Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes (2024, PS4)

The algorithms of the internet probably knew how I felt about Suikoden I and II when it suggested a Kickstarter of its spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes for me back in 2020. I played the first Suikoden back in 2016, and Suikoden II not long after - really enjoying both of them, so when I saw that "the old team" was getting back together to create what essentially was another Suikoden, I was hype.

After having thrown my money at 505 Games I started to eagerly wait. And wait. I already covered this in another post - but it took 4 years for Suiko... I mean Eiyuden Chronicles: Hundred Heroes (ECHH, yeah the name might not be the strongest point) to finally be released. Just to quote myself to save some breath;

"To their credit, the development team were very informative and transparent about the ups and downs of the developmental process. So much in fact that I stopped reading the steady flow of updates that came to my inbox not long after I had backed the project. I realized that the game would either be a thing or not be a thing (as is the way with Kickstarter) and basically stopped thinking about it for a year. And another year."

Long story short, the game arrived eventually and I (almost) immediately started to play it. Was it worth the wait?

Firstly, it is worth noting that if you wanted more Suikoden, ECHH delivers. The story themes, the gameplay elements, the character developments - they're all there and handled just as well in most cases as their inspirations. You can tell that a lot of the same people have handled the design and that the game comes from a source of genuine love for the material and the originals.

You play as Nowa, who goes out to vaguely seek fortune but quickly sees himself embroiled in something much larger. Before long you control whole armies against Dux Aldric who threatens to become the new dictator of the lands. The story is epic in its own way and just like Suikoden (1 & 2) always managed to stay on this side of far-out, unlike series like Final Fantasy (where I am often not entirely sure what is going on), the story in ECHH feels grounded and urgent. If you're worried that political intrigue will bore you (but how could it, have you not seen Game of Thrones?) don't be worried - the politics is just a backdrop for exploring all the characters that fill these games.

And while ECHH has some flaws (which I will get back to) I must say that the characters is where it absolutely excels. The thing that made Suikoden different from other JRPGs back in the day was the promise of being able to meet/collect over a 100 characters and build a home for them all. ECHH is no different. And you'd think that with a gallery of characters that large, most of them would feel underdeveloped, uninteresting or bland, but they don't. It's of course practically impossible in one playthrough to get to really know every single character, even if you don't run around and seek out all the optional ones, but ECHH manages. Every single character I came across made me want to know more about them, try them out in battle (when possible) and seemed like they had some thought behind them more than to fill a roster. 

The characters fill different roles in the games - a lot of them will be able to join your group as fighters. Some will help boost your characters with combat buffs or give you new features in different ways, like faster run speed, bigger bag space or fewer random encounters. Some will improve your castle that you get not very far into the game (by JRPG standards), with everything from theaters to hot springs to vendors. There is a mini game TCG, Beyblade (though called Beigoma in the game) and egg racing to mention a few. 

The game is shock full of content to explore when you don't feel like taking part of the politics of the main story for a while. The mini games are of varying quality and while I didn't get around to trying all of them, I enjoyed the ones I did (the card game in fact reminded me a little bit of the card game Shotten Totten 2). You can tell that a lot of these were probably after thoughts in the sense of stretch goals rather than content originally meant for the game, but I still found they added to the overall experience and to the atmosphere of the game.

While I had fun exploring the different characters and learning more about them, I found the world they live in lackluster and empty. It's varied enough with the standard desert, forest, mountain and ice areas. But both the cities and surrounding areas feel cramped and uninspired compared to the characters you play with. I tried to think of an RPG where I love the settings and remember them fondly years later, places like FFVII and FFIX. What is ECHH missing that these games have? I realize that it's a matter of details, nooks and crannies, little areas that you want to explore, the people you meet, objects that hint of lives being lived. In ECHH every house you enter looks the same as the next and you can't even go up to the second floor. People say and do nothing of interest and just feel like backdrop. I usually run around and explore everything in towns I enter, talking to everyone. I quickly lost interest in that in ECHH, only interested in finding the inn and the armory and moving on. There are some exceptions though, Castle Hirganthia towards the end is really cool and some cities hint of interesting concepts, like the Sand Shark people the Shi'arc (took me way too long to get that word pun too).

Doesn't this look like a place you want to live in?

But the world settings aren't really something I remember fondly, or at all, from the original Suikoden games either. There too the strength was in the story and the characters driving it forwards, so maybe it makes sense that that is where ECHH would put its focus as well. It definitely doesn't make ECHH (nor the Suikoden games) any less fun to play, but I still can't help wondering what if...

That being said, I loved the graphics and especially the character sprites. My kid couldn't stop commenting on how much it annoyed him that the player characters didn't have the same graphics as the surroundings, them being regular 3D, but this never bothered me. Would it have been even better with full sprite work or faux/modern style sprite work like in Octopath Traveler? I think so, but the design they chose to go with works too.

The combat in ECHH is something I never grew tired off. You've got six characters fighting simultaneously (though some characters count as two because of their size) on screen, their stats deciding things like combat order, crit chance, physical damage done and taken, magical damage done and taken and so on. Some times your choice of action changes your order of execution, and I found it confusing that I had to do the inputs based on party order rather than speed. This meant that whoever was first in your party was the one to receive action input first, even if they were the last character executing them. This never stopped being confusing to me, even though it probably is the most logical way of handling it.

Fortunately everything else about combat is fun and easy and doesn't outstay its welcome. It helps that there are literally scores of different characters with completely different fighting styles to explore, and even though they're not all equally strong and useful, they're all interesting. Add to this different "hero combos" in which certain combination of characters can unleash extra strong attacks together. Every character also have a varying set of runes that they can equip, which can give new skills, new magic or extra stats. There is even an "auto" feature in which you, sort of FFXII style can program your characters to fight according to certain parameters. While this works well, I enjoyed combat enough to always want to keep control over what was going on. And in case you're curious, my main party consisted of Nowa, Zabi, Gieran, Yusuke and Kogen. The final character was most often Seign for the Hero Combo, but I ended the game with Yuferius.

Add to this that all these different characters come with different voice actors and that you can choose freely between English or Japanese spoken dialogue (ok, some actors voice several characters, but the credit list is looong).

They even got Motoi Sakuraba himself to do the score. While I am not as huge a fan of Sakurabas' as some people, there is no denying he is a skilled composer and he does a good job here. The battle tunes, always a litmus test of good composing in my book, are doing a good job at getting you pumped while not getting annoying after the 100th time.

As mentioned ECHH is essentially a carbon copy of the original Suikoden, in all the good ways. But also in some of the bad ways. The loading screens (on the PS4) are so plentiful and long that I started doing exercises during them to offset some of my sitting and to feel like I was at least doing something useful rather than just waiting around. The inventory is also so confusing that it must be copied from the older games, though I don't remember it, because otherwise what the heck is this system doing in this game. Items stack in completely random numbers, meaning some will stack up to 2, some 3 some 5 and so on. It doesn't help that you start with an extremely underwhelming bag size and throughout the entire game I struggled to fit items that I came across, constantly having to decide which items to keep and which to throw. 

The duel system from the Suikoden series is also in ECHH, in which a certain character is pitted alone against an enemy. The fighting consists of trying to match the right type of attack based on the dialogue the characters are having, in a rock-paper-scissor way. Sounds cool on paper, doesn't work so well in reality. I don't recall it being a problem in the original games but it feels completely random and arbitrary in ECHH. I managed the first few I came across but towards the end I got sick of having to trial-and-error my way through them and just used a walkthrough for those fights specifically. Other than these situations, ECHH is not a particularly difficult game, and I only rarely struggled.

This next point wasn't a problem for me personally, but some times it was quite far between save opportunities. I clocked close to an hour at one point. If you're old-school this won't faze you, but it does mean that your playing sessions require a little bit of planning and timing.

While I feel like these are things you might want to know going in to the game, I really don't want anyone to avoid what is otherwise a great game over these flaws. 

So in conclusion, Eiyuden Chronicle is a game made with pure love for the genre and especially the inspirations Suikoden 1 and 2. While it has some flaws, everything else works so nicely that I fully enjoyed my 60 hours with it. The characters, the story, the gameplay - it made me just flow through the game and I never felt bored. And I feel like I haven't even mentioned half the stuff the game throws at you yet, there is simply so much to do. So when the credits rolled I knew I was really going to miss all the crazy creatures and people I had come across and I could finally conclude that yet, Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes was worth my money and it was definitely worth the wait.

Cyberpunk 2077 - PS4 Review

I've been ambivalent towards Cyberpunk 2077 since the first couple of hours of playing it. My expectations were just about as high as anyone else's, maybe especially since I had just played through the absolutely amazing The Witcher 3. And the more I played Cyberpunk the more I felt there was a lot of good things to be said about it, but also many things that just felt off. Around the 25 hour mark I still wasn't entirely sure if I was having fun or not, which of course isn't the best of grades.

Having finished it though I think I can put the finger on one of the main issues of Cyberpunk 2077 - and no I am actually not talking about the now infamous bugs and glitches, but I'll get to them too. The game suffers from a serious case of fluff-itis, or something I also call the Skyrim-syndrome. I spent over 60 hours in Skyrim before I realized it wasn't going to offer me much more than the same stupid enemies in the same boring locations. Fortunately it only took me about 25 hours to realize I was making the same mistake in Cyberpunk 2077. There is a big difference though, Cyberpunk actually also has a lot of really interesting bits buried within all that fluff. The important thing is to dig those bits out and not be lured off the road by enticing map markers that are just going to end up wasting your time doing the same repetitive stuff.

You can customize your character a lot, but rarely do you get to look at it.

In Cyberpunk 2077 you play as V, a character I had little love for. V isn't a silent protagonist, but also not a fleshed out character like Geralt, but rather something in-between that'll end up mostly annoying you with their own dialogue. While you have some control of what V will say in some situations, I too often ended up not agreeing with their style of saying it. Maybe the dialogue was just badly written, because V is definitely not the only character I felt was way more corny than cool. It's fortunate then that the other main character, Johnny Silverhand famously played by Keanu Reeves, ended up really working for me.

Maybe it was the concept of body-snatching more than Keanu Reeves himself. I don't actually think Reeves is a particularly good actor and I don't think he is in this game either. But he has a certain je ne sais quoi, a unique charm that worked perfectly for this character. The main plot starts a bit meandering, probably mostly because the only people around you are V and Jackie, a guy who although endearing doesn't get fleshed out enough to become interesting. But as Jackie leaves the scene, Johnny enters. Your brain. Literally.

It manages to be atmospheric and lifeless at the same time.

This is where I find Cyberpunk 2077 has one of its strengths. The main story, and many of the bigger side-quests, do some very interesting explorations of cyberpunk and sci-fi themes. It's so frustrating then when they're often only skin-deep and leave you wanting for more. One quest has you looking for the run-away subconscious of a taxi company run by a massive AI. After having rounded up all the different taxi cabs and having to listen to their different reasons for having left, I expected a lot more than the plain "thank you" I got. One side quest with a super popstar who has completely covered herself in chrome and going a bit bonkers also didn't really go anywhere. Or maybe they do, maybe I didn't do many enough of the side quests and these elements pop up again elsewhere?

Either way you're going to play Cyberpunk 2077, side quests or focusing on the main story, there is going to be a lot of combat. And it has potential. You are theoretically given the possibility to stealth, hack, punch or shoot your way through most combat situations. In reality though, the enemies are so boring I didn't want to spend more brainpower thinking about what to do than necessary. In the first half of the game I sprayed and prayed, in the second half of the game I quickhacked everything to death. Even though I could technically hack turrets, cameras and drones to do my bidding or stealth my way around, silently picking enemies off one by one and hiding them - none of these elements were well enough designed for me to want to use any of those paths. 

Finding the stealthy path, or staying out of enemy sight in any meaningful way, was way more hassle than it was fun. I also rarely found it neither necessary nor practical to use any other way than just rushing to get through an area. Fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, combat was almost never any challenge and thus felt more like a necessary evil to get to the more interesting story points. There were some fights that had me breathing heavy though and that I might remember for a while - a samurai boss somewhere in the middle of story mode and the final boss did prove a bit of a challenge and variety to an otherwise rather stale ordeal.

The game also has an obsession with cars. Anywhere you'll go, some random person will ring you up and offer some car or motorbike for what I considered a ridiculous price. I had no interest in this part of the game, and I have also never had any fondness for games like GTA - cruising around is just not my kind of thing. And maybe that is for the best since it seemed a lot of bugs happened while using vehicles. I almost always chose running from A to B, but some times it would turn out to be too far away. Getting in to a vehicle the first time I notice that the radio station play some absolutely banging tunes. How unfortunate that these are not available outside of vehicles! I would occasionally get into a car just so I could listen to some nice music, but quickly realized internet could serve me better. I do really recommend you check out the radio station music from Cyberpunk if you have an opportunity, because I almost didn't hear a single song I didn't enjoy.

Speaking of getting around - while Night City often feels completely lifeless, in other ways it was absolutely amazing. Often when I had to wait for something to trigger in the game, I chose to just walk around and slowly take in the surroundings. The city itself is meticulously built up, and it many ways it felt real. The people in it not so much. I still loved to just look around, peek in to nooks and walk up and down stairs to see where it would take me. Night City is like a postcard of a real city, it looks real when you look at it but you know you're not really there.

Filling these nooks and alleys are people that some times didn't load in with their faces on or cars that would get stuck in walls if I stood in their way. I won't be too mean about the bugginess though, in fact after 45 hours of game time I didn't encounter any game breaking ones and only a few weird ones. There were a few corpses that died in places where I couldn't loot them properly, and towards the end I had to backtrack a few corridors to shoot off a lost enemy because an item wouldn't trigger otherwise. There were items floating in the air here and there or people interacting with things that weren't there. Quite often audio tracks would play on top of each other, when I was having a conversation with someone and my phone rang for instance. But this was in no way a part of the game that bothered me or ruined my fun at any point.

The game wants to do so much and I wish they would've just focused on half of the stuff and made them really good instead. It's like they started out with a solid idea but just kept adding on top of it until all the good bits where all but buried. As it is now, most of it comes off as either half-baked or just not thought through. There are cars to collect, gangs to murder, psychos to find, fixers to help and a billion other things that scream for your attention. The main story is actually quite good, and worth playing through if you ask me. I probably would've had more fun with combat if it had been more focused and less of it. Now I definitely burned myself out on it in the first 20 hours of the game, and had little interest left for it when it bloomed out a bit towards the end. When you try to cater to everyone, you often end up catering to no one and the developers should've had the guts to stick to one vision or two instead of trying to include so many. Cyberpunk 2077 is proof yet again that most often, less is more.

Cyberpunk 2077 - 25 hour mark

Spoilers ahead! (Played on PS4)

At mid- December last year me, and a lot of other people, started playing the extremely highly anticipated game Cyberpunk 2077. I wrote down some thoughts on it after a few hours of gameplay; I thought Night City was fun to check out but didn't really feel "alive". I was unsure about the main quest and mostly stuck to doing side business. I hadn't really encountered any bugs or game breaking glitches. I felt combat lacked something that made it really interesting, but hoped more skills for my character and knowledge from my part would change that. I was worried I would find the game repetitive if that didn't happen.

So, some 20 hours down the line, have I changed my mind about anything regarding the game? Mostly no, but there are some things that have been positive surprises.

I am still a bit torn, or should I maybe say worried, about how I feel towards the game. When I am not playing it, I don't really have any feelings drawing me in to play it. It's not like how I felt about The Witcher 3, where I constantly wanted to play more to discover more adventure. So far I feel the main story is fairly meh and almost every character I have met is too. While I still think Night City is gorgeous and I actually really just walking around and taking in the scenery because there are fun little things to see and marvel at everywhere, all the people in it sort of break my immersion. Or maybe it is something about how the bad guys and side quests are all gathered up in little chunks around the map for you to deal with that makes it feel so planned out rather than natural and dynamic. 

An unwelcome sight

Over the 120+ hours I had on the Witcher 3 I never once thought "urgh, this kind of quest again" and the only enemy I got bored of were the dogs. I already feel like I've done only the same quest over and over in Cyberpunk 2077 and that's not even true, it just feels like it. Every enemy in Cyberpunk 2077 feels exactly the same because they are. In The Witcher 3 I fought everything from Drowners to Katakans to Alps to Giant Centipedes and even plants! In Cyberpunk the enemy is always yet another street thug (I guess I've seen a handful of drones as well).

In fact it reminds me so much of how I ended up feeling about Skyrim. After having played it for 65+ hours I realized I felt cheated by the game and all its little icons beckoning me to check what was around the corner. There was always the same thing around the corner! The same dungeon, the same enemies, the same loot. I fell for the urge to explore and continued to harbour the hope of something new and interesting continuously until I was almost angry at the game for having tricked me. 

The main story of Skyrim didn't interest me in the slightest either, and Cyberpunk has at least the upper hand in that regard. While I don't find the main story particularly compelling, I didn't really in The Witcher 3 either - it's adequate enough and has me mildly curious. My main drawing point so far is by far Johnny Silverhand, whom I really didn't believe I was going to like as much as I did. 

At least Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't have a really annoying companion ruining your life. Oh wait.

When Keanu Reeves first showed up on screen and I got to know who Johnny Silverhand is and how he is implemented in the game I was actually not too keen on the idea. But he quickly grew on me and now I miss him every time he's not on screen. It's kind of unfortunate because since he never shows up during any of the generic side quests, that's just another reason for me to avoid them.

I've got to hand it to them though, to me the whole concept of Johnny Silverhand is genius. A long dead terrorist-rebel who's stuck as a data-avatar in your brain? He's too cool for school and while I don't consider myself part of the Keanu Reeves fan-club I will acknowledge that he is probably the only one who could've pulled this off. I usually actually detest when they use actual actors in games, but this is one instance where the casting was absolutely perfect, nothing else would've had the same effect.

Combat has some fun points, but it still hasn't evolved much from me just being able to run in wild and crazy and just hold a shoot-out. I don't actually need to plan ahead or need to use a different tactic. I guess you could blame the fact that I've only ever tackled quests labeled "moderate" or lower, but "moderate" shouldn't be easy right? Maybe I should try some "high" threat quests and get back to you on whether combat required some more thinking or not. Right now I will occasionally essentially Nuzlocke myself to get some thrill out of the fights, because while there are a lot of interesting skills to be had, when you don't feel like you need to use them they lose a lot of their fun.

Game designers should ask themselves, what would Pokémon do?

You get completely drowned in loot like this is Diablo 4. I stopped caring about what I was picking up about 15 hours ago. I still pick up everything because the game tricks you into thinking that some of those things might be really useful. They almost never are, the only time you'll notice any major upgrades or differences are within the first five hours of gaming or if you do some certain quests that reward you with good legendaries. After every fight I've got about 20-30 inventory items to sort through, ranging from sunglasses, y-fronts and yet another assault rifle. I think there must be a better way to handle loot from how I am doing it now though... I will figure it out.

I've put most points into Quickhacking, Breach Control and Crafting, in that order. So I am what you could basically call a mage in this game. And it is quite powerful. I can take out entire squads of enemies by getting them to puke their guts out while being on fire, while I am hiding behind some trash can giggling. It's a fun concept and I know there are a dozen other ways you could handle a fight, but like I said you never feel like it's necessary anyway. I would've liked to be better at sneaking, but have yet to feel like the game is actually well designed towards this game style. Often I find some interesting alternate route after I've murdered everyone in a building already, and that is not for lacking of trying beforehand. 

Combat in some ways epitomizes what I might think is the main issue with Cyberpunk 2077, it is trying to bite off so very much that only some very core concepts work ok and when they try to come together they just don't. The world aesthetics are great, but characters are not. Combat skills are great, but combat is not. For everything cool about it there is still something empty and tedious in every smile I see and every gun shot I fire.

And yet there are a lot of things to like about Cyberpunk 2077. It's not a bad game, and yet it is. I really can't wrap my brain around exactly what my problem with it is, it's like a nice looking pair of trousers that are slightly uncomfortable. I still intend and want to see the story through, so I don't feel like I am done with it yet. But I really doubt this game will manage to get 120+ hours out of me like The Witcher 3 did, with ease. But you never know.

And also I still really can't stand the voice acting for female V.

Cyberpunk 2077 - My First Impressions

 Ah Cyberpunk 2077. I guess No Man's Sky is happy you finally pushed them off the podium for "games so overhyped they couldn't possibly deliver". 

I was fairly excited about Cyberpunk 2077 myself. After having played the Witcher 1-3 I knew CD Projekt Red could do really amazing games. I loved each and every one of those games for completely different reasons too. With the Witcher series CDPR showed they could handle a multitude of gameplay styles but also had a handle on storytelling and character building. Or do they? More on that a bit further down.

But I also knew there was a possibility that this game, being something very different from the Witcher universe, could be something I wasn't going to love. I was ok with that. I had already decided I was going to buy the game at launch anyway, because I knew that even if I ended up hating it I still would've thought CDPR deserved my money for the fun I had already had with the Witcher series (all of which I bought cheap).

Don't bring a katana to a gun fight.

I wasn't bothered by the constant delays either. The stars know my backlog stresses me out enough as it is already, so I had plenty of stuff to keep me occupied while I waited. Finishing the Witcher 3 was one of them.

In fact I would've preferred if they had delayed the game further to prevent having to use crunch hours. I guess it must've been the Christmas holidays looming that made them finally release it (even though it was still not finished as it would turn out) but who needs to hear the echoing words of Shigeru Miyamoto again nowadays? Surely everyone knows that a game that is released too early may never manage to redeem itself. The beforementioned No Man's Sky is a decent example, because even though they've done a tremendous job making a great game out of it, I am sure most people still only know it as "that game that was overhyped". Unfortunately it seems Cyberpunk 2077 will now join that stable of games that deserves better, at least in the future.

I fretted for the longest time over whether to get it on PC or ps4. I knew there was shooting and I hate shooting with a controller. On the other hand, what if I get it on PC and it turns out my PC can't handle it properly? In the end I opted for the ps4 version because it had worked so well with The Witcher 3 (completely different games, I know, but that is the logic I used). The fact that the game wouldn't run well on my ps4 didn't even enter my realm of possibilities. That is the one thing console has over computer right, you know the game will work?

Shotguns are really fun to use, as they should be.

Usually before I get a game I spend quite a lot of time looking at and reading reviews about what other people think about it, this is to avoid buying something that is actually a broken game. But I had already decided CDPR was going to get my money, remember? So I wanted to be as unspoiled as possible about Cyberpunk 2077. I am glad I did that too, because if I had waited and seen all the fallout about the game, and especially the ps4 (and Xbox) release I would've most likely not bought it at all.

And that would've been a shame, because so far.. it's actually a pretty fun game. Which is not to say it is perfect. And it is far from the amazing experience The Witcher 3 is, with its excellent world building, characters, story telling, gameplay... and so on. But Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot going for it as well. I loved Deus Ex and had fun with Shadowrun Returns and Cyberpunk definitely takes a lot of inspiration especially from the latter.

Some core ideas are similar to The Witcher 3, where you have an over-arching main story but are allowed to wander around and delve into other issues around the map as you please. I have so far (around 10 hours of game time) put a lot more time into the side missions than the main story, just like I did in the Witcher 3. And over 150 hours I wasn't bored once with what there was to do in the Witcher 3. After 10 hours it is difficult for me to say if Cyberpunk will hold up as well, and while I have been having a lot of fun so far there is a nagging worry that it might get repetitive in the longer run.

I am playing on normal, and just like The Witcher 3 I don't find Cyberpunk to be particularly difficult at any point so far. While there is the option to hack things I often find I can do well just running in guns a blazing. I am not really sure if I think the hacking option isn't well enough designed or if I think I just don't have enough talents (or know-how) to make the best use out of it yet. Time will tell regarding that bit I guess.

You'll meet many people, but few to care about.

The world building is adequate, Night City is a fun city to run around in. Does it feel like coming to a real place like in The Witcher 3? Not really, but I still enjoy walking around slowly and look into nooks and crannies like I did in that game. There is a lot to look at, discover and learn about Night City and I am curious to do so.

But coming back to the point I briefly mentioned in the beginning, you can tell CDPR didn't have the lore from some books to fall back on here. The interesting thing is I find CDPR did more and better with the lore in The Witcher 3 than the Witcher books ever did, but this time around I am nowhere near as interested or invested in the characters or stories that I come across. It doesn't help that the voice of my own character is really annoying. But overall they at least don't detract from my fun of the game. The AI isn't the best at times, with enemies not reacting appropriately to bombs thrown in their face for instance but then again it's easy for me to write it off as them being "off their trollies", or having implants that don't work so well, it would all fit the world I am in.

I'm not even sure I understand the main story yet, or that I have come into it. So far I have mostly been doing side quests, as mentioned, and whatever seems connected to the main story has got to do with me establishing rep in the "fixer" business, or whatever. I wasn't overly invested in the main story in Witcher 3 either, in the sense that I didn't care too much about Ciri. But it was still fun to play through, and so far Cyberpunk 2077 is too. 

I seem to have been lucky enough to not have come across too many bugs, glitches or crashes so far. I've actually not had a single bug or crash, though I've probably jinxed myself now. There have been some floating objects and faces that took a bit too long to load, but again I find as long as it doesn't actually prevent me from playing, I can have these aesthetical glitches work in the world I am in. That quirky weirdness that those glitches add also sort of add to the atmosphere of the game in a way that would've never worked in The Witcher 3.

I have feelings that I wish I could do more in each encounter, rather than just run in slashing my dagger around like a crazy monkey, but I tell myself that'll happen as soon as I unlock more perks and learn the systems better. If it doesn't happen however, there is danger that I'll find this game repetitive in the long run. But so far it has great potential and I am having a lot of fun exploring the crazy world of Night City, even if I don't love the characters that inhabit it.

Images from cyberpunk.net.

Final Fantasy VII Remake - Review

At around 41 hours of gameplay and having watched through the entirety of the credits, I realized last night that I had played through a masterpiece. I had played through the first part of Final Fantasy VII Remake.

I can throw in the towel at once and just straight up admit that I don't have the linguistical prowess to do this game justice in any kind of review. I simply don't have the words to adequately convey in what ways this game affected me and the feelings I felt throughout.

But I am going to damn well give it a good try. Let's start out with quoting myself (like all good writers) from my previous post, when I had only played a few hours of the game and gave it my first, careful thoughts.

"...a few hours into the game and I have barely anything to complain about. So far it is everything I hoped for and it gives me all of the nostalgia from the original while also infusing it with a fresh and new feeling. I am hoping the manage to keep it this good throughout, because then I am envious at myself for the absolutely amazing journey that lies ahead of me."

I doubt I have ever been more correct about anything in my life, and I couldn't be happier about it. The journey was in fact so amazing, I can't even be sad about the fact that I have completed it. I am just happy. So happy that I got to know these people, got to spend some time with them. And if I am lucky, in a not so distant future I might get to meet them again.

Did I even know these people before? Biggs, Wedge, Jesse. Aerith, Tifa, Barret. I have played through the original FFVII two times and played parts of it a couple of times more. I've always felt like I knew most of the game thoroughly. I thought I had a clear idea of who these characters were, whom I liked and whom I didn't so much. I realized as I played through this game though that not only did I not have a clue who they really were, I didn't actually like most of them that much before. For some reason I never could stand Tifa. Aerith was bearable. Jesse, Biggs and Wedge were barely in the original game enough for me to start caring about them. In fact this goes for pretty much every character in the original game, they're all kind of vague and never fleshed out enough for me to feel like I had a good sense of what kind of people they were. 

The first amazing thing the remake does is smack me over my head and go "look at them. LOOK AT THEM! They are great people! They are people you want to know. They are people you are glad you got to know. They are people that you will miss...". 

The remake takes the original game and decides to flesh out everything about it. When I first had daydreams about a remake of FFVII, many many years ago, I couldn't even really think of what I wanted them to "remake". The graphics maybe? But surely the story and gameplay are perfect the way they are? I realize now I was wrong. There is in fact a whole bunch of things about the original that was worth putting more time into, but I could've never thought that what they did to the characters would so fundamentally change the way I felt about them.

I love them all now. I love Tifa, and Aerith, Barret and Jesse and all of the others. They are multifaceted people with agency, camaraderie and humour. They will make you laugh out loud and cry into a pillow, they will make you want to hear their thoughts and make you wish they would stay around longer.

Graphically the game is far from perfect. I found many oddly low rendered objects and there were several times when I wondered if I was playing on a ps2 or a ps4. It felt weird because on the one hand there was great detail and world-building put into this game and on the other hand you could run past an object that almost looked like it didn't belong in the game because the graphics were all wrong. Some parts felt a bit rushed, but contradictively in the end the game still managed to make me feel like everything had been given the utmost care and love. I attribute that to atmosphere and probably a hefty does of nostalgia. How amazing isn't it to see and be in the locations of the game you played 20 years ago, but in completely reimagined and new graphics? 

Odd low resolutions aside, and I don't even care about them, they managed so incredibly well with keeping the feeling of Midgar, and just like with the characters they even enhanced, expanded and evolved the city. Running through it you can almost smell the dust and rust, you can feel the pressure of the plates above you. The first time I swung the camera around and looked up on the upper plate hanging over my head I was completely awe-struck. This was a feeling the original game never managed to convey to me, though to its credit it did incredibly well with the graphics at its disposal (I mentioned this in my previous post as well).

Cloud and his merry band of rag tags look great, I am absolutely on board with all the character designs which are very close to the originals anyway. I decided to go with Japanese voice acting and thought it worked great for all the characters in the game.

Overall I am completely blown away by how well they have walked the precise and fine line regarding the whole "what to change and what to keep". Hats off! I think the audio and music is an area that shows this perfectly, where they have opted to keep almost all of the original soundtrack basically intact, while letting the re-arrangements be optional jukebox tracks. Every single track that came on, with one exception, gave me a huge smile on my face. They did an absolutely amazing job with making the original soundtrack sound perfectly nostalgic and perfectly new at the same time. I've got confirmation that the soundtrack simply is timeless.

Moving on to something they went on to change quite a bit instead, the combat system. As I already mentioned in the previous post, I had my trepidations especially regarding the changes made to the combat system as I am personally quite a big fan of the FFVII ATB system. A few hours into the remake however and I wouldn't want the combat to run any other way. I can see their vision and idea that the original ATB system just wouldn't work as well with the modern concept and I think they are absolutely correct. The new system which is more active and action filled works so well and is so much fun. I almost wish this game had random encounters so I could just run in circles and mess things up.

The story too has been changed to contain so much more of everything. It almost gives me vertigo thinking about it. I read somewhere that the original Midgar section takes about 7-8 hours to complete. If this remake is any indication of the work going into the rest of the game, we're looking at a story and game time enhancing at the magnitude of five times. If the original game then takes about 75-80 hours to complete, does that mean the finished remake will take around 400 hours to complete? I swoon at the thought of it. But having played through this remake I definitely don't hold it to be impossible.

I end up not disliking any of the story changes they have done. They're barely even changes, the story keeps very closely to the original but fleshes it out with side quests and new side characters. I love it all because in the end I just want more of everything that is this world. I hope we haven't seen the last of Leslie for instance (apparently he is part of a side-story manga?)! And again, the feeling of having so many memories, and so much nostalgia for a thing and then getting to relive it in a new and fascinating way just can not be put into words. It has to be experienced. I doubt any other media can have this effect either. A movie remake or a re-telling of a good book just couldn't do what Resident Evil Remake or FFVII Remake has done.

Playing through the game on normal I never felt it was too hard or too easy. It was exactly tuned to fit me. And that can actually be said for the entire game. Is it perfect? Probably not. Am I biased and affected by nostalgia? Probably. But I can't recollect the last time I felt so strongly that this is a game made for me. I am the exact target group for FFVII Remake. Every corner I turn, every line Barret says, every fight I get into I just feel yes, yes, yes! This is exactly what I wanted FFVII Remake to be, even though I never even knew it myself. SquareEnix have managed to open up my brain and pick out every single element required to make a game that resonates so hard with me I can feel my bones vibrating.

My biggest issue here is that I can't objectively tell whether this is actually a good game or not. I am so ensnared into the nostalgia of the original game that it is impossible for me to say if these characters and this story will mean anything to anyone who doesn't have any previous history with it. I can't even tell if SquareEnix has actually tried to make it into a game that anyone would enjoy or if this is a treat just for the fans. But that's ok, right? I think we deserve it.

"Here, we made this for you. We know you have been waiting for a very long time and we hope you will enjoy it".

Oh I did SquareEnix, I did. And I will be eternally grateful to you for the experience that is FFVII Remake.

Final Fantasy VII Remake - Thoughts On The First Few Hours

There are spoilers here.

Many years ago now... I first heard about them making a remake to one of my all-time favorite games - Final Fantasy VII. FFVII was my first real single-player game experience, though I did play it in the company of one of my best friends. Thus I have nothing but great memories of FFVII and have been dreaming about some sort of remake to the game ever since I first heard about remakes. I didn't really know what exactly I wanted the remake to remake, initially it was pretty much just the graphics that I thought needed "fixing" or that I would like to see in a more modern version. Pretty much everything else was close to perfect to me, the story, the characters (well, at least the ones I cared about, see below) and gameplay. I don't even dislike the graphics in the original game, I have a very soft and nostalgic place in my heart for the blocky 90's polygons, but I was curious to see what the game would feel like if everything looked more realistic and detailed.

Thank you!

For the longest time I thought it was all a pipe-dream. I heard rumours saying that they could never remake FFVII because the original assets weren't workable or even available. They would have to basically make the entire game from scratch and there just wasn't enough money in it (though I couldn't understand how that could be true since surely a remake of a game so beloved would sell well?).

Maybe it wasn't until Capcom showed the world how great a remake can be done when they released Resident Evil remake for the Gamecube that anyone actually thought that they could be worth the time and effort (to earn the money). Maybe a remake could actually add to the original experience by walking the fine line of nostalgia and new game with new technical advancements.

Either way it may be, SquareEnix at least decided to announce that there was going to be a remake and I was hype from the very first second. Hype enough to pretty much immediately invest in a ps4 although I had had zero interest in the console beforehand and even though SquareEnix hadn't even announced any kind of release date yet.

I couldn't fathom how long it would take them to actually get the game done and in the meantime I got a lot of fun out of my ps4 playing other games, so I definitely don't regret that buy anyway. I had already given up hope on FFVII ever making it off the drawing table when it seemed suddenly it was almost upon me.

How can you not love that?

The release date, a mere week before my birthday, seemed too much of a sign (not that I needed any signs!). It was finally coming, it was finally here!

I was betting on getting the game for my birthday but as there was a week between the release date and my birthday I realized I could be waiting a whole week for nothing if it turns out that wasn't actually part of my gifts. I had to ask. Turns out it wasn't part of my gifts so I immediately set out to buy it. The Deluxe Edition, of course.

A few, gruelling, days later I had it in my hands. I can not explain the amount of hype I was feeling, despite trying to calm myself as I knew more hype just increased the likelihood of being let-down.

I started it up (after almost an hour of installation) and started playing.

It didn't start out well since I for some reason chose to invert my camera and so couldn't control it at all as soon as I was out of the first cut-scene and on the platform by the train station. First thing I had to do was reload and fix the setting (since that early in the game I didn't have the menu option to do it yet). Fortunately it only took a few minutes and I was ready to go, again.

And what a beginning it was. Now, bear in mind I am only some four hours or so into the game so I am carefully very optimistic about what I have experienced so far and what it means for the game as a whole. There is still plenty of room to mess things up, but these first few hours have pretty much lived up to exactly what I envisioned my ideal FFVII remake to be.

I don't know where to start so let's just go with random thoughts.

The music. Love it and love that the rearrangements are close to the original. Why change a winning concept? The original OST is so strong and something that's strongly connected to the nostalgia of the original game. I am glad they didn't decide to change that up too much because every tune that I have heard so far has put a massive smile on my face.

The characters. The remake has managed to make me feel something not even the original could. I really care for Avalanche and Jessie, Biggs and Wedge. While I didn't feel indifferent to them before and thought it was a bit of a bummer that they end up dead, I am already feeling a great sense of dread and sorrow knowing what will happen to these great and funny characters, especially Jessie!

I used to never like Tifa in the original game and never used her as a party member other than when I had to but I've barely got to spend any time with her in the remake so far and I think she is great! I prefer fighting with her over Cloud!

I've dabbled with whether I prefer the Japanese or English audio and they're both good. For now I am going with Japanese however, only because the odd "eh", "ah", "uh"'s that Cloud does here and there work better in that language. I even think Barrett sounds better in the English dub, but they all sound good.

Overall, and I never thought I would say this because I usually prefer to play games without voice acting, this game has managed to make all the characters I have met so far a lot more interesting and alive than they ever were in the original.

Redeeming herself.

The battle system. I had heard they had changed it from the static ATB system that I quite honestly love about the original game. Back in the day when I first played it I didn't consider myself good or confident in gaming and the mere thought of real time battles made me break out in sweats. A fighting system that allowed me to take my time in making my choices suited me ideally.

I've played a heck-ton of games since then though and real-time battles are definitely not something I struggle with anymore (Dark Souls doesn't count...). I was very weary about the idea of changing the original fighting system and thought that could be the one big thing I wouldn't enjoy about the remake but so far... I love it!

It might help that I've just spent 100 hours with The Witcher 3 and that the battle system is fairly similar. It's a system I am familiar and comfortable with but I also think it is well designed and fun to use. It's not perfect though. I find it way too hard to spot when the enemies are using special skills so that I can dodge or block them, but that is also my only complaint this far in.

The world. Some set pieces are almost brick by brick recreations of scenes from the original game and I just squee every time I recognize a place. I remember exactly what they look like in the original and comparing them is so much fun. Looking up into the sky only to see a big slab of metal hanging over my head hundreds of meters up was also a very humbling and thought-provoking feeling, one that the original game managed to convey greatly without the ability to pan your camera but the remake made it really hit home with me.

So a few hours into the game and I have barely anything to complain about. So far it is exactly what I had hoped for and it gives me all of the nostalgia from the original while also infusing it with a new and fresh feeling. I am hoping they manage to keep it this good throughout, because then I am envious at myself for the absolutely amazing journey that lies ahead of me. (Seeing Jenova! Finding Vincent Valentine! Summons! Red XIII! OMGOMG).

Images from polygon.com,

My Best of 2019

Time to take a look back at 2019 and some of my personal entertainment highlights as far as books and games go.

Some thoughts on the books I read in 2019;

Overall I can't say 2019 was a good year for my reading. I did a lot less of it first of all. I think the main explanation is that I used to do most of my reading at my work (it used to be very intermittent work load with sometimes longer breaks in-between) and now I have a different job that has pretty much no breaks for reading instead. The upside is that I have more fun at work, the downside is that I have less time to read.

I also didn't read many books that wow:ed me and some times when I read a lot of not-so-exciting books in a row it sort of puts me off reading for a while. I have this issue with watching anime or TV-series as well. For instance my usual go to series when I want something that I know I'll enjoy - The Expanse - ended up being not as good as I usually think they are. The fifth book in the series, Nemesis Games, introduced a character I had little interest in and really just wanted to go away.
Unfortunately that seems very unlikely to happen anytime soon, but maybe I can suffer this character if the rest of the storytelling is as good as it usually is. Nemesis Games didn't deliver but Babylon's Ashes which I am reading at the moment is already proving to getting back to older forms.
As an anecdote I can mention that I've watched all the seasons of The Expanse on Amazon as well (and Netflix before the move) and while I think the books are amazing I actually think the TV-series is even better.

Didn't have much of this last year.

I've also read a couple of Agatha Christie books as it's always been on my bucket list to read through at least a few of her works. I find them very snack-sized. They're easy get through and entertaining enough but not really anything you'll remember for too long afterwards.

Interestingly enough my favorite books of last year where actually two books I had already read before and re-read because I enjoyed them so much. I guess they don't really count then since I knew I liked them already.

The first one is The Mountain Village by Chun Chan Yeh. I have a fascination with the ordeals of Chinese people through the ages and maybe especially the early 1900. This book takes place in a little village out on the countryside and what happens to the people there as cultural and political revolution takes place around them. People are only trying to get by and do the right thing, but when the right thing is defined by whomever has the most soldiers that day it turns out to be a very hard thing to do. It's well written and heart breaking in many ways. I love it because it manages to make you smile through all the hardships, it's not all grim. You really care and feel for these characters who could've been any one of us.

The second re-read I did last year was of a book I read and owned when I was little. It's called Vitterväder (Wights Weather) by Börje Lindström. It's a ghost story for young adults and I remember really liking it for its down to earth writing style. I decided to buy myself a copy as I've lost my old one somewhere and see if it still held up, and it definitely does. It has the right amount of creepy yet doesn't over-embellish but keeps it clean. I always enjoy books that can tell things with less words rather than more.

Another book I am glad I read last year was Frågor Jag Fått Om Förintelsen (Questions I've Been Asked About The Holocaust) by Hédi Fried. Hédi Fried is a Holocaust survivor born 1924 in Romania and she has worked many years with different kind of educational work regarding the Holocaust. Frågor Jag Fått Om Förintelsen is a straight-forward Q&A with things people have been wanting answers to regarding the Holocaust when she has been out giving speeches. The subject matter makes it a dark read, but it's a necessary one. These things will always be difficult to process and understand, if not impossible, but this book breaks it down to just the thoughts that pop in to people's heads and it's a great read.

My gaming year of 2019 was pretty good actually...

It started off absolutely brilliantly with Return of The Obra Dinn. What a great game. The only bad thing about is that it's a one-off, you can't experience the magic on a second playthrough anywhere near as it is the first time you play it - but that only goes to emphasize what a special game this is. Original idea executed amazingly, this is fun and enthralling from beginning to the end.

Cause of death - really bad luck.

I also played Bloodstained and enjoyed it a lot. Bloodstained is a good example of how you can't capture lightning in a bottle twice, but by golly if you can't have fun with it a second time around. Borrowing very heavily from the Castlevania Symphony of the Night formula, Bloodstained decided to add more of everything and I think it worked. A lot of the extra stuff wasn't really necessary but it also didn't detract from the core game so I didn't mind it. The main game was competent enough and kept my interest throughout.

Talking about re-treading old footsteps as I seem to have done in my book reading last year, I also replayed Resident Evil 2 in a way. Resident Evil 2 remake was finally released, more than 15 years after it was first announced (yes, it was first announced when the first Resident Evil remake was released). The first Resident Evil remake still stands as the template on how to not just make a game justice but actually improve upon it with modern tools and I was definitely worried that Capcom could not pull that off twice. I am so glad I was wrong. The Resident Evil 2 remake embraces everything that made the original great and adds new flavor to the formula to keep the familiar feeling yet making it fresh. Kudos to Capcom for pulling it off again. Let's hope they can do a hattrick with Resident Evil 3 Nemesis.

2019 was also the year that saw the return of WoW Classic and I can't tell you how much fun I've been having with it. I still play it though literally no one else I know does (or at least not on my server). Even my bf who played it a bit the first couple of months, and we were levelling paladins together, cancelled his subscription last month. Me, I am trudging along in my loneliness. It's not that bad actually, and to be fair it's pretty accurate to my original WoW Vanilla experience. Back then I only knew my brother who played and for the first nine months we shared an account, so playing together wasn't an option. Also he was all into Pvp and I really wasn't.

I've missed this place.

At the moment I play my different alts (have pretty much one of each class) and haven't even made it to 40 on any one of them yet. I run around and do quests and the occasional dungeon while listening to podcasts. I love that you're often forced to ask other people for help and most of the time I only meet nice and funny ones. I am taking my time to get to endgame because I know that's probably when I hit my stop button. I never really raided in Vanilla and I don't have much desire to do so this time around either. On the other hand I know endgame content is more accessible this time around, for whatever reason, so I wouldn't mind giving it a shot. We'll see when I get there, because at this rate of levelling it is going to take me another half year at least, and I am perfectly fine with that.

If I were to also look ahead a bit...

I am mostly stoked for Cyberpunk 2077. I wasn't too fussed about it really until I started playing the Witcher 3. The only reason The Witcher 3 is not on my "awesome games I've played this year" list in this post is because I am nowhere near done with it yet. Spoiler alert, it will be on my list for 2020, if I remember to make one. While I really enjoyed The Witcher 1 and 2 and so I knew CD Projekt Red clearly could do great games, I put it down to the IP rather than the craftmanship. But now that I have played X many hours in The Witcher 3 I have a completely different idea of the skill set of these developers. Cyperpunk isn't something I am crazy into but definitely a genre I enjoy, so now I am really looking forward to trying this game out. As I am writing this, CD Projekt Red just announced that the game has been delayed until September and to me that's is practically good news since I still need more time to finish off The Witcher 3 before I can delve into Cyberpunk 2077.

Can't I just play as Geralt in the future?

Years and years ago, it feels like now at least, I heard about Final Fantasy VII remake being a thing. I decided to buy a ps4 pretty much on the basis of being able to play that game. Years later we are all still waiting as you know and I was starting to become pretty sure that the game wasn't even going to make it onto this generation of consoles but that I would have to invest in a ps5 as well. Well... it is coming out this year now finally right? Did I get that right? I don't even know anymore and I don't even know if I care. Maybe one day it'll come out and when it does I will be a happy camper and play it.

On a personal scale life is absolutely great and on a global scale I am panicking, but at least there are some good gaming and reading hours ahead of me...

Any of you have some personal favorites of last year? Book recommendations are definitely always welcome!

Images from Youtube.com, goodreads.com, pcgamer.com, myogaming.se

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (PS4) - Review

The king is dead. Long live the king!

Let's not beat around the proverbial bush here. Did you play Symphony of the Night? Did you love it? Are you secretly hoping that Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night will be a carbon copy of that game to fulfil your Metroidvania needs? If your answer to those questions are yes, yes and yes respectively let me just say that yes - Bloodstained: RotN is what you have been waiting for. Now that the TL;DR section of this review is out of the way, let's get to the meat and bones of what I actually enjoyed about this game.

Because of course it isn't an exact copy of SotN. We could just all go back and play that game instead then. But it is definitely close enough of a copy that if anyone else than the master brain behind SoTN and the Metroidvania formula, Koji Igarashi, had been behind this a lot of angry voices would've been yelling words about property theft. In fact, even though IGA and his teams have been clever enough to rename and rework everything just enough to avoid any lawful actions from Konami who own the actual Castlevania property, it is clear that names is pretty much everything that really has changed. In body and soul, Bloodstained: RotN is Symphony of the Night. If you ever wondered what "spiritual successor" means, Bloodstained: RotN is the dictionary definition henceforth.

In it you play as Miriam - a shardbinder who because of reasons needs to go after evil things in a big castle, killing everything she can set her eyes on to find a vast amount of weapons, gear and magic skills. On her journey through the castle she finds new skills that allow you to open up new paths, there are occasional secret rooms and walls here and there and a load of bosses to take down. Sound familiar? If you've played any of the Metroidvania, or as they really should be called, Igavania games between Symphony of the Night and Portrait of Ruin on the NDS you will recognize the concept.

And it is clear IGA has let himself be inspired by more than just SotN for this game, we see gameplay elements borrowed/reused from several of the games in the series that so weirdly teetered out into nothingness after the (frankly) not so good Order of Ecclesia. That game was released in 2008, so even though Order of Ecclesia wasn't as great as the other games in the series, fans have still eagerly been awaiting another instalment (I know for sure I have), scratching their heads as Konami seemingly just decided to let the property mold away in its loneliness somewhere. Why companies do this we will never know, but IGA seemed to think there still was potential in the concept when he left Konami in 2014, and we all agreed with him. When IGA took the idea to Kickstarter it was quickly one of the most successfully backed video games on there.

The shardbinding that Miriam uses is very similar to the soul collecting from Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow and thus comes with the same gameplay pro's and con's. On the one hand, finding new shards is fun throughout and they range from genuinely useful to truly whacky (one will let you summon a chair). On the other hand, once you've found ones that work for you, there is little reason to change and play around with your setup. Though I had loads of different shards to choose from I found myself using pretty much the same setup throughout the game. While I don't dislike this system neither in AoS/DoS nor Bloodstained: RotN, I am personally more fond of the card collecting from Circle of the Moon where I often found myself tinkering with different combinations to fit the situation I was facing. The shard collecting makes sense in Bloodstained: RotN however and in fact the entire story is built up around it - my only humble wish is that if (hopefully) IGA is encouraged to continue making these games, he'd explore one of the other or perhaps a completely new style of using magic.

Simple and flexible.

Running through the castle is fun though and it is monstrously (pun intended) large. You'll go through pretty much every kind of environment, from fire to water to ice to buzzing saws. Every enemy is not like any of the enemies in the Castlevania games and yet exactly like in the Castlevania games - they might not be called Medusa Heads, Axe Knights and Slingers but you know that's what they are and it all feels comfortably familiar exactly the way Shakespear meant it when he wrote "a rose by any other name would smell as sweet". Just like in the Castlevania games, Bloodstained: RotN reuses enemy models throughout the game. When you see an enemy you've killed before with another coloration, you know it's going to be a little bit harder. It never bothered me in any of the other Castlevania games and it doesn't bother me here, in fact I almost prefer not having to relearn enemy patterns for every new area of the game.

The bosses are varied and generally fun to fight against but I didn't find any one of them memorable like the Zombie Dragon in Circle of the Moon or Legion in several of the Igavanias. This especially is where I would've liked to see myself being forced to go outside of my comfort zone regarding the shards and maybe have to stack up on certain resistances or use certain weapons. On the other hand, the Igavania bosses are never meant to be road blocks or feel like insurmountable challenges à la Dark Souls and it's not like I feel like I can run into a boss room in Bloodstained: RotN without making sure I am properly prepared and saved. Except for the final fight there was only one boss that managed to kill me but they were generally sweaty challenges.

I mean… just look at it.

The game is on the easy side, but so was SotN. And while the difficulty of Circle of the Moon didn't bother me, one of my biggest issues with Order of Ecclesia was in fact that it was too hard in the not-fun way. And there are definitely areas in Bloodstained: RotN where I have to tread carefully and pray to find the next save room quickly because I have run out of healing items and am hanging on at the skin of my teeth. I find that overall the game has a good pacing where it alternates between giving you areas that are easier to traverse and some that require more effort. I wouldn't want the game to be more of either, it hits the right balance for me.

The game employs a variety of gimmicky skills to allow you to traverse the castle and some are almost criminally underused to the point where their inclusion almost feels pointless. Early on you learn that Miriam can direct her arm to interact with certain objects in the castle, to for instance move them out of the way. While the directing of the arm is used in combat, though I never found it practical enough to actually use it myself, the moving of objects this way is used in only one or two places. The whole hand-directing could've been removed from the game entirely if you ask me. The Reflector Ray is almost in the same camp. It's rarely used to get to new places and fills no other function in the game. The double-jump and inverse skill are much more thought through and practical and thus more fun. Whenever I have to dig out the Reflector Ray shard I just sigh.

Otherwise the inventory is one area where Bloodstained: RotN is an improvement over SotN, but that wasn't hard to achieve. The fact that you had to equip healing items like potions to use them in SotN was one of that games only flaws, and one that Bloodstained: RotN of course does away with just like all the other Igavania handhelds. Not only is there an abundance of gear to find, unlike other Castlevanias many of them show up on Miriam (otherwise it's only been the weapon that's changed). Miriam can tout some truly hilarious combinations of hats, scarves and masks that could ruin the immersion of the game a bit, especially in cut scenes, but to me it's definitely a fun and welcome addition. You can also change her hairstyle if you are so inclined, and it turns out I am. If I had to complain about one thing though, it's that I can't flip through the inventory lists with my right analog stick like in many other games, meaning that you have to scroll through some long list of items occasionally to find that one thing you need.

The game also allows you to craft items, disassemble items, cook food and enhance your shards so there is a lot of reason to pick up all those weird knick-knacks the enemies drop. All of these extras are well designed and fun to do, and their inclusion feels justified and not just like padding. I only had some issues with the cooking as I found it quite difficult to find some of the ingredients for the food I wanted to cook, but on the other hand once you've cooked something you can buy that finished dish in the shop. Considering that you can only carry 5 high potions at any time, being able to craft some high-healing food items soon becomes something worth investing your time in.

Often the larger enemies are less annoying than the small ones.

Graphically there is just no way to beat SotN, it is one of the most beautiful games not just on the Playstation but on any console, period. I've heard there were initial concerns about not going more 3D, considering this was supposed to be part of the new generation, but whoever made the final decision on art direction for SotN absolutely did the right one and proved any disbelievers wrong. To me Bloodstained: RotN can't come close to that and at first the sort of sheen given to everything in the game even bothers me. It looks like everything is a bit wet and since the first stage is literally on a boat in rain it makes sense, but as soon as you get into the castle it just looks weird. I don't know if that is a thing in modern games because I had the same issue with the Resident Evil 2 remake. As I move on through the game I quickly forget about this however and actually come to some truly gorgeous areas, the icy one being a feast on the eyes. Bloodstained: RotN is colorful and fun to look at and anything that irked me about the graphics the first hour of the game is completely set aside before long thanks to interesting and well designed areas and enemies.

The same goes for the music. Michiru Yamane returns to compose yet again and as always she does a tremendous job. The music in Bloodstained: RotN is atmospheric, relevant and good in its own right but has yet to become iconic like most of the music from SotN. This is an impossible task not because of Yamane's skills but simply because of how human nostalgia works. I fell in love with the music to SotN long before I even played the game and every time a new track comes on I just want to blast the speakers. The music in Bloodstained: RotN is lovely but perhaps a little less memorable and same-y sounding. I'm sure that is mostly my rose-tinted goggles talking though as this OST sports some truly great tracks.

I haven't said much about the story or anything about the characters because as with the Igavanias there isn't really much more to say. They are as interesting as they need to be and all characters fill their parts just fine. What motivation do you really need to go and slaughter loads of enemies to find cool stuff and skills? We don't play these games because of the story, but because of the fun gameplay and Bloodstained: RotN delivers all the elements necessary to fulfil that need. Not only are there loads of items to kill and collect, but also loads of secrets, side-bosses and optional quests to do. A handful of times I was lost and confused as to where to go next, but this has happened in every Igavania I've played at some point so it probably says more about me than the game design. I will honestly say though, there were two times where I know for sure I couldn't have figured out what I needed to do next to advance the game so I am glad internet is a thing nowadays.

I had some tiny technical issues, like words disappearing in texts, loot being uninteractable because it didn't drop properly on the ground or a hold-up when opening the menu specifically in save rooms for some reason. These were rare and never detracted from the fun of the game though.

Some of the critique pointed at this game has been that it's a step backwards and that the Metroidvania formula has evolved since Symphony of the Night was released. To me this is like pointing at a game like Shovel Knight and complain that the platform formula has evolved since the NES era. This game, and a lot of throwback indie games, are intentionally backwards in style because that is what people are after. People don't want the evolved style, they want the old one. And they can both exist without it making the one lesser than the other. Also Bloodstained: RotN is not an exact copy of Symphony of the Night, as already established. IGA has deliberately and carefully chosen the elements of all the Igavanias that he thought worked and blended them together in this throwback that is not just a delight to play but exactly what he promised all those people who threw money at him on Kickbacker.

What is it about cool characters and wearing deep red?

There is a saying - you can't step into the same river twice. I often hold Symphony of the Night up as an example of a game that is objectively good, regardless of what kind of genre you usually like. It is also greatness that is impossible to recreate. And Bloodstained: RotN makes the right decision in not trying to. However, while this game doesn't want to be Symphony of the Night it definitely wants to be part of the Igavania handheld series, and as such it fits the team just perfectly (Order of Ecclesia gets to sit on the bench though). It is so easy to forget it's not in fact part of the Castlevania series, but considering Konami doesn't want our money I am more than happy to give it to IGA who knows what to do with it. I think SotN to Portrait of Ruin are some of the best and most fun games ever made and Bloodstained: RotN is a worthy successor. It delivers on everything I hoped for and sets a standard for spiritual successors to come.

Images from Steam, Bloodstained.fandom.com, kotaku.com.