On my world, it means hope.

I don't often post video game reviews, but I really wanted to do a review for this game (and there aren't really any places I can post a review, sadly, since I'm playing on the Switch rather than on Steam).

If you want a challenging platformer that requires relentless precision, this is the game for you! If, on the other hand, you play games to unwind, don't be fooled by the beautiful art style and cute design - look elsewhere!!

I describe myself as a casual gamer. I enjoy action RPGs and Super Smash Bros. I've played Mario and the odd Sonic games as far as platformers go; I haven't played Ori or Hollow Knight, which were apparently the inspirations for this game. I found this game to be frustratingly difficult.

The platforming is incredibly precise; one dash that takes you too far or jump when you weren't supposed to, and you have to start the sequence all over again. It was doubly frustrating when you had to backtrack through a bunch of stuff every time you died because save shrines aren't that plentiful. I also found combat difficult, as so much of it revolves around "pogoing" off enemies. However, in order to pogo, you need to hold down on the joystick, and if you're also using the joystick to move horizontally (which you are, usually), then oftentimes you might not be pressing "down" enough to trigger a pogo, and you'll take damage instead.

The boss encounters had good ideas, but I found that they took FOREVER to beat because they had so much health and too much of boss fights were obstacle courses where you had to survive long enough just to be able to hit the boss a few times. In other words, the attack windows were so short that bosses took forever to die. I also hated some of the forced combat arenas, which seemed designed to be as annoying as possible (the one in the western part of the Ice Caverns made me rage so hard!!).

This is also a game where you can't farm/grind for upgrades if you're struggling, as health upgrades are locked behind Lotus Seeds that you can only get from specific quests/story sequences. You can farm up teapot upgrades relatively easily, but that's it. I didn't find the Daruma dolls a meaningful help for combat, and I also thought most of the Omamori not that useful, since many of them were too specific to a certain context to be worth equipping. Or, they were just flat-out useless. Like stopping time while changing Daruma? Getting rid of the timer while batting objects? Who needs those? Generating shockwaves with the Mochi Mallet? The Mochi Mallet is so rarely useful in combat if you're not facing a few specific enemies that that's a waste of a slot. And so on.

Honestly, though, the difficulty wouldn't have bothered me as much if it weren't for some design choices that add to the difficulty. With more save shrines, with shrines being able to function as fast-travel points, with the ability to farm health upgrades early if you want, and with more helpful Omamori, I would have found the game more accessible. (Also, it would have been better if the game had gotten rid of the most frustrating enemies. Like those homing cats in Midori Forest or my absolute bane, the f#$%ing wolf/weasels in Megumi Mountain.)

On the plus side, the game IS gorgeous. I just wish it wasn't so frustrating. This is definitely NOT a game I would recommend to anyone who isn't experienced at playing 2D platformers/challenging Metroidvania games.

NEO: The World Ends With You

Rating:
Gameplay: 4.5/5 stars
Audio & Visual: 5/5 stars
Story: 2.5/5 stars

I played the original The World Ends With You (TWEWY) on the Nintendo DS and loved it. So I was of course super excited when the sequel finally came out, after so much time.

Gameplay: Neo TWEWY took the gameplay pretty much wholesale from the first game, from fighting Noise to adjusting your level and difficulty on the fly to eating food and shopping for clothes to increase stats. There isn't too much innovation (aside from the new character-specific psychs that were integrated into the story), but then again one could say, if it ain't broke, why fix it?

And the gameplay still feels as fresh and unique as it did in the first game. I'm especially impressed with how the devs adapted the combat system, since the partner battle system developed for the DS sadly doesn't work on a single screen (I haven't played the TWEWY port for the Nintendo Switch, but I've heard from reviews that the combat controls weren't great). At first, I hated the new combat system, but after about two in-game days, it finally clicked for me and I got it. Plus, it definitely feels better the more party members you get and therefore more pins you have access to—just like with Neku's combat in the first game, the joy is all about finding pins that have synergy with each other.

Just like with the first game, I became more engrossed in the side activities than the main story at times—mastering pins, eating every single food available, filling in the collection. One fun thing Neo TWEWY added that I adored is the graffiti wall—basically, you get graffiti for achievements, and you can arrange them on a wall (and you can find your graffiti wall in Udagawa as well). It's such a fun way to do achievements.

I took off half a star because New TWEWY introduced something called "Scramble Slam" as one of the missions in the Game, which is basically a turf war among the teams of Players where you compete to take over all the available territories. It sounded like a cool idea, but it quickly became extremely tedious and repetitive, especially if you wanted to go for the high score for the top prizes (and you have to play Scramble Slam multiple times!). The game would've been better off without Scramble Slam.

Audio & Visual: Not much to say here. Just like the first game, Neo TWEWY excels when it comes to visual and auditory presentation. The soundtrack is amazing, the voice acting is top notch, and the use of 2D sprites for the dialogue provides the feeling of a comic book in motion.

Story: Here is where I have the most thoughts. Many of them are spoilery, but I'll put the spoilers behind a cut.

TWEWY had a phenomenal story, and perhaps it's unfair to say Neo TWEWY doesn't quite match the level of storytelling in the first game—but, since it's a sequel, comparisons are impossible to avoid. Which is not to say Neo TWEWY had a bad story; it's fine. It's a little bit generic for a JRPG, but it's fine. I think the characters were very well drawn, but they also didn't have much backstory, which made them feel a little like blank slates despite their distinctive personalities.

The thing is, the first TWEWY didn't just have colorful characters; it also had a plot full of shocking twists and turns and a profound message. And Neo TWEWY just isn't on that level. The twists in the story weren't particularly shocking (also, if you go on the internet at all, you'll probably be spoiled regarding the most significant twists very quickly, as I was). There were a few plot holes at the end, and what ended up happening to one of the characters left me annoyed (I'll go into more detail in the spoiler cut).

When thinking about the story, I feel like Neo TWEWY got caught a bit between indecision over whether it should be a sequel or a standalone and ended up falling in between (but leaning more toward being a straight sequel). And yeah, it's fun to see the characters from the first game return, and I can't fault Neo TWEWY for wanting to do that kind of fan service. But it also feels like Neo TWEWY couldn't really have a story that stands alone or does something different from the first game as a result.

Okay, now I'll get into my spoilery thoughts.




( ** SPOILERS BELOW ** )

I haven't written a video game review in forever—because I usually don't have many complex thoughts besides "This was great for XYZ reasons!" But Immortals Fenyx Rising is the first game I've played that I've had complex feelings about, so let's get to it.

Out of a 5 star rating, I would give this game 2-2.5 stars.

The fact that it's clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild doesn't bother me. I love BotW, so I'm happy to play similar games. But the problem is that Immortals has major flaws in execution such that BotW was a better gameplay experience.


The story

The story of Immortals is that Typhon has separated four gods from their essences, rendering them useless, and Zeus is about to lose against him. Your character, Fenyx, a lowly shieldbearer, washes up on the Golden Isle and is recruited by Hermes to help save the gods. Along the way, many Greek myths are explained.

A lot of people were charmed by the whole Zeus/Prometheus narrative device, and yes, I agree some of their dialogue is funny. Overall, though, I find the story disappointing, just because it's not fresh.

The Greek gods have been done so many times that, by now, the way to stand out is to put a new spin on them. It's particularly glaring when you look at a game like Hades, which came out almost the same time as Immortals Fenyx Rising, but which is daring in terms of story—the protagonist, Zagreus, is literally an obscure Greek deity that is elevated by the game—and features unique, memorable character designs for the gods.

Immortals simply feels...safe. Even the choice of the four gods that the game focuses on—Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaistos, and Athena—feels safe and blandly conventional for a story about fighting back against Typhon (instead of spicing things up by throwing in, say, Dionysus or Apollo. But also, why the hell do Athena's blessings all revolve around archery? The game might as well have used Artemis or Apollo instead). The gods' character designs are equally blandly conventional (except that Athena has blue eyes, which...what?).

There is nothing new added to the Greek myths here. Achilles is a character, yet aside from hints that Zeus had a crush on him, his relationship with Patroclus isn't even mentioned. The overarching narrative is essentially "the gods were horrible jerks, but we need to restore them to their jerkish selves in order to beat Typhon" because Ubisoft doesn't want to play with the canon in any meaningful way—and the result is a narrative that isn't interesting and feels rather problematic.

I haven't played the DLC, but I've watched the story of The Lost Gods, and the story honestly gets even worse, with every god—especially Poseidon and Hades—being complete caricatures. Poseidon is a surfer bro with zero brain cells. Hades is so jealous of Zeus that he becomes the bad guy. Kronos is a cannibal, because Ubisoft took the "eating his children" part and made it his entire character.

Basically, if you already know and enjoy Greek myths, don't play Immortals for the story. If you're a child who knows nothing about Greek myths, I suppose you might learn something from the super basic way Immortals presents the Greek gods.


The visuals

The artistic style of Immortals is quite pretty, and I enjoyed it. However, I have to knock points off visual presentation for the Switch version of the game. I don't mind that it doesn't look as good as the PS5 or Xbox X/S versions, but Ubisoft essentially dialed down a particle effect slider for the Switch version, which led to problems like: amber not showing up in trees until Ubisoft patched it (which took several months from launch), certain landscapes appearing too foggy to see properly, and some of the cosmetic skins looking defective and ugly (not really a good way to entice people to buy them—not that I'm complaining, since I hate microtransactions). Basically, the Switch port felt lazy. But then again, that's pretty much what you'd expect from Ubisoft these days.


The gameplay

Whooo boy, do I have things to say about the gameplay on basically every level.

Let's start with structure and overall gameplay design. Unlike BotW, Immortals is crammed with things to do on the map, between myth challenges, Tartaros vaults, and chests locked behind puzzles. The problem is that, after a while, none of this feels particularly compelling to do. The puzzle designs aren't clever—think 100 puzzles that all involve some variation of putting heavy things on pressure plates, flicking switches, and lighting torches, and you can see how repetitive it gets over time. Half of the time, it becomes a scavenger hunt to even find the damn switch/torch you need, or figure out what the hell you're supposed to do to unlock the chest. This isn't fun gameplay. It's tedious.

Quick game design note—any puzzle that involves manipulating heavy blocks becomes instantly trivial when you unlock the skill upgrade that allows you to carry heavy blocks overhead. On one hand, I can't complain since the puzzles are so tedious that I'm glad for any shortcut—but on the other hand, the puzzle lover in me is appalled that you can so easily "cheat" these puzzles. Like, what's the point anymore?

The Tartaros vaults are especially tedious. Now, there were a handful of vaults that I actually enjoyed (I liked the ones that were designed like obstacle courses for Fenyx, and the pinball one was fun), but many of them were designed so that if you made a mistake, you had to go a long way back to the beginning to start over, which made the experience so damn tedious. The vaults and side content are in stark contrast to BotW—yes, BotW's shrines were generally easy, but as a result, they also never felt tedious, and yes, BotW didn't have tons of things marked for you to do on the map, but as a result, you felt genuinely rewarded when you stumbled across a Korok seed or hidden chest because you wanted to go exploring and found this cool thing along the way.

I really want to reiterate that, aside from maybe some of the constellation challenges that were moderately interesting, there isn't really a sense of accomplishment when solving these puzzles, but just relief that you've ticked off that box and can move on to the next thing. And I'm saying this as someone who's a completionist whenever I play a video game.

In terms of main quest gameplay, you're allowed to rescue the four gods in any order you want, which is fine. But when you get to the final area, King's Peak? It basically takes two hours to slowly ascend this huge mountain, occasionally pausing to fight enemies or do mandatory myth challenges, and all of it is just. So. Boring. I don't know whether they threw in the mandatory myth challenges as a way to pad out the gameplay length, add some "variety" to the ascension (even though the myth challenges are all ones that you would've done already, unless you went out of your way to avoid doing any myth challenges on the Golden Isle), or force you to get some Charon Coins before the final boss in case you, again, went out of your way to avoid myth challenges (which feels like too much hand-holding). But the whole experience is, again, just tedious.

"Tedious" is not a word I should be using at all to describe a video game, let alone using multiple times.

Now, let's talk about the combat. There is nothing wrong with the combat at first blush—it's more frenetic than the precision-based combat of The Legend of Zelda, so if you preferred a hack-n-slash combat style, you'll probably enjoy Immortals more. But it's also—once again—not done in a way that's particularly interesting. Maybe this was stark for me because the previous game I'd played was a Platinum Games game, so there could really be no contest. But combat in Immortals boils down to figuring out the most efficient strategy and then using that over and over again. For me, it became (1) spam Ares's Wrath until I stunned the enemies, (2) wail on them until the stun meter ran out, (3) repeat ad nauseum. The only time you're forced to change your tactics is when it comes to the wraiths and some (not all) of the bosses.

Combat itself felt slightly janky to me. I don't know whether it was me or the game (though, once again, I just came off a Platinum Games game where I found the combat responsiveness smooth as butter), but I sometimes felt like I would hit the button to dodge or parry, but the move wouldn't register or it would be delayed, and that was extremely frustrating.

Also, you have a number of special abilities: Athena's Dash, Ares's Wrath, Hephaistos's Hammer, and Phosphor's Attack. However, because—again—you're incentivized to stick to one efficient combat strategy, I find myself almost never using Athena's Dash or Phosphor's Attack. Athena's Dash feels redundant in combat, because you have Ares's Wrath for heavy stun damage and Hephaistos's Hammer for heavy DPS, so Athena's Dash has no niche (except maybe if you want to close distance to a faraway enemy, I guess). Phosphor's Attack is cool, and I wish I could've used it more often, but it just doesn't feel worth the stamina cost compared to Ares's Wrath or Hephaistos's Hammer in most cases. There's a problem when half of your special combat abilities feel pointless.

In terms of combat strategy, there's a fundamental problem with the game, which is that you're generally incentivized to dodge instead of parry, since most attacks from most monsters are un-parryable. So, when you encounter a new monster or boss, instead of wasting time learning the 10% of the battle when you can parry, it's easier to just dodge. Plus, when you're sufficiently "over-leveled" in terms of health/power/potion strength for a boss fight that's supposed to require specific tactics, you're incentivized to soak up damage rather than change your strategy. However, this becomes a problem in the 1% of situations when you're supposed to parry a boss's attacks. I learned this too late for the Medusa boss in Athena's vault—after three extremely frustrating phases when it took me forever to damage her because she was constantly teleporting, I finally realized I could parry one of her attacks. This isn't good gameplay design.


Conclusion

Immortals Fenyx Rising is entertaining enough if you have literally nothing else to play at the moment—and yes, that's damning praise. But it's a game made mediocre by its many flaws, and it falls heavily into the Ubisoft trap of seemingly having tons of side content, only for said side content to feel like tedious items to tick off a completionist's checklist rather than enjoyable for their own sakes.

Pokémon Sword/Shield is the first non-remake Pokémon game I've been interested in since Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald!

I mean, I did play a bunch of White 2/Black 2 (though now I can't even remember which one I played...), and a tiny bit of Platinum. And I'd intended to play Pokémon X at some point but didn't get around to it.

But yeah, I'm so hyped for Sword/Shield!

I think part of it is that I really fell in love with the overworld pokémon idea from Let's Go Pikachu/Eevee, and I also love that the game introduces you to the Wild Area fairly early on so you can choose from a wide selection of pokémon. I also like the Dynamax idea better than mega evolutions (which just made me think of Digimon...). Also, the graphics are beautiful!

I know lots of people hate the idea of not every pokémon being available...but to be honest, I don't care as much. I'm not interested in trading pokémon from older games into Sword/Shield, and I'm not particularly angry about not having my favorite Gen 1/Gen 2/etc. pokémon available in Sword/Shield when there are so many others.

I saw one person complain that Sword/Shield is "too linear" (mostly compared to Sun/Moon). Granted, I've never played Sun/Moon, but I'm pretty used to linear Pokémon games in Red/Blue and Emerald... (And, I dunno, I checked out some Youtube videos of Sun/Moon and honestly thought it looked more linear because it forced you to follow a really involved plot and long tutorial section. But seriously, who plays Pokémon for the plot...?)

The only thing is that I'm forcing myself to wait to buy Sword until I've finished my revisions for Novel #3...so...I probably won't play it until early next year. SIGH.

(Though that idea is possibly backfiring a little because I find myself watching tons of Pokémon videos on Youtube instead. MEGA SIGH.)

I'm definitely excited for the Switch, and I really want to buy the one with the colored Joy-Cons...though I suspect those will sell out fast. O_o

I've typically tended to be a late console adopter, though (for economic reasons), and things will probably be the same with the Switch. I'll probably get the Wii U version of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, and I see myself as unlikely to buy a Switch until either (a) there's a sale, or refurbished versions available, or something, or (b) Xenoblade 2 comes out (or more information on Super Mario Odyssey makes me want to buy it ASAP). I'll also probably use it primarily as a home console, since I'm not super big on mobile gaming in general.

Once I do get a Switch, I'm also interested in buying the Virtual Console version of Super Mario Sunshine. I played the Gamecube version for a while, but I was borrowing my friend's copy, and though I remember the game was frustrating at times, it's definitely stuck in my head as a worthwhile game to play.

But yeah...right now, I'm just hyped for Breath of the Wild and Xenoblade 2.

All I want is a high-res screenshot of an Urban Skell facing the camera for my laptop wallpaper to tide me over until I can return home and play some more Xenoblade Chronicles X. :(((

In previous Assassin's Creed games, the Assassin outfits worn by the protagonists were usually just fitting enough with the fashion of the time period that (aside from the color) they didn't look too out of place. Syndicate, however, is looking to be a different matter.

Jacob Frye, at least at a quick glance, looks all right, with the exception of his elaborately embroidered green vest. During Victorian times, there's no way someone who isn't from the upper class could wear something with that much embroidery, especially an Assassin who's going to get his clothes bloody on a regular basis.

Evie Frye, though, is the bigger problem.

Problem #1: So much embroidery! I mean, it's beautiful, but once again, this is a far cry from your regular working class coat and would've had to have been custom-made. What was that about fighting upper-class oppression, again?

Problem #2: Boots! Evie's boots go up to her thighs, which as far as I can tell is rare, if not nonexistent during 1860s London. Victorian boots seem to go up to about mid-shin-length at a maximum. Also, Evie's boots have heels (which make audible clicking sounds in-game...which is absolutely terrible for stealth), but while heels did come into fashion in the 1860s, they were mostly found on upper-class women's boots. Which Evie is not, because again, Assassin.

Problem #3: This just...doesn't look like anything any woman in 1860s would possibly wear. Aside from the fact that Evie's not wearing a dress (I'm not advocating for her to wear a dress), she doesn't even look like a woman wearing Victorian men's clothing. Basically, she looks like she'd really stand out wherever she went—which is a horrible idea for an Assassin.

Bottom line: I loved this game a lot, despite its flaws. I think of it as an imperfect gem.

Gameplay

By far my biggest complaint with the gameplay is that I hated the beginning 3 sequences with Haytham. I could not care less about Haytham (although I did get a kick out of calling him "douchebag dad" whenever he showed up later in Connor's story). If it was really necessary to make us play as the villain and/or show how Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton's parents got together, I wished the game could've at least cut down Haytham's section significantly, since a lot of that part felt like I had to run around as an errand boy in order to get the Templars together.

Overall I liked the gameplay a lot. The combat is fluid and dynamic and the sidequests are fun and engrossing. Occasionally I had difficulty with some of the main story missions, mostly because some of the forced stealth/eavesdropping missions were pretty punitive and the AI was occasionally wonky, but nothing was too frustrating. Having played this game along with Black Flag simultaneously, I have to say that Black Flag's controls and HUD felt more streamlined (particularly the weapon selection, Eagle Vision tagging, and enemy map icons), but ACIII's were serviceable.

I have to give a shoutout to the glitches, though. My God, the glitches. I don't really mind cosmetic glitches that are hilarious but don't affect the gameplay, but I encountered numerous glitches that forced me to restart missions. Some examples below:

- During the Homestead mission to rescue Lance, I killed all the guards harrassing him but could not get the next cutscene to trigger. I walked into his burning cart, got stuck (couldn't move out of it), and died, and when the mission restarted everything was okay.
- In sequence 10, while trying to steal the mercenary's clothes without being detected, I kept running into this weird glitch where I would somehow not loot the mercenary's clothes "properly" and be unable to progress.
- In sequence 12, while chasing Charles Lee, in the boat, he just stopped and I couldn't trigger the next part of the memory until I restarted.
- Once, when I booted up the game, something was wrong with Connor's character model and colors kept flashing on the screen in a definite seizure-inducing way.

Also, sometimes the follow-NPC sequences weren't timed correctly and conversations would be cut off by cutscenes before they finished, which was a shame.

I wanted to drop a special note about the end-game pivots/cheats—they're absolutely a blast to play around with.

Story

Once again, I hated having to start the game as Haytham. It felt fairly pointless from a narrative standpoint because the first 3 sequences gave us very little additional context on who Thomas Hickey, John Pitcairn, William Johnson, etc. were.

I really wish the script went through a few more rounds of editing for logic/consistency. Many times I felt like the script didn't explain how characters knew about each other (i.e. I would've liked to see who told Connor about Haytham and what his reaction was, and vice-versa).

It was frustrating in particular because I think the story overall had a lot of potential and the themes (freedom vs. order, idealism vs. pragmatism) were really interesting, but the script didn't really go far enough. I would've liked to see Connor argue back more with the Templars, and they really, really should've kept his moving soliloquy in the game.

I like Connor/Ratonhaké:ton a lot and I'm quite sad that his character still gets short shrift by Ubisoft/certain parts of the AC fandom.

History

My sister pointed out to me that ACIII's take on the Boston Tea Party is flat-out inaccurate (for the real Boston Tea Party, the Sons of Liberty dressed up as Native Americans, there were more of them throwing tea into the harbor, and they weren't being harassed by guards while dumping the tea), which makes me nervous about the accuracy of other parts of the game and disappointed as a history geek.

I actually wish we could've seen more of the American Revolution and substituted Haytham's boring introductory blather with more Revolution battles/conflicts with the Native Americans. My sister really wanted to see the Battle of Saratoga, for example. I also wish we could've seen more Native Americans other than just Connor's tribe, and it struck me how there are almost no Native American NPCs just walking around or doing things in the Frontier, which is a disappointment.

ACIII is pretty good with diversity by video game standards, what with featuring Connor/Ratonhnhaké:ton, his Mohawk tribe, and Achilles, but the game still presented a view of the American Revolution that was disappointingly white and male. It didn't show the women that followed the American and British armies, for example, and it would've been really nice to see figures like Martha Washington (who was known for visiting the Continental Army) and Molly Brant, the Mohawk wife of William Johnson, who helped convince the Mohawks to keep fighting for the British throughout the war.

So...apparently I've run into an issue with my new host, where it refuses to display my blog because I've somehow violated the Terms of Service, even though I have no idea how because it's all harmless PHP/MySQL blog code. Which makes me sad. I don't know what to do about this—maybe fiddle around slowly to see if I can get my host to be less grumpy, but otherwise, I have no idea.

I've been gaming like there's no tomorrow (partly because I was trying to get everything done before my sister left for the summer—I managed to finish Assassin's Creed III but not Black Flag). I've been thinking about writing a more formal post with my thoughts on ACIII, now that I've actually played the game, but I haven't been in the blogging habit recently, so we'll see.

In miscellaneous comics news (which I again got too lazy to write up in its own post): I'm super excited for DC Bombshells and all of the Divergence previews I saw (killer art style for Starfire, Black Canary, and Constantine: The Hellblazer! Intriguing directions for Cyborg and Martian Manhunter!). I read the first issue of A-Force, which people have been praising to the high heavens, and...I don't know, I thought it was okay. Not horrible, not great. Probably it's the whole Battleworld thing that's making it hard for me to get into the series, but I dunno.

Assassin's Creed: Victory reveal during my Constitutional Law exam?

Guess I'll have something to look forward to when I'm done, at least.

"Oppression has to end" seems to be the new tagline, though I kind of wonder how that'll be handled in the game. Because playing as Straight White Guy #5 is just the pinnacle of oppression, of course (even if he's poor). Also people are already making jokes about "The oppression of a yearly Assassin's Creed has to end."