While I don’t usually write reviews for TV shows or movies I watch, the friend I watched this with tossed out the idea once we finished watching it a little while ago, as I clearly had so much to say about (as I had already said at length during our post-episode discussion sessions). Mulling it over, I decided I did indeed have enough to say to at least take a crack at writing up my thoughts about the original Macross series, so I’m giving it my best shot here. We watched all 36 episodes of the original series at the pace of about 2 episodes every weekend over the course of about five months. Fair warning: This review will have spoilers galore, as it’s really impossible to relate my issues with Macross as a show without getting into specifics about its plot.
The 1982 anime, Super Dimension Fortress Macross is the story of the titular ship, the Macross, and the interstellar war that it takes part in in an imagined early twenty-first century. In the last couple years of the twentieth century, a mysterious interstellar object crash lands on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That object is in fact an extra terrestrial space ship, and the massive tsunami from its impact as well as the fight as to who would take possession of it sparks a massive conflict known as the Unification Wars that take the better part of the next decade. At around 2008 (over two and a half decades from when the show was released), the Unification Wars have resulted in a united Earth government, and the Macross itself is just about ready to launch, having been under repair for nearly that entire time. However, just on its landing day, another extra terrestrial visitor comes to Earth, aliens known as the Zentradi who have been pursuing the Macross. Their attack on the island the Macross sits on culminates in that very ship initiating a “fold”, a worm hole jump, to escape the combat, but a technical mishap results in the Macross as well as the island and town surrounding it being un-folded out past Pluto in the depths of space. The Macross’s perilous trip back to Earth and the ensuing conflict with the Zentradi take the course of the show’s first 27 episodes, with the last 9 episodes detailing events two years after the end of the first 27. Our show follows a young man named Hikaru Ichijyo. Starting the series as just a teenager, he’s pulled into the Macross conflict and the military branch of the Macross after attending the ship’s opening ceremony at the request of his senpai, Roy Focker (a decorated veteran of the Unification Wars). Additionally we have Lynn Minmey, a young girl who loves to sing and who ends up becoming the Macross’s biggest cultural pop sensation after their trip into space, and we also have Misa Hayase, the captain of the bridge crew of the Macross. If nothing else, Macross would becoming most famous as a series for its love triangles, and the relationships between Hikaru, Minmay, and Misa are the core of this show (beyond its often confused politics). Macross had a very troubled production. Being inspired (as so many shows were) by the big sci-fi anime boom that the original Gundam launched, it would take passing between several publishers (each with their own visions of what they wanted this show to be vs. what the actual creators had in mind) and the help of several extra animation teams to get Macross to the finish line. On top of that, the publisher they ultimately found gave them only 27 episodes, but the first 3 episodes were such a massive hit that they then gave them another 9 (resulting in just how different and separated the last 9 episodes feel compared to the previous 27). With all this in mind, it is no wonder that the execution of the original TV series’s story is so scatterbrained as it tried to help pave the way for future plot-focused sci-fi anime that were more than just a “monster of the week” experience as past shows had so often been. However, understandable as its production difficulties may have been, that doesn’t really make Macross any easier to watch in the current year. Just as the Macross within the show was a large vehicle assembled as it went along, so too was the show that it starred in. The hurried production schedule has left a large and very visible aftermath along the whole of the show, resulting in a lot of larger plot details that are either swept away out of convenience, or stated suddenly with no prior established reason for their existence. The crew of the Macross will suddenly and inexplicably have key information about their adversaries, mechanical problems in the ship itself will undo themselves after enough episodes have passed, and the exact nature of the danger they’re all in will shift and change beyond what we’ve previously been shown. It all makes for an overall experience that will very often leave you asking yourself, “Wait, what? Since when did that happen?” But there is no casualty of this “write as you go” production schedule that is greater than the show’s characters and the themes they represent. This is a larger web of relationships so big and messy that it’s honestly hard to know where to start, but we may as well start with Hikaru and Minmay. Hikaru gets tangled up in a vague romance with Minmay that takes over a lot of the show’s first two thirds, but Hikaru’s career in the military and Minmay’s rising pop-star successes keep driving them apart. Hikaru is a confused young man trying to balance his own feelings about the life he lives and the conflict he’s a part of and the girl he loves. We get a ton of windows into Hikaru’s frustrations, but very few into Minmay’s. It’s ultimately very unclear that she has much agency in anything beyond what her managers tell her to do, and that’s especially true once her cousin (and eventual sort-of boyfriend) Kaifun enters the picture. Once we get to the show’s first sort-of finale at episode 27, Minmay’s reveal to Hikaru that she only ever thought of them as friends (despite all the romantic dates and such that they went on) comes off as nothing short of absurdity in service of the plot, but with the momentum the plot has at that point, it gives Hikaru some sort of closure and allows him to pursue Misa as a more responsible romantic partner. It’s hurried, sloppy writing, but at least it seems to serve a kind of purpose. Near the mid-point of the overall show and especially after the 2-year time skip, Hikaru has matured into a much more logical and duty-driven young man. He still makes mistakes here and there in his interpersonal life, but he is virtually always correct when it comes to the military conflict he has such an important role in. This is not true, however, for Kaifun, Minmay’s cousin/boyfriend and eventual manager. Kaifun is positioned as a sort of romantic rival for Hikaru, but he’s also positioned as a kind of ideological rival as well. Kaifun is staunchly anti-military. Not just anti-war, but anti-military, and he takes every opportunity he can get to rail against the military that he sees as single-handedly continuing this conflict simply because it can. However, we the viewers know that this is nonsense. The Macross, its crew, and all of humanity are locked in a defensive war for their own survival. Early on, you could attempt to write off Kaifun’s words as simply the result of his ignorance of the larger stakes of the conflict, but this becomes impossible to excuse as the story goes on and he becomes a more and more important figure in the story. Other characters (such as Hikaru and Minmay) express similarly baffling statements at times, asking in frustration when the fighting will end as if their superiors have any choice in the matter. It all results in a story that comes off as incredibly pro-military, as anyone who expresses ideas of pacifism or non-violence are either making clearly illogical statements or shown to be simply wrong in their assertions (either implicitly or explicitly). Kaifun in particular feels like a far-right conservative’s idea of a “useful idiot” pacifist, where their calls for non-violence are so illogical that it just plays exactly into the enemy’s hands, as this is shown to us over and over with Kaifun and others. This is a show that has very messy themes, but the supremacy and moral virtue of the military is one very consistent theme throughout the entire show. Adding to this very conservative vibe that Macross has is its treatment of its aliens, the Zentradi, and their strengths and weaknesses. The Zentradi are a warrior race of giants who know only war. They know no culture (no literature, song, or fiction), and exist only to fight. Men and women of the Zentradi are forbidden to serve on the same ships, and they know nothing of love either. They can’t even repair their own ships or vehicles they’re so single-minded in their fighting. Now the first 27 episodes focus on this a fair bit, as the “culture shock” they experience upon being exposed to human culture, especially Minmay’s songs and ideas/depictions of love & romance, gives them the realization that there is something else to live for other than fighting, and it leads to huge defections among their ranks to the point that a lot of them choose to size-down and try to live among humans. However, this isn’t just “beauty taming the beast”. Repeatedly, we are shown that the Macross and the earthlings are willing to use culture not as an olive branch but explicitly as a psychological weapon. It’s how they defeat the larger Zentradi fleet in the climax of the 27th episode, and many times before then it’s used similarly to catch off guard and ambush other Zentradi enemies. Culture and love are shown time and time again to not be some illuminating light to let us escape from constant war, but as weapons of war no different than any bullet or missile. This gets even more problematic and troubled once we get into the 2-year time skip and the last nine episodes. Zentradi (both big and small) have chosen to live among humans and indulge in a shared culture together. This is especially true after, earlier in the show, we are given confirmation that Zentradi and Earthlings are effectively biologically identical. This even extends to a sized-down female Zentradi falling in love with an ace pilot among the humans, and them getting married in a very public ceremony. Their union is explicitly used in-universe as not just proof that Earthlings and Zentradi can get along, but as a propaganda tool. They are even even shown to have had a baby together during the time skip. However, regardless of all of this, the show takes very explicit steps to show that the Zentradi are biologically tied to violence. There are some small attempts here and there done to suggest that the long Earthling history of warfare shows that they’re no different, but these ring very hollow when the whole premise of the last 9 episodes is that Zentradi, unable to assimilate into normal society due to their biological need for violence and warfare, begin defecting to a surviving Zentradi commander with whom they launch a rebellion against the new Earth government. A major plot element of the show, one that is never refuted, is that while these aliens, these foreigners, SOME of them can assimilate and be normal and peaceful like us, ALL of them still carry some risk of falling victim to their biological urges for violence, and it’s just not safe for them to live among peaceful Earthlings. They even are explicitly shown to be using the machine repair skills that the Earthlings taught them to build tools for their rebellion, and say things like “this will make them regret teaching us ‘culture’”, casting doubt on the value of rehabilitating former enemies like this at all. It’s all an extremely xenophobic and racist message that also ties into the earlier pro-military messages. The military and its actions of segregation and skepticism are shown to ultimately always be right compared to those who wish to give the benefit of the doubt to self-realization and self-governance, because anyone who gives the good aliens the benefit of the doubt and stands against the military government just turns into a sitting duck to be killed and attacked by all of those bad aliens out there. The military is always right, and aliens, even the good ones, are always most safely viewed with some level of suspicion of their unquenchable base urges for warfare. Then, last but certainly not least, we have the show’s approach to gender, love, and romance, best shown through the very troubled character of Misa Hayase and her relationship to Hikaru. Misa is a competent and very accomplished woman in the hierarchy of the Macross military, and is one year Hikaru’s senior. Her and Hikaru have a long, troubled courtship over the series that at least in part has to do with some similar things they’re both working through. She too has a past lover that she’s been trying to forget, and she also has trouble balancing her important military job with her personal love life. By the time we reach the original climax of episode 27, they’ve fallen into something resembling a quiet, mutual understanding of affection, even if there’s nothing explicit. However, as with most trouble in this show, the real difficulties begin once we reach the time skip. Once we skip forward two years, Misa is hopelessly emotional over her non-relationship with Hikaru almost constantly. Apparently, between now and the time episode 27 takes place, they had never actually started dating or explicitly expressed their affection for one another, and she’s just been building a stockpile of passive aggression until the time we rejoin the story in episode 28. Unlike Hikaru, who especially post time-skip is shown to be competent, logical, and driven by his sense of duty, Misa is a constant storm of emotional impulses that frequently endanger her and her comrades and cost countless innocent people their lives. At one point, she nearly goes to Hikaru to tell him how she feels, but upon seeing him simply talking with Minmay (someone he hasn’t seen at all in nearly two years), she instead turns heel immediately and sobs all the way home. Speaking of Minmay, she also receives a very odd character change in the last nine episodes. Where she was largely devoid of much inner life or character motivation in the previous 27 episodes, she now has a far more fleshed out and better character. She’s matured a lot, and has grown increasingly distant from Kaifun who, in addition to being a useful idiot pacifist, is now inexplicably incredibly greedy for cash and compensation as the manager/boyfriend of a famous pop star (as if the viewer needed more reason to dislike him). She repeatedly fights and tries to leave Kaifun and try things again with Hikaru, who she has only now realized she truly does have romantic feelings for. Despite the utterly baffling final scene with Kaifun (as he spouts wisdom utterly out of character towards her in an exchange that would frankly make more sense if he were the one being chastised instead of her), Minmay actually manages to really determine what she wants in life and goes back to Hikaru for good. She realizes she loves him, and Hikaru hasn’t been able to stop thinking about her since they last parted. The only real things you could call mistakes that Hikaru makes in the post-time skip period is repeatedly (and somewhat heartlessly) blowing off Misa to instead hang out/go on dates with Minmay. What ultimately seems to draw Hikaru back to Misa doesn’t so often seem to be love, but guilt. Meanwhile, Misa has been getting relationship advice from Claudia (Roy Focker’s fiance) that is easily one of the most explicitly poorly aged thing in the show. While Macross’s romance subplots have airs of this, Claudia’s story of her initial courtship with Roy really exemplifies how much this show pushes the idea of “no means yes” when it comes to relationships between men and women. Despite acting like a pig to her constantly, Claudia is still head over heels for Roy despite him doing virtually nothing to earn it, and her only real trouble is not knowing how to tell him how she feels in return (and this is exactly the situation Misa finds herself in with Hikaru). When Misa actually finally builds up the courage to tell Hikaru how she feels, he and Minmay are already living together they’ve become so close. Minmay is completely in love with Hikaru, and it takes some completely out of character Kaifun-like useful idiot anti-military nonsense from Minmay to try and plead with the viewer to not see just how heartless this whole situation is. Keep in mind, Minmay has lost her love for singing because of Kaifun’s greed and abuse, and she has thrown all of her career away to be with Hikaru. As a result, despite how heartless Hikaru was towards Misa earlier, he and especially Misa are FAR more heartless towards Minmay in the climax of the show, and the only way that the episode seems able to break the tension is with a final enemy invasion to force the scene to end, because otherwise we’d need to deal with just how little sense it makes for Hikaru to leave the loving and very emotionally matured Minmay for the emotionally mercurial and obsessive Misa. Hikaru’s ultimate reason for choosing Misa feels something closer to “well, we work together, so this just makes sense” rather than any “we live in different worlds” that was the original 27 episodes sort-of justification for Hikaru and Minmay growing apart. This is really where it all coalesces. Misa is shown to be weak in both reason and ability because of her emotional state, and it’s only once she overcomes these emotions and instead chooses duty (to protect the Macross, to do her military job) that she is able to do good things again. This mirrors very well the transition Hikaru went through earlier in the show as well. Once he’s able to put the conflict in key focus instead of obsessing over girls constantly, he’s able to find success in both duty and love, as now the women in his life he used to chase now chase after him. Following Roy Focker’s advice from earlier in the show, that the best thing in life is to fight in the military to protect the women in your life, Hikaru finally finds success and happiness. This is a show that first and foremost glorifies the military (its power structures, governments based around it, the relationships it facilitates) and portrays emotion as a point of weakness. Those who feel emotion and let it get in the way of their duty, in the way of the military, are just messing everything up, compromising their ability to accomplish anything, and effectively just aiding the enemy who are only just waiting to take advantage of their bleeding heart notions. That really is my ultimate problem with Macross. Sure, it’s a mess of a show plot-wise, and it’s not particularly pretty either. Characters change their motivations seemingly with very little motivation, the military political situation changes just as conveniently, and you really just need to not pay much attention and let the momentum of the show carry you if you want to enjoy it on a plot level. As for its aesthetics, some of the less talented studios who assisted in animating this left error-prone and ugly looking episodes strewn throughout the entire series. These are things unavoidable when talking about Macross, and are largely just the result of the troubled production it went through to exist. But the real devil in the details here is in the writing. Given the political culture of the early 80’s, I can honestly understand, to a degree, why Macross would’ve found such popularity in the past. But the messages it pushed were bad then and they’re still bad now. Its age isn’t even a particularly good excuse, as there are plenty of other sci-fi anime of the early 80’s (like one of my favorites, Galaxy Cyclone Brygar) that have much healthier and better aged theming and messaging. Intentional or otherwise by its creators, the themes of Macross have said no to more anti-war and progressive sci-fi anime and gone with a staunchly conservative approach instead. Macross is a show that loves the *vibes* of Vietnam War-style anti-war stories. Stories where the government is waging a war that's completely meaningless beyond pure aggression, and raging against the military industrial complex and the government enabling it is righteous work for good. But the problem here is that Macross either just fundamentally lacks cognizance as to why those types of anti-military resistance apply to a Vietnam War story or just doesn't care. It loves the style, but doesn't understand (or doesn't care about) the substance at all. All of the anti-war/anti-military pacifism in this show, from Kaifun to Hikaru, makes a lot more sense if you view it through the lens of a Vietnam War movie. The kind of conflict where "when will the killing stop?" makes sense as a complaint from a soldier towards his superior if their side is the aggressor. It's gibberish if he's on the defending team. What we end up with in Macross is equivalent to if you made a Vietnam War movie where you have a Viet Cong soldier raging at their superior to just end the war already. It makes no sense and comes off as FAR more pro-military and anti-pacifism in how nonsensical it makes those arguments look, but that's the story Macross is, and it's frankly disgusting. Despite all of the trouble in the production, despite all of the animation troubles, the plot of the first two thirds having needed to be condensed, last third of the show being written way later, all of that, the show still maintains that pro-military, very conservative message from the beginning to the end. This is a show that is very right-wing, very xenophobic, and very sexist (despite what all of the women in the main cast might lead you to believe otherwise). As a result, at least for the messaging, unless you’re of a very conservative bent, you’re likely not going to like the writing in Macross at all. If you’re anything like me, you’ll likely find it quite abhorrent. But even if you agree with the messaging, then we run into the problems born from the troubled production, and then we just have a show that’s paced very badly and plotted even worse, and it doesn’t even look terribly nice as a last consolation. With a very wide range of animation that runs the gamut from great to awful, dreadful pacing, and a reprehensible moral compass, Macross is a show I really cannot recommend at all. The most generous possible reading of it I could give places it at a very solidly mediocre mess, and even then, with all of the far better sci-fi anime (even from the same era) that's out there, your time is worth more than this. If you’re a huge sci-fi fan, perhaps you’ll find it worth your while to watch it if only to get a better grasp of its place in history, but outside of that scenario, Super Dimension Fortress Macross is a show worth staying far, far away from.
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It's time for my (quite overdue, given it's the 8th ^^;) year-end wrap-up! Heck, I beat a ton of games this year. 130 of 'em! But now it's time to reflect on the most notable entries on both ends of the quality spectrum.
The Worst: #3: Rockman World 3 (GB) - I played a LOT of Mega Man this year, mostly in April, and while there were some really awesome games in there and some ones I really didn't enjoy, the 3rd GameBoy Mega Man game really takes the cake. Overly damaging bosses that move way too fast, stages full of fast platforms and big animations that cause tons of slowdown, and a massive pile of pixel-perfect jumps made this a horrible chore to play through. Mega Man as a series generally keeps such a good baseline of quality that I'd have trouble calling virtually any of them outright "bad", but this game is one I feel no hesitation calling out as heckin' awful. #2: Maken Shao (PS2) - Last year I played through Maken X: a horrible time of a Dreamcast game that used a console with only 1 joystick to have a first-person sword fighting game. In short, it didn't work, but a lot of the problems it had *felt* like they could've been solved had the game been in third-person. Fast forward to this year and I finally got around to playing the PAL and Japan-exclusive remake of Maken X on the PS2, the one that makes it third-person, and was blown away at just how much being in first-person benefited the first game. Maken Shao is nothing but an embarrassing mistake in not acknowledging what not only makes your own game work, but in what even makes action games fun. If the Maken games are any indication, it's a good thing Atlus generally stayed far, far away from developing action titles after these. #1: Shining Wisdom (Saturn) - When I played through Maken Shao way back in summer, I thought there was NO way anything else could be that bad. Little did I know what was waiting for me come December's TR. Now Shining Force 1 and 2 simply weren't for me, but I can understand their popularity to a certain degree, especially back in the 90's when they came out. Shining Wisdom, on the other hand, is a game so baffling in its construction that I can only summarize it as "an astoundingly bad time". A game that seems to go out of its way to do just about everything (sans the music) wrong, it is undoubtedly not only the worst game I've played this year, but it's also easily one of the worst games I've ever beaten, full stop. ---- The Best: #5: Tales of Xillia (PS3) - It's been a while since I've played through a Tales game, and it was about time I did. I'd heard Xillia was quite good, and those people were absolutely right! Xillia isn't quite my favorite game in the series, but it's damn close. Very interesting and well-fleshed out themes combined with a tightly written & charming main cast made this an absolute blast to play, and the fun combat helped a bunch too~. It's a shame the sequel is such a mess, but the first game is definitely one of the best games in the series that I've played~. #4: moon RPG (Switch) - moon RPG is a bit deceptively named, given that it's pretty clearly an adventure game and not an RPG at all, but regardless it's still a very wild adventure through an RPG-like world. A very clever deconstruction of RPG tropes, moon doesn't so much criticize video games as they are, so much as postulate what they *could* be, and it does it through a delightfully strange and weird world packed with charming characters and locales. I really do hope Onion Games decides to localize and port more of their old games, as even though most (or all) of them aren't as good as moon, there's a lot of greatness to be found in this old gem that finally got localized (and a truly stellar localization it is!). #3: Hermina & Culus (PS2) - In my sudden urge to play just about as many Atelier games this year as I could get my little hands on, I happened upon the existence of this weird little VN spin-off to the main series' third entry. I was able to track down a copy, and I was told it was pretty short, so I grabbed it and played through it all in one sitting. Afterwards, I was glad that I didn't play it in a voice call and glad I played through it in one sitting, because I'm not sure any game has made me cry in one burst as much as this one did (and one I still tear up thinking about). A captivating story about unconventional families/relationships, growing up, and loss, this is a game I love so much that at several points I've considered trying to fan-translate it myself, because more people need to experience this. I'm not sure I'll ever actually get around to that, but damn if I'm not tempted every time I think about it #2: The Missing (Switch) - I've been hearing for years that The Missing is a great game about the trans experience, and I really can't say that those statements were wrong after having played it myself. It does a brilliant job of using both more subtle metaphor alongside more direct explanations to get its messages across to the audience, and I couldn't stop thinking of so many of my real life trans friends (not to mention myself) while I was playing it. A story so raw and true to life that I kinda didn't wanna keep going but also never wanted it to end, this was an awesome game to cap the year off with. #1: Atelier Totori (PS3) - A game I'd already watched a friend play before I played it, I was kinda shocked at myself for just how hard it was still able to hit me. The mechanics of Atelier Totori are a really fun and well-polished refining of what had made Atelier Rorona work so well (a revival of the series' older mechanics). It's a really fun game to play and try to find all the secrets and best battle strategies in. It's also one of my favorite stories I've seen in a video game. A really touching story about family, grief, and growing up that had me in tears over and over with just how bad it hit me. This game, more than any other this year, has definitely been ushered into my list of all-time favorite RPGs I've played. ---- Honorable Mentions/Special (In no particular order): #A: Blue Stinger (DC) - Our own little mini-TR outside of the other TR's! It was a lot of fun going through this together, especially when I got to hear y'all's opinions on it. It was very interesting to see how different from the other regions the Japanese version is, and it even ended up being one of my most enjoyed games I've played on my Dreamcast #B: Doraemon: Nobita To Mittsu No Seireiseki (N64) - This was a surprisingly good, even shockingly good, licensed game on the N64. Now it's hardly the best thing ever, but I was really blown away at just how competent and well-polished the whole N64 Doraemon trilogy is. The reason it's on this list, however, is because it's something that helped me meet on of my new best friends last year. She grew up watching Doraemon on TV, and me streaming this game to our Discord chat (as well as its two sequels) gave us a lot to talk about when we were first meeting, so it will always hold an extra special place in my heart ^w^ <3 #C: Fruits of Grisaia (PC) - Now this is a game I technically saw the end of (well, one of them anyhow) but never actually wrote a review of. It's a visual novel I played through a bit of every weekend with my significant other for months, with her voicing the female characters and myself voicing the male main character. We only actually finished one route of five, so I didn't really feel comfortable writing a full-blown review on it (and there's also such a wild mix of genuinely good and well-done writing mixed in along with some really skeevy/porny stuff that I would've had a monster of a time writing about it anyhow XP). Regardless, it was something that brought us a lot closer together and something we bonded over a lot. We both have very mixed feelings about the quality of it, but it will always hold a very special place in our hearts. As an example of that, she even sent me a really sweet screenshot from one of the epilogues we saw as an extra message after we got engaged in December <3 Over the past few days, I played through the other 7 games on the Castlevania Anniversary Collection as well as another Castlevania game I got on the Wii U Virtual Console. Rather than review them separately, one at a time in the order that I beat them, like I usually do, I thought it would be more fun and interesting to try something different. I'm going to write this singular massive post reviewing each in the order that they came out and in the context that they came out. I already was comparing the games to one another as I played them, so comparing them actively via writing to the past Castlevanias at the time sounded like an even more fun idea~. As a quick note before I properly begin, I will clarify that because Belmont's Revenge and Rondo of Blood already have proper reviews on the site, I'm not going to totally re-review them here. Additionally, Kid Dracula is a bit too different to really be worth comparing to other Castlevania games, so that'll get its own review at a later date. Lastly, all of these games are the Japanese versions unless specified otherwise.
Castlevania (Famicom) The game that started it all: Simon Belmont's quest to go to Castlevania and destroy Dracula. This is where so many foundational aspects of the classic games get their start, but it also definitely shows its age and has many marks of being a first attempt. This is a game I attempted to beat quite a lot as a kid, but I never could. Even this time I used save states quite a fair bit (more than almost any other of the games I'll write about here). I generally tried to use them only either before a very hard boss, or once I'd completed a section without getting hit (that was proof enough to me that it wasn't worth my time replaying it over and over). Simon Belmont has six stages of Castlevania to get through before Dracula, each of them with an increasingly difficult boss awaiting him at the end. He has his trusty whip which he can collect upgrades for (that reset when you lose a life) that make it longer and more damaging, and he can also pick up one subweapon at a time that can be used by holding up and pressing the attack button. It's a relatively simple formula, but it works pretty damn well. Other staples of the classic games get their start here too, such as your infamously very rigid jumps (no play control here) and the big knockback when you get hit. Simon has a very deliberate way to how he controls. From the jumping to the walking to the whipping, everything has a reliable animation that you need to really get used to if you're going to survive with it. Mistakes are not very often tolerated, and this is a game that really rewards knowing exactly what you're getting into so you can approach it in a way that you'll actually have a chance of surviving. On that note, I would say that the first Castlevania's biggest problem is that it falls into a design trap of "too hard to be fun" very often for me. The knockback is very unforgiving and frequently lands you down pits, constantly spawning medusa heads and bats are a constant danger to falling into pits as well, bosses are often very mobile and powerful while you are absolutely not, difficult gauntlets proceed nearly every boss, and so on. What I think makes this somewhat worse is how GOOD the holy water is. Most if not all of the bosses and enemies in the game can be absolutely destroyed if you manage to get holy water and a subweapon multiplier (to let you throw more than one at once) before you get to them, because holy water stun-locks not just normal enemies but bosses too as long as the fire burns them. This means that most bosses are either super difficult and punishing, or you know how to beat them and they're pushovers. I didn't realize it until I'd already beaten it, but the Japanese version of the game actually has an easy mode that makes you deal more damage, take no knockback, take less damage, and generally make the game far more forgiving, and that's something I wish I'd realized before I'd started the whole adventure XP One excellent trend that this game starts that continues through the whole series is nailing the presentation. It's a fairly early NES/FDS game (1986, but the Famicom version on the Anniversary Collection is the cart version of the FDS game released in 1993), but the music is excellent and the game looks really pretty. There's still sprite flicker and slowdown from time to time, but it's often not frequent enough to really impact gameplay all that much. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. This is definitely one of the games in the series that I say most benefits from save states. The difficulty on particularly the Death and Dracula fights is just so brutal that even aside from how difficult their stages can be to get through, those save states will really come in as life savers for your patience. It may be an excellent action game for '86, but I don't think it's all that fun to play vanilla these days if completing the game is your end goal. ----- Castlevania (MSX) Released very shortly after the original Famicom Disk System release of the original Castlevania, "Vampire Killer", as it's also known, is an adaptation of the Famicom game made for the MSX home computer system. It's never been released outside of Japan, and this game also is the only one in this post not on the Anniversary Collection. This is one that I bought on the Japanese Wii U Virtual Console to play on Twitch, and I ended up beating it in a little over 2 hours in one sitting. While this will be uncannily familiar in many respects to anyone who has played the NES game, the MSX version of Castlevania is a completely different game in just about every respect. Some of that is down to the differences in the programming realities of building a game for the Famicom vs building one or the MSX, but there is a broader design philosophy that makes the bridge between the two far far wider. While still a stage-based linear game, MSX Castlevania is much more of an adventure game than its predecessor. In many ways, it's a kind of missing link between the first two Famicom game, and playing this explains a lot of why Castlevania II was just apparently an adventure game for no reason when the first entry was a straight-up action platformer. Some elements of this game are just like its Famicom counterpart. Your whip upgrades when you collect power ups and that power resets on death, there are six stages with generally the same bosses at the end of each, and you collect hearts as you go through the castle. However, there is a LOT here that is utterly alien to the original Castlevania experience. You have hearts to collect, sure, but they don't power your subweapons (not like the other games, at least). In fact, this game doesn't even have subweapons at all. You use these hearts at merchants in the castle to buy things like health refills, new weapons, maps of the areas you're in, or even a shield to block incoming projectiles. There are more weapons, yes, but they replace your old one. If you get the knives (which are REALLY good), they replace your whip, but you can throw those things infinitely and they take no ammo to fire. The only subweapons that are here are the holy water and stop watch, which are both very very finicky to use, and seemed to require jumping in the air and then holding up and then pressing B to actually use. I could never get them to work reliably. Additionally, each of the six stages are separated into three areas, and in each area you need to find a silver key to open up the gate at the end to access the next area. There are also normal keys to collect to open chests that hide everything from passive items to maps to just bundles of hearts you can use to buy stuff. The keys you need to progress are often hidden very well, and some are eventually even outright fakes or red herrings that are only there to try and get you to kill yourself trying to get them. That brings me to my ultimate gripe with this game. While the first Castlevania is difficult to the point of not being very fun, I wouldn't call it outright unfair more often than not. Its level design is unforgiving, absolutely, but it's never meanspirited. MSX Castlevania, on the other hand, is a VERY vindictive and unfair game. It is riddled with traps to kill you like the aforementioned false door keys, and that's not to mention the slimes that are hidden in ever so many candle sticks, the enemies that are so close to the edge of the screen that you cannot enter that screen without getting hit, or how if you miss the return on boomerang weapons like the axe or cross that weapon is just GONE and you have nothing but your weak default whip again. Even your map has limited uses for some inexplicable reason. And this is all on top of how this game has no continues, no passwords, and no extra lives. You have THREE whole lives to get through the entirety of a very labyrinthine Castlevania and kill Dracula with, and should you lose those lives, it's back to the start of the entire game for you. Thankfully, Simon is pretty beefy and he can take a lot of punishment, but even with save states it was pretty difficult at times to not die before getting to the bosses. The bosses, paradoxically enough, are super duper easy, but this mostly revolves around how this is an MSX game and not a Famicom game. Like most MSX games, the screen doesn't scroll with you as you move. Like in Zelda 1, when Simon gets to the edge of the screen, the next screen forms ahead of him as he transitions to it. It doesn't move along with you as you move like the Famicom version of Castlevania does. Another interesting thing is that, while Simon himself has a knockback SO huge that it actually knocks you farther than you can physically jump forwards, enemies themselves don't freeze upon being hit and have no invincibility frames at all. Simon can also whip his whip REALLY fast, so if you just get close to a boss, you can let it hit you, tank the hit and just lay into them while your invincibility frames keep you protected. While this is otherwise a very difficult game, the bosses are easily one of the least difficult aspects of it. This also has one of the easiest Dracula fights by far (at least if you buy the very cheap knife weapon being sold right near his boss door), although it does drag on and gets a little boring after a while. All that said, the most unfortunate thing about this being an MSX game is that the slowdown affects the gameplay far more than in the NES games, meaning there were a lot of times where the game simply didn't recognize an input because it was stuttering so badly and I ended up getting hit or dying as a result. As far as the presentation is concerned, it's still pretty decent. The music hardware of the MSX isn't exactly up to the standard the Famicom could produce, but they're still quite good renditions of the tracks from the Famicom game. The graphics are also good recreations of that, although I wouldn't say it's quite as pretty as the Famicom game. There are some quite odd aspects to the presentation though. Particularly, that not only is the epilogue to this Japan-exclusive game all in English, is also doesn't even call you Simon Belmont O_o Verdict: Not Recommended. I can say very safely that this is the worst Castlevania game I've ever played and almost certainly the worst in the series. It honestly wouldn't be quite so bad if it weren't for the lack of continues or extra lives, but even then it'd just be a below average adventure game. Even with save states, this game is really only ever worth playing if you're just THAT curious about how it fits into the overall evolution of the series, and even then, I'd advise just watching a playthrough on YouTube before spending any money on it (let alone 800 yen like I did XP). ----- Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES) While the Castlevania Anniversary Collection DID add all the Japanese versions of the games on it in a post-launch patch (the Japanese versions for the English release, and vice versa), the one exception to that is Castlevania II. I even bought the Japanese version of the game on the Japanese Switch eShop, and even THAT version just has the American NES game instead of the Famicom Disk System version of Castlevania II. Given that this is even more of an adventure game than the MSX game is, and therefore has a lot of text, it's easily the worst game you could possibly do that with if the intention is for Japanese players to be able to understand what they're playing XP. The only explanation I can think of to why they did this is that Konami just didn't want to bother getting Famicom Disk System games to work on their Famicom emulator, so they just slapped the NES version on there since, unlike Castlevania 1, no cart version of Castlevania II exists in Japanese. Weird version nonsense aside, despite this game's dire reputation, I was actually very pleasantly surprised by what it had to offer. In a weird turn (particularly for Westerners without access to the MSX game), Castlevania II is much more a successor to the MSX game than the Famicom game. Releasing the year after the first two games, Castlevania II is an action-adventure game through and through. Just like the MSX game, you have hearts not really to use subweapons, but to buy things from merchants. In an even more odd twist, those hearts also function as experience points that you will level up with to gain a larger max health bar. Unlike the MSX game, however, there's not a set of levels to go through, but a side-scrolling overworld connecting a series of towns and mansions to explore. This is the first time we start getting much any story in a Castlevania game as well. After Simon killed Dracula in the first game, he unwittingly was cursed by the vampire despite his victory. He now must go through five mansions around Transylvania to collect the remnants of Dracula and then bring those remains to Castle Dracula to destroy them to free himself from the curse once and for all. It's not much, but it's something, especially for a series that would eventually become much more narrative focused. Simon goes from town to town hunting for items, and these items take all variety of forms. Like the MSX game, you can buy subweapons, and some of those subweapons consume hearts but some do not. There are also items you'll need to progress through dangerous areas, as well as passive items to unlock secrets. Even Dracula's remains function as passives when selected, like Dracula's Rib being the return of the invaluable projectile-blocking shield from the MSX game. Most interestingly to me is how your whip can be upgraded to simply do more damage forever. The temporary upgrades of the past are gone, and now you can even get a really awesome flame whip if you REALLY wanna heck fools up. You're gonna need those better whips too, because this game works on a day/night cycle, and enemies get twice as tough at night time. This game has three endings, and you need to beat it within a certain amount of time (which is a pretty damn tight time frame, all things considered) if you want Simon to live through his quest. And that time limit comes down to the ultimate flaw with this game: signposting. Like so many other adventure games of the 8-bit era (even the Zeldas of the time aren't free from this design hurdle), the massive amount of time spent with the game will be wandering around utterly lost as you try and stumble into the next totally unexplained thing you need to do to progress. The combat and platforming in Simon's Quest aren't particularly hard, but what IS tough is just knowing where to go or how to progress in the first place. The times I did use save states were largely just to save time should I make a wrong turn or take a bad jump, and not usually for larger difficulty reasons. Simon's Quest in particular suffers from a pretty rough English translation that makes the information you ARE given that much more difficult to use in the first place. A guide is absolutely essential if you're going to make it through this game in any reasonable amount of time, let alone get anything other than the worst ending. Personally, I didn't use a guide for my first attempt, ended up totally hecked after accidentally skipping the first three mansions, and then started using a guide. I took a wrong turn near the end of the game and the time it took to recover from that still put me over the 8 day limit you need to beat in order to get the best ending, so all I got was the 2nd best ending XP The presentation and base mechanics of the game are both good improvements to the first game. You'll sometimes get framerate slowdown, but it's not too brutal or game affecting thankfully. This game polishes up Simon's movement a fair bit too. He moves just a bit faster, jumps a bit quicker, and whips a bit faster. It makes the whole thing feel a bit better to play than the first game, although the kind of action and platforming you're doing isn't exactly the same most of the time. This game also has some of the best music in the classic series, with the main theme, Bloody Tears, being one of the most iconic songs of the entire franchise. Verdict: Recommended. My recommendation here is largely on the condition that you'll use a guide. If you don't use a guide, then it's honestly largely on you for how frustrated you get being lost, because this game is a doozy of a game for how lost it makes you XP. As a relatively early Famicom adventure game, however, this is a really solid one. The difficulty almost never feels unreasonable, and it's a pretty good time to spend an evening trekking through if you know what you're doing. I was very pleasantly surprised by my time with Simon's Quest, and I'm looking forward to someday playing through the Japanese version so I can compare just how misleading the hints and information are in the original Japanese compared to the cryptic English text. ----- Castlevania: The Adventure (GB) 1989 brought us Castlevania's first foray into the portable space with Castlevania: The Adventure. Developed by a different team than the NES games, this is the story of Christopher Belmont's first quest to take down big ol' Dracula. This game has something of a bad reputation among those who have played it, and in my time with it I grew to find that its reputation is absolutely deserved. The Japanese version is almost identical to the International releases, so there really isn't anything to comment there (Switch port or no Switch port), so this game's faults are entirely its own, no matter the region you're playing them in. The story as its presented is pretty basic Castlevania fare of "Oh look there's Dracula, let's go kick his face in." Not a whole lot here other than an excuse to go out vampire-huntin', and who really needs more of an excuse than "he's here to destroy the world yet again"? The presentation as a whole is pretty sub-par, though. The music is fine and the graphics are alright, but the game runs VERY slowly when there's more than a few enemies on screen, and that's something that affects your ability to play the game significantly at times. Much like the MSX game, there were many times where Christopher just wouldn't do a quick turn or a whip I needed him to do simply because the game was slowing down so badly. That slowdown just compounds onto the game's already fairly mediocre design. This is a Castlevania game that is once again an action game (no adventure game aspects to find here), but it's a far more simple action game than even the first Famicom game. You have your upgradable whip, but other than that, you don't got nothin'. This game has no subweapons of any kind, and not even a fireball to whip out when you have your whip at max power. Then add in that your whip gets downgraded EVERY time you get hit, and you have the realization that you're gonna need to memorize these levels quite well if you want to have anything other than your base whip. The level design isn't MSX Castlevania-levels of vindictive, but a lot of it is just really uninspired. Like Belmont's Revenge (the second GameBoy game) would later do as well, this game eschews stairs for ropes to climb, but that's really the only "special" thing about it, if you can even call it that. The downgraded whip and a fair amount of really precise jumping sections really make this entry an unforgiving time in a way that has a lot of trouble finding a fun-factor, even with save states (and I only used save states in this one right before Dracula since stage 4 was so difficult I didn't wanna have to go through the whole thing again XP). The way the game slows down and speeds up can those jumping puzzles and dealing with enemies, particularly tougher ones, feel far more frustrating than it should be, and it makes the whole game feel like a slog. It's far from the toughest Castlevania game, with even the bosses not being terribly difficult (save for Dracula who's pretty tough but very learnable after a few tries), but that just never gets around the fact that this game just isn't terribly fun to play. Verdict: Not Recommended. If you ABSOLUTELY MUST have more Castlevania in your life, I can certainly recommend this game more than I can the MSX game, but I still think your time is better spent playing or replaying one of the other classic Castlevanias instead. It's more frustrating than fun, and on the whole pretty unmemorable outside of those most frustrating sections. I didn't despise the few hours I spent with this, but I certainly feel no need to ever repeat them again, and "I didn't totally hate it" is a pretty difficult watermark to recommend a game at in any regard XP ----- Castlevania III (Famicom) In a fairly hard pivot for the main Castlevania team back from Castlevania II, Castlevania III not only changes the era and the protagonist but also the genre back to being an action platformer. Being an action platformer is also where the series would stay for quite some time, as the same goes for the rest of the games in this post as well. Castlevania III also is a quite famously different game between its NES and Famicom versions, so for this game, probably more than any other on this list, it's important to keep in mind that I'm talking about the easier Famicom game rather than the much harder NES game. It took me about 3 or 4 hours to get through the game with marginal save state usage (mostly just before very hard bosses, especially before the second to last level's boss). This game follows Simon Belmont's ancestor Trevor (or as he's known in the Japanese version, Ralph) Belmont in his quest to travel through Transylvania to Dracula's castle to defeat him. Similar to Castlevania II, this is another game where the adventure doesn't start at Dracula's doorstep, but instead follows our hero from the Transylvanian hinterlands all the way to and through Dracula's domain. Trevor himself plays a lot like Simon does in Castlevania II. He has no inventory like that game (back to good old temporary whip upgrades and classic heart-ammo subweapons), but he still moves and whips a bit faster than Castlevania 1 Simon did. While this game may not be an adventure game like its predecessor, what it does have is a series of branching paths. The most important feature of these branching paths is not just to give you more ways than one to play the game, but also to lead you down optional roads to this game's other most important innovation on the previous games: extra playable characters. Along his journey through Transylvania, Trevor can meet three people turned into monsters by Dracula as stage bosses. Upon beating them, they will offer to join Trevor, but he can only have one companion at a time. These companions can be switched to at any time with the select button, and they each have their own unique attacks as well as often having their own unique subweapon set as well. First you have Grant the acrobat, then there's Sypha the witch, and finally you have Dracula's own son Alucard who is half-vampire and half-human. Alucard has a projectile attack and can turn into a bat, but he's generally considered the worst of the companions since his transformation is limited by your number of hearts, and flying isn't actually that useful. Sypha's normal attack isn't that great, but she has a slew of subweapons that turn most bosses to tissue paper if used properly. Finally you have Grant, who can not only jump higher and even change direction mid-jump (something no other character in the game can do and is a rare ability in the series as a whole), but he can also throw infinite knives. A very big change from the Japanese to the English releases of the games is that Grant was given a very short-range, weak melee knife in the English versions. This is in contrast to his normal weapon in the Japanese version which is an infinite supply of the knife subweapon which he can even throw if he's climbing walls or ceilings. This makes him an even more useful ally than he is in the English version, as he's not just nimble but dangerous too, and that's just one aspect of how the Japanese version is easier. Damage calculation itself differs between the two games, but on the whole you take less damage in this game. Many bosses and even normal enemies have significantly less health and more simple/abusable attack patterns. Heck, Grant is so good and Dracula is so much easier, I got to him with Grant without even full health and I managed to (albeit narrowly) beat him on my first try (which I was very proud of regardless :b). That's still not to say this game is easy, not by a long shot, but having played a fair bit of the American version as a kid, I can say that this version's lowered difficulty allows it to be a lot more fun than its English counterpart for me. The presentation is once again absolutely excellent. The Famicom and NES's technical differences allowed Konami to use their own hardware in the cartridge for this game, meaning that the Japanese version of the game not just has gameplay differences but it also has several extra audio channels, meaning the music is on the whole often better (although some of the English tracks can certainly be argued to be superior). The environments are very pretty, the animations are nice for enemies and player characters alike, and the game on the whole really flexes what devs were able to do with the Famicom by 1989. Verdict: Highly Recommended. While not my favorite game of the classic action platforming Castlevanias, this is still easily my favorite of the 8-bit games (followed by Belmont's Revenge on the GB). It's got stellar music and a fairer difficulty curve that makes it a compelling challenge even without save states, and the oodles of content provided by the branching paths and extra characters give it plenty of replay value as well. If you're a fan of action games and don't mind a bit of a challenge, this is definitely one you can't afford to pass up. ----- Super Castlevania IV (SFC) Despite the title, this is actually more of a remake of the original Castlevania than anything (which is why the title is the same as the original in Japanese). Coming out in the first year of the Super Famicom and SNES, it still manages to be a really impressive entry for both the series and the console. This is the only entry on this list that I've beaten before, so while it has been years since I did so, this was ultimately a re-experience of this game rather than my first completion, so it didn't take me that long or that many save states to do it (save states were once again more of an infrequently used convenience thing rather than used out of necessity). While in spirit this is certainly a remake of the original Famicom game, the content of it is anything but. Along with the addition of a "trek through Transylvania" lead up to Dracula's castle, even Dracula's castle is completely different from the NES original. The only real relation to the original is that it's once again Simon Belmont's quest to kill Dracula, and from there on out proceeds to be an entirely different Castlevania game. That said, it's still a very good and very impressive Castlevania game. Once again we have linear stages, temporary whip upgrades, subweapons (you know the drill by now), but there are a few very interesting mechanical changes to how you play this Castlevania. Most important to mention is how your whip works: You can whip in EIGHT whole directions! You can even hold the whip button down to let it go limp and then you can flick it in any direction with the D-pad for a weak bit of damage. Additionally, the subweapon button has been bound to the R button instead of up + attack, so you can finally stop worrying about accidentally trying to use your subweapon while trying to climb some stairs and attacking XD. Even Simon himself has a real fluidity to it, and a level of maneuverability and play control rarely seen among the classic Castlevania games. You can even jump onto staircases! It provides a sense of control that I find really engaging, and that's a bit part of why this is my favorite game on the Anniversary Collection. Level design is varied and interesting, and there are even new platforming mechanics to take advantage of your new whip abilities by means of grapple points Simon can swing from. The game as a whole has a very fair level of challenge to it. I would say it's probably one of the most fair-feeling out of any of the games on the Anniversary Collection. Part of this is definitely down to just how versatile Simon's move set is, but part of it is also definitely down to how tight the level design is and how well balanced the bosses feel. This game has a bunch of bosses that all feel good to fight, and the difficulty curve of the game is also well done so you don't really have huge walls of difficulty in the middle of the game. The presentation is once again excellent, with a rocking soundtrack of remixes of old tunes along with new tracks, and the graphics are excellent as well. I can't help but feel that, had this come out a year or two later and Konami had had more experience with the SFC sound chip, the music would be even better, but what's here is still really impressive for such a relatively early SFC game. Verdict: Highly Recommended. This is right up there with Rondo of Blood for me as an impeccable classic Castlevania game. I know there are many who prefer the Mega Drive game, and I know that there are many who also find this game a bit too different to feel comfortable with it compared to the other Castlevanias, but those elements of difference are part of what makes this such a brilliant entry in the series. Despite the fact that I'd easily call Rondo of Blood the better overall game, this game is just so good for pick up and play action that I'd frankly recommend this first over that one. ----- Castlevania: Bloodlines (MD) Coming out at the tail end of '93, we have our last classic Castlevania game on the Anniversary Collection as well as really the last proper classic-style Castlevania game made before Symphony of the Night revamped what the whole series was about (at least if you consider Dracula X on the SNES as a port of Rondo and not its own game, which is debatable). I don't like it quite as much as Castlevania IV or Rondo of Blood, but it's still an excellent entry in the series. This was one that took me only a few hours to get through the six stages of, with serious save state use only used in the last stage. This is a bit of an odd Castlevania in how the story is both simple but also quite different from the simplicity of its predecessors. Sure, it's still basically "Oh look, let's go beat up Dracula again, he's a baddie", but this time you aren't even a Belmont (not by name, anyhow). This game takes place in 1917, and the vampire killer whip has passed to a distant relative of the Belmont clan known as John Morris (hilariously called "Johnny Morris" in Japanese). You can play as either him or as Eric Lecarde (who looks quite feminine in the Japanese version) who is out to avenge his vampirized girlfriend, as they trek across Europe to several famous spots to hunt down Dracula's allies before he can be taken on himself. While the story itself isn't really that interesting other than it calling into question how you can go from Romania to Germany to Britain during the height of World War 1, or the really funny way that one level is a German munitions factory (which also has a castle because of course it does) that is populated by skeletons wearing military helmets, it DOES give you the ability to play as one of the two characters. While Morris has his whip, Lecarde has a spear. The two characters aren't nearly as different as Richter and Maria are in Rondo of Blood, but they play meaningfully different enough that a playthrough with each is definitely still worthwhile. I played through as Johnny, and he can whip in front of himself, but also diagonally upwards to swing on ceilings and even down (although your jump is so low that the downwards whip isn't all that useful). Lecarde's spear, on the other hand, can stab directly upwards and has a slightly longer range than Morris does, and he can also do a high jump. Morris' grapple whip and Lecarde's high jump give them access to slightly different paths through the levels, making even the levels themselves slightly different depending on whom you're playing as. Instead of going through Transylvania, you're treking all around Europe to all sorts of different locales. Even Dracula himself isn't even in continental Europe at all, but in a castle in England. The different countries make for some very interesting level designs (like the swaying in the Tower of Pisa), and despite this game having fewer levels than the other 16-bit Castlevanias, they're quite long compared to those levels and each level feels very different to the others. My main complaint about the game is how stingy it can be with whip/spear upgrades. There are many bosses, particularly in Dracula's castle, for whom range is paramount to how easy a time you'll have with them. If you die once, you won't be given two whip upgrades to fight the boss again, you'll only be given one, and that aspect to the boss design really left a sour taste in my mouth. It's certainly far from how tilted the difficulty can feel in Castlevania 1 depending on the loadout you brought, but it's analogous enough to that frustration that it keeps me from holding this game in quite a high a regard as the other 16-bit Castlevania games. The presentation is also no exception to the series general rule of excellence. The music and graphics that really show the kind of speed and color you could get from the Mega Drive come 1993, and it's probably one of the prettiest looking of the older Castlevanias in general as a result. Most of the differences between the Japanese and Western releases are cosmetic (such as making Lecarde look more masculine, Morris' first name), but one important difference is that the Japanese normal mode is the English easy mode, so even though I played through the game on "normal", what I played through compared to the rest of the world was easy mode. Verdict: Highly Recommended. Though this may be my least favorite of the 16-bit Castlevanias, it is by no means not a great game. It still sets a high water mark just as most of the other games do, and is very well worth playing. ----- Upon buying the Anniversary Collection, I really didn't imagine myself playing through anything more than just Belmont's Revenge and maybe toying with the other games only a little. I'm really glad that I caught the Castlevania bug and ended up giving the others a chance, because it was a weekend I really enjoyed my time with. Especially if you can get it on a 40% off sale like I did, I highly recommend the Anniversary Collection to any fan of retro action games. The save state function lets you make all the games as hard or as easy as you'd like them to be, and that's honestly the best way to play old action games like this: at whatever difficulty and pace is right for you ^w^ And because it would be criminal to write such a long (and ostensibly comparative) piece about so many similar games and NOT rank how I feel about the games, here is my ranking of the classic (pre-SotN) Castlevania games that I've played: Rondo of Blood > Castlevania IV > Castlevania III (JPN) > Belmont's Revenge > Bloodlines > Castlevania II > Castlevania I > Adventure > MSX An Underwhelming Future: A Critique of Narrative in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time9/29/2020 The soft conclusion to the Insomniac’s original Ratchet & Clank (R&C) series, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (ACiT) is the capstone of a decade of work for one of Sony’s biggest stars. While it’s very ambitious in certain ways, the narrative and overall world building feel bloated and occasionally self-conscious in how they’re presented. The first of the Ratchet & Clank Future games really upped the ante in terms of not just the gameplay but the storytelling of Ratchet & Clank. Its sequel, however, is littered with fumbles that ultimately keep it from surpassing the relatively high bar set by its predecessor.
Ignoring the awkward misstep that is Ratchet: Deadlocked (which has barely any story to speak of), Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (ToD) is largely a sequel to Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (R&C3) despite the changed naming scheme. Dr. Nefarious, while far more memorable than past R&C villains, still has fairly simple motives for doing what he’s doing. Tachyon, however, manages to fill the gap between serious and campy in the role of ToD’s antagonist. He’s still a silly-voiced weirdo, but he actually has compelling reasons for what he’s done and what he plans to do. His goals are certainly evil and selfish, but what’s important is that they’re also nearly identical to Ratchet’s: Tachyon wants the Dimensionator to bring back the Cragmites (a banished race of which he is the last), and Ratchet wants it to bring back the Lombaxes (a banished race of which he is the last). Both the hero and his antagonist want the same machine to undo history and bring back their people to the galaxy. A people neither of them have ever met, but a people that each thinks will fill their lives with a sense of belonging that was impossible up until this point. The climax of Ratchet’s character arc is when he has to sacrifice the possibility of fulfilling this desire to accomplish the need of saving the galaxy from Tachyon and his fellow Cragmites. It doesn’t shut the door to Ratchet meeting up with his people in the future, but he’s sacrificing personal happiness now for the good of everyone, because he knows that allowing others to suffer to fuel his own happiness makes him no better than Tachyon. It’s not a masterful work of fiction, but it’s a solid and compelling story with high stakes and a moral at the end. In ACiT, the narrative starts where ToD leaves off, with Clank having been kidnapped by the mysterious aliens known as the Zoni. They show him where he originally came from to help him fulfill his destiny. Ratchet sets off on a journey to find him and along the way ends up meeting General Alister, a Lombax left behind when the rest of the Lombaxes used the Dimensionator to escape the Cragmites long ago. Dr. Nefarious is also back, and he’s here to try for the same goal as everyone else: the Great Clock. Clank’s father (the alien that created him) has established him as the caretaker of this great machine in the center of the universe. The Great Clock is meant to stabilize the universe to keep time and space from literally ripping themselves apart. However, it could also be used as a time machine, and that’s why everyone wants to use it. Once again, we have a machine that can rewrite history (literally, this time) that everyone wants to get their hands on. Most of Ratchet and Clanks’ respective stories take place apart, Alister is only in about one half of the narrative as well, and Dr. Nefarious is in even less (as he’s often seen from afar in cutaway cutscenes). While Clank was a main character in ToD, he was very much a sidekick to Ratchet, and Ratchet was the main driver of that story. All of this adds up to mean that ACiT has: two main protagonists, a protagonist that turns antagonist (Alister), and a primary antagonist in Dr. Nefarious all wanting the same selfish thing, and this story is ultimately how their motives come to blows. Doubling the number of protagonists and antagonists isn’t necessarily a recipe for disaster, but ACiT fails where ToD succeeded for various big but interconnected reasons. ---- #1) Justification: The narrative never gives a compelling enough justification for each of the characters continuing to chase what they supposedly are willing to risk everything to obtain. The story makes very clear to each character, either through first-hand or second-hand communication, that trying to use the Great Clock as a time machine will break it and destroy the universe. There isn’t any element of probability to that warning either. It just simply will destroy the universe if used that way. This means that the choice on whether to try and use it for that is incredibly simple. Both Ratchet and Clank want to use it to save their respective parents, but what good are parents if the entire universe is destroyed? Dr. Nefarious has the baffling idea to recreate the universe in a mold where the bad guys always win and heroes always lose, and putting aside the fact that simple time travel doesn’t make that make sense as a concept, it still just makes him foolish for pursuing it because it will destroy the universe. Alister wants to use it to bring back the Lombaxes, just like Ratchet does, but the only difference between them is that Ratchet correctly realizes that destroying the entire universe is a bad trade off for doing anything. While the story does actually have the player go back in time at several points to change the past in minor events to your favor, it hand-waves away those events as reality-destroying disruptions. It is constantly unambiguous in regards to how using the Great Clock as a time machine will definitely destroy the universe, and that nearly occurs in the climax when Alister storms the Great Clock’s control room. In ToD, the stakes were happiness at the sacrifice of everyone Ratchet knew and loved. There was a potential benefit he could be selfish and chase after should he have wanted to. ACiT has no such trade off. Using the Great Clock as a time machine simply will destroy the universe. It’s an utterly uncomplicated moral decision that makes Alister look just as bad as Dr. Nefarious with how carelessly he disregards this unshifting warning from the maker of the Great Clock. It weakens the stakes of the story in regards to character motivations, and makes the character arcs as a whole fall far flatter than ToD’s did. #2) Setup and Payoff: With both Ratchet and Clanks’ respective motivations being about using a universe-destroying machine to find their families, the overall plot of ACiT leans very close to a retelling of ToD’s story. This being the case, the narrative has two obvious options it can take: either 1) have the same moral ending again, or 2) subvert those expectations and have a different message. ACiT not only picks both and neither of those options, but it also avoids a conclusion to the story simply for the sake of it. ACiT picks option number 1 through General Alister. Alister storms the Great Clock and tries to rewind history all the way back to before the Lombaxes lost the war to the Cragmites to try and save them from destruction. This proceeds to begin tearing the Great Clock and the universe apart, just as he had been warned countless times that it would. He has a change of heart at the last second and sacrifices himself to stop his bad decision and stops Ratchet from saving himself instead. He sacrifices his want of saving the Lombaxes for the need of saving the universe just like Ratchet did in the last game. However, unlike how it’s framed in the narrative when Clank tells Ratchet “He did a brave thing,” this is nothing like how Ratchet acted in the last game. There was no selfish alternative to saving the universe. The alternative was just letting the universe be destroyed after he should’ve known better than to not start destroying it. On top of all of that, this is all after Alister disappears for a while and conveniently forgets that Ratchet already made it very clear that he didn’t want to destroy the universe trying to save the Lombaxes. Alister gets angry at Ratchet all over again for a jarring replay of an emotional conflict between them that has already been shown, and all for the sake of a very rushed redemption arc for Alister. It’s a weak attempt to recapture the message made at the climax of the previous story, and it reads as more confusing than heroic. At the drop of a hat, Alister turns from unflinching zealot to a totally selfless hero. With how headstrong the narrative has shown him to be, a more logical outcome for Alister would’ve been to deny that he was in the wrong until the very end. Instead, the game attempts to lionize his foolishness simply because he changed his mind right before death. Alister begins as a character with a lot of potential to be a compelling foil to Ratchet, but the poor justifications for why he’s doing what he’s doing ruin any character arc he might’ve had. ACiT also picks option number 2, to have a different ending, by ignoring the obvious and better choice it’s been alluding to since ToD. Ratchet is trying to find his family and where he belongs, and Clank is with him every step of the way. The narrative really feels like it’s leading up to the realization that they don’t need to find any new family or any new place they belong, because they already have each other. With one another is where they belong. That’s why they’ve been trying to find each other the entire game. That’s why they’re best friends and brothers in arms. They even share a big hug when they’re finally reunited at the game’s midway point (where in ToD they only do a no-homo fist bump). That would’ve been a fine ending to the story that ToD started and ACiT continued, but that isn’t where the writers at Insomniac took it. Upon defeating Alister and saving the universe, Ratchet bids Clank a farewell as Ratchet prepares to let Clank fulfill his destiny as the caretaker of the Great Clock. But Clank has a change of heart. Stating that he can’t be with his family (the digital representation of his dead father that lives within the Great Clock) until Ratchet finds his own, Clank rushes off to join him after giving the role of caretaker to the Great Clocks’ only other occupant. This ending is not only not a conclusion to the story. It also seems to suddenly frame Ratchet & Clank’s entire friendship with one another as a very utilitarian and toxic one. If Clank is really only joining Ratchet to help him find the Lombaxes through some possible 3rd universe-destroying machine, this ending implies that it’s because he just views himself as a tool to his friend. The narrative has this frustrating insistence on pushing this as their end goal despite repeatedly implying that the characters are learning that it isn’t actually important. Despite two adventures pointing towards the fact that finding the Lombaxes isn’t actually what will make Ratchet feel accepted and fulfilled, it keeps repeating that he whole-heartedly believes this, and this stubborn refusal to let the character grow and learn the lesson directly in front of his face makes this story’s conclusion feel not just unfulfilling but outright confusing. #3) Tonal Dissonance and Inefficient Storytelling: This problem isn’t as intertwined as the last two, but it’s still a massive problem that underlines the entirety of the narrative. ACiT has a real problem with tonal whiplash in both its dialogue and its themes. This, combined with very inefficient storytelling, makes the story out stay its welcome while simultaneously hurrying to its conclusion far too quickly. The entire game feels like it’s stuck squarely between the silliness of the old R&C games and the more serious take put forward by ToD. As discussed with problems #1 and #2, ACiT does try to touch on some serious topics with its story, albeit similar ones to ToD. However, what ACiT has that ToD lacked is a horrible bloat of extraneous races and characters. The races of the Terachnoids, Fongoids, Argonians, Vullards, and Valkyries feel very shallow, with most of their appearances dedicated to being exhaustingly not funny. Although issues with humor can be chalked up to the decade of time passing since this game came out, it can’t so much be hand-waved away when it occupies so much of the game’s body of text. Lord Vorselon, Dr. Nefarious’ #2 in command, feels almost entirely superfluous in the narrative and only really seems to be there to be someone other than Nefarious for you to fight occasionally. As discussed in Problem #2, even Dr. Nefarious’ motives are so superficial that you could make the story about the Argonians simply causing chaos because they can and it fundamentally wouldn’t change at all. While Tachyon had a legitimate grudge against Ratchet in ToD, Ratchet and his allies also had legitimate grudges against Tachyon, and it made for a more engaging story. The pile of side characters in ACiT serve mostly to enhance the gameplay at the severe detriment to the narrative. Nowhere do I think this issue of humor at the expense of depth is more represented than in how Captain Qwark’s chance for redemption is so brashly thrown away. Captain Qwark, the cowardly, narcissistic, self-proclaimed hero has always been the butt of jokes in the R&C games since the beginning. He has often played at least some role in the plot, but at the end of the day he never really does much more than simply get in the way or make things worse out of his incompetence. This is even the case in ToD, where he unwittingly delivers the Dimensionator straight to Tachyon. In ACiT, however, Qwark actually comes along for the adventure at several points and is instrumental in Ratchet’s reunification with Clank. In removing Clank from Ratchet’s side and so often replacing him with Qwark, Insomniac gave Qwark more pathos than he’s ever had before. They give him the chance to, for once in his life, stand up and really be the hero he so often claims to be. However, similarly to how Alister is forgotten from the narrative for nearly a third of the story, such is the fate of Qwark. Despite finally learning to risk his own hide to save the day, he’s reduced to being a silly, after-credits joke where he’s alone on an asteroid being mauled by a monster forever. Rather than give Qwark the chance to actually finish out the series by doing something important or at least finding some shred of self respect, he is used as a narrative device to get Ratchet information that he needs and then carelessly discarded when he’s no longer needed. They don't even have him ever face off against Dr. Nefarious (a character here almost entirely for fan service), a character who is ostensibly his nemesis. Insomniac don’t write a totally serious game, nor do they even indulge in the easy fan service they allow themselves, and it makes for a game with more than a bit of an identity crisis. ---- To be completely fair, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time isn’t actually the last piece of the pre-reboot R&C timeline. That honor goes to the short downloadable-only game Ratchet & Clank: Enter the Nexus. In that game, Ratchet is finally given the narrative conclusion of realizing that he has more to live for with Clank than he does with other Lombaxes. However, I do not believe that that excuses the sins of ACiT’s storytelling. Each entry in a larger serialized story should be, at least to some extent, a fulfilling story in and of itself, even though it is ostensibly part of a larger story. ACiT’s overly derivative plot, careless character writing, and horribly confused pacing sully what is easily the strongest of the games mechanically up to that point. It makes for a very underwhelming narrative in what would turn out to be Ratchet & Clank’s last big game on a console for the next seven years. If ToD showed that Insomniac can write a compelling narrative for a R&C game, ACiT shows just how disinterested they are in actually pursuing that goal. Back from vacation, so it's time to finally do my write up for my games beaten in 2019! It was a bit of a huge year outside of games for me, with getting a teaching job in Japan and moving out here in March, but even with that I manged to beat more games than I have in any year since I've been tallying them up annually (the previous high was 70). I guess I have a lot more free time as a teacher who barely leaves the house than I did as a full time student who would go and hang out with friends from time to time
I played a lot more retro games this year than I have the past couple years (certainly compared to last year). Also a lot more repeats than previous years, that's for sure. I guess that's likely a combo of getting addicted to playing through games I know well in English but now in Japanese, and those games being easy/cheap to find between the resale stores in my city and my access to the Wii U Virtual Console. Then all the repeats are also due in at least part to just wanting some comfort food gaming because moving was a bit stressful ^^;. Regardless, the comparisons of Japanese and English versions (at least in regards to my memory) was something I really enjoyed and I hope I can do at least a few more in this new year ^w^ Anyway, now down onto my highlights. I didn't really play many games that actually came out in 2019, so these are just gonna be my favorite/least favorite games I played this year, regardless of their release date. ~Favorite Games (in no particular order)~ Shin Gundam Musou: Flake talks about this game a lot (the English version anyhow) in the Slack chat, and I really enjoyed the first Dynasty Warriors Gundam so I've been meaning to try this out for ages, and what a great use of 800 yen it was. One of the very few PS3 games I've ever put the time into to earn the platinum trophy on, this one absolutely devoured my attention with a combination of how mindless and fun the giant robot bashing is. I didn't really pay attention to much of the "What If" stories, as this was definitely a comfort food kind of game that I got pretty close to when I moved out here and I wasn't really in the mood to look up tons of words to understand a story I couldn't really appreciate, but I still really enjoyed my time with this game. Not quite Hyrule Warriors, but easily one of the best Musou games ever made (and it even got me to watch Turn-A Gundam, which I also really enjoyed ^w^). Final Fantasy VI: It'd been a while since I played this game, and playing it in Japanese was really neat at first, but then I realized just how long it's been since I played this and just how much better than I remembered it actually was to play. Getting a deeper than ever understanding and respect for the story and characters, particularly the villain (although I think that's down to being an adult who's better at analyzing the media they consume, more than it has anything to do with playing the original text of the game) made this one of my favorite experiences of the year for sure. This is also the winner of "favorite repeat" out of the games I replayed this year, I suppose. Paper Mario: Color Splash: A game I'd had for ages and even brought to Japan with me because I meant to play it, on a streamer's recommendation I finally got to playing this game and I'm so glad I did. A welcome improvement on Sticker Star's combat and some of the funniest writing I've seen in a game, I was grinning ear to ear the whole time playing this thing (well, except for all the swearing during the rock-paper-scissors tournaments I suppose :b). I really hope this gets a Switch port someday, because this was really chained down by the stigma of its predecessor (and being released in the twilight years of an unpopular console), and I think it really deserves a second chance ^w^ The Outer Worlds: I got my Xbone at the perfect time to pick up Game Pass and play this really close to launch, and I devoured it. Bringing back tons of memories of an old favorite, Fallout: New Vegas, but with suuuuch welcome modern quality of life improvements. I know very well that some folks didn't care for it, but I adored the story, especially the character writing. To have an asexual major character in a AAA released game, especially one written so well, was just so awesome to see on top of everything else. Not my favorite game I played this year, but it came damn close. ~Honorable Mentions: Blazing Chrome, Mario & Luigi Superstar Saga & Bowser's Minions, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Recore: Definitive Edition, Steamworld Dig 2 ~Game of the Year: God of War (2018). Leave it to Sony to have made the best OoT-style game ever. Great combat, beautiful world, engaging and well-paced story. This game just has it all and it keeps coming. This lived up to and leaped clear over the hype for me. A new entry for my all-time favorites list, god damn I have no idea how they're gonna follow this up, but if it's even close to this good I'll be happy. ----- ~Least Liked Games~ Final Fantasy IV: This will take the top spot for "least liked repeat game" (edging out Mario Party 3). Several friends of mine talk up 4 as one of the better ones but I absolutely do not see it. Granted I was playing the much clumsier Super Famicom original rather than the streamlined SNES port, this game was still such a let down it's easily on this list. I'm not gonna go into it again, as I already did on the actual review, but just how shallow the story is still gets to me on top of just how much of a mechanical step down it is compared to FF3 (even just on QoI features, totally ignoring the differences between the job systems). Tiny Barbarian DX: This game is close to fun, but falls deeeeep into a "far too aggravating to be fun" trap that it never escapes from. Especially in the more recently released 3rd and 4th chapters, there are SO many pixel-perfect jumps, annoying enemy placements, and grueling combat gauntlets combined with not quite precise enough controls that this game is a miserable time. It may have some nice animation, but god damn is it not worth it once you really get into the gameplay parts. Castlevania: Circle of the Moon: Another game I know has its defenders, but I just cannot see the appeal like they can. Clunky controls, a too big and too barren castle, underwhelming or just outright cheap boss fights (that final Dracula fight is one of the worst in the series I swear). I would say that the card system is fun, but the cards are so well hidden that I barely even got to use them because I wasn't lucky enough to find them. I'm really glad that Castlevania moved away from this idea of what their Metroid-like games could be, because this is far at the bottom of the barrel of Metroidvanias in my book. ~Honorable Mentions: Snake Pass, Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story & Bowser Jr.'s Journey, Shantae: Risky's Revenge ~Least Liked Game of the Year: Corpse Party. Anyone who read the review I wrote for this very likely saw this one coming (the longest one of these reviews I've ever written, coming in at just over 3000 words). A decent horror story buried under a mountain of clunky controls, perverse serialization, and crude localization choices, I don't think Corpse Party will be a game I will ever forget for just how much I disliked playing it. I certainly realize that there are games who do the things this one does but worse, and I don't care because I see those as nothing but garbage for the same reasons. Sexualization of minors is a horrifically commonplace problem in the anime industry, and while I'm certainly not going to conquer that issue myself, I very much hope that Corpse Party is the last of that I ever have to be exposed to personally. This has been so fun to think about! I didn't do a very good job of keeping track of what I played before I started on RacketBoy in 2016, and I also didn't play very many games as they were new this decade, so I'm just gonna use my Games Beaten lists to scope out my favorites that I've played that came out this decade. I'm gonna keep it narrowed down to a list of 10 favorites in a simply chronological order, because otherwise this list would be far far too long XD
Blur (2010): My favorite kart racer I've ever played. Any one I've played since I've just thought to myself "damn, I could be playing Blur right now" XD. The game has SUCH a great sense of speed along with the bright cars and dark racing tracks, it really brings the feeling of a blur to how you play. The power-ups all having 2 uses makes none of them ever feel useless, and ones like the mine can really be essential to later tracks in getting good at throwing it in front of you. I'm not sure I've ever had this much fun with a kart racer, and I don't think I ever will again. Even just typing about it here makes me want to rush out and go buy it so I can play it again XD Crusader Kings II (2012): I've technically played more Civ 5 (like 350 hours more of civ 5), but 820-ish hours in CK2 is still a lot! XD. Along with the tons of time I've sunk into watching my kingdoms grow and trying to secure the best heirs, this game really helped nurture my love for world history. It helped me learn so much geography and has helped me connect a lot better with people around the world because of it. It's also given me tons of incredible stories of my favorite rulers to share (like my insane pirate king of Ireland who died on a doomed quest for immortality). If I had to pick just one big strategy game with maps I played a ton of this decade, it'd have to be CK2. Octodad (2014): One of my favorite multiplayer games ever, easily. The number of times I've used Octodad to bond with family and friends who don't even play video games very much (if at all) because of its wacky humor, simple premise, and awkward controls is too many for me to even count. Even with so many other brilliant, casual local co-op games released this decade (like Super Mario Party and Overcooked), Octodad takes the top spot for me. LISA: The Painful (2014): One of the most brilliant RPGs I've ever played. Not just the story it tells, but how it tells it, weaving together narrative with mechanics, is a high bar that other games should strive to reach. It's a game with a weird sense of humor, despite its heavy subject matter, and it's not something I can recommend to everyone. That said, I can think of very few RPGs that I've engaged with so thoroughly that I've played them back-to-back 3 times. Magicka 2: Learn to Spell... AGAIN! (2015): Where Octodad was the game I played with more casual friends, Magicka 2 was what I played with friends more used to playing video games. The controls take some time to get used to, but once you have them down this game is such a blast to play. We played through this game, must've been 4 or 5 times this decade, and I was so incredibly excited when we actually managed to beat it on very hard mode. This game has a lot of wonderful memories for me, and I'd be very remiss to omit it from a list like this. Paper Mario: Color Splash (2016): Let's not forget the BEST Paper Mario game came out this decade! X3. Taking all the good ideas from Sticker Star and making it into a game with combat that mattered and some of the best, silliest writing a Nintendo game has ever had, this game blew me away when I played it earlier this year. Easily one of my favoritest RPGs, and it easily made this list among some very stiff RPG competition. Yokai Watch 3: Sukiyaki (2016): Speaking of amazing RPGs that blew me away, Yokai Watch 3! I was already a fan of Yokai Watch before I played this one, but clocking in at 214 hours, I played 3 more than the other 4 games in the series combined. For once we had an actually good narrative (or at least a cohesive one) full of fun pop culture references and characters that had me constantly grinning ear to ear. It introduced a totally revamped battle system that took the confusing yet still too simple system of the first two games and combined with with the 3 Kingdoms tactics game to make something actually engaging and meaningful. And to top it all off, it added the Yokai Treasure Busters mode, a Diablo-style side game with an absurd amount of detail and content that by all means could've been its own stand-alone game (and eventually was). Pokemon wishes it could ever have a game as good as Yokai Watch 3, and I'm not even sure the Yokai Watch series will ever have a game this good again. Hollow Knight (2017): A long series of excellent indie Metroidvanias (that still continue to come out) has a masterpiece above all others, and that game is Hollow Knight. It brought to the table an incredibly huge map paired with an enemy variety that makes for an experience rivaling the decadence of Symphony of the Night. It has a really tight combat system and lots of awesome bosses, and overall just feels great to play. A great, fluid art style helps bring to life a dreary world with a somber narrative. Its difficulty definitely keeps it from being the most accessible game in the world, but damn if it isn't a great 2D action/adventure game. God of War (2018): I never would've guessed that it'd be Sony who'd make the best 3D Zelda-style game to date. A complete re-imagining of a classic series, Dad of War came out and changed the face of the franchise in a way I don't think anyone could've predicted. A sincere reflective story on what the series has been gives a really wonderful narrative on two people growing to love each other despite their differences with some really unprecedented pacing for a video game story. Combat is so visceral and fun to play, I was sad when I was out of optional extra bosses to fight. The game looks gorgeous and sounds great on top of that. Definitely a game you'd expect to come out at the end of a generation and stand atop its console's library in quality. La-Mulana 2 (2018): This is another fairly personal one for me. I don't think that La-Mulana 2 is a better Metroidvania than Hollow Knight, although it is definitely one of the better ones out there. A Let's Play of La-Mulana is one of the first things that got me into gaming outside of just AVGN videos on Youtube. It's, effectively, one of the reasons I'm part of so many of the communities online I am today. I played through the first game's remake eventually and adored it, but was a little sad that I'd never get to try and solve La-Mulana's many cryptic puzzles on my own. I was absolutely shocked when, on one of the last times I went on Kickstarter, a game I never thought would or could exist was on it: La-Mulana 2. I waited patiently for years for it to come out, and jumped right in the day it finally did. A whole new ruin, a whole new story, better controls, and so many new bosses: It was better than I ever really could've hoped for. I wasn't able to figure out ALL puzzles myself, but being able to try was what I really wanted most, and that's what I got. La-Mulana 2 is the culmination of a lot of feelings about video games and my time with them online, and it will always hold a very special place in my heart because of that <3 |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
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