to get through it. Not just during my late-night gaming sessions, but even in the middle of a Saturday. I was so ready for the game to be over with by the time I rolled the credits. It was such a slog to get through, especially for such a short game. It irritates me how much I hear people complain about PlayStation games being movies, but this is literally an extended movie with a little bit of interactive flavor. While it’s certainly an impressive experience, the sad truth is that Hellblade II is a bad game. It’s just too slow and boring to play with a disappointing plot to match being propped up by impressive leaps in audio and graphical game design.

Hellblade II has collectibles you can miss, so there is a bit of replay value, but I have absolutely no desire to return to this game. Additionally, you could get all those collectibles in a single playthrough, removing any possible replay value from the experience.

Something that really disappoints me about Hellblade II is that I’m starting to see a pattern with Microsoft Studios games. I don’t play many games from Microsoft Studios. Not because I actively avoid them, but because they usually don’t make games that I’m interested in playing. Ironically, I’ve played three games from them in the last couple months. The first was Starfield, which I’ve already posted about recently. The short version is that I was disappointed. Now, I’ve played Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II; and I’m also disappointed. Finally, I’m currently playing Ori and the Blind Forest for the first time. That one I actually like. But that’s a low budget game that came out 9 years ago in a completely different gaming landscape with Microsoft in a completely different mindset about games publishing. So to include it in this discussion is more a matter of coincidence than anything else. Of the higher budget games I’ve been playing from Microsoft’s ever growing umbrella of studios, the ones that do manage to grab my interest recently keep being boring. Visually impressive, but boring to play. That’s a problem, in my opinion.

I’ve said many times that the focus on better graphics is ultimately hurting games development. It’s increasing both budgets and development times while lowering the quality of the overall gameplay experience. It took Ninja Theory nearly seven years to make Hellblade II, and it’s little more than a glorified tech demo. Now, obviously one can’t say that something is happening with just two examples. That’s conspiracy talk. But it is concerning that a major publisher that rarely produces story focused games that attract my attention but keeps buying up studios managed to put out back-to-back highly anticipated narrative driven games that are just boring. I will continue to monitor Microsoft Studios on this issue.

Ultimately, I’m glad I had enough time to finish Senua’s Saga: Hellblade II during the free trial I used to play Starfield, because I would have been very unhappy to have paid to play it. While I give it the absolute highest possible marks in graphics and audio, I honestly have to give it low marks in both gameplay and replay value, along with no better than decent at best points for writing. Sadly, the game that I was most excited to play from Microsoft Studios this year only gets a 6/10 from me.

I had planned to write a full review of Stellar Blade, but I’m barely past the introduction, after defeating four bosses mind you, and I felt that in the current discourse of this game, this post was more valuable and important to write than waiting until I was ready to pen a formal review. So, as you read this, please understand that my opinions on this game are not fully baked yet, as I’ve only played the game for eight hours at this point.

I’m really angry that currently there is so much discussion about this game online, and yet none of it is about the gameplay. In fact, it’s already a meme that many people are talking about this game, often quite passionately, while never taking the time to discuss or even mention the gameplay. I think that’s a shame, because the gameplay is absolutely worth talking about. In fact, it’s the best part of the game. Which is important since this is a video game.

The fact that the entire conversation about Stellar Blade has devolved into two camps arguing about ass in video games is annoying. I expected one side of the aisle to complain about this game. They already were before the game even released. No one should be surprised about people complaining that EVE, the protagonist, is too sexy. “Male gaze”, “objectification of women”, and so on. What I could not have predicted is that an even more vocal minority would be on the other side of the fence arguing that EVE, or more specifically her clothing, is not sexy enough. I think both sides are wrong. I think both sides are stupid. And I think both sides need to touch grass. That’s all I’ll say about that issue in this post, as I want to talk about the gameplay of Stellar Blade. If by now you haven’t realized it, my title is ironic and has little to do with the actual content of this post. Sorry, not sorry.

The best way that I can describe Stellar Blade’s gameplay is “What if From Software didn’t hate their players?” Put another way, “What if From Software made Bayonetta?” To clarify, I’m not referencing Bayonetta because of the character’s appearance. I’m referencing Bayonetta because of the fluidity of the gameplay and QoL mechanics that make combat way more accessible than anything From Software has ever made. Why am I referencing the soulslike genre? While this game is not a soulslike, it borrows heavily from the Dark Souls formula. Stellar Blade’s combat is not perfect, but it is great, because it prioritizes fluidity over difficulty, which translates to fun.

The first thing that you’ll notice about Stellar Blade’s combat, once you unlock a few essential techniques from the skill tree, is that there are several mechanics built in to help you avoid damage. Not just the traditional dodge, block, and parry, all of which are present, but also, special counter moves that rely on timing. Other than organic dodging via manually moving out of the way, there are at least four different mechanics that all work in tandem to help give you opportunities to deal large amounts of damage against enemies while avoiding taking any damage from them. And you don’t have to be a master of the gameplay to use them. This game is not built around the idea of having to play for hundreds of hours so you can master the gameplay to the point of being able to run around naked with a dagger and one-shot bosses with a back stab. Though I’m sure many players wish you could do that in this game. You simply have to learn the basics of the mechanics and then you can quickly start avoiding all sorts of damage, including special attacks. Skills like “Blink” allow you to dodge behind enemy special attacks while taking no damage and getting a massive opening to deal a flurry of attacks. Not only is it effective, but it’s satisfying to pull off; and it’s not super hard to pull off either.

Most of the counter skills are pretty easy to implement. They’re highly telegraphed and require 1 – 2 button (including the joystick) combinations. They’re even color coded to make sure that you know exactly what you need to do to avoid the attacks being thrown at you. It looks good, it feels good, and it’s highly effective. And that’s how most of the gameplay feels. It’s a game that’s rewarding to play from basically the start, because the damage ratios are fairly well balanced, including boss fights.

One of my favorite things about the gameplay is that every technique you can use against normal enemies also works exactly the same way against bosses; and just as effectively. I abhor the longstanding design concept that boss fights should work differently than regular fights. Everyone has played a game where they give you really effective skills that simply don’t work in boss fights. Sometimes it’s blocking. Sometimes it’s a perfect parry or dodge. Sometimes it’s a special attack. In all cases, it’s annoying. The idea that I have taken the time to master combat techniques to make myself more effective only to have those techniques not be usable against the hardest enemies in the game is insane. It’s the equivalent of making overdrive (that’s what they’re called in FFX) attacks not available against boss fights in Final Fantasy. Stellar Blade does not do this in any way, shape, or form.

When you fight a boss in Stellar Blade, everything you use normally is both at your disposal and effective in said boss fights. Blocking, perfect parrying, perfect dodging, blinks, special attacks, shield breaks, and so on all work just as effectively against bosses as they would against any other enemy; and it’s awesome. It feels great to face a boss and feel like the fight is balanced on the very first try. I’m not saying that I beat every boss I encounter of the first try, but I never feel like the boss fights are unfair. I cannot say the same for Dark Souls. Those games never feel balanced in the boss fights. So far, every boss I’ve faced in Stellar Blade has felt extremely fair; and the reason for that is because I can use the same fighting style that I’ve been working to master against regular enemies.

Again, the gameplay is not perfect. For instance, while the combat is very fluid, there is a bit of command lag. Sadly, this was done intentionally, as has been confirmed by the developers. They felt like the game would be too easy if it had perfect button press parity, which is an insane take in 2024. However, I can confirm that removing the lag completely would make the game considerably easier. I don’t know if that’s a bad thing though . . . However, the gameplay is very fun and gratifying.

If you like action RPGs, with little emphasis on the RPG mechanics, as they’re very simple in Stellar Blade, I highly recommend that you try out this game. Play the free demo! The combat is good. The puzzles are fun. The graphics are good. The writing exists. Compared to a lot of games in recent years, this is a serious contender for GOTY, or should be anyway. Yes, the protagonist is sexy. But if you think that’s all this game is, the internet has failed you, as is its way.