Familiar 4

Story Positives:

1. Animation: The animation in this game is weirdly good given how few characters there really are (functionally just three; The Slayer, Olivia, and Hayden) and each one is oozing personality. Olivia lurches, clearly in pain, emaciated. Hayden walks with confident precision, gesturing grandly. The Slayer is brutal but efficient, no actual anger in his movements, just doing what needs to be done. This is all fantastic…
2. Animation: …for an easy…
3. Animation: …triple positive
4. Architecture: A strange pick, one might think, but really consider the UAC facility. The interiors are obviously pretty arena’y but the exteriors and the surface of Mars itself and the visible other elements of the facility as you progress do a good job of making this place feel like a huge, immersive facility on Mars
5. Background Lore: Lots and lots, though most of it is covered by…
6. Storytelling Mechanic: …the bestiary…
7. Storytelling Mechanic: …and optional data entries. All of this do a wonderful job of adding to the…
8. World Building: …fact that this feels like a weirdly well fleshed out setting. Little tidbits and references make the whole thing cohese nicely
9. Atmosphere: Corporate horror (7 day work week!). There’s such a casual banality to how mundane all this horrible cult stuff is (remember, sacrifices are consensual!) and how awful it really was working here even before the demons invaded
10. Sound Design: There’s plenty of viscerality to it, which is mostly under gameplay, but what really shines is how much atmosphere it adds. This is accented further by…
11. Music Direction: …a truly strange situation. Usually music direction, as in music that changes the Story axis, is about music that adds to a scene or a character or a region. Here music adds to the characterization of the Slayer, to be assured, but it also feels like without the music the moment to moment actions thereof just don’t work right. We actually did a test and turned off the music entirely for one arena fight, and the difference was staggering. This is at least in part due to Mick’s amazing work on music direction, with how the music IS a part of the scenes and actions of the player, and provides the all important atmosphere and tone…
12. Music Direction: …thus earning its own double positives
13. Humor: Mostly on The Slayer himself, but it’s there
14. Moment: The Slayer’s reaction to and decision on destroying the Hell energy filters. It’s great characterization for him (screw Hell energy) and Hayden (we must rebuild)
15. Character: The Slayer. This is weird for a character with no dialogue, but this is one of those rare times where a voiceless protag actually does have a personality. He’s one of my favorite examples of a ‘no sell’ character, someone who remains stoic and incorruptible in the face of the awful and the terrible. But he also has a bit of humor to him, he’s clearly willing to think and consider and be respectful to those around him, and he has his own little quirks
16. Character: Olivia is surprisingly interesting for being, essentially, Bertruger again. A brilliant woman who, out of pride, refused all of the options available to her to help with her broken body, and instead chose to live in constant pain which, of course, broke her mentally… ripe for the forces of Hell
17. Character: Hayden is fantastic. The absolutely perfect balance between competent and arrogant without really being too much of either. He still makes mistakes and he is sufficiently pragmatic and intelligent enough to bypass his own ego. And all of that is of course helped…
18. Voice Acting: …by Darin DePaul, who absolutely nails the nuances and presentation of the character
19. Voice Acting: I should mention that the other voice actors are solid too. Olivia, the random propaganda messages, and of course VEGA
20. Brickwork: The UAC base facilities. The perfect blend of pristine and worn down, with the paint peeling off and the sharp metal angles accenting how utilitarian this whole base is
21. Brickwork: Mars itself. You really get the feel for how blasted this place is, barely livable and functional despite the severe importance of this base. It gets across the vibe of how much effort was put into settling this incredibly inhospitable place
22. Brickwork: Special mention for the Foundry area. It’s a shame we only really see it the one time because it’s a wonderfully industrial factory area
23. Spritework: The Demons themselves. Good, general, proper design to the creatures
24. Doodads: The amount of attention to detail in the UAC doodads is pretty damned good. In fact it’s doubly good because on the one hand we see what this place looked like as a corporate office, but then we also see how it was changed post invasion. But I also have to give props to the worker areas (hammers, spare equipment suits, half eaten food)…
25. Doodads: …earning the whole thing…
26. Doodads: …three positives
27. Visual Storytelling: Hayden’s and Olivia’s headquarters in comparison. His has corpses everywhere outside, but is pristine within. Hers is pristine and untouched without, but within is a blood soaked, crudely lit chapel of horror
28. Intro: Initial escape. This is only a handful of seconds but so much is done right so quickly. The quote, us breaking out of chains unassisted, killing a possessed with our bare hands, grabbing the gun, shooting the others, and then inspecting it…
29. Intro: …immediately followed by a single line by Olivia which instantly establishes her as the villain, as well as several bits of characterization for her
30. Intro: Then we suit up, listen to Hayden, and he says the wonderful line… “For the betterment of mankind”… while we glance at the nearby corpse
31. Moment: Backing up VEGA before deleting him
32. Outro: Weirdly this one works for me. Olivia’s final words (“They promised me so much”), Hayden’s final speech (“And you may be right.”)

    Story Negatives:

    Gameplay Positives:

    1. Intro: Tutorialization: Immediate, with the pistol and the enemies right in front of you
    2. Intro: Tutorialization: The spacing and placement of enemies for Glory Kill tutorials (how to do it, how far it reaches, how it rewards you) and all of this is both shown and told
    3. Tutorialization: Also, pretty much every gun and general concept is tutorialized with something immediately after you get it or immediately prior to you needing it
    4. Guidance: Quest marker. I know, weird to give a plus for it, but it’s well designed, optional, and a toggle (you hit a button for it to pop up, it’s not always there distracting you)
    5. Controls: The game controls smoothly and well
    6. Options: Ironically Doom 1 and 2 had better options, but this still has very good option design…
    7. Options: …for a solid double positive
    8. Core Combat: Glory Kills. They’re fast and punchy, vary based on enemy, input, and location…
    9. Core Combat: …they offer i-frames while using them, have a grapple range which becomes part of the tactics of using them, and increase the reward for killing something…
    10. Viscerality: …oh, and they’re fun to use
    11. Sound Design: Not as good as previous Dooms (ironically) but still useful for navigating combat and arenas
    12. Core Combat: The running is good and the gunning is good, what can I say. I’m not sure that any FPS actually surpasses this in the sheer joy of the loop…
    13. Core Combat: …earning a solid double positive
    14. Core Mechanic: Then we have to talk about the all-important loop. Kills get health, sure. But also chainsaw kills give a TON of ammo. Ammo helps you kill, which also can weaken enemies allowing for Glory Kills, which give more health (and some ammo). It’s not a perfect circle, but everything about all of these interlocking systems is designed to keep you pushing forward at all times. Thus we have the reward for killing…
    15. Itemization: …all while there’s smart placement of gas canisters throughout the levels, to help with…
    16. Kit: …the chainsaw, which gets you flush with ammo to keep going, feeding into…
    17. Kit: …the guns. This is some of the best gun selection I’ve ever seen in an FPS, with no given gun being useless (though some mods and models are simply better than others in several cases). The guns are punchy, varied in how they attack, and ultimately very very fun to use (and quick to swap between)…
    18. Kit: …encouraging the player to shift around in which ones they use and when…
    19. Kit: …which is all helped by the fact that…
    20. Kit: …you can switch which alternate mode you’re using for a given gun on the fly. Which I guess is a good a time as any to mention…
    21. Kit: …guns have alternate fire modes. These are optional (of course) but fundamentally change how that gun works, adding more variety to the kit and all leading to the all-important…
    22. Viscerality: …viscerality. There’s three points to viscerality, for those who’ve forgotten. The first is visuals. These guns and their shots look very cool, especially the bigger ones like the Gauss Cannon, but even the Pistol has some great oomph to it. This leads to the second point…
    23. Viscerality: …sound design. And the sound design here is fantastic, with some real oomph and just the right amount of echo and flourish to each shot. But the best viscerality in the world visually and audibly will fall short unless it has the third point…
    24. Viscerality: …impact. You want things to feel like you’re doing something, like you’re having an impact, and when you fire a shot that destroys 5 demons in a row because you lined it up just right, or watch their giblets go flying from an angled grenade shot, you know it has that impact
    25. Difficulty Mutator: Challenges. There’s challenges to max out weapons, and there’s challenges to get extra weapon upgrade points per stage, and they really can change up how you play and add some fun mutators…
    26. Difficulty Mutator: …for a solid double positive
    27. Enemy AI: I’ve seen better, but the enemies are pretty solid about finding you and fighting you
    28. Power Progression Curve: Challenges for upgrades, argent energy, armor upgrades, weapon upgrades through combat, and runes. This is all a wonderful way to keep the player continuing to upgrade their capabilities in lateral ways as they continue to play, regardless of access to new weapons, and it is brilliant…
    29. Power Progression Curve: …earning a solid…
    30. Power Progression Curve: …three positives
    31. Minigame: Trials. They’re not the best little side quest things, but they can still be fun, and they’re rewarding to do
    32. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Present and… decent, though this varies a bit
    33. Itemization: Drops and placement. Some of the usual Doom quality here in placement of armor, health, and ammo. Not as much for navigation, but definitely to assist with the arena design…
    34. Itemization: …for a solid double positive
    35. Visual Distinction: For how dull some of the outside areas can be, everything is very distinct and color coded. They’re not afraid for things to be visible via glow or unusual color usage, and enemies are all quite distinct at a glance…
    36. Visual Distinction: …for a solid second positive
    37. Pacing: You kill, then you explore, then you kill, then you explore. It rarely varies, but it’s still very well paced…
    38. Pacing: …and it still works very well
    39. Enemy Design: Some very well designed enemies here. Chargers, melees, leapers, shooters, shooters with beams, shooters with rockets, all kinds of great stuff…
    40. Enemy Design: …for a double positive
    41. Enemy Variety: The variety of the enemies more or less mandates different approaches, but it also doesn’t force you to fight them in a given way
    42. Encounter Design: And it does some great mix and match with enemies to fulfill the Doom standard of encounter design
    43. Guidance: It’s relatively subtle, but it does good stuff. The little indicators of green to show where to go are nice of course, but there’s also some good terrain layout which informs where the player can and should go
    44. HUD: Decent in general, but what really works well is the center circle and how it adjusts based on current gun and gun mode. This is some great stuff…
    45. HUD: …for a solid double positive
    46. Music: I mean of course. The music is just really, really good…
    47. Music: …for a solid…
    48. Music: …triple positive… but!
    49. Yoshi Drums: There is one other element of the music that really makes it even better, and that’s how it’s actually several different snippets of songs that have intros, outros, and moments to keep the pace with the action of the game. This dynamic element to the music is some of the best I’ve ever seen…
    50. Yoshi Drums: …for a strong…
    51. Yoshi Drums: …triple positive
    52. Map: I’ve seen better… barely. This is an excellent map, with indicators on where you’ve been and where you can go, items found and not, and general visibility and navigability. This is an easy…
    53. Map: …double positive
    54. Level: Mars 1. This is what I often refer to as ‘simple but good’. Initial corridor leads to a larger open area which itself is actually just a mini-arena, which then leads to another corridor funneling into a much larger arena. This type of ‘threading’ happens consistently throughout and loops in on itself smartly, so you end up going back through the main arena twice but in gameplay terms there’s no backtracking due to the new routes and access
    55. Level: The Foundry. This one’s the same pseudo open-endedness of Mars 1 but even more so. Nice big area, plenty of spots to drop down to progress (and no fall damage to dissuade you), and multiple routes through along with 4 objectives scattered throughout which can be done in whatever order, with the usual supply of monsters and items to convince the player to navigate one way or the other. This is solid…
    56. Level: …and deserves double positives
    57. Level: Beginning of the End. A bit more contained than the Foundry but with the same general concept; Here’s the central open area, here’s your three objectives nearby, figure it out. There’s also some good looping (almost every branch comes back to the main area but does so in a different manner then how you entered) and good shortcut unlocks
    58. Level: Argent Tower. I wasn’t sold on this at first, but it has decent flow and reasonable platforming, and some of the better arena designs thusfar
    59. Level: UAC Invaded (name?). Some basic but solid arena construction, starting to really play with partially obscured cover and looping pathways vertically and horizontally
    60. Level: Lazarus labs and surprisingly simple yet good arena. Central cylinder with an upper and lower walkway, but multiple pillars and protrusions which provide cover and navigation)
    61. Level: Lazarus labs, storage facility is another weirdly good arena. Mostly vertical this time, with three distinct floors and lots of portals and jump-pads between them, though what makes this particular arena work so well…
    62. Level: Encounter: …is something the game has done well in general, escalation of encounter. Lots of imps, but then hell knights, but then cyber mancubi
    63. Boss: For how relatively easy it is, I do enjoy the Cyberdemon fight. Good variety of attacks, and the ‘corridor and wave’ combo added in phase 2 makes it even better
    64. Level: The Titan graveyard starts leaning a bit more into traps and gotchas, but still feels like the same good sequence of arenas strung together
    65. Level: Y’know, there’s only so many ways I can say the same basic things, and I feel silly sometimes typing up what seems like the same things over and over… I’m not an AI bot, I swear. But the VEGA facility arenas are legit. They might honestly be some of my favorite in the entire game. Nice, big, open, lots of jump pads and well positioned blocks and ways to maneuver around and pickups and tons of mean, good enemy composition. This level might actively be my favorite in the game, but at the very least…
    66. Level: …it deserves its own double positive
    67. Outro: Boss: Spider Mastermind. The usual simple but fun qualities; good pay attention checks, nice big avoidable hits, gives resources upon weakpoint hits, has a weakpoint at all, and general fun
    68. Replayability: I mean of course it is, but also it has the bonus optional stuff and indicators thereof
    69. Mod: Tools. It’s irritating to use, but there are built in ‘mods’ via the Snap mode
    70. Mod: Depth. And you can use it to do a few cool things (like remake E1M1)

    Gameplay Negatives:

    1. Unskippable Cutscenes: Nothing too egregious, but every time a major cutscene plays there’s nothing you can do until it’s done
    2. Raspberry Jam: It’s rare, but it’s there
    3. Save: Forced ironman mode
    4. Save: No saves… at all, really, just the autosave at checkpoints
    5. Mid Mission Checkpoints: So, this is part of the save system problem but the game is not always great about where exactly it places those checkpoints
    6. Bug: Several smaller ones, but the big one is it’s relatively easy and very reliable to do a glory kill and clip through the terrain, which usually results in plummeting to your death
    7. Level: The Argent Tower, despite its positives, also has irritating platforming, frustrating waiting sections to progress, and ease of slipping and falling which means losing progress or dying AND losing progress
    8. Level: Hell 1. The layout is weird, the flow isn’t (many people get stuck thanks to some basic flaws in color usage), and the encounters go from engaging to just irritating, where you are penalized for making any mistakes at all
    9. Graphics: Gross factor. It’s pretty mild all things considering, but some areas are just entirely too much
    10. Difficulty Curve: Related to the aforementioned levels, but there’s a point in the game where it just stops being fun due to the wonky difficulty curve
    11. Padding: The final few Hell levels, while ‘good’, are really just more of the same and the game could probably have been a solid two levels shorter and be fine

Story Positives:

1. Intro: The entire opening sequence; the first stage, the tutorial, the death of the first priest, the confrontation with Khan Makyr and the priests, all does a tremendous job setting up where we are, what we’re doing, who our targets are, and what’s been happening…
2. Intro: …earning a second positive
3. Storytelling Mechanic: The lore entries are back, and honestly are better than ever. Lots of fun and interesting stuff here, about enemies, areas, weapons…
4. Storytelling Mechanic: …all great stuff, but what really works here…
5. World Building: …is how much it fleshes out the setting. Never before has the Doom setting felt as cohesive and, frankly, interesting as they develop in this game. The Argenta, the Wraiths, the Titans, the Makyrs, it’s all great stuff…
6. World Building: …and earns…
7. World Building: …a solid triple
8. Brickwork: So, one of the things I tend to complain about when it comes to ‘ruins’ in game is how samey and boring they tend to look, even in otherwise visually impressive games. So consider me impressed when they bother to actually make the destroyed and invaded Earth ruins look fantastic, really adding to the feeling and vibe of how devastated this place is as Hell has come to Earth. This earns…
9. Brickwork: …an easy second positive, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention…
10. Doodads: …how well they place items and objects to continue to sell the scene. Offices, fortifications, corpses, husks of weapons and signs of battle…
11. Visual Storytelling: …all of which really sells what happened here, and what is still progressing as we arrive
12. Brickwork: Everything about Argent D’Nur is gorgeous. The not quite byzantine architecture, the rolling mountains, the wonderful mixture of high tech and medieval, all greats a great visual flair…
13. Doodads: …further accented by the periodic weapons, training halls, overgrowth, and other wonderful foliage around
14. Brickwork: The Cultist Base in the Arctic deserves its own mention. A great mixture of horrible torture devices, frozen wastes, and molten factory
15. Brickwork: I also have to mention the ARC Base and, consequently, Phobos, which both do some great stuff with selling their respective scenes and keeping things varied from otherwise ‘ruined Earth’ tilesets
16. Visual Storytelling: Much as I hate to admit it, there is some great visual storytelling in Hell… especially the Nekroval. We get to see, right up close and personal, the factory that tortures and kills people in order to convert them to energy to feed Urdak, and it is just as horrifying as it should be…
17. Visual Storytelling: …for a solid second positive
18. Brickwork: Urdak. This might be one of my favorite horrifying locales in gaming. The perfect usage of cold metal and rock to avoid simply being gross and gorey, but the excellent shaping and styling to make them still look vaguely… organic, without actually being organic. The amazing combination of cold ivory, smooth copper, and scarlet trees do an amazing job of feeling like bone, blood, and veins. I cannot gush about this place enough…
19. Brickwork: …earning an individual…
20. Brickwork: …triple positive
21. Spritework: Better than Doom 4 in several ways. Sure the demons look legit, but then we add the Argenta, the Makyrs, and of course the guns themselves…
22. Spritework: …for a second positive
23. Humor: The UAC Spokesperson probably isn’t intended to be as funny as she is, but here we are
24. Voice Acting: Nika Futterman does a wonderful job as Khan Makyr. Probably best known for her role as Ventress over in Star Wars, she nails the particular tone of indignant Khan Makyr as she demands you submit because it is the correct order of things
25. Voice Acting: Of course I’m going to give props to Darin DePaul for being a national treasure.
26. Animation: Not QUITE to the incredibly high quality of Doom 4, but still some fantastic usage of animation to characterize here…
27. Animation: …for a solid double positive
28. Foreshadowing: Quite a bit, actually, if you’re paying attention
29. Writing: With one notable exception pretty far in, most of the game does a stand up job expositing naturally and in the narrative
30. Moment: The Slayer walking through the Phobos base, people’s reactions, and the simplicity yet effectiveness of it…
31. Moment: …is one of the best moments in the game
32. Moment: Firing ourselves further at Mars in a gun
33. MSQ: Sentinel Prime, the lore dumps, and all nicely skippable and optional…
34. External Continuity: …and this is when we finally discuss continuity in this series. I know this is an unpopular opinion but, with a few individual exceptions, I rather like how this game ties in the previous Dooms (minus Cubed) into a cohesive narrative. We started off as just a guy in 1, fought to save Earth in 2, descended into gibbering rage in 64, were rescued and refined in between, trapped and contained by the demons (who dropped an entire temple on us!) before being released in 4, and finally full circle in 5. I think it does a good job lining up the dots
35. Plot: The plight of the Betrayer, his son, and the Icon. This is a weirdly engaging plot point, especially considering it was actually introduced back in 4
36. Music Direction: Urdak. The eerie creepiness of it is just on point and right where it really needs to be to emphasize how wrong this place is
37. Character: Doom Slayer. He’s honestly just as good as he was before, with a few additional moments that make him shine even better (which get their own positives)
38. Brickwork: UAC Atlantica. The roiling waves, ravaging storm, and (for once) pristine industrial platform
39. Brickwork: The Blood Swamp. I’m a bit surprised, but this does a really good job of conveying the rotting depths that lies beneath the rest of Hell
40. Character: The Intern is weirdly delightful for how little screen time he gets
41. Brickwork: Urdak 2. I’m sorry, but the backdrops and the symmetry of the broken husk of a world framed by damaged superstructure is just gorgeous and really sells the nature of what’s happening to Urdak
42. Moment: The cutscene where the forces of Argenta charge Immora’s gates is pretty frickin’ badass…
43. Visual Storytelling: …and the war going on in the background adds some wonderful visual flair to the final stage
44. Outro: Moment: “No”…
45. Outro: Moment: …gets two positives

Story Negatives:

1. Writing: So, the Crucible… no not that one, the other one. Neither of these things are really properly explained, and function as macguffins to drive the somewhat lackluster middle section of the plot
2. Plot: Suddenly it’s the fate of the entire universe due to a Titan being able to create a super blackhole. Why?
3. Music Direction: Relentless and negatively impacts…
4. Pacing: …of the DLC especially
5. Writing: So, why do we screw over Samuel? Why does the Father save him last minute despite him rather suddenly suffering Transfiguration? It feels needless amongst everything else
6. External Continuity: So VEGA was always the Father and Samuel was always the Seraphim. Neither of these reveals really changes or adds much and, honestly, kind of messes with what came before
7. Outro: Moment: So Davoth was really the creator all along. DUN DUN DUN. This is stupid. It’s stupid in the moment because it tries to be a twist at the very last second…
8. Outro: Character: …it’s stupid for how it spits on VEGA and Hayden…
9. Outro: World Building: …it’s stupid for how it makes no sense in the confines of the (otherwise quite cohesive) story of Eternal…
10. Outro: External Continuity: …and it’s stupid for how it interferes with the logic of the now-connected franchise as a whole

Gameplay Positives:

1. Minigame: Horde mode
2. HUD: Even more improved from before (and still mostly customizable), with pips, centralization of necessary elements, and color distinction…
3. HUD: …earning a solid…
4. HUD: …triple positive
5. Sound Design: Still pretty solid, especially with audio indicators of things like cooldowns and health
6. Music: So, it’s hard to even properly convey the variance in quality between this and Doom 4, the two are just so close to each other. I think I will in the end still consider this game to be…
7. Music: …a very solid…
8. Music: …triple positive
9. Controls: Same basic control quality as before
10. Enemy AI: Same general quality from Doom 4
11. Song: Gladiator. Rip and tear
12. Song: End Credits Music. Yeah I know, dull name, but man this song so perfectly embodies Doom music (even structurally!)
13. Options: Lots and lots of options this time around, more like the classic Doom standard (though still no option to disable the damned low ammo and low health indicators)…
14. Options: …for a solid…
15. Options: …triple positive
16. Core Combat: “Potions” (aka lives) system. No interruption in flow or gameplay, just a greyscreen and a sound effect and you’re right back into it, and the distribution of them throughout levels is solid
17. Map: This might be one of if not the best maps I’ve seen in gaming. Clear indicators of height and positioning, well marked, well colored, very well laid out, very intuitive and easy to navigate, and quick and easy to open and close. It’s flat out amazing…
18. Map: …and deserves a full…
19. Map: …triple positives
20. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Better than last time, further helped by falling into pits not resulting in instant death…
21. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …for a double positive
22. Visual Distinction: Various, but also color coding in items, enemies, attacks, etc. It’s great…
23. Visual Distinction: …and it earns a double
24. Bestiary: Details and information on weaknesses and tactics
25. Kit: Okay, let’s talk Kit. So we still have several of the same guns…
26. Kit: …and that’s still awesome…
27. Kit: …we also still have the alternate fire modes, which also change how the gun operates fundamentally…
28. Kit: …and now we have the other ‘Equipment’, like grenades, Blood Punch, flamethrower, and chainsaw, all of which feeds into…
29. Viscerality: …honestly, while this game is still very visceral, I think it’s just a bit below Doom 4 in this regard. Still absolutely enjoyable though…
30. Viscerality: …and still worthy of double positives
31. Viscerality: When we hit the DLC the Viscerality finally steps up a notch into triple territory. I was iffy on it (I do still prefer overall Viscerality in Doom 4) however the new Kit (especially the Hammer) really pushes it over the line for me
32. Enemy Design: Honestly a bit lacking in relation to the enemy design in 4, but still some good designs…
33. Enemy Variety: …with some good variety in how you have to approach them
34. Pacing: You kill, then you platform, then you kill… it’s good stuff
35. Cheats: This is a weird one. They’re found in game as collectibles and can only be used on levels you’ve already completed, severely limiting their use… but the are there and they do help with 100%ing
36. Difficulty Mutator: Mission (and weapon) challenges
37. Power Progression: Mutator upgrades also upgrade stats. Mutator upgrades to begin with. Weapon mod upgrades. Weapon mastery challenges. Choice of what batteries to spend on what upgrades…
38. Power Progression Curve: …all of this earns…
39. Power Progression Curve: …a solid triple positive
40. Tutorialization: The prison area where you can play around with enemies to practice freely
41. NG+: Level select is, as always, a nice feature
42. Guidance: So they still do the green thing this time around, but are even smarter about it than before. Obviously some of these are pretty visible thanks to the increased saturation of the color in general…
43. Guidance: …but what pushes it up to double positive territory is how many small, individual sequences where they’re smart about adding some form of green to help guide the player (like a sunken traffic light, or a green flame torch)
44. Level: As with some of the previous Doom games, there’s some general solid Peeking going on here which helps with navigation
45. Intro: Level: 1, Hell On Earth. Some fairly basic but good flow as the level progresses past basic jumps and encounters to function as the first real tutorial level
46. Level: 2, Exultia. Platforming and light puzzle elements (falling platforms, swings, lava pits, Mario fire wheels) make this more fun than it has any right to be. In fact I thought it’d be one of those situations where the first half worked and the second didn’t, but no the Hell levels were legit too…
47. Level: …for a double positive
48. Level: 3, Cultist Base, opening. Some nice and fun arena sections and some fun if brief platforming sections
49. Boss: Doom Hunter (all three of them…). I remember having issues with this last time, but it was nothing but fun this time around. Good mobility, variety of attacks, a nice long stun factor, and trash to recover on
50. Level: 5, the Super Gore Nest. Very good internal looping, with objectives smoothly laid out to allow for a smooth flow through the level, even as it interweaves itself, and the whole thing is properly dense and doesn’t overstay its welcome
51. Level: 7, Mars Core. I hate to sound like a broken record here but the platforming is fun and the arena design is great
52. Level: Pacing: Nekroval to Urdak. This is a weird one but these two levels compliment each other beautifully. Nekroval is almost nothing but brutal arena encounters, and Urdak is primarily platforming fun. Both have the other of course, but this really keeps this section’s pacing up there
53. Level: Encounter: Speaking of Nekroval… the encounter design here is some of the best in the game, finally hitting that sweet spot of fun and engaging without being absolutely stupid
54. Level: Urdak then, as mentioned, really dives into some fun platforming sequences, complimented by a new enemy type and some fun arenas. But really, the way the level loops around itself is what really sells this…
55. Level: …earning a double positive
56. Level: Blood Swamp (platforming and encounter design). There’s a few niggles here and there, but I still enjoyed this for what it was
57. Level: Arena design in the Holt, platforming in the Holt. The arena design here includes some of the best arenas in the game; some truly great interweaving and just enough platforms to hide behind and out-maneuver with
58. Boss: The Seraphim. I’m shocked at how good this fight is. At first I saw his huge health bar and reliance on area denial and the Spirit enemies and was like blurgh, but not only do these actually add to the arena design and serve as methods of recovery, but the boss itself actually has mid boss checkpoints. All in all this was very fun…
59. Boss: …and deserves a second positive
60. Level: DLC. The World Spear. The new swing mechanic works far more smoothly than it has any right to, and they quickly progress from basic platforming to traversing huge swaths of terrain via this
61. Level: Encounter: DLC. The World Spear. Some of the encounters here are some of the best in the game. I find it difficult to put into words, but the specific combinations of which enemies attack alongside others, how they stagger future spawns, and arena design just feels so much more polished than any stage prior to this one (with the possible exception of the Super Gore Nest). This is all awesome…
62. Level: Encounter: …and earns a solid second positive for Encounter design, but…
63. Level: Encounter: …gets a bonus as well. There are these one-room gimmicky encounters which I thought would irritate me, but actually play with concepts in fun and interesting ways. Two that jump out at me are; You’re stuck in a purple pit (so no dashing or jumping) and tons of basic level zombies spawn, which are suddenly an issue given the restrictions… And the other one is a very small, narrow corridor (with plenty of vertical height) where you’re give plentiful Blood Gauntlet ammo and a ton of Pinkies spawn on your face. These add to the all important…
64. Pacing: …pacing of the DLC. Unlike the first DLC (which felt like holding onto a jackhammer for 5 hours) this feels more like it has proper variances in highs and lows
65. Kit: DLC. The introduction of the hammer (gives ammo and nice big AOE and fed by glory kills). I don’t even know what to add to this; It’s a great ‘oh crap’ button, fits seamlessly into the existing core combat, feels great to use, and is rewarding to use
66. Level: DLC. Reclaimed Earth. Platforming, again with the good platforming. They really are mixing things up with these segments
67. Level: Encounter: DLC. Reclaimed Earth. Just like in the World Spear, we’re really starting to see some of that arena design and encounter design shine. There were several encounters where I felt very pushed, but never irritated or frustrated, and I love (once again) the proper spacing out of types of encounters as a given arena progresses…
68. Level: Encounter: …earning another solid positive
69. Enemy Design: Armored Barons. They’re just… weirdly well designed. Their one weakpoint thing has multiple methods around it, they’re aggressive but not too much so, but the thing that really pushes them up is their entire movement tech is designed to compliment their attacks and moves
70. Level: Encounter: While not at the level of some of the other excellent design in the second DLC, they still do a lot right with the arena design of Immora
71. Minigame: Master Levels. Mutators and remixes of existing levels to add the all important…
72. Replayability: …replayability. (Also the game has good general replayability)

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Kit:: Okay so, there’s this thing in this game which I call the Combat Problem. Like all ‘Problem’ issues it’s a multi-layered series of smaller things that, taken individually, aren’t really bad, but all run into each other causing an overall negative experience. Let’s start with one of the easiest identifiable problems with the combat in Doom 5; the ammo cap. The initial ammo cap is REALLY low, like… pathetically low, to the point where the guns you have (all two of them…) require near constant swapping, and you’re blowing your chainsaw every encounter just to keep up. This already feels bad as is, but it runs into another problem…
2. Kit: …and that’s that even when you upgrade your ammo cap it doesn’t really help the situation as much as it should. Oh it helps, don’t mistake me, but you’re still constantly swapping weapons every single combat simply because you have to. Even this isn’t necessarily bad, until you realize…
3. Power Progression Curve: …it’s part of the built in upgrade systems (of which there are many). And these upgrades go from being ‘neat ways to improve your power’ to ‘absolutely mandatory’. It’s also worth noting these upgrades come at the expense of increasing your survivability (since the other two things you can upgrade are health and armor). There’s another niggle to all of this though, as one of the ‘mandatory’ upgrades increases weapon swap speed, without which…
4. Flow: …the flow of constantly swapping weapons completely interrupts the natural flow of combat. Even with this upgrade though, it feels… awkward to have to constantly swap between weapons, especially given how incredibly high intensity combat can be in this game. You’re making multiple tactical decisions every single second, and having to remember which buttons do what in sub-second timing can lead to irritations, especially considering…
5. Difficulty: …the game is just mean. There’s a lot of reasons why, but this specific negative is for how punishing it is to make any mistakes during the aforementioned high intensity combat. For example, sometimes you’re in a low ammo situation thanks to the earlier Kit negatives and need ammo, NOW. So you whip out…
6. Kit: …the chainsaw. This is overall a good idea, really, but it comes with a few caveats. First, the specific enemies which cost which specific amounts of chainsaw fuel honestly feels like an unnecessary addendum. I’ve been chewing on this exact point all day and I realized that, sure, the chainsaw just straight up kills something, but that’s not its REAL benefit. The point of the thing is to get that ammo splurge. Just make certain enemies totally immune to it (already true, by the way) and make everything else cost one pip, and shazam, problem solved. As is it can be clumsy to try and chainsaw in mid combat, especially if you accidentally target the wrong enemy or don’t have the right amount of fuel, costing you precious seconds. So okay, the chainsaw has its own problems, but another weird issue…
7. Padding: …is enemy health. Some enemies (but not all) have just entirely too much health. This is because the devs don’t want you to fight them in whatever manner, they want a specific ‘solution’ to any given fight, which is why they emphasize…
8. Core Mechanic: …the weakpoint system. Most enemies either have a specific weakpoint that can be destroyed by a specific damage type, or parts of them where they take normal damage. This, once again, is fine in a vacuum but you can start to see how this starts to cascade across several of the previous negatives. In the moment, hitting the right enemy with the right weapon at the right time suddenly becomes more of a chore than an engaging bit of gameplay, and once again ties into that ‘solution’ concept I mentioned earlier. But even THIS wouldn’t be so bad…
9. Encounter: …if not for how dense enemy encounters are. As with Doom 4, a lot of the combat in this game is arena based; Big (well designed) arenas with lots and lots of movement and traversal options all about keeping you moving. Cool. But there’s also a billion (slight exaggeration) enemies and well over half of them have to be ‘solved’ in a certain way, or you risk losing both health and ammo, which we’ve already covered is an existing issue. And even all of this is, ultimately, something I could bypass if not for the last and biggest issue in the game…
10. Traversal: …navigating the enemies themselves. See, enemies have collision. I know this sounds like such a small issue but trust me, it’s a huge cornerstone of how frustrating this game’s combat feels to me. Said collision extends a bit out of the enemies themselves, so it’s very easy to get blocked in…
11. Traversal: …and most arenas have naturally built corners or deadends you can get stuck in, which by a certain point in the game is just death. This is made even worse because…
12. Enemy AI: …almost every enemy AI is designed to rush right into melee with you, exacerbating the aforementioned collision problem. It’s almost always smaller stuff too. Enemies that rush the character aren’t new (Pinkies and Lost Souls did this all the way back in Doom 1), but having so many enemies that rush you, while blocking you in, while requiring specific ways to kill them, while causing issues with the chainsaw, while having low ammo… you start to see how all of this cascades into one colossal Problem. And yet it gets even worse, because…
13. Raspberry Jam: …there’s this not-quite raspberry jam thing that happens when you’re stuck or struck in melee. It can be EXTREMELY disorienting, especially in the thick of things, to the point where you find yourself struggling to even see the damned thing that’s hitting you. This was a feature back in Doom 4 too, but it’s so much worse here…
14. Raspberry Jam: …as virtually every enemy has a ‘screw you you’re in melee’ thing they do automatically as a reaction (think of it as a free action in a turn based game) which does damage, disorients, and gets in the way of your movement (just jumping away isn’t always an option thanks to how it can screw over your momentum). This bleeds over into…
15. Difficulty: …how much this one single point makes the game so much harder. The disorienting, the inability to move, and the tremendous amount of damage coming in, while requiring specific kit to deal with it, makes the game way, way harder than it really should be…
16. Difficulty: …which, I know what you’re thinking, ‘just play on easy noob, gawd’, and you’re right, except…
17. Difficulty Options: …easy mode… isn’t. It’s actually well designed difficulty options for the most part (go figure) but Easy is more like Normal. And this is all conflated with one final irritation…
18. Save: …the lack of saves. Yes this is the same issue as in Doom 4, but it’s even worse here due to how beneficial it’d be to be able to save in mid fight once you’ve either gotten a good groove, taken out a particular enemy, or are trying to reposition properly, but no. Instead…
19. Save: …if you die, hope you have an extra life. And if you don’t…
20. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …hope you enjoy redoing that entire encounter (and possibly platforming section)
21. Graphics: Guck bluck yuck. This isn’t the grossest game I’ve ever seen, but several levels (notably the Nekroval and Super Gore Nest) can go straight to hell…
22. Graphics: …for a double negative
23. Raspberry Jam: I’ve seen worse, but not by much. It actually gets worse the lower in health you get too…
24. Raspberry Jam: …for a double negative
25. Level: 3, Cultist Base, padding. Seriously, this level is just too long, and while it has some interesting sequences in the first half, the second half is just the same stuff again with no real variety in arena design or platforming. Contrast this slog with the much tighter Level 5
26. Enemy Design: Marauders. Okay so, these have been tuned down a bit since launch (thank God) but they’re still just… wrong for this type of game. They functionally are ‘parry enemies’, aka wait until a certain type of attack then react to it. And that’s fine in a lot of games, but in a Doom game it just feels wrong. Further, they’re usually alongside a whole bunch of other enemies. So you’re either dealing with them while the Marauder harasses you, or you try to ignore the Marauder while THEY harass you
27. Encounter: Sentinel Prime major arena (visibility problems compounded with LOTS of enemies and one perched Archvile)
28. Enemy Design: Archvile. These guys are irritation incarnate. They don’t do much themselves, except summon tons of enemies, teleport, and throw up shields preventing them from taking damage, oh and they have a bunch of health. These are just damned frustrating to deal with
29. Boss: Khan Makyr. This isn’t a terrible idea for a fight really; Shoot her to lower her shields, then Blood Punch her in the face. There’s several problems with it however. First, unless you spec’d into Blood Punching your only real method of gaining charges is Glory Kills, which have their own problems with a bunch of ranged enemies with just the worst amount of health (too high to vuln easily, too low to avoid one shotting accidentally). Then you add her ability to add damage to huge swaths of the floor, where the aforementioned ranged enemies like to hang out. And finally she has six health pips, and NOTHING changes in between these pips, so it’s just six iterations of the same fight…
30. Boss: …for a double negative
31. Outro: Level: The final Earth stage. It’s not.. Bad, really, but it is substandard for this game’s usual quality of arena and platforming design
32. Outro: Boss: Icon of Sin can go straight to hell. It’s mostly an add fight, with escalating types and density as the fight goes on (testing, it appears to be time based). You also have to destroy its pieces, which… okay, fine. These pieces have a billion health, okay that sucks. Then you hit phase 2 which is… the same thing, but now it’s body parts instead of armor, and now he’s going to be a total dick about area denial. Here’s the catch, and the thing that makes this fight really suck; it is VERY intense (even on Easy, though I’m speaking mostly from Normal difficulty experience here), requiring the player to constantly be on their game navigating the swarms of enemies and using them to refill to keep damaging the big boy, all the while he can fling you, do crap tons of damage in milliseconds, and most of his attacks you aren’t going to see coming. All of this means death is easy on this fight, which means starting all over, and this fight can be LONG. So it becomes a horrible version of boring; it’s so intense and lasts so long it gets dull…
33. Outro: Boss: …earning it a double negative
34. Pacing: DLC. There’s entirely too much of the same type of thing over and over and over…
35. Padding: DLC. …which leads to the whole thing feeling far more padded than it really should, considering how insane these…
36. Encounter: DLC. …encounters are. Absolutely unforgiving combinations of brutal enemies, combined with the new enemies that just make things even more arduous than before
37. Trash: DLC. This sort of blends into the whole game, but really shows up in the DLC. There’s just too many enemies and too much fodder you spend too much time churning through and it removes enjoyment from otherwise enjoyable gameplay
38. Guidance: DLC. Small, but several key sections where it’s really not super clear what to do or where to go
39. Enemy Design: DLC. General. Too many enemies that focus on ‘use this specific weapon mod or equipment to bypass my mechanic’ thing
40. Outro: Boss: Over-reliance on hammer (which just got grindy instead of fun, felt like spinning wheels to get back to the fight)
41. Outro: Boss: Entirely too much healing on the boss. You are penalized, hard, for making even the slightest of mistakes (and when I say slight, I mean dashing half a second too late, or not dashing at all)…
42. Outro: Boss: …which is really frustrating, especially in how it ties into the last part…
43. Outro: Boss: …boredom. The final boss is BORING. It’s just sitting there and waiting for him to open up, grinding out a Hammer to clear the board, and then going back to waiting. This is further aggravated by the aforementioned healing, and the fact that he has entirely too much health regardless of healing…
44. Outro: Boss: …making this a truly miserable, dull last fight

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: The Hyperion and Nexus interior are, I’ll give it this, pretty decent
2. Background Lore: Chatter while docking with the Nexus (and in general)
3. Background Lore: Codex. No voice acting or in depth stuff this time, but there’s still enough for one positive
4. Brickwork: Eos. The badlands of Utah
5. Brickwork: H-047c, and being on the inside of a convex blasted moon
6. Brickwork: Elaaden and, once again, desert. Good stuff though
7. Brickwork: I’ll even give it to Vloed and its frozen wastes
8. Doodads: Ruins, in general. There’s not a lot of good doodad usage in the whole game but they tend to do well here
9. Character: Drack. Weirdly good character for this game, and he retains it throughout. It’s probably telling that his banter and quests are some of the best in the game…
10. Character: …for a double
11. Character: Cora. She only has a couple ‘notes’ to her but she’s still well written and well acted
12. Character: Vetra. Weird archetype for this game but she fits with what she’s going for
13. Character: Jaal. The ‘foreign exchange student’ of the group, who does a great job mostly in his connections with the others
14. Prime Opt: Romances. Usually I like to give individual positives but here I can only really manage an aggregate or two as there’s just too many issues with them, the animation, the voice acting, and the dialogue. They’re still decent for what they’re going for though
15. Moment: Suvi and Ryder admitting they like each other
16. Moment: Jaal’s shock at seeing that the Kett are his own people is actually pretty impactful. The actor sells it, and his under-stated lines help emphasize how hard this is hitting him
17. Brickwork: Kadara. The city more than the wastes, but it still gets it
18. Banter: The banter in this game varies wildly in quality but there’s a lot of it, it acknowledges a lot of situations, and the dynamic between characters is good…
19. Banter: …for a solid…
20. Banter: …triple
21. Secondary: Kadara quests, weirdly. Despite how none of this makes sense in lore, the individual stories are engaging enough by themselves…
22. Secondary: …to earn a double
23. Humor: Yeah I know but hear me out. The game’s biggest narrative flaw is that it’s trying for two tones and failing for the most part, but when it embraces the ‘kids in college’ vibe it actually manages to be pretty funny…
24. Humor: …earning a double
25. Secondary: Eos. Again, color me shocked, but in a vacuum several of these work for me
26. Moment: Okay so… the ‘fight’ between Morda and Strux is absolutely hilariously bad. Like, it’s SO, so bad, I love it
27. Prime Opt: Havarl planetary primary. Restarting the device, learning more about Angarans and their connection to the precursors, and trying to tear down walls of prejudice as we go
28. External Continuity: ME3. No, hear me out. The primary kickstarter of Andromeda’s entire premise is actually really good; Someone was spooked about rumors of the Reapers, Shepard confirmed it 100%, and they threw everything into getting the hell out of dodge immediately. I love it, it makes sense, and it’s a good way to acknowledge the previous games despite being a soft reboot
29. Prime Opt: Cora’s loyalty mission
30. Moment: Cora’s final moment. Sand, seeds, and a garden
31. Prime Opt: Drack’s loyalty mission is… weirdly good. Drack is legit, Vorn is legit, there’s good chemistry between the two, there’s good acknowledgement of the relevance of things other than killing for Krogan, and the whole time we’re smashing through wave after wave of expendables…
32. Prime Opt: …good stuff
33. Moment: Aroane’s fate. The right combination of hilarious and earned
34. Prime Opt: Settling the fate of Kadara and Reyes’ general sensibility
35. Cutscene: Drack reminiscing about how Kesh got into his life, recovering from his wounds, and moving on from his past
36. Prime Opt: Jaal’s loyalty quest in dealing with Akksul has some good underlying meat on its bones
37. Moment: Jaal showing us his family, his tinkers, accepting us into his family. As usual execution fails but it’s still a nice moment
38. Moment: “Okay, this way!” Opens door, gun turns to shoot, close door. “Not that way!”
39. Humor: Somehow the Liam Prime Opt is… legitimately funny, repeatedly
40. Prime Opt: The Liam loyalty quest has a lot of weirdly good elements. It’s like… an actual honest to God ME mission…
41. Prime Opt: …for its own double

Story Negatives:

1. Animation: Awful, just awful, top to bottom. Things don’t connect, body movements are stilted and awkward, facial animation (even while improved!) is bad…
2. Animation: …easy double
3. Intro: Dialogue: Okay so the dialogue in this game is terrible. We’re going to start giving these negatives per section because wow. So, all the dialogue is stilted, awkward, badly exposits, and feels extraordinarily unnatural. It also tries a little bit too hard at times
4. Intro: MSQ: Pointless action sequence to add drama to brother
5. Intro: Cutscene: Pointless dick measuring sequence with our dad, followed by a generic speech
6. Intro: Cutscene: Then it turns out our shuttle is actually a typical movie helicopter and we crash, somehow barely surviving but also smashing our glass helmet for absolutely no reason
7. Animation: Facial capture
8. Voice Direction: Or lack thereof. For some reason half the characters are sleepwalking through their lines…
9. Voice Direction: …for a double
10. Banter: Awful and unnatural. Like uncanny valley for dialogue
11. Intro: Tone: Everything about the Intros tone is just wrong. It’s not gallows humor, or professionals under stress, or serious… it’s portrayed as a silly quirky zany adventure while also trying to be deadly serious
12. Intro: Cutscene: Alec’s death is stupid on at least three levels. First, the shattering of the helmet AGAIN which is already frustrating…
13. Intro: Cutscene: …second, everything leading up to it (including a whopping 3 cutscenes to establish Alec)…
14. Intro: Cutscene: …third and most importantly, his death was so hilariously preventable given the way they set it up
15. World Building: Okay so we get to another galaxy and we’re here explicitly and implicitly to explore, scout, and set up settlements aaand we got here SECOND because they’ve already built Citadel Lite there ahead of us. What?!
16. Writing: Okay so hear me out. We’re the Pathfinders, the tip of the spear, so they sent an entire team and an absolute metric ton of resources and everything to establish a giant space station ahead of us. This is already eyebrow raising but it gets worse…
17. Internal Continuity: …because they can’t even keep straight within the game itself why they’re there or how…
18. Consequence Storytelling: …and it doesn’t even have any relevance. It’s just there so we can have the Citadel Lite
19. Writing: The in-universe excuse for us being able to magically be a biotic and superhuman is pure grade-A nonsense…
20. External Continuity: …and the fact that they try to pretend it’s anything otherwise is even worse
21. Cutscene: Vetra’s introduction scene. We have her established as a rogue type (she isn’t) to bypass an irritation (that isn’t) to get on with it (which we don’t)
22. Character: Liam is a piece of irritation the moment you meet him, and never really… stops
23. Visual Storytelling: The blackhole. It’s shown in cutscenes CONSTANTLY and it means… absolutely nothing
24. Cutscene: Peebee’s initial cutscene is a waste of space (at best) and actually delves into…
25. Cutscene Incompetence: …yeah, this old chestnut. Really think about it; This woman has enough time to rush up and tackle us, THEN comment, before anyone has a gun on her. THEN she says nonsense (seriously, what is this writing) and THEN they also completely miss the probe about to attack us
26. Voice Acting: Audio Logs. Seriously, learn to act
27. Sound Design: Audio Logs. Seriously, learn to sound design
28. Writing: At every point in time, everybody constantly talks us up as if we’re the Chosen One and the one true super amazing person who can save everyone and at no point does anything really… earn that. And it gets really grating
29. Sound Design: Or lack thereof. It’s especially bad in towns, ships, etc.
30. Internal Continuity: Just… none, really. The game has a really hard time keeping track of things that happen in its own narrative, or the order in which they happen, or even just acknowledging basic consequences…
31. Internal Continuity: …earning an aggregate…
32. Internal Continuity: …triple
33. Secondary: Sabotage quest. All three of the following quests have the same basic issue; They’re worse than other secondary quests. They wrap up too fast, they don’t even begin to touch on the meat of their subject matter, the characters aren’t well written, the animation is bad, the voice acting is bad. It’s bad top to bottom
34. Secondary: Protests quest. These people want you to release people early… not at all, mind you, just early. I remind you they are having food and air shortages at this point
35. Secondary: Anti AI quest. So listen, AI’s evil because of a ME tie-in DLC, let’s kill her, quest over
36. Tone: First contact. Everything about this is wrong. Yes I get that this isn’t actually first contact for THEM but it sure as hell is for us, and the whole thing… just feels like you’re getting a side quest to prove yourself from the local faction. It’s awful…
37. Tone: …and deserves its own double
38. Pacing: General. Stuff happens with no regard to pacing…
39. Story Sequencing: …or sequencing. There are often zero connecting threads between plot beats, even if you just beeline the MSQ
40. Dialogue: Everyone, with like 3 exceptions, is a friggin’ teenager. Everyone! What in the world
41. World Building: Kadara and the Exiles. I’m sorry, everything about the Exiles is stupid. There’s not that many people here (in general, at all. Remember the Exiles was pooling from about 20k people, since this was before the Ark showed up) and they already have a flourishing economy, outposts (plural), nations (plural), smuggling, and slavery. These things require a basic level of societal infrastructure that is, at absolute most, a year old now. What?!
42. Tone: Sam (sorry, I mean Ryder) died, but then got up, and is flippant. This is immediately after finding Salarians being tortured to death and being captured by the one doing it
43. Cutscene: Also the scene I just mentioned is legitimately awful. Let’s ignore that the AI can just stop our heart, or the fact that the field stops when you’re dead (how does it know?), but also can restart and just get right back into combat? What in the world
44. Animation: Ryder’s smile never… ever goes away. The acting can be pretty good (from both actors) but their face never leaves that static half grin (or whatever you set it to in character creation)
45. Animation: Archon. Seriously, the dude isn’t just animated badly, he’s animated wrong. And presentation with a villain… y’know, matters. Thank goodness they got his voice right…
46. Voice Actor: …wait, no they didn’t. I would have to put real effort into sounding more generic than this. That’s okay at least he looks cool…
47. Spritework: …wait, no he doesn’t. He looks amazingly generic, like they threw him together in an afternoon. But that’s okay because at least his character is okay…
48. Character: …he’s the second most generic doomsday Bioware villain of all time. And that’s impressive when going against Morag and the like. Still not as bad as The Monitor though
49. Pacing: Quest endings, in general. Quests just… stop, abruptly. Almost all of them
50. Padding: Voeld. Just a whole lot of wheel spinning
51. Padding: Elaaden. Again, just a whole lot of nothing
52. Prime Opt: The Elaaden planetary primary is actually interesting until the wrap up, at which point it goes really bad, really fast. Bad voice acting, bad and rushed conclusion, and all of the sudden we’re friends (or enemies)
53. Cutscene: The… Ellen Ryder stuff. So hey we build up our dead mother (through most of the game actually) and surprise she isn’t dead… hokay
54. Character: Director Tann. I get that the obstinate bureaucrat is a common Bioware trope but that doesn’t make it good, and Tann is a particularly bad one
55. World Building: The Roekaar are just too much. Anti xeno sentiment? Sure. These people are literally nazis, who want to genocide every non Angaran. There is a specific quest where they are deliberately throwing resources into killing a pregnant woman for God’s sakes
56. Moment: Two biotics killing an entire destroyer (a ship, I mean) with biotic fields. Sure
57. Prime Opt: The first baby in Andromeda… wow. This quest chain sucks hard. The woman being a colossal idiot is bad enough but the game never calls her out for it, and instead treats it like some big accomplishment. What in God’s name
58. Cutscene: The execution of Jaal’s loyalty mission kind of sucks. First several seemingly impactful scenes just fall apart due to presentation, but the thing that really makes this worse is the game baits us by giving us no real indication that NOT killing is the correct call (keeping in mind we’ve been killing his people left and right for several minutes) and it’s legitimately only down to luck that Jaal is fine
59. Prime Opt: Peebee’s quest chain… kiiinda sucks. It’s awkward quirky without the charm needed to make it work. And it’s just aggravating…
60. Prime Opt: …culminating in a dumb choice between ‘save the life of a murderer’ or ‘don’t’… and… okay?
61. Outro: Cavalry moment falling flat
62. Outro: So the big final battle with Archon is stupid narratively. He’s not an engaging villain for previously indicated reasons, but having him flip out and try to kill us… with nonstop waves of droids is just… pathetic
63. Outro: Also the super fantastical magic tech that magically and instantly starts terraforming the entire cluster
64. Outro: Also the stupid post credits stinger
65. Outro: …and the epilogue, something that’s usually worth a damn, is just… flat at best
66. Outro: The final no really reward for 100%ing is the same type of damned abrupt cut off cutscene we get constantly
67. Camerawork: Or lack thereof. The amount of irritating cuts, weird zoom ins, and lack of design to shots is constant in every single cutscene…
68. Camerawork: …for a double negative
69. Writing: Not as bad as some I’ve seen but the repetition is real
70. Plot: I’m sorry, the Kett and the ‘big threat’ are boring as sin and nothing interesting is ever done with them
71. Spritework: The general NPCs and general armor is… not good in this game, at all

Gameplay Positives:

1. NG+: Actually decent new game plus, holy crap
2. Character Creation: Honestly, not too bad of options
3. Traversal: Jetpack. I’m sorry this is actually fun, just zooping and jumping around, and it adds some good mobility in combat too
4. Traversal: Nomad. Yeah I know, it’s not the Mako, but that doesn’t make it bad. I rather enjoy zipping around on this thing
5. Overworld Design: Eos, weirdly. Good density, layout, and flow
6. QoL: Looting / break down on looting, and general quality to speed the whole thing up (including things like ‘sell all’)
7. Builds: Great build systems in this game. Lots of skills, lots of possible combos (passives, actives, cross professions, dual, single)… great stuff…
8. Builds: …an easy…
9. Builds: …triple
10. Kit: Weapons. These are basically the weapons from ME3, so of course they’re great. Good variety, good design, good impact…
11. Kit: …another easy…
12. Kit: …triple
13. Kit: Soldier skills. These are pretty basic but do a good job of synergizing with other stuff…
14. Kit: …for a double
15. Kit: Engineer skills. More interesting stuff here, like turrets and more side-stepping combat options…
16. Kit: …for a good…
17. Kit: …triple
18. Kit: Biotic skills. Again, some cool stuff, to buff, debuff, heal, and add mobility…
19. Kit: …for a solid…
20. Kit: …triple
21. Kit: Party members! They’re worth a damn (see the next positives) and they have their own variety of abilities which can legitimately change how you play through missions…
22. Kit: …for a double
23. Party AI: Weirdly good stuff here. Party members will use abilities smartly, seek out enemies, and navigate the terrain quite well…
24. Party AI: …solid double
25. Enemy AI: The enemy is… not as good, but they’re still better than I was expecting
26. Core Combat: All of the above sits on top of a very solid combat system. Shooting, abilities, mobility, the minute-to-minute combat is very fun and easily the best overall point of positivity in the entire game (as it should be, it’s well over half the positives the game gets to gameplay)…
27. Core Combat: …earning…
28. Core Combat: …a triple
29. Terrain Design: Weirdly, yeah. There’s some good design to staircases, chest-high areas, interactables to explode or freeze, that sort of thing
30. Enemy Design: Again, yeah. The basic ‘guys with guns’ are whatever but there’s some neat stuff in Remnant tech as well as some of the monsters and bosses
31. Viscerality: Sound’s a bit lacking but the visuals make up for it
32. Prime Opt: Vault puzzles (the optional ones, not the sudoku ones) are actually pretty decent for what they are
33. Secondary: Voeld quests, weirdly, have some decent design here and there
34. Encounter: Architects. There’s only really the one fight, but it’s got enough spectacle and general fun to be enjoyable
35. Prime Opt: My goodness, an actual honest to goodness decent level; Vetra’s loyalty mission to rescue her sister. Decent encounter layout, actual objectives, and options for how to proceed through the rooms
36. Options: Generally decent options across the board (auto leveling, swapping shoulders in combat, helm visibility, etc.)
37. Prime Opt: Liam’s Loyalty mission. Actual stage design, usage of destructible terrain, good verticality, and…
38. Terrain: …actually really good terrain design for the holdout missions
39. Song: I know I know but dammit the MEA map song is really, really good
40. Minigame: The co-op multiplayer is actually pretty fun in general…
41. Minigame: …and has some decent map design to it

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: Load times. Way too many and too long
2. Difficulty Options: Enemy health, number of enemies, and hazard damage… not too great
3. Unskippable Cutscenes: Weirdly
4. Overly Skippable Cutscenes: Quite a bit and quite easily
5. Saves: Inability to save during ‘priority missions’. Yes I know it has auto saves but it doesn’t LET YOU SAVE. This is already bad…
6. Saves: …and earns its own double by itself, especially since these saves LIE (double and triple tested)…
7. Saves: …so screw all of that…
8. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …but then you get into its shoddy, distant checkpoint design
9. Graphics: Many, many graphical issues and lack of polish issues and visual noise (like warping around)
10. Interface: Made for console, and it shows. Inconsistent controls, bad mouse usage, total lack of proper indicators of button usage
11. Tutorialization: Or utter lack thereof. The Intro fails miserably at conveying even basic things like how to order squadmates
12. Bug: Music doesn’t play. Like, at all. On ships or stations or planets or SCENES…
13. Bug: …it’s awful
14. Interface: So I gave this negative, then removed it, but we’re back baby! So while in the inventory you can check equipment and, if you hit a special button (page down by default) you can see tooltip comparisons to your currently equipped gear. That’s irritating, but whatever. But the one place you can’t do this? While selecting your loadout for a mission, aka the one time you really WANT such a feature
15. Bug: Resolution issues. As is basically standard for Bioware games these days
16. Seconds In Minutes: Travel takes way, way, way too long. And it is a nonstop, constant issue…
17. Seconds In Minutes: …across…
18. Seconds In Minutes: …the entire game
19. Interface: Quest log is… not great
20. Controls: Inconsistent controls and related issues
21. Guidance: No real indicator of variance between Secondaries and Tasks
22. Pacing: The… sheer quantity of ‘town’ sequences are absolutely gobsmacking. It’s well over 60% of the playtime of the game and even if it was fantastic, which it is not, that is just entirely too much in comparison to the other aspects of gameplay…
23. Pacing: …earning an easy…
24. Pacing: …triple
25. Backtracking: Mandatory (if you want to do anything other than MSQ) and built in. Areas, quests, and activities don’t unlock until certain points
26. Secondary: The Remnant Data Cores quest can go directly to hell. It’s a huge quest that spans almost the entire game, you get it right out the gate and are told how important it is, many of them are permanently missable thanks to how vaults work, and your reward at the end is nothing different from any other Task
27. Itemization: Crafting, research, building. It’s… weirdly not super worthwhile and has a few related issues with being one of the best sources of several things…
28. Seconds In Minutes: …takes forever to come back periodically to deal with…
29. Grind: …and is weirdly grindy if you really want to push up to the higher tier gear
30. Graphics: Bizarre and horrible periodic and severe flickering issues
31. Padding: Voeld quests, general
32. Bug: Quest log. In a game with ZERO directions, the quest markers occasionally not showing (either on the map, or even if you have it manually tracked) does not help anything
33. Bug: Audio glitch. So every now and again it gets stuck trying to play a sound file, fails, and so there’s no sound (except for a very high pitched whine) requiring a game restart
34. Padding: Kadara quests, general
35. Graphics: Brightness issues and flashbanging on Elaaden
36. Secondary: So if you take out the Kett command center on any given world absolutely nothing happens
37. Padding: Elaaden padding
38. Choices: Or lack thereof
39. Overworld: Kadara and navigation
40. Prime Opt: Vaults. Vaults are just irritating, linear, and confusing, especially given…
41. Visual Distinction: …how hard it is to tell where anything is, between the stark and over-bright lights and the overly-dark shadows
42. Secondary: Planet scanning, as per the series tradition at this point
43. Choices: Okay this is a weird one. I got literally locked into romancing the asari news person (no option to back out, no option to say no) which is already bad. They ALSO don’t acknowledge it, at all
44. Outro: Level: The final stage is… not. It’s very ME1, for what that’s worth. It’s a charge down a single corridor while watching, then the same damned fights we’ve been fighting the entire game in yet another vault…
45. Outro: Level: …for a double negative
46. Outro: Padding: Also the entire thing drags entirely too long
47. Outro: Boss: So, ME games have never had good final bosses (or in some cases, NO final bosses) but this is honestly I think the actual worst final boss we’ve had in ME history. I’ve seen worst final bosses overall but this is still pretty damned bad. It’s three hold the line missions in a row where you fight the same trash you’ve been fighting since the beginning of the game. That’s it…
48. Outro: Boss: …and it sucks
49. Map: Yeah it’s… I mean it’s there. It’s also hard to see and irritating to navigate
50. Minigame: The multiplayer co op mode is… problematic at best. Bad interface, extremely laggy, and barely supported…
51. Minigame: …for a double negative

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: So, let’s get this out of the way. Story is not this game’s strongsuit. Enjoy the visual positives, for they are some of the only ones this game shall receive. Thankfully these aren’t pity positives, the brickwork and doodad design really is top notch. To wit; the initial (and final) palace area
2. Doodads: With wonderful details and placements
3. Storytelling Mechanic: The Heart itself probably deserves mention for being an interesting, if horrifying, storytelling tool
4. Brickwork: The docks of Edge of the World. This entire place just screams mediterranean coastal town
5. Doodads: Amazing detail on the doodads throughout the docks as well…
6. Doodads: …for a double
7. Brickwork: The Institute of The Good Doctor. Place looks juuust functional enough while still being pretty run down, and you can see what it used to be
8. Doodads: Institute, again. The sheer attention to detail here continues to blow me away…
9. Doodads: …makes me wonder if Bethesda did anything with this
10. Background Lore: My goodness we’ve come up with a second story positive that isn’t visual (I’m honestly a bit shocked). The newspapers, posters, journal entries, all do a good job of fleshing out the background lore
11. Doodads: Conservatory. Lots and lots of wonderfully horrifying stuff here
12. Visual Storytelling: The mansion of the Crack In The Slab. There’s a lot of stuff going on here and it’s all doing a great job of conveying how this place fell apart
13. Doodads: And of course, has tons of wonderful details…
14. Doodads: …twice over for the very nature of the place
15. Brickwork: The Duke’s Palace. I mean of course, it looks exactly as expensive as it probably was
16. Doodads: The Palace, again. I’m particularly fond of all the party going pieces, the disgusting games people are playing, the food and confetti, and of course the 2 plus billion in gold in the vault
17. NPC Set Dressing: The Palace, one last time. One of the only places in the whole game with legitimately good NPC usage
18. Visual Storytelling: The final dungeon (Dunwall again) except this time the last two months have not been kind to it

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: So… this initial cutscene is awful top to bottom. Let us count the ways
2. Intro: Dialogue: First, the dialogue is… bad. The whole game has this issue but the dialogue here is noticeably awful, truncated and unnatural speech making for clunky exposition…
3. Intro: Voice Directing: …said by people who probably didn’t have a single proper voice director to help them have any context on their lines at all…
4. Intro: Pacing: …while the whole thing simultaneously drags and is rushed
5. Voice Directing: The entire game suffers pretty badly from voice direction. This is a game with Vincent D’Onofrio, Rosario Dawson, Pedro Pascal, Sam Rockwell, et cetera and they all sound just… awful
6. Writing: Unnecessary exposition is all over the place. Emily is off doing her adventure, cast from the job she never wanted to be free, and of course she’s upset at the circumstances. She conveys this by… stating this outright, in a journal. Almost word for word. This bleeds into…
7. Character: The Outsider is substantially less interesting this time around. In the first game he was barely present and mysterious, here he’s… there. I don’t mind fleshing out a character and adding to them, what I mind is when they do absolutely nothing with that. There are entire scenes where he just shows up to remind you he exists and then leaves after stating the obvious
8. Character: General. There just are… not interesting characters in this game
9. Plot: The plot is… really basic in the early half of the story, to the point where it’s honestly actively disinteresting
10. Pacing: Okay so first thing. Our throne taken (or our daughter’s throne), our beloved daughter/father is frozen in stone, let’s go… deal with the crown killer! Then we’ll rescue Sokolov. THEN we’ll go after the Duke. There’s also no real sense of time or urgency in any of things
11. Dialogue: This is atrociously bad dialogue. Every single sequence where people talk to each other has people talking over or across each other, with no real logic or flow to their conversation at all, it’s awful…
12. Dialogue: …earning a full…
13. Dialogue: …triple negative
14. Atmosphere: The game is somehow even bleaker than the first game. Not obviously, but if you use the Heart as you roam around and you pay attention to the background lore, this game really emphasizes just how doomed this setting really is
15. Outro: The endings are, at best, flat, and at worst, unsatisfying…
16. Outro: …worse, it just happens out of nowhere and then stops abruptly
17. Character: Delilah and informed attributes. The game will NOT stop talking about how amazing she is despite her near total lack of screen time and accomplishments
18. Voice Direction: One final voice direction negative for the entire game
19. Atmosphere: The Dishonored series is not exactly known for being rays of sunshine but this game is above and beyond horrible. It’s also tonally inconsistent; We’re told at multiple junctures that it’s just the bad Duke responsible for everything, and yet as we actually go through the stages and see the individuals we see that everybody’s pretty horrible
20. Plot: So quite literally in the last mission we find out what Delilah’s plot is. The ENTIRE game it’s been made clear that she took the throne and that’s it, now she’s off enjoying herself, but no she actually wants to rewrite all of reality. Cool
21. Writing: The premise is massively flawed. Everything happened off camera, before the game began, and then you can play however in total contradiction to that. Worse, the game constantly shoves into your face how culpable you are in everything despite this
22. Outro: By the way the OTHER ending(s) aren’t any better. In fact arguably they’re worse

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Options: Still one of the golden standards of difficulty design. Presets, which are well labelled…
2. Difficulty Options: …lots and lots of specific and well designed individual settings, which can be cranked up or down…
3. Difficulty Options: …for a full…
4. Difficulty Options: …triple
5. Difficulty Options: And adjustable on the fly
6. Penalty For Failure: Mana system. If you use a spell it costs mana, but after a bit the mana regens (depending on your settings)… but if you need to use it again in the period where it hasn’t regened yet, it lowers your mana cap. This is a great system for encouraging the player to think and plan out ahead, but granularly allowing them to cast when needed
7. Save: Multiple autosaves…
8. Save: …for a double
9. Save: Proper quicksave and quickload…
10. Save: …for a double
11. Core Combat: The difficulty options affect this substantially but there is still some decent stuff here, in contrast to the first game
12. Core Mechanic: I’ve seen better stealth, but this is still some of the best stealthing in the business. Good and clear indicators, granular detection, usage of distance and activity and visibility and sound, all good stuff…
13. Core Mechanic: …for a double
14. Kit: Charms. Some good stuff in general, but what really makes these interesting…
15. Kit: …are Corrupted Charms, which are powerful but come with a detriment too
16. Kit: Emily’s powers. Some good utility and good maneuverability in these. I’m especially fond of Domino..
17. Kit: …easy double
18. Kit: Corvo’s powers. Far more focused on killing but still have some great utility regardless (Blink is just better, I’m sorry, and time stop is exactly as useful as it sounds)…
19. Kit: …for another double
20. Itemization: General. Good layout and placement of basically everything throughout the game…
21. Itemization: …for a solid double
22. Enemy AI: Some of the best I’ve seen for a game like this. Smart routing, calling for help, and fixation. They can still be blind to traps, but honestly that works here (if they avoided traps it’d probably just make traps useless)…
23. Enemy AI: …so enjoy that double
24. Intro: Tutorialization: The actual tutorial level is bleh, but the first level (Escape From Dunwall) is a really solid tutorial.
25. Intro: Level: It’s also a solid mission in general. Not a lot of routing, but a few options as you go, some side stuff to see, good enemy placement, good terrain placement…
26. Intro: Level: …an easy double
27. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: So let’s talk about level design. Dishonored 2 levels are so good they need to be broken down a bit more than the usual. So let’s go through the categories as we progress, shall we? First is Mission 2, Edge Of The World, the docks. This area is the tutorial for the All Roads Lead To Rome concept, and has quite a few paths twice (first to get past the wall of light, and second to get to the final tram station), and these paths are intuitive, fun, and well designed…
28. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: …for a double
29. Level: Encounter: Then we talk encounter design. Very good escalation in this stage (a form of tutorialization really), starting off with a few guards which are relatively easy to isolate, to a few guards with interlocking fields of view, to guards with patrol routes that don’t coincide with getting them ‘naturally’. Good stuff here…
30. Level: Encounter: …for a double
31. Level: Terrain: Then there’s the terrain design. This is still some really solid terrain design, which in a game like this boils down to what is placed where and how. Walkways, lamp-posts you can walk on, balconies, pillars to block line of sight, stuff like that…
32. Level: Terrain: …for an easy double
33. Level: Encounter: Next up is the Institute for Mission 3, The Good Doctor. This level isn’t… quite as good as the others, honestly, but it still has good encounter design for the most part. Some really smart placement of guards and our introduction to elites proper
34. Level: Flow: It also has something most Dishonored 2 stages don’t have; solid Guidance (at the expense of All Roads)
35. Level: Terrain: And still some legitimately decent terrain design, especially in the upper levels
36. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: And now we have the Clockwork Mansion of Mission 4, named… uh, The Clockwork Mansion. This is some of the best All Roads in the game, with tons and tons of options for how to proceed once you get inside the mansion, and it’s all pretty granular amongst itself too, so you’re not locked in to one route or another…
37. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: …for a solid…
38. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: …triple
39. Level: Encounter: This is also the best encounter design to date in the game. The servants, the visitors, the guards, the scattered elites, and of course the clockwork soldiers themselves. The placement, usage, and interlocking throughout is legitimately excellent AND varies based on how you proceed with the mission…
40. Level: Encounter: …for another…
41. Level: Encounter: …triple
42. Level: Terrain: And of course the terrain design is phenomenal. It’s good in and of itself, but the switches allowing for changing the layout is excellent on top of that, and add into that the ‘backdoor’ areas where you go behind the scenes? Truly excellent design…
43. Level: Terrain: …for a double
44. Level: Encounter: So, the Conservatory of Mission 5, The Royal Conservatory. This level might be the overall weakest in the game, but it still has several things going for it. First, the witches themselves are very carefully and interestingly placed inside. They don’t roam (for the most part) and don’t see much, but they’re also hard to spot (no bright colors like the guard, no chatting to themselves, no footsteps)
45. Level: Terrain: Further, the terrain design once inside the conservatory itself is legitimately excellent and deserves its own recognition. The bookshelves, the side areas, the multiple routes through the interior, the statues you can use to bypass normal areas…
46. Level: Terrain: …it’s good stuff
47. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: The Dust district of Mission 6, the… Dust District (these mission names sure are on the nose aren’t they?). This is weirdly excellent All Roads here for such a tiny level. There are a minimum of 5 ways I can count off the top of my head through this stage, and they’re not all mutually exclusive either…
48. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: …for a solid…
49. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: …triple
50. Level: Encounter: Good enemy placement and layout too
51. Level: Guidance: And because of the V shape of the entire level, it’s got good guidance in and out of the two fortresses
52. Level: Terrain: And good overall terrain design, but it also does one other thing right
53. Level: And that’s the dust itself. It’s a minor thing, but having those dust storms blow through periodically can really help and hinder the player by massively reducing their visibility… and increase their stealth (both audibly and visibly)
54. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: The Stilton Mansion of Mission 7, A Crack In The Slab. There’s actually not as much All Roads in this one as most levels due to the removal of kit, but it does branch a non-insubstantial amount after you make the decision and determine the final state of the mansion
55. Level: Encounter: Again mostly smaller tier stuff, but some solid encounter layout and design
56. Level: Guidance: Solid guidance in where to do what and when…
57. Level: Flow: …which flows very naturally across both versions of the mansion
58. Level: Terrain: Once again some fantastic terrain design. A lot of how you navigate between the two mansions really alters how you interact with and your general platforming, and of course they have to accomodate you having no powers…
59. Level: Terrain: …for a solid double
60. Level: So, the gimmick of the time mansion by itself is a triple. First, it’s just a cool idea in and of itself, flipping between two versions of the same stage…
61. Level: …second, they do a LOT with changing what and where in the two versions, influencing pathing and flow…
62. Level: …third, and this really needs to be emphasized, the mirror to peek into the other mansion is an AMAZING tool, easily earning its own individual positive here. The ability to see the other mansion, live, and plan using that is just a great idea top to bottom
63. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: The Duke’s palace in Mission 8, The Grand Palace. As usual some great options and methods for pushing through this level…
64. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: …for a double
65. Level: Encounter: Some of the best encounter design in the game here, with great placement of civilians and types of guards, with just enough clockwork bots to keep things interesting…
66. Level: Encounter: …for another double
67. Level: Terrain: Honestly I think the Palace might have the best terrain design in the game. The rooftops, the tops of windows, the hedges, the ledges, there’s so much going on here and I love it…
68. Level: Terrain: …for a full…
69. Level: Terrain: …triple
70. Level: All Roads Lead To Rome: The final mission, Mission 9, Death To The Empress. Honestly the All Roads is simply ‘good’ here, but that’s still damned good
71. Level: Encounter: Also some interesting and fun layout of the witches, dogs, and clockworks
72. Level: Terrain: And some really solid terrain usage, especially given how much of this is recycling the first mission but reimagined…
73. Level: Terrain: …for a double
74. Secondary: Plenty of fun, side things to do in A Long Night In Dunwall
75. Secondary: Also the docks of Edge Of The World
76. Enemy Design: This is one of those games with really solid enemy design. Each enemy is a bit different and needs to be dealt with differently. There’s not too many of them, but there’s some real thought put into them, especially the elites (the clockwork soldiers and witches)…
77. Enemy Design: …for a solid double
78. Interface: Post mission completionist checklist. Could be better, but lists a lot of what you did and how you did it
79. Difficulty Mutators: The very existence of no detection, non lethal, and ghosting modes (which the game itself keeps track of, both on the fly and in the post mission checklist)
80. Replayability: Obvious, but also…
81. Replayability: …with the alternate abilities, options, and routing
82. Viscerality: Almost entirely reserved for going loud, but it’s there
83. Choices: While not our usual approach to Choice Gameplay, the options that are constantly being chosen throughout the game between being detected, killing, avoiding, or disabling form much of the core structure of the entire game and are very fun and, again, very gradient between them…
84. Choices: …for a solid double

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Respec: Or lack thereof. In a game all about options and trying new stuff, the only way to do so is to NG+ off an existing save or try from scratch

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Okay. I’ll give it this. The game manages a consistent and well done paper/cardboard aesthetic throughout and it is charming
2. Cutscene: There’s several humorous or interesting moments throughout. Parakoopas attacking us in formation, a rube goldberg device of destruction in the background, and the Snifit or Whifit gameshow
3. MSQ: 4-3 is, weirdly enough, pretty legit. Good flavor, good themes, some clever moments, and a nice overall motif. Sticker me shocked

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: So Bowser shows up, Mario just… stares at him, while three nobody Toads try to yank on his tail and then there’s a frickin’ fade to white after this nonsense
2. Character: The central villain has ZERO lines of dialogue. This is a very difficult thing to pull off, in general, and they absolutely do not here. But it gets worse because…
3. External Continuity: …this is Bowser. Bowser has been a delightful character in almost every Mario and he’s just… not here. But it’s even worse because…
4. External Continuity: …this is a Mario RPG. Bowser has been a well fleshed out, fantastic character in the Mario RPG franchise and he is, once again… not here
5. Intro: Moment: Introduction to Kersti. She just yells at us (expositing as she goes) and when we point out that she’s wrong she doubles down on yelling
6. Intro: Writing: Also immediately after this is a lot of very boring, very dry exposition
7. Intro: Dialogue: Nonsense non-funny dialogue. It’s everywhere, but it’s really worst right at the beginning in the Intro
8. Humor: This game is not funny. It thinks it is, but it is not
9. Writing: There’s quite a few examples, but consider this a general aggregate for writing issues throughout
10. Dialogue: Similarly, dialogue just… falls apart. It’s very… silly, but not in a good way. Instead it feels like it was written by a child
11. World Building: There are two issues here. First there’s no general worldbuilding, no central fabric or presence to the civilization or culture or… anything really. This is already disappointing…
12. World Building: …but the other issue is how they handle the paper thing. It’s actually very simple; things are paper when they are, and not when they aren’t, with absolutely no thought put into it on any level. It’s actively detrimental to its central theme…
13. World Building: …and deserves a double
14. Segregation: Hammer and Jump. You can jump (of course you can), and you explicitly get a hammer, but you cannot use either without spending a sticker upon doing so
15. External Continuity: This is not a Mario game. It is not a Mario RPG. It is the start of a whole new thing (which actually would be fine if not for the false advertising and attempts to connect it). But this still means this is a totally new reboot of a totally new continuity (which will go on to be in three future games; Color Splash, Origami King, and Paper Jam)
16. Character: Kersti. This brat has nothing redeeming about her at all. She starts off abrasive, self centered, and bratty. And she NEVER gets any better. This is even worse because she’s the Companion, with the most dialogue of any character in the entire game and functionally the main character. So we’re force to put up with her constantly…
17. Character: …so enjoy…
18. Character: …that triple
19. Character: Peach. She is a complete non-character here, to the point where it’s a legitimate plot hole
20. Moment: Kersti’s big sacrifice is a big, heartfelt, rending moment of goodbye to a terrible character, which saps it of all its impact…
21. Moment: …and is immediately undone by her being brought back to life literal minutes later
22. Outro: The ending has Bowser trying to steal the star again, Kersti being stupid (and alive), and everyone laughing as the camera pans out. I cannot put into words how insulting and aggravating this feels after all this nonsense…
23. Outro: …screw this ending…
24. Outro: …and screw it hard

Gameplay Positives:

1. Boss: I’m shocked. The boss of World 4, Mizzter Blizzard, has honest to goodness boss design. His armor is breakable by fire damage (ANY damage, no Things required), each time he shrinks he changes moveset, and damage to the armor translates to him
2. Itemization: World 4, shockingly, has actually good sticker placement. Shinies and useful shinies to boot
3. Boss: I… can’t believe this but Petey was actually a good boss fight. He has basic attacks at first but periodically uses a spin attack which vulns him, giving you a breather segment. Then you jump on him which not only gives you more Jump stickers, but also progresses the fight
4. Music: It took the ENTIRE game to wear me down on this, but I will admit there’s enough decent music throughout (some boss songs, the overworld, a few nice friendly areas) to qualify

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Intro: Tutorialization: The entire first town segment is honestly awful. Bad indications, guidance, and portrayal of what you can do, but worse…
2. Intro: Tutorialization: …the parts that are actually correct are incredibly hand-holdy, to the point of irritating
3. Tutorialization: General (actually misleading info on timed hits, among other things)
4. Intro: Seconds In Minutes: First Town. This entire sequence sucks. Go find every single friggin’ Toad in the area, and almost every step of them takes far, far longer than it should (like hammering the right space in front of the house, or jumping 8 times for the one on the roof)
5. Intro: Walkthroughitis: The first town. Seriously, most of these are fine, some are NOT. Some of these are VERY hidden, and remember this is on a friggin’ 3DS screen
6. Intro: Guidance: Actively misleading guidance. TWICE (once with Kersti yelling at you for doing what’s required for progressing, once for indicating you were done with a room when you were not)
7. Unskippable Cutscene: The entire opening cutscene is the worst, but the whole game has them…
8. Unskippable Cutscene: …for a solid double
9. Inventory: Almost no real design to what takes up how much space in your inventory, which is one of THE primary gameplay loops (managing your sticker album)
10. Walkthroughitis: Paperizing. You have to ‘scan’ basically everywhere, and…
11. Seconds In Minutes: …it takes forever…
12. Guidance: …and even if you find the right spot, good luck figuring out what to do with it (size of sticker is NOT indicative)
13. Penalty For Failure: Also the wrong sticker used? You lose it
14. Info In Game: Okay there’s way too many examples to list here. This game is built out of a lack of Info In Game. SO much isn’t explained, entire mechanics, controls, how things work, the bonus for raising HP, just…
15. Info In Game: …give up…
16. Info In Game: …and go get a friggin’ walkthrough
17. Core Combat: So. Let’s talk about the first (of TWO) Problems this game has. The Sticker Problem. The first, and most commonly talked about aspect of this is how the entire game revolves around ammo. This COULD work honestly, but absolutely doesn’t here because at the end of the day the Core Combat itself is just dull as dishwater. And I know that’s low hanging fruit when it comes to a lot of JRPGs but there really is a near total lack of actual design to the combat. This bleeds over into…
18. Kit: …the stickers themselves. They are very inconsistent in how useful they are, and I get that not all tools in your kit should be equal, but there really are stickers that are just next-to-worthless and stickers that are incredibly useful and both take up the same amount of space (more on that later). This also dovetails into…
19. Kit: …inconsistency in targeting. In a game where some stickers are hard to come by or replenish, it’s really frustrating to use one that doesn’t even hit the enemy because it was unclear (or actively nonsensical) what it’d attack
20. Inventory: So, you start off with a fairly small inventory size for stickers, but this DOES increase over time (one new page per world, not counting bonus stuff). Thing is, as you get further into the game you really need better stickers which means bigger stickers (see previous negative) which means your inventory size, relatively, shrinks over time
21. Inventory: By the way the auto-sort is… weird. And it has trouble understanding some of the sizes
22. Power Progression Curve: So there IS a curve here thanks to stronger stickers but it’s… awful. A lot of people complain about the lack of experience in an RPG (and I get that) but the real issue here is that there is no smooth increment in availability of better stickers. As of World 3 (arguably over halfway through the game) we’re still getting Worn stickers in level design. Keep in mind those are manually placed. Meanwhile as far back as World 1 we’ve had access to Flashy stickers. Now, all of this sort of ties in to another thing I like to bring up as an example of how much this game sucks…
23. Itemization: …the combat gives you so, so little. You actually do get a fairly large amount of coins for killing all enemies (at the end of the level… by the way as usual NOTHING tells you this in game) but coins aren’t super useful in general, and there is no real other benefit of fighting considering how minibosses and bosses both have their own issues (more on that later). I know it’s something of a meme that I prefer to avoid combat in a JRPG (I do firmly believe most have too much combat for their own good) but at least there is a benefit to it in most games. Here the game actively and aggressively encourages the player to just skip combat, because just Running counts as the enemy going away (being defeated) and lets you progress, except in pretty rare cases. Speaking of which…
24. QoL: …running is awful. Oh it’s great for avoiding combat if it works, but it’s random, takes too long, and leaves you vulnerable while you do it. This is almost the opposite of how Thousand Year Door approached the run equation as it’s totally not in your hands, there’s no gradient, and failure is heavily penalized
25. Core Combat: By the way the enemy can just randomly crumple you (it’s basically a crit) which stuns you (nothing you can do about it at all) and makes you take double damage for the duration. What this boils down to is periodically the game just decides you lose
26. Core Combat: Did I mention that buffs/debuffs are both… wrong in this game? Let me try to explain. So you use your turn to buff yourself for three turns. Cool! Then your turn ends and now you have 2 turns left of the buff. Now this could just be a simple display issue, or an ease of code issue, but they never adjusted the duration of buffs/debuffs to accommodate, so most de/buffs last (on average) 2 turns of usefulness
27. Core Combat: This is a weird one, and I’ll only give it one negative, but you can’t heal out of combat except at the full heal spots, which are… everywhere. It’s the most bizarre thing. You’re either totally helpless or completely fine
28. Core Combat: There’s also no skip turn option or defend or… really anything other than stickers. If you don’t want to burn a sticker, sucks to be you
29. Core Combat: In fact if you somehow run out of stickers (it IS hard to do, in fairness) you get to… run. Because you cannot do ANYthing without a sticker. See negatives about Segregation related to this
30. Core Combat: So there’s this thing you can do, which is making a Reel show up (which costs coins, of course) in order to have a chance at attacking more than once per round. If you spend MORE coins (18 by this point) you gain a guaranteed second attack, and if you’re lucky or good you get a third attack. Congrats! Every round that goes down by one. So if you go for the guaranteed, next round you get… one attack. 18 coins to spend one additional sticker. I’m not even going to get into the fact that one of the reel options is to frickin’ poison you, but this is more or less mandatory for any serious encounter in the game (in fact boss fights start with a free Reel spin)…
31. Core Combat: …so screw this mechanic in its entirety
32. Core Combat: By the way if you select 3 stickers in a combat round, and win after the 1st or 2nd sticker is used, those other stickers? Erased. Completely burnt. This is already pretty bad but hang on, it gets worse…
33. Core Combat: …because there’s no ability to aim. You… I’m having a fit just trying to describe this. You cannot aim with your attacks, they just hit who’s in first, then who’s in second, etc. Now this is already bad on a surface level but when you start to get to more complex fights (or basically every boss fight from World 2 onwards) this becomes a major problem, because how the first sticker ‘performs’ can change what happens to the second mob being targeted by the second sticker, and if something screws up sucks to be you. I just need to stress that Final Fantasy I on the frickin’ NES let you target mobs (it had a ‘no rollover’ issue but it still let you target at least). This is bonkers. I’m giving this its own…
34. Core Combat: …triple…
35. Core Combat: …negative because not only is it awful and feels bad but it actively penalizes the player, usually for things outside of their control, for no good reason. This more than anything else is probably THE big thing that pushes a player out of the combat. There’s no reward to speak of, it wastes too much time, and the further into the game you get the more frustrating combat becomes as you start fighting all kinds of enemies and you CANNOT TARGET THEM
36. Inventory: So now let’s talk about the Thing Problem (I told you there were two). First let’s get this out of the way, Things are overpowered as hell. Normally this wouldn’t be a bad thing but this actually makes them more irritating considering everything else about them, because you see you can only have one copy of a given Thing on you at a time, either in your album or as a sticker. This is already irritating…
37. Itemization: …but it gets worse when you think about what it takes to procure another one. First you can go back to wherever they were in whatever level you found them in (good luck remembering them all, there’s 64 total) which is also just a giant load of backtracking, or you can go dump a LOT of coins on a vendor to grab a copy. Oh but I’m not done, because see…
38. Seconds In Minutes: …you can’t use Things. You can only use Thing STICKERS. This means taking the arduous and unnecessary amount of time to traipse back to town every single time you want to use a Thing and going through the process of stickerifying it. Now, at this point you might think ‘man screw these Things, these aren’t worth the irritation’, but see the thing is…
39. Boss: …they’re mandatory for bosses. I’ll cover specifics in individual bosses, but every boss in the GAME is designed to be weak to a specific Thing (or two, or three, and only at the right time) which means good luck going without. It’s actually possible to beat several bosses without their Things but good lord is it frustrating, so the game really wants you to bother with them. Okay fine, that’s not the end of the world right? Well…
40. Level: …they’re actually mandatory for puzzles. There is absolutely no way around Thing puzzles (that does not involve a glitch or skip) meaning you 100% no really have to go get the Things, keep them as stickers, and use them to progress through the game. And even this is more irritating because…
41. Inventory: …they take up a ton of space. In fairness not every Thing is huge (or medium) but a lot of them are and remember, inventory already has issues thanks to how limiting it is. So what this boils down to is you’re discouraged from actively keeping them on hand as stickers and just letting them sit in your album (which you can just have all 64 in there no problem by the way, thanks game). Now if you do this, guess what…
42. Backtracking: …when you run into the next puzzle (or boss), have fun backtracking to go turn the damned things into stickers. And thanks to other negatives that will be individually given, sometimes it’s not very clear which Thing to use at which spot. Every Thing used is burnt meaning going back and re-acquiring it (backtracking or backtracking and money, take your pick) and trying again
43. Core Combat: This generally discourages the player from using some (honestly) pretty awesome super powered abilities in regular combat because you never know when it’ll be NEEDED for progression. Picture a Pokemon game where if you use Cut in battle you have to go back to the starter town to re-learn Cut to be able to get a tree out of the way and you’ve got a decent idea of how this works
44. Info In Game: By the way, Things have QTEs. I didn’t even know this myself until doing research for THIS Run. Absolutely nothing indicates this anywhere… in fact it’s worse than that because by all accounts the Things work just fine as is. If you use, say, the Trumpet, it blares, does damage, we good. But then there are a very small number of Things that have a different QTE and if you don’t do theirs… nothing happens. This leads to the player just being confused as nothing indicated what they did wrong or even that something WAS wrong
45. Core Combat: By the way almost every single Thing QTE is just button mashing. Thanks game
46. Inventory: One last complaint then we’ll move on to content. So… you know how Stickers have inventory size and usefulness problems? Things are so much worse about it. One of the best Things in the game for over half the game is the Trumpet, which does a flat 30 damage to the entire screen, it’s a great move. It takes up a tiny square of space. Required Things like the Vacuum, Hook, Baseball Bat, etc? Medium or Large. There’s just… no design to it, but again Things shouldn’t take inventory space at all. This is the Quest Items Take Inventory Space problem all over again
47. Seconds In Minutes: Looting. The archetypical example of seconds in minutes, having to peel stickers is entirely too time consuming. And as per the terminology it’s only seconds… but you do it CONSTANTLY
48. Level: World 1. Just the entirety of World 1 is boring. There’s worse in the game but not a single one of these levels has any real level design to it
49. Walkthroughitis: Megasparkle Goomba. As with most bosses in this game (see the Thing Problem earlier) there’s a very specific way to do this boss. You CAN go around it, but finding that exact route takes entirely too much trial and error
50. Boss: Megasparkle Goomba is also a terrible boss fight. Boring, too much health, too specific a weakness, too irritating even if you bypass his weakness. He’s the worst combination of dull, hard, and easy…
51. Boss: …screw…
52. Boss: …this fight
53. Backtracking: World 1 really loves its backtracking. But don’t worry! It’ll get worse
54. Info In Game: So there is one specific thing I need to call out; The Sticker upgrade systems. First, nothing indicates it even exists at all, so the player doesn’t know to even try. Then there’s randomness to how it works, which diminishes its usefulness but also prevents the player from deducing through trial and error how it even works
55. Segregation: Jump and Hammer. You can jump (of course) and you explicitly get a hammer, but you cannot use either without expending a sticker on doing so
56. Seconds In Minutes: Slots. For many, MANY battles you are encouraged to do these, and it just takes entirely too long
57. Level: World 2, and quicksand being in real time. Yes there’s plenty of time to avoid it but it’s a full on GAME OVER
58. Guidance: Kersti gives actively inaccurate or useless information in World 2
59. Level: Backtracking: 2-2 has plenty of mandatory backtracking
60. Level: Enemy Design: 2-2, Dry Bones in puzzle rooms. These enemies only stay down for a bit if you expend stickers on them, giving you an irritating timer on doing the puzzles. If you Run (which works on 98% of mobs in this game) they’re totally unaffected and just go back to being irritating
61. Level: Guidance: 2-2. Obtuse and barely hidden puzzles with no real indicators of interaction
62. Raspberry Jam: Low health music. It’s obnoxious, like you’d hear while being drunk
63. Level: Guidance: 2-3. Seriously, good frickin’ luck navigating this hellmaze
64. Level: Backtracking: 2-3 also involves a ton of backtracking, unless you manage to go exactly the right way the first time
65. Level: Backtracking: 2-3 again. Yes, really. It’s mandatory to do the stage twice
66. Level: World 2, get all the ruin pieces across all the stages and they’re all super hidden secrets, have fuuun
67. Level: 2-3 and the secret exit of total bullcrap
68. Level: Just REACHING 2-4 is insane. First you have to do the secret exit in 2-3 (see above). Then you have to go to the harbor (a place absolutely nothing indicates you have to go to), get the vacuum, and Thingify it. THEN come back. Or, more likely, reach the stop part of 2-4, have no idea how to progress, and walkthrough it…
69. Walkthroughitis: …so enjoy that
70. Backtracking: Even if you somehow find the guidance on how to find the piece in 2-1 (good luck with that by the way) it’s an absolutely no way no how mandatory backtrack to 2-1 to redo the level to get the piece
71. Level: 2-5. Boring, drawn out, the same puzzle over and over which just mandates slowly walking around and then paperizing, on top of mandatory backtracking…
72. Level: …for a double
73. Boss: Tower Power Pokey. First, it does absolutely insane damage regularly (and can Crumple you), summons adds, and can’t be hammered but can be jumped on (despite all logic to the contrary). But then you hit it with its weakness and, just like every other boss in the game…
74. Boss: …it just crumbles instantly…
75. Boss: …screw this fight
76. Level: 3-1. Do a platforming section while people you can barely see attack you from the background. Get hit and get knocked off, having to walk through poison (and enemies) to start over
77. Level: 3-2 and the trial and error maze. There’s NOTHING to this, it’s purely a trial and error maze…
78. Level: Padding: …and every failure sends you all the way back to the beginning
79. Level: 3-4… and good luck even seeing the Wiggler segment
80. Padding: By the way the assholery of the Wiggler segments fleeing when you rescue them is just a slap in the face
81. Level: 3-5, part two. Except there’s nothing to do here but wait on a leaf, find an invisible block, and wait on a leaf again
82. Level: Encounter: 3-7. So this is a ‘no kit’ section, which is fine (and honestly can lead to some good game design if done well) but this… is awful. So first of all, there’s plenty of enemies here which require items or a hammer to defeat. This is a point when you cannot use your hammer
83. Level: QoL: By the way if you use a hammer sticker while you don’t have the hammer not only do you waste that turn, the sticker is DESTROYED
84. Level: Encounter: Also they throw lots of enemies at you in 3-7 in a section where you cannot multi attack
85. Level: Itemization: Also they keep giving you hammer stickers
86. Level: Walkthroughitis: Absolutely nothing indicates where to go to progress through 3-8
87. Padding: I’d like to give another negative to all of World 3. Every stage is just designed to take too long
88. Level: 3-9 is absolutely awful. Designed to waste your time even when you know where to go, finicky / buggy progression triggers, and slow, all on top of being over a giant vat of poison that damages you everytime you do anything wrong (or even sometimes when you do things right)…
89. Level: …screw this level…
90. Level: …and everything about it
91. Itemization: World 3 continues the trend of giving weaker stickers en masse
92. Itemization: By the way, by World 3 you officially start to fall behind the sticker curve if you fight everything
93. Enemy Design: Enemies in World 3 start to really get irritating in how much health they have and the types of stickers they require to hit them
94. Padding: I’m also going to ding World 3 for the sheer quantity of enemies, most of which are IN poison
95. Level: 3-10 at least tries something but inconsistent controls and periodic stuns make it more irritating than it should be. Also hiding the mandatory item for progression behind the ‘optional hard mode’ is ridiculous
96. Padding: The Bowling Ball. It’s already irritating that it’s a Large sticker (taking up TONS of space for what is effectively a key), but if you didn’t drop off the Wiggler on the way there he blocks the shot, forcing you to redo the entire sequence (and drop off the Wiggler)
97. Walkthroughitis: So this is a weird one but there’s some neat story tidbits if you do Wiggler’s diary. Thing is… some of these are pretty intuitive, most are NOT. And require absolutely bonkers things to acquire. And, as always, nothing indicates this is even a mechanic
98. Boss: So let’s talk about Gooper Blooper. There’s probably worse bosses than this somewhere in the world but this fight is honestly insane. First and foremost, good luck knowing what Thing you need for this fight…
99. Boss: …second, once you have it, good luck using it at just the right moment (also good luck FINDING the Thing, but we covered that back in 3-9)
100. Boss: Third, once you’ve hit him with his weakpoint you’d better unleash because if you don’t kill him in time he will go right back to murdering your face off
101. Boss: Also everything about his big gimmick (the poison) is awful. Covers the UI (irritating), makes you incapable of hitting him (remember you can’t defend or otherwise, so this means burning stickers), and you take damage each turn. This is on top of him wailing on you each turn too. Also he follows a very predictable pattern which means the poison wears off just in time for him to re-poison you
102. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring where to get and how to use and when to use the THREE Things you need for the Cheep Cheep boss
103. Walkthroughitis: Good luck knowing the Cheep Cheep boss is even coming AND how to specifically deal with it (there’s actually three methods; Survive the hit with a reel and a defense up item, pop it with an optional Thing, or just kill it in three rounds). Because if you don’t…
104. Boss: …it kills you in 3 rounds
105. Level: 4-1 has some honestly very irritating design, most notably in the rolling snowballs and the forced infinite encounters
106. Level: Padding: 4-3. This stage took 91 minutes to go through just due to how much time everything took. This ONE STAGE took AN HOUR AND A HALF…
107. Level: Padding: …so…
108. Level: Padding: …screw that, but it gets worse, because the only reason it took that little time is…
109. Level: Walkthroughitis: …because we looked up a friggin’ walkthrough. Some of these Boos just do not have any indicator at all of them being there (and in some cases they actively discourage you from searching where they are)
110. Boss: 4-3, stack fight. Screw this stupid fight. Each attack you do only does 1 damage, killing 1 Boo. There’s ways to make this interesting but instead it just wastes your stickers (or forces you to waste an Infinijump AND do it right)
111. Boss: 4-3, Big Boo (hope you brought the right Thing or the ability to kill it in one turn)
112. Bug: Several. Losing leafs during World 3, falling behind terrain, outright crashing on certain bosses
113. Level: 4-5 is literally just an elevator stage. Stand on lift, swing to avoid stuff, tons of enemies. That’s it. This wouldn’t be bad if it was a third the length…
114. Level: …for a double
115. Power Progression Curve: The whole game has you slowly, bit by bit, falling behind the curve on stickers and their usage
116. Enemy Design: Enemy HP is consistently and awfully designed to waste turns and stickers both
117. Itemization: World 5 has legitimately awful itemization, the worst in the game. Enemies at this point are some of the hardest in the game and they’re giving you very few stickers…
118. Itemization: …and very crap stickers
119. Encounter: And then there’s the problem with the sheer quantity of irritating enemies you fight in World 5. Almost every encounter is a ton of enemies and there are so, so many enemy encounters
120. Level: 5-1 and the Shy Guy trash puzzle. So to make this clear, this world is littered with enemies, tons of them. There’s also three Shy Guys who run away from you who you have to chase (while they are surrounded by enemies). All of this means a lot of chasing and fighting, which would reward a ton of coins… until you get to the garbage pile which requires one of two Things (one is an optional bonus Thing, the other is found back in World 4). Meanwhile not only does nothing indicate this is a Thing puzzle at all, but there’s an actual mechanic that makes you think it’s something else entirely. So if you have the right Things, if you sticker’d them, and if you knew to do that at all, you’ve got it. If not, go leave the level and reset those swarms of enemies…
121. Level: …screw this stupid puzzle
122. Level: World 5 in general. The first raft ride is just boring, the second is actually irritating to avoid and comes with either a bad penalty (less maneuvering room) or a literal instant game over
123. Level: Also 5-3 gets worse each time you redo it for… some reason? This is irritating especially for completion’s sake
124. Level: Padding: 5-6 really likes to waste your time
125. Level: 5-6 has this… Chain Chomp puzzle. You have to fight the Chain Chomp, put it to sleep (hope you found/kept those baahammers earlier), flee from battle, slam the switch, re-enter battle, waste three turns (read: waste three stickers), then puzzle solved. This is absolutely insane troll logic…
126. Level: …easy double
127. Itemization: Also they REALLY like to rob you of both coins and stickers in World 5, while giving you jack in return. Seriously what is with this sticker placement?
128. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out how to progress at 6-1
129. Boss: Bowser Jr. This isn’t a bad idea for a fight (really) but… well. The last time the franchise tried this (Mario & Luigi 2) the boss was very explicit in explaining that ‘hey, this is a counter attack fight’. It also didn’t require a limited use sticker to do the counter attacks
130. Boss: Kamek is the worst boss in the entire game. I thought Blooper was bad but no, this is atrocious. So let’s go down the list shall we? First, he replaces all your stickers… this is already a massive dick move, with no warning or preparation time it’s coming
131. Boss: Second, he can randomly decide to just… float up, and you have ONE way of dealing damage… that cannot hit the air
132. Boss: Third, you have to kill all three in one round or else they resurrect, which means they have to all be on the ground AND you have to get near-perfect hits…
133. Boss: …and a triple special slot. Keep in mind there’s no slowing down the third slot AND they get progressively more expensive to even attempt it
134. Boss: Finally his attacks include Sleeps and, my personal favorite, randomly DELETING your stickers
135. Tutorialization: So the ENTIRE game has tutorialized you into fighting a boss, dying/running, getting what you need, and trying again. If you try that on Bowser you A: Can’t run, B: Don’t get a save, and C: Have to fight Kamek all over again
136. Outro: Boss: Phase 1, does all the wrong things the other bosses do. Lots of enemy spam (unless you brought the right Thing, good luck with that by the way), and just to add insult to injury you can’t Jump on him…
137. Outro: Boss: …screw…
138. Outro: Boss: …this fight
139. Outro: Boss: Phase 2. Okay so kill the Whomp (then Bowser). Once again, hope you brought the right Thing! No it’s okay if you don’t you can just do an INSANE amount of damage to the Whomp instead. Then hit Bowser who, once again, has that stupid anti jump mechanic…
140. Outro: Boss: …so…
141. Outro: Boss: …enjoy that
142. Outro: Boss: Phase 3 is arguably worse than the previous two. It’s functionally possible to progress through both phases without the Things, it’s just awful. Here it… might be as well, I’m not actually sure as I type this. But what I do know is that every single turn he spawns an insane number of adds who all attack you every turn. Unless you brought the right Thing of course! And THEN do some damage (remember, spiky helmet)…
143. Outro: Boss: …so…
144. Outro: Boss: …yeah
145. Outro: Boss: Phase 4, hope you brought a tail OR get good RNG while getting railed on, also good luck with that dwindling health. Cuz seriously, this is pretty mean even without relying on the items you probably should not be burning here…
146. Outro: Boss: …since this is a long ass fight and you really want as many stickers as you can for…
147. Outro: Boss: …Phase 5, which STARTS with a bit of ‘waste your stickers’ (also the power up mode KILLS stickers if done incorrectly)
148. Outro: Boss: Final phase can go directly to hell on every level. First and foremost, three targets (remember you can’t target anything specifically). Second of all, he continues to have that stupid hat (even with the thing we’ll talk about in a moment)…
149. Outro: Boss: …third, the camera actually gets in the way of properly dodging OR attacking…
150. Outro: Boss: …so screw all this noise
151. Outro: Boss: He also has massive, irritating to dodge attacks
152. Outro: Boss: And an insanely huge health pool…
153. Outro: Boss: …dwarfing anything else in the game
154. Outro: Hyperfail Moment: But then Kersti sacrifices herself for you, giving you a permanent five stickers per turn feature. Cool, right? Well, all this really does is give you the opportunity to do regular damage to him (and of course, use five stickers per turn). Nothing mitigating that stupid hat (by the way his arms can explode and if they do and you have just Jumps, you CANNOT damage him). So if you’re out of stickers, or out of usable stickers…
155. Outro: Hyperfail Moment: …sucks…
156. Outro: Hyperfail Moment: …to be you!
157. Outro: Difficulty Curve: By the way the final boss is a massive increase in difficulty out of absolutely nowhere
158. Core Mechanic: Paperizing. At best it’s a key. At worst it’s just used to flip something
159. Minigame: Museum, Things. Okay so you have to find a Thing (or buy it), stickerize it, manually place it (Seconds In Minutes), and… your reward is either the terrible bestiary or the terrible music player
160. Minigame: Museum, Stickers. Same deal (lose the sticker in the process of course) and same terrible reward (one or the other)

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: There’s only a few main characters but good lord the detailing on them is crazy good
2. Spritework: Enemies in general deserve mention too
3. Spritework: A bonus positive because good lord the game really is just gorgeous looking on the peoples
4. Visual Storytelling: The whole game, really, but mostly the RPD, brief snippets of the city, and the NEST. Uh, basically everywhere except the sewers (hah). You can really tell what’s been going on here and how things went down just from looking around, both on the macro level (blood everywhere, stuff knocked over, barricades against the door) and the micro details (like the one cop corpse who died reaching for the handle on the door)…
5. Visual Storytelling: …great stuff…
6. Visual Storytelling: …and another triple
7. Brickwork: Police Station. The museum turned police station turned shelter is great stuff…
8. Brickwork: …easy double
9. Architecture: I know I just mentioned this but it really needs to be emphasized that the RPD is pretty small but due to the sheer effort put in it feels much larger than it is. Nice big open central area, tiny side areas, good usage of hallways, and lots of different stylings all really flesh this place out
10. Doodads: The gas station. I know it’s just for the intro tutorial area but damn
11. Doodads: The RPD is kind of crazy in terms of doodad design. Just this one level, across two (and some change) floors…
12. Doodads: …deserves an easy…
13. Doodads: …triple
14. Animation: Motion capture helps but there’s some really solid stuff here, from monsters to zombies to people…
15. Animation: …easy…
16. Animation: …triple
17. Pacing: This is a weird one, but for the first half or so of Route A I’d say the narrative pacing is essentially perfect…
18. Pacing: …easy double
19. Lighting: More wonderful atmosphere in the shadows, the bright areas, the lightning flashes
20. Intro: MSQ: The initial quiet walk, the dead cop, the run, and Marvin. This is a great segment and really helps set the stage
21. Atmosphere: Of course the game oozes atmosphere…
22. Atmosphere: …especially in the (mostly) abandoned RPD…
23. Sound Design: …helped by the wonderful sound design of the rain, the thunder, the zombies, the monsters…
24. Sound Design: …for another double
25. Cutscene: Iron’s establishing scene. This one scene gets across everything he is basically immediately. His tone is so normal, but he also cusses way more than anyone else in the situation and in a really crass and crude way on top of immediately being both violent and willing to harm a woman and a child
26. Background Lore: The usual. Logs and notes, all suitably horrible
27. Moment: Mr. X’s first scene is still a fantastic moment. They introduce the dude by having him lift a helicopter (one handed!) before stomping slowly towards you
28. MSQ: Sherry’s Peach segment. While this segment does have a few issues gameplay wise it is a masterclass in narrative tension. You play a powerless young child with a normal but terrifying man trying to hunt you down and hurt you. Everything about this is absolutely terrifying…
29. MSQ: …for a full…
30. MSQ: …triple
31. Tone: Mr. X, general. While there’s some debates about the gameplay axis, Mr. X is basically perfect narratively. The stomps, the slow advance, the way he stalks you, he adds wonderful tone…
32. Tone: …to every single moment he’s in, almost all of which are (by design) diegetic
33. Moment: Irons’ fate, Berkin’s last act, and the introduction of Annette. Irons’ death is wonderful, Berkin’s final act is a nice bit of debatable foreshadowing, and Annette being so thoroughly detached and distressed is great
34. Brickwork: NEST. Pristine and clean and covered in blood…
35. Brickwork: …lovely stuff
36. Doodads: I love how much this place vibes as both a clinical, bland office…
37. Doodads: …and a disaster area
38. Cutscene: Spectacle of Birkin 3 and 4. Big, loud, bombastic, good music
39. Character: Claire. This woman goes through a lot but I like her overall arc, from concerned sister to surrogate mother for…
40. Character: …Sherry. This poor kid does a great job of feeling like… well like a poor kid in this environment. Especially against…
41. Character: …Irons. This guy is disturbingly well presented as the kind of monster he is
42. Character: Marvin. Yeah I know but dude, this guy is legit. Takes charge of the situation, helps Claire (or Leon, whoever’s in Route A), actually changes how he acts depending on who he’s acting around, holds off until the very end to help with the escape… it’s great stuff
43. Voice Acting: Claire’s voice actress does a wonderful job conveying how single minded and focused she has to get across the game
44. Voice Acting: Marvin, of all people, just kind of nails it in Route A
45. Voice Acting: Irons. Amazing job portraying this everyday, normal dude who is a monster
46. Voice Acting: Sherry. Again, wonderful child acting here
47. Voice Acting: Annette, of all things. She really does sound properly detached, injured, or fixated
48. Moment: Kendo, his daughter, and Leon

Story Negatives:

1. Writing: An aggregate for several weird issues throughout. Irons’ plot going nowhere, several instances of teleporting characters, etc.
2. Outro: Route A’s ending is… nothing. It’s very similar to RE1R’s ending, there’s just nothing here. “Okay let’s head home, cool, the end”
3. Voice Direction: Leon. The best he ever rises to is ‘fine’, and a lot of the rest of it is off in inflection, tone, emphasis, and just generally flat
4. Cutscene: Ada’s ‘death scene’ is ridiculous. The timing and placement of the guns, Annette’s final act, the overly dramatic oh noes she’s dead, it’s silly in a bad way
5. Internal Continuity: Leon and Claire’s routes incongruence. It’s not the end of the world but it is weird, especially since both are canon with each other
6. Writing: By the way Ada’s totally fine! Somehow!

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Options: Pretty decent actually. Changes item layouts, usage of ribbons, interconnectivity of boxes, etc.
2. Controls: Pretty solid actually, for both controller and M&K
3. Saves: Good and quick to save and load…
4. Saves: …and good autosaves
5. Map: This is a really, really good map. Indicators of interactions, items, whether or not you’ve finished a room, and clean and easy navigation…
6. Map: …easy double
7. Interface: Decent for what it is, especially the inventory management
8. Pacing: The RPD is more or less perfectly paced in Route A. Exploration, threat/combat, puzzle, and loop…
9. Pacing: …easy double
10. Overworld: RPD. This is probably the best connective tissue level design I’ve seen in this franchise. How everything connects one to another and how that develops over time as shortcuts and tools are opened…
11. Overworld: …is absolutely…
12. Overworld: …amazing
13. All Roads Lead To Rome: The RPD (yeah I know, what do you want from me it’s the best part of the game). While there’s some bottlenecking here and there, this is a great ‘pick your route’ segment
14. Core Mechanic: The same limited inventory system and ‘use resources to deal with problems’ system from the first game persists here, with defense items, ammo, and juggling quest items…
15. Core Mechanic: …for a double
16. QoL: Don’t need an item anymore? Here’s a clear indicator of it so you can dump that sucker
17. Kit: Variable between playthroughs, but still overall enough variety to qualify. Defense items and gradient heals help
18. Guidance: RPD, again. There’s lots here to help you figure out where to go next or how to progress…
19. Guidance: …from little things like visual indicators, to actual hints telling you ‘hey here’s a code for this area’
20. Visual Distinction: Also the RPD has great visual distinction
21. Sound Design: Still good stuff here. Can tell where is in what direction just by listening
22. Enemy Design: General. You can remove limbs, which can change how zombies operate (or burn ammo killing them), and Lickers are avoidable with patience and quiet… but both interact with each other quite well
23. Tutorialization: First run to the dead cop and Marvin introduces basically everything the game is about and how it operates. Enemies and avoidance / weakpoints, items to unlock progress, backtracking, and slow exploration of new areas
24. Intro: The lead up to the Spade Key. There’s still enough side stuff to do here to keep it interesting though you can beeline if you want
25. Itemization: The RPD, again. Where and what is placed is very well designed, both in terms of progression items and upgrades…
26. Itemization: …but also consumables
27. Level: Spade to bolt cutters. This is another great segment of the RPD, really using the interlocking layout well and encouraging exploration…
28. Level: …easy double
29. Level: Lead up to the statues. Also worth noting that the RPD is good for…
30. Backtracking: …the all important backtracking. As time progresses (or progress? Or quests? I’m not sure which) the RPD slowly gets more and more dangerous, with more zombies in worse areas, then Lickers show up, then MORE Lickers, and so forth
31. Tutorialization: Mr. X. Yes, really. His introduction has him lifting a helicopter single handedly, and the dude looks like a giant brick (in a trenchcoat) and he then (slowly) starts stomping towards you. Immediately after you can hear his distinct bootsteps, all of which immediately convey the type of enemy this is and how you should avoid this thing at all costs
32. Enemy Design: Mr. X deserves mention too for being one of the more interesting enemies in the game. His variable speed, his homing in on you dependant on sight and sound, as well as…
33. Core Mechanic: …careful usage of triggers and his roaming patrol, plus the ‘leash’ concept, all mean Mr. X is a more or less constant presence throughout the RPD and can really lead to some fun, natural encounters…
34. Core Mechanic: …for a double
35. Sound Design: Mr. X’s directional audio
36. Level: Post Mr. X leading down to the sewers, essentially the last portion of the RPD
37. Visual Continuity: The RPD, one last positive for this place (for now). Unlike later stages, every area of the RPD is sufficiently distinct (even in the dark!) that you can look around and get a good feel for where you are and how to navigate it purely by sight
38. MSQ: To the orphanage. It’s dense, there’s no natural safe zones (you have to ‘make’ them with resource usage), and to compliment that there are very few resources here
39. Level: The NEST is… fine. There’s some decent puzzles here, the respawning plants are irritating but they bother to give you resources to deal with it, and there’s still some decent itemization and looping to it…
40. Level: …for a double aggregate
41. Level: Route B for the RPD is just enough different in its item placement and routing as well as objectives that it deserves to be mentioned as its own level. And on top of that they do some really solid stuff with it…
42. Level: …another easy double
43. Encounter: The chess puzzles. I’m sorry, I do actually like logic puzzles and while there are aggravations around these puzzles (as noted in later negatives) the puzzles themselves are cool
44. Minigame: Fourth Survivor mode. Very similar layout to the base game but with a few minor changes, a pre-determined loadout, and a massive increase in enemy placement (with careful thought into encounter design)…
45. Minigame: …easy double
46. Minigame: Tofu Survivor mode. Same basic concept as Fourth Survivor but with a totally different loadout that drastically changes your tactics…
47. Minigame: …but wait! There’s actually multiple tofus with different loadouts
48. Music: There’s only a few good songs but they’re each pretty solid. HUNK’s, the ‘fleeing’ music, Mr. X’s theme, and the final boss tunes
49. Replayability: The usual second positive for a Resident Evil. Different routes, different playables, improving your time, etc.
50. Viscerality: Visuals. The gun blasts are nice, but what really sells this is the big’ns like the grenade launcher
51. Viscerality: Audio. Absolutely love how the guns sound in this game. Even down to little things like the reload audio for the shotgun…
52. Viscerality: …great stuff

Gameplay Negatives:

1. MTX: Cosmetics, guns, and friggin’ mode unlocks. The Capcom Special
2. Audio Spam: Claire will not shut up while gasping just from running around
3. Enemy Design: G Spawn. I wasn’t sure if this was a full negative or not but honestly they are entirely too bullet spongey even if you know what you’re doing
4. Level: Sewers. The same general ‘maze’ design of the RPD continues here but without the proper shortcutting, and…
5. Visual Continuity: …visual continuity to back it up. Oh and it also leads to a lot of…
6. Backtracking: …backtracking, especially if you make even a slight mistake with that stupid chess puzzle
7. Padding: The Sewers. In both routes the Sewers are virtually unchanged, involve slowed movement, and are designed such that if you screw up at all it’s backtracking city
8. Boss: Berkin 2. Tiny area against an enemy with huge reach and a nice long delay in attacking him
9. Backtracking: The Lab is pretty bad on backtracking too. It’s actually worse than the Sewers because here it’s just those instant-kill plant monsters who keep showing up endlessly, even as you burn some
10. Boss: Berkin 3. Not super impressed with this one. Interesting visually but gameplay wise it’s an enemy with absolutely insane reach in his attacks, no real way to avoid or dodge other than ‘already be running’, irritating weak points, and frankly too much health
11. Outro: Boss: Both versions of the final boss are whatever, and that last DPS race is really frustrating (especially since it is possible to softlock yourself right here)
12. Viscerality: Impact. There’s just… not impact from most guns. It feels weird doing this big, massive shot on a zombie and they just… keep coming like nothing happened. Or getting headshot after headshot and they’re just shrugging it off

Story Positives:

1. Animation: Not as good as in 2’s honestly but still some damned good stuff…
2. Animation: …for an easy double
3. Spritework: The usual quality here, same as the previous game. Good main characters…
4. Spritework: …good enemies…
5. Spritework: …good Nemesis. Seriously Nemesis actually does look really good by himself, in each of his forms
6. Visual Storytelling: Jill’s office. You can really see how the events of 1 did a number on her, and how she’s handling things and trying to stay active. It also does a great job of conveying how much influence Umbrella (and by consequence, Irons) had and why this whole thing would have completely blown over if not for the Birkin incident sending everything straight to hell
7. Doodads: Jill’s office. Lots and lots of doodad detailing for this one small room (right before Nemesis smashes it to hell)
8. Doodads: The Subway. I mean at this point it’s almost a gimme but there’s still lots of great detailing here. I’m particularly fond of the posters
9. Brickwork: Streets. And again of course the RE Engine does great visuals
10. Doodads: Lots of details and cool stuff here too (even a Megaman store!)
11. Sound Design: Still some solid sound design here, especially with the cityscape and how things have gotten out of control. Also I actually rather like Nemesis’ roars
12. External Continuity: Quite a bit. Marvin’s fate thanks to Brad, the reason the pipe was burst in the RPD, the obvious direct connection to 1, the timeline, etc.
13. MSQ: Nemesis rocket launcher sequence and fleeing. Nemesis stomping in, dropping the rocket launcher, us fleeing, it’s a pretty nice sequence
14. Cutscene: Nemesis and the train. Nikolai immediately backing off, Jill’s instinctive reaction to go for the civvies, and Mikhail going out like a boss
15. Brickwork: So we only see part of the RPD buuut they do still go here so it still gets points…
16. Doodads: …on both Brickwork and Doodads
17. MSQ: Holding the line in the hospital is a great way to really showcase how bad things have really gotten
18. Brickwork: Hospital and facility
19. Doodads: Hospital and facility
20. Voice Acting: Decent across the board, though really Jill and Carlos are the standouts
21. Character: Jill. Didn’t think I’d like her here but she does have enough going for her that it deserves a positive
22. Character: Carlos. Dude is just kind of legit across the board, and grew on me more than I thought he would
23. Character: Mikhail Viktor. This dude only really has three scenes but, similar to Marvin in 2 R, dude is legit
24. Character: Tyrell. Similar to Mikhail above, Tyrell just sort of is a bro in every scene he’s in, as few as they are
25. Outro: Cutscene: The spectacle of the final Nemesis fight is absolutely legit, I will give it that. My personal favorite part is actually cracking the ground with the shot

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: Fake-out jumpscare. Not a fan. Also…
2. Tone: …the game likes jumpscares in general. Like, far too often
3. Intro: Nemesis’ introduction is… not good. I get what they were going for; Much bigger, more actiony intro, but it just falls flat because of execution
4. Intro: Moment: Brad’s death is silly, at best, and bad at worst
5. Dialogue: Jill & Carlos’ initial banter together needed another polishing pass or two in editing
6. Pacing: Issues. It lurches a lot, probably due to edited content
7. Storyboarding: Several issues in several scenes. This kind of dips into cutscene incompetence but there’s some real problems with how characters move through scenes, how events unfold, how the camera moves, etc.
8. Visual Continuity: Or lack thereof. This might be due to how the game was chopped down but zones don’t really connect with one another logically
9. Writing: Nicholai is… weird. He’s fine as a character (you’ll notice this isn’t a character negative) but what he is is like… the main bad guy for some reason. And I get they’re going for the thematic thing but I don’t think they succeed here
10. Outro: As is basically tradition at this point, the ending is just not there (seriously, that’s 1 R, 2 R, 3 R, and 4 with bad endings)

Gameplay Positives:

1. Map: It’s a bit different, but overall it’s the same excellent map quality (clear indicators of exploration, items, and quest spots) we saw back in 2 R…
2. Map: …and still deserves a double
3. Core Mechanic: Dodging. It’s not much by itself but it does help (especially with boss fights and the tighter corridors) and the ‘perfect dodge’ reaction thing is nice
4. Difficulty Options: Same basic quality from 2 (item placement, usage of ribbons, box interconnectivity, etc.)
5. Interface: Same basic quality as RE2R
6. Save: Good and quick saving and loading…
7. Save: …and autosaves
8. Viscerality: Visual and audio. Not quite as good as in 2, but still good
9. Itemization: For the issues with encounter design, the item placement is pretty solid
10. QoL: The usual ‘you’re done with this’ indicator for items
11. Level: The power station relay is actually pretty fun for what it is. The enemies there have very little health, but are very costly if they get you, and routing through the small maze to hit each spot is nice
12. Level: The sewers, weirdly enough. Actual looping design and rewarding side areas on top of a new enemy type which is simultaneously dangerous as hell and very vulnerable
13. Pacing: Good general pacing across exploration and combat sequences
14. Boss: Nemesis 1 is, color me shocked, a decent boss fight. Two viable weak points (his weapon and his back), a nice big opening after he attacks to counter, and when he hits phase 2 he has increased speed and reach to up the intensity, all in a boss arena with some actual design to it
15. Boss: Nemesis 2. I was torn on this but I do like the usage of the mine launcher to counter his roaming phase, nice big openings after his attacks, and again a decent arena design with lots of resources to help you through it
16. Encounter: Holding the line in the hospital. This is probably the singlest best point of the game, gameplay wise. You have good terrain to navigate (and a second fallback position later), lots of ammo and health items to use at your discretion, enemies have slightly reduced health (and despawn), and the enemies escalate as you go. It also doesn’t overstay its welcome. Great sequence…
17. Encounter: …easy double
18. Level: The hospital in general. There’s a couple of weird foibles to how it loops and the Hunters can go straight to hell, but it’s still got some solid routing to it and good shortcutting and feels like a nice mini segment
19. Music: General, but special mention for the increasing tension music of the last dungeon and the final boss theme

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Tutorialization: So… at several points in the game it tutorializes either very crudely or outright badly. The way it tells you how to shoot, the way it doesn’t tell you about items to puzzle solutions, the way it doesn’t encourage resource management. And even as the game keeps going it keeps tutorializing weirdly, usually by having a note on the ground directly spelling out what to do on the next puzzle or boss
2. Viscerality: Impact. Same general issue as the previous games
3. Raspberry Jam: Low health beedleeps. I’m honestly shocked they decided to add this in when they already had the good animation indicators from the previous two games but they added a bit of jam and an obnoxious heartbeep
4. Encounter: Lack of encounter design. I noted this my first time through; the game just does not think about which enemies, bosses, and setpieces should be where and how
5. Enemy Design: Hunters. Fast, hits rapidly to stunlock the player, has tons of health
6. Padding: The fuses. This entire sequence blows as hard as the fuses you find in it
7. Backtracking: This varies a bit but due to the lower quality of the level design, the backtracking is noticeably worse in several segments (notably the city and the hospital)

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: This game is bonkers gorgeous. They brought in the actual Disney animators, and it shows. The enemies…
2. Spritework: …the main cast…
3. Spritework: …the bosses…
4. Spritework: …everything just pops
5. Animation: And alongside that, everything is brilliantly animated. They even have little emotes during cutscenes to help sell the scene…
6. Animation: …easy double
7. Brickwork: The amazon stage. Really looks like a wild jungle nestled amidst the mountains
8. Voice Acting: There’s some shockingly good voice acting in this, given the age of the cast and the relative humor and pacing required…
9. Banter: …helped by some legitimately funny banter…
10. Tone: …all of which adds to the generally enjoyable tone of the work. This is a light hearted treasure hunt
11. Brickwork: Transylvania. Lightning crashes, distant ruins, mirrors, broken bricks
12. Brickwork: The diamond mines. A well fleshed out cave (how’s that for a rarity), with mining equipment and endless tunnels
13. Brickwork: The Himalayas. Another cave, but a bit more frozen this time, and a lot more natural

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: I wasn’t expecting much but this is a hell of a wah-wah ending. And a joke about Scrooge actually giving his nephews ice cream? Come on game

Gameplay Positives:

1. Controls: With a notable exception mentioned later, the game controls very well. Good precision platforming
2. Core Mechanic: The pogo. Almost the entire game is centered around it, but it does change the dynamic of platforming; Your height and range of jumps is increased, it gives you protection from the bottom, and encourages you to approach almost any encounter top-down (which most levels play with)
3. Music: The new soundtrack is an absolute banger. Jake Kauffman knows his stuff…
4. Music: …and earns an easy…
5. Music: …triple
6. Music: By the way the original soundtrack is in the game too…
7. Music: …so that’s awesome
8. Song: The Moon. Don’t front, you know the song
9. Song: The Dime Chase. This is a fantastic, high tempo, intense remix of the Duck Tales main theme and it absolutely rocks
10. Sound: Satisfying and ‘you did a good’ with treasure (escalating based on size of treasure)
11. Difficulty Options: Actually really solid for a platformer. Easy removes lives entirely and reduces damage taken, and a few things (timing for example) are changed, as well as drops being altered
12. Intro: Tutorialization: The first stage is simple but does exactly what it needs to in how it tutorializes through level design how to engage in the basic mechanics
13. Enemy Variety: Not too shabby actually. There’s enemies you stomp on, enemies you avoid, enemies that drop down, etc.
14. Optional Mode: Art gallery and music player
15. Level: Amazon and exploration. A stage with limited but extant verticality and encourages you to roam a bit
16. Level: Transylvania. Exploration (even better than in the Amazon), fun side areas with optional rewards, and the minecart sequence…
17. Level: …honestly make this the best level in the game
18. Boss: Magica deSpell is, weirdly, the best boss in the game. She has her vertical beam attack, horizontal beams which are harder to dodge but also come with a recovery item, the swoop vuln period, a quick ‘find the right target’ sequence, and finally a spread-fire attack…
19. Boss: …all while not dragging the whole thing out with padding or too much health or too long of invuln phases
20. Level: The diamond mines. Basic but fun platforming and nice escalation
21. Boss: King of the Terra-Firmians is one of the rare decent bosses in this one. His rolling attack and its increasing speed, the wave of doom, and rocks falling, and no real irritations
22. Level: The Himalayas. Another fun one, with a gimmick of penalizing the player for leaning on the pogo too much, but also rewarding them for using it well (with enemies, boxes, etc.)
23. Level: The Moon. I mean, it’s mostly the space ship, but anyways… Fun level. In total contrast to the previous one you really have to lean on the pogo here, or else you just are not going to keep up
24. Level: Mt. Vesuvius. For all my frustrations at the final chase, the level itself is solid. Good escalation of themes (bat, spikes, bat with spikes, carefully positioned bat with spikes) as well as some solid platforming
25. Boss: Count Dracula Duck is another weirdly good boss. Several fun attacks (the bite, the stomp, the fireballs) and plenty of vuln periods. Also a fun aside; his stomp is more forgiving than it looks because it doesn’t come down until you’ve reached the safe spot for the first time

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: No audio options. At all. (Also a few limited options in general)
2. Encounter Rate: Ninja Gaiden respawns
3. Penalty For Failure: Lives. And loss of lives equals going back to the stage select and losing all progress on any difficulty other than Easy
4. Bug: Hit/Hurtbox issues. I suppose this is inevitable with the type of drawn sprites these are but it’s still annoying
5. Controls: Golf issues. So no matter your control setup if you’re up against anything and holding in that direction and try to jump you instead golf and get animation locked into doing that, which can be fatal
6. Boss: The giant rat. Only two attack patterns and both are the worst thing a boss can be; boring
7. Outro: Level: Final climb 1. So this is unpleasant in how tight the timing is (though it is changed by difficulty, go figure) but it means it’s awful to screw up, and results in an instant death if you do
8. Outro: Level: Final climb 2. This is much worse. Broken chains and tight platforming with a tight timer and then…
9. Outro: Level: …the screen scroll problem of early NES games. Put simply as you go up the screen scrolls up with you, but the bottom of the screen is a kill plane, and it doesn’t scroll back DOWN. Which means you can screw yourself out of jumping room very easily. Which is made even worse because…
10. Outro: Penalty For Failure: …you’re on a difficult stage in general and any failure here is, once again, death. And you only get 3 lives. Which means…
11. Outro: Mid Mission Checkpoint: …any failure on this is heavily penalized, and any ‘running out of lives’ means redoing the ENTIRE stage and boss and then this nonsense again

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: There’s not a ton of spritework in a game like this (mostly just the principle cast and a couple of enemies) but it’s still very good
2. Storytelling Mechanic: Talking heads and distinct ‘voices’
3. Brickwork: The Forgotten City. the posters, the street lights, the distant buildings, the little details…
4. Brickwork: …lovely stuff
5. Music Direction: First Steps. This song is perfectly upbeat, adventurous, and encapsulates everything the beginning of the journey is
6. Visual Storytelling: Old Site. This entire ‘level’ is styled like an old medieval dungeon, complete with traps, cages, and other unpleasantness. A great visual metaphor for where Madeline is at at this point in her life
7. Music Direction: Resurrections. This song is probably one of the best ‘dream world’ songs I’ve ever heard, rivaling some of Shimomura’s best stuff, and once again is the perfect tone setter for the stage
8. Brickwork: Celestial Resort. There’s some insane quality here, if a bit more… jumbled than you’d probably find in a normal hotel…
9. Brickwork: …easy double, but also our first…
10. Doodads: …doodad positive, for all the details and layers
11. Music Direction: Checking In. You wouldn’t think this type of song would fit a hotel, and it kind of doesn’t, but instead it’s more like a vibe of being lost. The tune is very listless and low-key, with very low energy, and once again sets the tone fabulously
12. MSQ: Mr. Oshiro and his honestly quite tragic fate as a languishing ghost, locked in the hotel he likely died in and unable to move on…
13. Visual Storytelling: …with some really solid presentation of his anxieties and anger literally manifesting around his form
14. Moment: The moment on the gondola with Theo and Madeline is one of the better visual and audio presentations of a panic attack I’ve seen in gaming, and the way Theo tries to talk her through it is great
15. Brickwork: The Golden Ridge is straight up gorgeous. This is probably the most ‘mountainscape’ we get in visuals in this game, with the wonderful lavender rock, setting sun, and blue crystals…
16. Brickwork: …brilliant stuff
17. Music Direction: Golden. I feel like I’m repeating myself but this is such a perfect tone setter. The distant, empty valleys and vast loneliness comes across in the slow paced piano and wonderful low thrums
18. Brickwork: The eldritch temple Mirror Temple
19. MSQ: A nice breather segment between Theo and Madeline (mostly optional) for them to chat, for us to learn more about them, and to give the player a chance to digest
20. Brickwork: Reflection. That is to say, the amazing looking depths. The water, the foliage, the whole area looks wonderfully pristine, probably one of my favorite looking zones in the game…
21. Brickwork: …easy…
22. Brickwork: …triple
23. MSQ: Madeline accepting Badeline. The entire scene is good, and exceptionally on point for the theme of the work
24. Music Direction: Summit. This song is phenomenal of course, but it’s also a perfect encapsulation of everything to-date…
25. Music Direction: …and really makes you feel like this is it, and you can do this
26. Music Direction: Farewell. The somber, sleepy, and eventually melancholy really comes across in every song in this chapter, fitting given…
27. MSQ: …it’s all about saying goodbye
28. Theme: The central theme of the work is debatable of course, but there’s no denying that each of the themes is strong, well presented, and oozes in every aspect of the game (visually, audibly, gameplay, dialogue). Identity, acceptance of self, uncertainty about the future, and saying goodbye…
29. Theme: …all present…
30. Theme: …all awesome

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Penalty For Failure: Fast reset time on death. This is a nice quality of life feature in general, but near critical for a game where death is expected and frequent
2. Built In Cheats: Very good options…
3. Built In Cheats: …which are fully granular, allowing for a ton of customization…
4. Built In Cheats: …and they can be toggled on the fly at will
5. Music: I mean come on. I bought this soundtrack like an hour after I first played it years ago, and the music is just straight up fantastic…
6. Music: …top…
7. Music: …to bottom
8. Core Mechanic: Dashing and dash filling. The dash refilling thanks to standing, or orbs, or… y’know what there’s a lot of things that refill dash, but this forms the core element of a lot of the more ‘puzzley’ elements of the stages
9. Visual Distinction: Excellent across the board. The variance between background and foreground, the clear indicators of ‘no touch’ areas, temporary platforms, everything…
10. Visual Distinction: …this is Nintendo levels of quality…
11. Visual Distinction: …and deserves a triple
12. Map: Indicators on what you’ve gotten in what area, and roughly how far through the level it is. The only thing not indicated here is the crystal hearts
13. Intro: Level: Forgotten City starting area. This is very solid platforming, great escalation, and great…
14. Intro: Tutorialization: …tutorialization on gameplay mechanics and the very nature of the game
15. Intro: Level: Forgotten City, Crossing. I’m going to be real, it’s hard to come up with different things to type for each of these when it boils down to ‘this is good level design’ so I’ll just mention things that really jump out at me. In this case they really start using the traffic light blocks well here
16. Intro: Level: Forgotten City, Chasm. Great ‘final exam’ of everything the game has been teaching you to-date
17. Level: Old Site, Start. This is a nice exploration segment with a lot of fun optional strawberries…
18. Level: …and some fun puzzles
19. Level: Old Site, Intervention. This begins our first ‘shadow Mario’ segment, where Badeline mimics your movement behind you. This is already interesting, but the screens do some very fun things with…
20. Terrain: …the terrain, making you really think about how you’re approaching a section to ‘leave room’ for doubling back later…
21. Level: …for a double. Er, technically a triple but whatever
22. Tutorialization: The Celestial Resort and the new anxiety lint/dust bunnies. This is some great stuff here, but it starts off pretty slow and chill, mostly more introduction
23. Level: Celestial Resort, Huge Mess. This is a bunch of rapid fire fun challenge rooms each considering a different application of the anxiety lint theme
24. Level: Celestial Resort, Elevator Shaft. This is when things really get mean, in all the right ways. Much smaller windows of availability, smaller but meaner rooms, more usage of the ‘temporary safe spot’ lint which forces you to either plan out or react properly…
25. Level: …great stuff here
26. Level: Celestial Resort, Presidential Suite… aka the boss battle. This is a rapid fire tutorialization of how he works before absolutely throwing you into the fire, and while it can get a little frustrating, this is still properly mean
27. Tutorialization: Once again, the Golden Ridge tutorializes its new features very well (the moving walls, the wind, and the bouncy clouds)
28. Level: Golden Ridge, Start. Mostly chill after the last level, but the wind making seemingly easy jumps much harder. Also love how much more open this is compared to the previous level
29. Level: Golden Ridge, Shrine. More escalation and more of the ice spikes
30. Level: Golden Ridge, Old Trail. The wind is getting to be much worse by now, and really forcing the player to think carefully, leading neatly to the last segment
31. Level: Golden Ridge, Cliff Face. This is when you’re punished the most, but in a weirdly fair way. This is also probably the best part of the Golden Ridge…
32. Level: …for a solid double
33. Level: Mirror Temple, Start and Depths. This is interesting as it’s almost entirely optional, with lots of strawberry hell rooms…
34. Level: …which are really well constructed
35. Tutorialization: Mirror Temple and the self loathing blobs. Seekers is what they’re properly called but the way the game tutorializes these (twice, actually) is legitimately brilliant. First you play as one and quickly learn their rules and how they operate because you yourself have them enforced upon you. Second, later on, you enter a room where a Seeker is in position to immediately go after you but can’t get you because there’s one of the impassable walls in their way
36. Level: Mirror Temple, general. The Seekers, the smart usage of the red orbs and tracking sight lines, and tons of well placed spikes…
37. Level: …make for a solid stage
38. Tutorialization: Gold feathers and charge blocks. These are, as usual, well tutorialized in Reflection
39. Level: Reflection. The smart usage of gold feathers, careful maneuvering around the charge blocks, having to ricochet off the bounce balls, and multiple paths to choose your route is some great stuff…
40. Boss: Terrain: …with some of the better terrain design to date, particularly during…
41. Boss: Level: …Badeline’s boss fight. I admit I’m not a fan of this fight personally (it just takes too long) but I’d be an idiot to not acknowledge it’s a really good one. They even do a lot to help make it less frustrating (you get iframes when you attack her, also hitting her sort of ‘homes’ you into a safe space that’s manually placed for you to recover from)
42. Song: The Summit. This is probably the best song in the game, being an excellent, uplifting, and marathon motif of all the major themes to-date
43. Level: Summit, Start. A few basic platforming things and a few fun challenges, as well as getting the player aware of what they’re in for
44. Level: Summit, 500M. More flings, more spikes, more fun
45. Level: Summit, 1000M. Probably one of the better designed of the Summit stages, the exceptionally tight design and placement of the dream blocks and how they can be used (with multiple possible solutions)…
46. Level: …great stuff
47. Level: Summit, 1500M. The retread of the hotel which, again, is exceptionally tightly designed. Escalating themes of timed obstacles, very tight windows, and temporary safe spots…
48. Level: …make for a double
49. Level: Summit, 2000M. Lots of tight, narrow passageways, and some absolutely brutal platforming
50. Level: Summit, 2500M. The return of the red orbs, and having to really get creative with advancing
51. Level: Summit, 3000M. The big finale. These jumps are absolutely bonkers, wonderfully designed, and best of all there’s checkpoints absolutely everywhere, often within visible range of the previous one…
52. Level: …great segment
53. Optional Mode: B Sides, in general. If you want a marathon of unmitigated hell, this is it
54. Optional Mode: C Sides are a great implementation of hyper difficulty. One or two screens of teeth rippingly difficult platforming, keeping on the theme of each given level…
55. Optional Mode: …for a solid…
56. Optional Mode: …triple
57. Replayability: Generally replayable. I actually hope to replay this game again someday

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Info In Game: The Crystal Hearts in general, nevermind actually finding them. These are unlocks too, so it’s not just a collectible like the strawberries
2. Visual Distinction: Reflection. This area looks wonderful, but it’s legitimately easy to lose Madeline in the visual noise
3. Music: Reflection boss battle duration, especially the glitchy version
4. Padding: B Sides. I generally don’t give points in either direction for this type of content but honestly, the B sides are just too damned long for the ultra hard content they are. The C sides are a much better implementation of this type of hyper difficulty

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: The wild jungle, with tons of foliage and detailing
2. Brickwork: Silhouette sunset in 1-4 deserves its own mention for being generally gorgeous
3. Visual Storytelling: Quite a bit. It’s all little stuff, but there’s details here and there throughout the worlds. The crab pirates, the kraken, the giant eye robot in the background, stuff like that
4. Doodads: World 1 Framing. Wonderful, wonderful details here, between the plants and boxes and ships and lighthouse and animals and everything
5. Animation: Top notch stuff, especially with Donkey and Diddy themselves
6. Brickwork: Beach. Water, sands, islands, palm trees
7. Brickwork: Ruins. The Kong tribe architecture, the broken buildings, the overgrown husks
8. Brickwork: Forest. I figured this would just be the Jungle again but no, this place looks fantastic and distinct as the upper canopy of the forest
9. Brickwork: The cliffs. The absolute nonsense of how precarious all these rocks and platforms are perched is wonderful
10. Brickwork: The factory. This place looks friggin’ amazing. Lots and lots of wonderful details and moving parts and literal bricks and metal churning death…
11. Brickwork: …love it

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Option: KONG letters and how it adds a whole, gradient form of difficulty
2. Controls: Pretty good, responsive, but with a few issues holding it back from more positives
3. Overworld: Small, but it’s there, to allow for multiple routes in each world
4. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Pretty solid for the most part. There’s some inconsistency in how well spread they are, but they’re still there
5. Itemization: The shop serves as a nice alternate method of being able to bypass certain specific issues a given player is having
6. Itemization: Also good drops of bananas, coins, and lives
7. Visual Distinction: With very few exceptions, the game is crisp and distinct…
8. Visual Distinction: …for a solid double
9. Minigame: Time attack mode is a nice, fun little side method to add some extra challenge to each stage
10. Sound: Excellent sound design, as per the norm…
11. Sound: …and some lovely indicators of things like revealing a puzzle, succeeding at a puzzle, picking up different types of things, hitting enemies, getting hit, etc.
12. Guidance: As per usual for the franchise, usage of bananas as guidance and indicators
13. Music: A heck of a spread of music, even if it’s mostly remixes…
14. Music: …it’s still damned good music
15. Difficulty Options: The ‘Modern Mode’ which increases health, and adds several of the aforementioned items to the shop
16. Co-Op: Exists
17. Co-Op: Campaign co-op
18. Difficulty Option: Super mode isn’t as good as it could be, but it’s still good (especially since they allow you to take control at will)
19. Intro: Tutorialization: 1-1. I’ve seen better, but this does the usual good job of a first stage. Here’s movement, enemies, platforms, and general controls
20. Level: 1-2, King of Cling. Quick tutorialization of grass grabbing, quick escalation into rotating and moving platforms, and then several ‘quizzes’ in the form of combining elements and themes of avoidance and grabbing
21. Level: 1-3, Tree Top Bop. Introduction to player-dependant jumps, timing, and our first foray into an animal companion
22. Level: 1-4, Sunset Shore. The silhouette thing is neat visually but they also do some clever things with it design wise, with hidden areas, bonuses, and enemies all ‘masked’ by the nature of the level. And of course a lot of neat little things to alter the graphics to be really parsable…
23. Level: …easy double
24. Level: 1-5, Canopy Cannons. Our first real barrel level. Starts off simple (timing to get bonuses), escalates (timing to avoid enemies), and finally concludes (timing to avoid terrain hazards)
25. Level: 2-1, Poppin’ Planks. Moving platforms and an interesting usage of enemies who are weak to one direction then the other depending on how you hit them
26. Level: 2-2, Sloppy Sands. Seemingly simple, but our first foray into turrets (both damagable and not) as well as a lot of moving parts in the second half of the stage
27. Level: 2-3, Peaceful Pier. The only good rocket barrel stage. Simple, fun, rewarding, good spectacle in the background
28. Level: 2-4, Cannon Cluster. Lots of cannon fire and avoidance tech here
29. Level: 2-5, Stormy Shore. The Kraken intersecting with the foreground is great, and there’s a lot of timing puzzles combined with good checkpointing
30. Level: 2-6, Blowhole Bound. A roaming whale which actively serves as a platform and destroys the other platforms as it goes (plus bowling for seagulls)
31. Level: 2-7, Tidal Terror. The persistent tidal wave periodically wiping everything not safe, the temporary and partial safe zones, the gradient of safe areas and enemy types…
32. Level: …great level
33. Boss: Crab bosses! Multiple methods of progressing and vuln phases on top of not overstaying its welcome
34. Level: 3-1, Wonky Waterway. Falling ruins and tall enemies to avoid, lots of bouncing challenges
35. Level: 3-2, Button Bash. Our second barrel level, much more complex, with a really smart approach to a ‘boss’ (hit the open mouth, but you get three ‘retries’)
36. Level: 3-3, Mast Blast. Some good player controlled timed platforming and cannon avoiding
37. Level: 3-5, Itty Bitty Biters. The eponymous biters control most of the level, with some nice peeking, and a lot of having to use the enemies as platforms to progress and access secrets
38. Level: 3-6, Temple Topple. This is kind of a mini hyperbeam level; Here’s a rhino, here’s a bunch of stuff designed to be destroyed by a rhino
39. Level: 3-K, weirdly enough. Mostly timing based but falls in the ‘mean but fair’ category, with smart usage of bouncy enemies in tight spaces and good spread of not-instant-kill-spikes
40. Level: 4-3, Bombs Away. Okay I’ll admit it, this is a good minecart level. Tight jumps, tight timing, good indicators of upcoming issues, and a great finale
41. Level: 5-1, Vine Valley. Our first real introduction to vines, immediately followed by enemy vines (which yank you in slowly), and finally having to do both at once
42. Level: 5-2, Clingy Swingy. Another excellent example of escalation; we take the grabbing the grass mechanic and introduce partial platforms, swinging platforms, and obstacles to the mix
43. Level: 5-3, Flutter Flyaway. Lots and lots of small, moving platforms and some good recovery
44. Level: 5-4, Tippin’ Totems. Great temporary and moving platforms with X amount of jumps before collapse, or X amount of time
45. Level: 5-5, Longshot Launch. Another great barrel level, starting to have one-off and two-off where you have to time it from one or two barrels away
46. Level: 5-6, Springy Spores. Lots and lots of bouncy mushrooms, on top of less and less maneuverable room
47. Boss: 5-B, Mangoruby. Smash each spot as they increase in speed, hitting a smaller vuln spot on the boss each phase
48. Level: 6-1, Sticky Situation. Good, smart usage of enemies to deny vertical platforms (which also move at variable rates)
49. Level: 6-3, Weighty Way. Lots of lifts and pulleys and careful maneuvering around them
50. Level: 6-6, Crumble Canyon. Lots and lots of crumbling cliffs… the thing is this is one of the few levels to use them interestingly, with a giant rolling ball of death chasing us half the stage
51. Level: 7-1, Foggy Fumes. The silhouette concept returns, some fun rotating fans platforming
52. Level: 7-2, Slammin’ Steel. Hope you like death crushers, because this level is absolutely filled with them. Usual good escalation of theme (run to avoid, duck to avoid, run and duck to avoid)
53. Level: 7-3, Handy Hazards. Very short, very dense, very nuts
54. Level: 7-5, Cog Jog. More grappling and tiny moving platforms
55. Level: 7-6, Switcheroo. This gets really clever with the central gimmick, and it’s incredibly well tutorialized early on (mandatory walls to progress, then a ‘catch you’, then it starts playing with it)
56. Level: 7-7, Music Madness. The music syncing, the beat, the crushers, the fire and water jets…
57. Level: …one of the best stages in the game
58. Level: 7-K, Treacherous Track. Another short K level, and absolutely insane in its platforming density (often multiple jumps per screen)
59. Boss: 7-B, Feather Fiend. Big, lumbering, obvious, but a huge hurtbox and nice big vuln phases
60. Level: 8-6, Moving Melters. Same general concept as some of the tar levels back in World 6; Lots of platforms melting into lava and playing with that as you progress
61. Level: 9-1, Crushin’ Columns. This is mostly just a fun romp; Some collapsing columns which can be used to advance, and several which have to be timed around
62. Level: 9-2, Gushin’ Geysers. Another chill, fun level of geysers, some tight platforming, and enemy avoidance
63. Level: 9-3, Spiky Surprise. Advancing walls of doom with smart enemy placement and fun terrain design
64. Level: 9-4, Mischievous Moles. Actually fun minecart sections which are precise rather than irritating, good checkpoint placement, good enemy and temporary platform placement
65. Level: 9-5, Topsy Turvy. I love the variance between ‘every three beats’ versus ‘every one beat’ rotating platforms, and proper usage of grass
66. Level: 9-6, Tar Ball Fall. New gimmick (rising temporary block), smart usage of tar, great recovery periods
67. Level: 9-7, Robo Factory. Great stampers, flingers, enemy placement, and the fun of the robot being built in the background
68. Level: 9-8, Lavawheel Volcano. Denser than the rest, probably the best overall ‘world 8’ level, love the rotating platforms diving into the lava
69. Replayability: Yeah, especially the first chunk of the game

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: Co-op issues with regards to not being able to multi-jump on enemies for some reason
2. Co-Op: So if you die during a single player section with two players both players lose a life, even though the second player is just a passenger at this point. This is needlessly penalizing on already frustrating stages and also aggravating since these stages are the worst in the game
3. Boss: The Mole Train. Too long and too dull for what it is, and no real alternate methods of progression. Plus the hurtboxing on the enemies diving out of the bananas is weird
4. Level: 1-K, Platform Panic. The core level design is fine, but it has two major issues. First, no mid-mission checkpointing at all which is compounded by, Second, it being entirely too long by at least 33%
5. Level: 2-K, Tumblin’ Temple, is another example of a stage that should be good and isn’t. In this case it’s mostly a case of Gotcha! where multiple times the level seems to want you to do A and in fact you need to do B. And the timing is so tight that if you’re not already doing B you’re already dead
6. Level: 4-4, Mole Patrol. The second rocket level and it already sucks. Enemies with entirely too large of hitboxes, some irritations in how they spawn, but ultimately this really boils down to the fact that each rocket level is binary difficulty. Any hit, of any kind, at all, is death
7. Level: 4-5 is much worse. More narrow areas, harder to tell what the hurtboxes are, and longer…
8. Level: …screw this level
9. Level: 4-K, Jagged Jewels. The usual issues here (too long and no checkpoints)
10. Level: 5-K, Blast & Bounce. Usual
11. Level: 6-4, Boulder Roller. Entirely too much stop-go at weird pacing (entirely too fast ‘go’, entirely too long ‘stop’), bad item placement, and irritatingly long
12. Level: 6-K, Perilous Passage. Slow (which makes the lack of checkpointing worse) and some absolute bullcrap in enemy placement and gotcha design
13. Level: 7-4, Gear Getaway. This is the first really bad ‘helicopter’ stage (the rocket barrels they’re so fond of) and… I mean all of these suck, but this one is unnecessarily mean and irritating…
14. Level: …for a double
15. Level: 8-2, Hot Rocket. This is the worst level in the game to-date. So first it’s a rocket level with binary difficulty, let’s just get that out of the way…
16. Level: Gotcha: …then there’s several moments of gotcha! in the design of obstacles and…
17. Level: Terrain: …the terrain, which combined with the above more or less mandates memorizing the stage…
18. Level: Visual Distinction: …then there’s the constant explosions and rumbling against a red and black backdrop while you’re trailing fire, making it hard to see everything clearly and (this is important) immediately…
19. Level: …and finally just a general negative for needlessly bullcrap obstacles and checkpointing
20. Level: 8-3, Roasting Rails. Entirely too much gotcha and quick reflexes and absolutely no room to screw up at any point, alongside some truly dickish placement of enemies…
21. Level: …for a double
22. Mid Mission Checkpoints: World 8 in general has a huge issue with checkpoint quantity and specific placement
23. Level: 8-7, Red Red Rising. The first part is whatever, the second is the worst types of autoscrollers combined. First it’s too slow, making the entire sequence take absolutely forever, with tons of damage everywhere to punish you. Then at the last second it speeds up psychotically and also there’s a G there so screw you if you miss it. Also no checkpoints the entire time…
24. Level: …screw this level
25. Outro: Boss: Screw the final boss. First a friggin’ rocket section, which isn’t terrible but honestly? Then the boss himself who’s fine… if you have Diddy Kong with you. If you don’t the jump arcs and height clash with his attacks and vuln periods, making him way more frustrating than he should have been…
26. Outro: Boss: …easy double
27. Outro: Level: 9-9, the Golden Temple. Overly long, miniscule platforms that shrink, enemies that home in on you, and no checkpoints…
28. Outro: Level: …screw you
29. Difficulty Curve: The game has a pretty smooth curve up until two sudden spikes; One at World 6…
30. Difficulty Curve: …and the other at World 8
31. Gotcha: Plenty, everywhere

Story Positives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: Silly, fun, well animated, and with a nice layer of seriousness to it
2. Brickwork: Overworld! The islands themselves have such wonderful flavor and vibe to them…
3. Brickwork: …love this stuff
4. Brickwork: Lost Mangroves. The jungle wilds, the lush foliage, the giant knotted roots and branches…
5. Brickwork: …great stuff
6. Doodads: Also love the detailing in the various wrecks and salvage yards
7. Visual Continuity: Lost Mangroves and the progression from the wilds to the ruins to the mechanical overgrowth
8. Background Lore: There’s a lot of storytelling quietly in the background of the entire game, indicating characterization, world building, and the like
9. Brickwork: Autumn Heights, the netherlands area. The towns, the hills, the trees, the rivers, the goats…
10. Brickwork: …one of…
11. Brickwork: …the best looking areas in the game
12. Doodads: Incredible design on the visuals too
13. Music Direction: Autumn Heights also has basically perfect music to set the tone for the entire area
14. Cutscene: Sawmill Thrill. Just the spectacle of how the level progresses as we first are on a minecart, then a log, then the sawmill breaks down and we’re avoiding the chunks of the terrain flung in front of us, THEN we’re leaping on the pieces of track flung into the air
15. Brickwork: The caves! Trickling water, the bioluminescent mushrooms, the ferns, the mushrooms, dear God the mushrooms. But the way they make even a cave look good…
16. Brickwork: …really earns the double
17. Sound Design: Wonderful sound design in the caves of Autumn Heights. Water, creatures, echoes
18. Visual Continuity: Autumn Heights. We start down at the beach by the villages, work up through production and logging, and climb up the peaks and mountains to the ruling birds above
19. Brickwork: Autumn Heights, the owls’ domain further up. To be clear this is for the separate biome further into the stage. The interiors, the bells, the owl houses, etc.
20. Brickwork: Savannah. The rolling golden fields, the sparse trees, the animals
21. Brickwork: Burning Savannah. Great usage of the wildfires to really emphasize the danger of the region
22. Brickwork: …consider this an aggregate additional for both Savannah regions
23. Brickwork: Fishing village and cliffsides as we get closer to civilization. Lovely detail on this
24. Brickwork: The fortifications furthest in, where we see just how defensible they’ve made this entire region
25. Visual Storytelling: World 3 (Bright Savannah) and the primary food production hub for the Snowmads, which also explains why it’s so well defended
26. Brickwork: Beach and sandy shores. I’m particularly fond of the architecture around these areas…
27. Brickwork: …another double
28. Brickwork: Underwater atlantean ruins. I love the air of mystery they give, these massive pseudo techno objects, some of which work just fine, some are clearly long ruined…
29. Brickwork: …great stuff
30. Brickwork: Juicy Jungle. The detailing here is crazy good, between the incredibly dense forest and the friggin’ fruits, my God the fruit…
31. Brickwork: …great stuff
32. Visual Storytelling: Juicy Jungle also has probably my personal favorite ‘story’ going throughout the zone, as we see their fruit harvesting operations, which leads me to…
33. Visual Continuity: …how we see each and every step of said operation as we go…
34. Visual Continuity: …from the more lush areas to the frozen south
35. Cutscene: 5-2, Reckless Ride, and the penguin determined to get us, so much so that he doesn’t look where he’s going and gets smashed, leading to him fleeing… and being eaten
36. Brickwork: The beehives of World 5. It’s not much but the overflowing honey, the combs, and most importantly of all the neatly woven houses the bees live in
37. Brickwork: The entirety of World 6. The snow-covered assets from the last game are good in general, and there’s some nice touches here and there (that poor bat)
38. Brickwork: Also the avalanche silhouette level of 6-6 deserves its own mention for being a combination of cool and horrifying
39. Animation: Some fantastic, flavorful animations on bosses, enemies, and the Kongs…
40. Animation: …really adds some character to the work
41. Spritework: Excellent across the board, for the Kongs…
42. Spritework: …for the enemies…
43. Spritework: …for the bosses

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Option: KONG letters and how it adds a whole, gradient form of difficulty
2. Controls: Controls excellently, one of the better controlled platformers of the era…
3. Controls: …easy double
4. Overworld: Optional exits are back, and optional pathing through stages too
5. Mid Mission Checkpoints: With the sole exception of the friggin’ Kong levels, the whole game has some really solid…
6. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …and there’s often multiple per stage
7. Itemization: The shop continues to be a good way to give the player specific items to bypass specific issues
8. Itemization: Generally great drop rate of items throughout the stages
9. Visual Distinction: Never ran into an issue with this across the game. Great usage of light, outlines, camera angles, and colors to always make sure I can tell what the heck is going on…
10. Visual Distinction: …for a full…
11. Visual Distinction: …triple
12. Camera: This is essentially the same wonderfully dynamic camera from New Mario U…
13. Camera: …and it’s still awesome
14. Minigame: Time attack mode is a nice, fun little side method to add some extra challenge to each stage
15. Minigame: There’s also optional Hard Mode which is what it sounds like. Do a stage in mirror with one health
16. Sound: Excellent sound design, as per the norm…
17. Sound: …and some lovely indicators of things like revealing a puzzle, succeeding at a puzzle, picking up different types of things, hitting enemies, getting hit, etc.
18. Guidance: As per usual for the franchise, usage of bananas as guidance and indicators
19. Music: Soundtrack’s a total banger, no notes…
20. Music: …just three…
21. Music: …positives
22. Yoshi Drums: Oh and great usage of Yoshi Drums too
23. Difficulty Options: Funky mode. Changes the shop a bit, adds some health, and adds Funky Kong
24. QoL: Funky Mode also does a few other tiny things which make 100%ing a lot easier and smoother
25. Co-Op: Exists
26. Co-Op: Campaign co-op
27. Intro: Level: 1-1, Mangrove Cove. It’s kind of crazy how good this is for a first stage. Improved terrain design inclining you towards how many things you can do and where, careful placement of items and enemies to ensure each compliment each other…
28. Intro: Tutorialization: …and it also has several individual segments that do a great job of conveying what you can do and how
29. Level: 1-2, Shipwreck Shore. This is probably the most ‘vanilla’ stage in the game and it’s still damned good
30. Level: Tutorialization: 1-2 also really gives you a lot of level design around the recently acquired Dixie Kong and her kit
31. Level: 1-A, Zip-Line Shrine. Some really fun usages of the quick vine drops and grabs, and some great swinging fun
32. Level: 1-3, Canopy Chaos. Great fun, great introduction to Cranky, great side areas
33. Level: Tutorialization: 1-3 again. Almost the entire level is designed around Cranky’s kit. Spikes, tall platforms, enemies to bounce on
34. Level: 1-B, Busted Bayou. Our first silhouette level is an absolute treat. There’s a ton of tiny details here that really show how the level design has been polished…
35. Level: …easy double
36. Level: 1-4, Trunk Twister. A good minecart level, holy crap. Great usage of the camera to ‘peek’ at what’s coming ahead, great dynamic camera in general actually, great tutorialization and escalation of what’s expected
37. Level: 1-K, Swinger Flinger. My goodness, a solid Kong level. Great introduction, escalation, conclusion of swings, limited space, and limited time
38. Boss: Pompy. Just fast moving enough without being unfair, great escalation of dangers (small fish, spikey fish, large fish), and a banger song
39. Level: 2-1, Windmill Hills. Windmills, platforms, temporary platforms, mix and match and you have some great platforming…
40. Level: …easy double
41. Level: 2-2, Mountain Mania. Great intensity of temporary platforms, obstacles, timing segments, enemies, and being on a rhino the entire time
42. Level: 2-3, Horn Top Hop. Simple yet solid, introducing the horns, variable enemy attacks (sideways and top), and a fun horn segment at the end
43. Level: 2-4, Sawmill Thrill. This is unironically one of my favorite stages in this game. A fun minecart sequence followed by a water bobbing sled thing followed by minecarting on dangerous terrain and then NO terrain at all…
44. Level: …all while being short, dense…
45. Level: …and with a great soundtrack
46. Level: 2-A, Crumble Cavern. Really seeing some fun stuff here with timing barrels and lots of rewards for difficult shots…
47. Level: …great stuff
48. Level: 2-B, Rodent Ruckus. I cannot friggin’ believe it, a positive for a rocket level, but there it is. Good evolving encounters, great escalation, fair recovery periods, and of course the rocket has a friggin’ health bar for once
49. Level: 2-5, Alpine Incline. Great verticality, great bounceyness, great creativity…
50. Level: …easy double
51. Level: 2-6, Wing Ding. Absolutely love the sliding vines, the intensity of ‘track’ switching, but it also does something incredible early on…
52. Level: Tutorialization: …at the first ‘ring bells to progress’ moment if you don’t (because it’s possible to assume it’s background) you get one retry barrel which frames the bells right in view to make sure you know what’s expected of you
53. Level: 2-K, Bopopolis. Brutal but fair, multiple recovery segments, encourages waiting and lunging in cadence
54. Boss: Skowl is a fantastic boss fight. Excellent escalation, multiple vuln points to speed it up, and nice usage of the stage to avoid his attacks and to escalate how difficult that is…
55. Boss: …easy double
56. Level: 3-1, Grassland Groove. Another simple yet solid level; Good tempo to the jumps and moving platforms, good reward indicators, nice introduction of the ‘shaving’ mechanic
57. Level: 3-2, Baobab Bonanza. Escalation of seed drops, good usage of bespoke timing in obstacles
58. Level: 3-3, Frantic Fields. Some good Rambi fun, some good moving platforms, and some good spectacle
59. Level: 3-4, Scorch ‘n’ Torch. Great usage of fire to create temporary platforms (either they burn away, or they burn a few seconds later) as well as burning enemies and vines, and all with the water balloon gimmick to give the player options for temporary safe spaces
60. Level: 3-5, Twilight Terror. Yes it’s a rocket barrel level but once again more fair obstacles (color coded avoidance, clearly indicated terrain changes) and the health make this far funner
61. Level: 3-A, Rickety Rafters. Some really great vine-pull segments that change platforms, unlock targets, and change how you navigate enemies
62. Level: 3-6, Cannon Canyon. Part barrel level, part bombs, all fun. We have a nice cadence of timing barrels and fast barrels, lovely camera usage for perspective, and good density
63. Level: 3-B, Bramble Scramble. Simple fun here; Mostly timing and horrible death vines, but the pacing helps
64. Level: 3-K, Precarious Pendulums. A bit too long (see the checkpoint negative) but still some very smart level design here; the quick and dirty tutorialization of the pendulum platforms paths (the first of which doesn’t move until you hop on it) and then the lightning platforms (nice and obvious, slow descent, only way to progress)
65. Level: 4-A, Rockin’ Relics. Great tempo level with repeated lightning strikes activating machinery to change the terrain
66. Level: 4-2, High Tide Ride. Fun minecart segment, playing with the diagonal perspective shift and multi-lane carts, with great introduction and excellent usage of lighting and camera to make sure you can tell what is happening…
67. Level: …for a double
68. Level: 4-3, Amiss Abyss. More smart tutorialization with the light mechanic, good usage of the silhouettes, and nice timed progression
69. Level: 4-4, Irate Eight. Nice build up, great chase sequences, fun finale with the mines
70. Level: 4-5, Sea Stack Attack. Mean enemy spam but good recovery areas and lots of nice timing puzzles
71. Level: 4-6, Current Capers. Lots of tight swimming, great ‘advancing threat’ mechanics, and some nice platforming
72. Level: 4-K, Spinning Spines. This is… probably the best Kong level so far. Great tutorialization, great escalation. Spinning platforms which give way to layered spinning platforms, which give way to spiked walls spinning platforms but recovery, which gives way to spiked walls spinning platforms and no recovery…
73. Level: …it’s great
74. Level: 5-1, Harvest Hazards. Another fun damaging terrain level, with grabbers, seeds, and spikes to contend with
75. Level: 5-2, Reckless Ride. This is probably the best rocket level in the game, with great indicators, great variety, wonderful density, good checkpointing, and tight platforms…
76. Level: …easy double
77. Level: 5-3, Fruity Factory. The way they do the platforming here is great; There’s a sound and a visual to indicate where a platform will pop up, and this is on top of the tempo of the factory itself
78. Level: 5-A, Beehive Brawl. Mostly grass grabbing and swinging fun but some very tight and well designed jumps
79. Level: 5-4, Panicky Paddles. A very mean but fair underwater level, with lots of indicators of upcoming platforms (either coming or going away)
80. Level: 5-5, Jelly Jamboree. This is a fantastic way to escalate mechanics and increase difficulty without really changing things up. It also introduces switches very naturally, first under your control, then later under the enemy’s…
81. Level: …fantastic level
82. Level: 5-B, Jammin’ Jams. Back to a factory stage, great tempo, great escalation and tutorialization, and I absolutely love the final sequence of timed seeds, launchers, and pits…
83. Level: …easy double
84. Level: 5-6, Frosty Fruits. Fantastic ‘bumpers’ and great pacing, basically a Sonic level in all the right ways…
85. Level: …easy double
86. Level: 5-K, Platform Problems. A great tutorialized and horrifically mean platformer with very fast dropping platforms, bounces over spikes, and on/off blocks
87. Boss: Bashmaster. Lots of varied attacks, multiple large vuln periods, and several ways to speed the fight up if you’re good…
88. Boss: …easy double
89. Level: 6-1, Homecoming Hijinxs. Great usage of the ‘safe a few times then fall’ mechanic for ceiling, walls, and floors
90. Level: 6-2, Seashore War. Fantastic ‘avoid the lava’ level, with temporary yanking to create platforms, and lots of enemies and projectiles to help with navigation
91. Level: 6-3, Aqueduct Assault. They really love their temporary platforms don’t they? Still some great escalation here
92. Level: 6-4, Blurry Flurry. There’s some irritations but overall it’s a decent rocket level, and the ‘have fun with it’ segment where you play as the rolling ball of death is just fun
93. Level: 6-5, Forest Folly. Mean jumps, mean flings, mean enemy placement
94. Level: 6-6, Cliffside Slide. Slow encroaching avalanche, great placement of obstacles and enemies, great tight challenges…
95. Level: …easy double
96. Level: 6-7, Frozen Frenzy. This is a legitimately fantastic gimmick; There’s electric nodes, when they come into contact with certain parts of platforms or vines they electrify the entire platform and vine (also there’s collapsing ice walkways). This is then played with… a lot. Tilting away from, tilting towards, timing, pushing down or up…
97. Level: …fantastic stage…
98. Level: …for our first triple
99. Level: 6-A, Dynamite Dash. Great, great usage of the explosives, both for immediate and long term delayed temporary platforming…
100. Level: …easy double
101. Level: 6-8, Meltdown Mayhem. Very high intensity, very high density, mostly fair
102. Level: 6-K, Slippy Spikes. Surprisingly fair, great density, great recovery segments, and multiple routes
103. Kit: Each Kong and their varying playstyles (even Funky)
104. Replayability: Fun, generally replayable

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Bug: Co-op issues with regards to not being able to multi-jump on enemies for some reason
2. Co-Op: So if you die during a single player section with two players both players lose a life, even though the second player is just a passenger at this point. This is needlessly penalizing on already frustrating stages and also aggravating since these stages are the worst in the game
3. Bug: Audio issues unless setting the Switch to a specific audio output setting
4. Mid Mission Checkpoints: The Kong levels… still don’t have checkpoints dammit
5. Level: 4-B, Shoal Atoll. A rare miss for the game. The idea of the level is fine (non linear maze) but having to collect all the bananas to literally progress with no indicators is irritating as hell, and all while dealing with the breath meter
6. Boss: Fugu. The combination of having to handle the breath meter (hey, deja vu) and the awkward underwater controls make this frustrating where it should be interesting
7. Level: 6-B, Icicle Arsenal. Not actually a bad stage… until you get to the memorization gotcha portion, where half the challenges require waiting and half require going as quickly as possible. Any wrong move is death
8. Outro: Boss: Fredrik is, ultimately, a pretty neutral fight. It has some issues and some good parts but for a final boss, it’s not great
9. Seconds In Minutes: Moving on the overworld map

Story Positives:

1. Humor: I’ll be honest, the game just straight up makes me laugh more than I should admit to…
2. Humor: …easy double
3. Brickwork: General, but good across the board. Very stylized, very appropriate to the area, very… claymation…
4. Brickwork: …another double
5. Animation: Some really solid stuff. How people show their illnesses, the cures, just moving around and showing character
6. Humor: Illnesses. I mean yeah, of course these get their own point. There’s a lot and a lot of them are hilarious…
7. Humor: …another easy double
8. Atmosphere: The generally zany atmosphere is… very helpful in making the otherwise very dark game palatable (and enjoyable)

Story Negatives:

1. Humor: I… ended up muting the radio at a certain point. Oh not for the music (which is fine), but for the mumbling announcer dude. Even with the audio up he’s hard to understand, and he’s just not funny

Gameplay Positives:

1. HUD: Quick, efficient, easy to read at a glance…
2. Interface: …which also conveys a fairly large amount of information efficiently and being relatively easy to peruse. This could (and honestly should) be a lot more positives but the filter and search function are a bit weak, alongside a few other issues
3. Respec: 100% efficiency on resale. This is such a God-send in a game like this, letting the player experiment freely as well as move the ‘puzzle pieces’ around as necessary
4. Save: Autosave!
5. Save: Quicksaves and quickloads, good efficient save method
6. Core Mechanic: Items and prestige. Quite a few items with quite a few effects. A lot are just cosmetic, but still provide gameplay benefit, and thus a lot of the gameplay loop orients around setting these up to help benefit your Hospital’s ratings…
7. Cosmetic: …and to look pretty
8. Core Mechanic: Building and error checking. Building is a huge portion of the gameplay loop, with the limited space and requirements for passageways and access points all needing to be considered. I would go so far as to say this is probably the central element of the entire game, and for how well designed it is…
9. Core Mechanic: …it gets a double. The QoL features (checking the validity of a build, the ease of control) easily push it here
10. Core Mechanic: Routing. This is related to Building (honestly almost all these core mechanics are related) but planning out how to best allow people to get from Point A to Point B without too much delay is, again, a huge element of the building design. Since, like any GOOD management sim, the denizens need to actually travel to a destination to interact with it…
11. Pathfinding: …and for the most part the pathfinding is actually really solid. Much improved from the last time I played it
12. Early Game: As with most strategy games (of all types, really) this has a pretty solid Early Game. Getting your first few patient chains running, slowly adding to the types of illnesses you can treat, worrying about budget, it’s some good stuff
13. Interface: This is functionally a Feedback positive. When something either goes wrong or the hospital isn’t running that smoothly or it’s getting backed up queues you can peruse and trace where the problems lie, which of course then allows for problem solving (or a cascade failure)
14. Core Mechanic: Managing staff. They have happiness, energy, and money to keep in balance. Higher rank means more cost and harder to keep happy but higher possibility for traits. Speaking of…
15. Alternate Leveling: …Training. This actually has a flaw I’ll mention later but being able to custom tailor your staff to what you need them to do (and related ‘only do this type of job’ or ‘go do this job’ controls) help
16. Core Mechanic: Providing for patients. They have hunger, thirst, boredom, happiness, and health. All of these drain naturally and all have ways to bolster them, but all of those cost something; either in space, money, personnel, or some combination thereof
17. Core Mechanic: Research isn’t enough to qualify for its own positive (it’s just unlocking new stuff and new upgrades) but Marketing is fascinating. It’s a way to either give yourself a generic boost in reputation, try to recruit more of a type of person, or bring in more patients of a specific type, which allows for a nice additive to customizing your hospital
18. Encounter: Outbreak mechanic. These little pandemics are actually pretty cool; There’s people who are suffering from something, here’s a hint as to how to spot them. You get X vaccines and there are Y infected. It’s basically a treasure hunt (and you get rewarded for successfully doing it), and rewards paying attention in general. If left alone it can also spread pretty fast, so it’s a nice way to add to…
19. Mid Game: …so we talked about Early Game earlier. Mid Game is actually pretty solid in this one. More advanced treatments and diagnoses, more space options (and requirements), and the aforementioned pandemics. As usual this is where the game comes into its own
20. Kit: Staff abilities. So obviously these are cool and help with doing things more accurately, with higher success chance, or come with other benefits and the aforementioned ability to Train helps
21. Kit: Rooms and devices. This is sort of a generic Aggregate for the room designs themselves…
22. Kit: …so enjoy that…
23. Kit: …triple
24. Sound Design: Barks and audio cues do a good job of informing you of issues, both as and after they’re happening
25. NG+: “Chapter Select” in the form of being able to hop between unlocked hospitals and retaining progress, unlocks, etc.
26. Difficulty Options: Remix modes and extra stars, both of which have their own much harder requirements…
27. Difficulty Options: …but they’re pretty well designed and fun to do…
28. Difficulty Options: …and even come with their own bonus rewards
29. Mod Support: Built in customized rugs and posters options. This is a weird one as it has no real depth, but it’s incredibly easy and intuitive to use
30. Penalty For Failure: Risk reward in quests and challenges
31. Intro: Tutorialization: Bogwarts. Quick and simple escalation of concepts, staff, rooms, patients, and illnesses and the ability to keep playing if you’ve gotten invested
32. Level: Lower Bullocks. I guess this is functionally more tutorialization, but it’s still solid for what it is, and escalates what we’ve dealt with thus far
33. Level: Flottering. Same as the previous two (don’t worry it’s our last tutorial level though)
34. Level: Mitton University, first mutator and first ‘real’ stage. (money on training and research)
35. Level: Tumble. First time dealing with truly limited space to work with as well as our first disasters, earthquakes, which are simple (they just do damage randomly to equipment) but give us a taste of what’s to come
36. Level: Flemington. Marketing and money. Low money, high marketing, figure it out
37. Level: Melt Downs. Our first high difficulty treatments, and our introduction into thunderstorms
38. Level: Duckworth-upon-Bilge. No income from anything other than bonus targets and quests…
39. Level: …which made this a memorable, mean, and fun challenge
40. Level: Blighton. Very limited space with regular epidemics
41. Minigame: Sandbox mode. It’s exactly what it sounds like, but it’s solidly designed for what it is, and offers the availability to download other people’s setups or save your own, multiple setups…
42. Minigame: …easy double
43. Starting Options: Sandbox mode. There could be more, or more granularity, but there’s still some really solid options in how you can set up any given hospital and where and all kinds of great things…
44. Starting Options: …easy double
45. Replayability: Very replayable…
46. Replayability: …and lots of great gameplay features to encourage variance in replays

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Difficulty Curve: Escalation into failure spiral. There’s several deliberate snowball mechanics in the game custom tailored to not only make you fail, but to cascade into other failures. Now this is fine to a point but it is entirely too easy to lose a lot of progress and hours of meticulous work to a relatively small screw up, and if going through the missions in order you will slam into this pretty hard about midway through the game
2. Info In Game: It’s a relatively minor issue, but more than a few times I ended up having to peruse a walkthrough or a reddit thread to understand the specifics of how certain mechanics worked
3. Kit: Staff… who come with their own abilities. By the time you get into the late Mid Game (or actual Late Game) you really, really need customized staff as the difficulty of successful Treatments goes through the roof. This means that Staff that have any pre-baked abilities and/or bad Traits need to be fleeced. Now this is ‘fine’ except there’s a huge issue here related to this…
4. Padding: …and that’s the waiting around. The only way to get good Staff is to get lucky (and have a Marketing campaign going to refresh new hires faster). That’s it. Just wait for a good Staff to be rolled. And you want one with either blank Skills or the one you want AND no bad Traits (and preferably good Traits) so that’s a minimum of two successful dicerolls. Speaking from experience the amount of time this can take varies, but that’s the point isn’t it? It’s just waiting around an uncertain amount of time before you can proceed
5. Late Game: The game likes to spiral pretty badly if you’re not very optimized. I get why this is but it means that any mistake is penalized so hard it’s sometimes impossible to catch back up. Multiple times we had issues completing objectives due to how antagonistic they were towards actually surviving, and it reached a point where the hospital was actually going under but we managed to stay afloat long enough to finish the objective and then bail…
6. Late Game: …making this frustrating
7. Respec: I know this is weird to put this here but hear me out; there’s no RE-training of staff. This is part of the Kit negative up above but the option to spend time and resources on retraining someone’s existing skills would not only be a huge boon, it’d remove several negatives from the setup
8. Level: Rotting Hill. This place fails at being a level, frankly. The IDEA is great; Start off in debt and with negative modifiers, but the reality is it’s just another slog level where you have to spin your wheels for a while. Speaking of which…
9. Level: Pelican Wharf. Pelican frickin’ Wharf. I say without hyperbole that this is the worst stage in the game. First the level has very long, sloggy requirements that just take an arduous amount of time to do (which honestly all the last few stages do), but then you stack that with this absolute anvil of a requirement for researchers which is bad no matter how you cut it. It’s either a nonstop pain the entire level, or something that artificially pads it out just to hit the finish line…
10. Level: …either way screw that

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Arni. The backdrop painting is legit here, with tons of detailing to get across the tropical coastal village…
2. Brickwork: …great stuff
3. Doodads: And some solid doodading
4. Brickwork: Termina is just as good as Arni. Different architecture, but still plenty of vibes of a bustling port trader city…
5. Brickwork: …another double
6. Spritework: The Cast. I’m honestly surprised at how good these sprites look. Good variety, good silhouette and distinction, good showcasing of personality…
7. Spritework: …for…
8. Spritework: …a full triple
9. Spritework: NPCs similarly have tons of variety and design to them
10. Spritework: Enemies too
11. Spritework: Bosses as well
12. Animations: Similar to its predecessor (no not FF8, FF7) the game does a good job with animations in cutscenes to really make things pop. From people shrinking back in horror, to bespoke cutscenes like being stabbed and reacting to it or walking up a wall to talk to someone, the animations are honestly legit…
13. Animations: …easily deserving…
14. Animations: …a triple
15. Dialogue: Dialects! Several people from several regions speak in several ways. This isn’t quite to the crazy extent of something like FF9 but it’s still a great way to add some flavor and culture…
16. Dialogue: …for a double
17. NPC Set Dressing: Arni, of course. Plenty of people going about their daily lives here
18. NPC Set Dressing: Termina as well, for the same reason
19. Localization: I’ve seen better, but I’ve seen a lot worse too, and a decent amount of effort clearly went into localizing
20. Moment: It’s under-stated, but when we first get to Another Arni the small details and variances from Home Arni are a great way to kind of showcase how off things are before we go talk to Leena and see our grave
21. Cutscene: Lynx’s introduction, Kid’s ‘kidnapping’ of Riddel, and Lynx’s attempt to kill Riddel (which resulted in Kid shoving Riddel to safety… and Kid being poisoned)
22. Cutscene: The Serge swap. I like that it’s not held back or Cassandra Truth’d, and it’s a hell of a moment. This also leads immediately into Harle (finally) joining the party
23. Brickwork: The Dead Sea, and…
24. Visual Storytelling: …all it implies
25. Cutscene: For all that I hate it, the cutscene with Crono, Marle, and Lucca as well as Miguel is well executed, and the first utterance of FATE has its own significance
26. Cutscene: While ultimately vacuous (and contradictory to the entire rest of the story) I do still like the play Nikki puts on. It’s well presented, has great music direction…
27. Dialogue: …and weirdly better writing than most of the rest of the game
28. Characters: There’s a wild and fun variety to the flavor, dialogue, and personality of the game’s many characters. I hesitate to call any of them an actual character (with a few noteworthy exceptions) but they’re still fun for what they are
29. Brickwork: Chronopolis. The city out of time is exactly as pristine and peaceful as it should be, and wonderfully creepy
30. MSQ: For what it’s worth, the one and only part of the game where the three plots collide well is right here in Chronopolis. The revelations of what Lynx really is and Serge’s significance as a ‘fluke’ (as presented here)…
31. Theme: …and, for what it’s worth, I actually really like the idea that in a game all about fate, it was actually all just being controlled by a supercomputer named FATE the entire time. And even then FATE couldn’t fully keep control of events (you’ll notice a significant plot point is that one storm and one kid managed to completely derail its plans)
32. Cutscene: If we remove the Trigger elements from it, Kid’s fate and grief after the loss of her home is pretty well done and honestly quite powerful
33. Characters: Harle. There’s not much there, but there’s enough I think. The bio bot trying to expand beyond her parameters
34. Characters: General (mostly the Dragoons, go figure… considering they are probably the most ‘from the original draft’ characters)
35. Music Direction: General. There’s some good atmosphere throughout
36. Brickwork: I’ll give it this, Dinopolis looks like what an organotech megafacility would look like
37. Cutscene: The developer room ending. Enjoyable in general (weird how many people talk about crunch!) and some neat little showcasings (like the fake reset)
38. Cutscene: Several of the downer endings are weirdly sweet (almost entirely to do with Harle, go figure)

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: MSQ: Total lack of hook. The Intro has nothing going for it
2. Intro: Meandering. Lots and lots of meandering. Honestly this is a pretty big issue for all of Act 1; basically nothing happens that couldn’t be summarized in a single sentence between Viper Manor and the Dragonian Fort
3. Storytelling Mechanic: The Bioware Problem. Almost every one of those 44 characters have unique dialogue for cutscenes. You get to bring 2 at a time (3 in NG+)
4. Theme: Humans suck (and the over-saturation. Seriously, I get it, please stop inserting it into every single scene)
5. Story Sequencing: Act 1. There’s just these giant gaps of nothing in between events that do not properly connect to each other…
6. Pacing: …and events happen almost seemingly out of order with each other
7. MSQ: The entire segment with Fargo, Irenes, and Nikki is… off. Plot points flung at each other, weird melodrama, lots of presumptions immediately taken as truth, just a whole lot of bad writing in one tight box
8. MSQ: I also just am not feeling anything to do with this weird side story (main story?) about Einlanzer, Radius, and the Masamune
9. External Continuity: Theme. Chrono Trigger is an unapologetically optimistic game, and the tone of it is near universally positive. It posits the idea that thanks to will and choice and hard work one can make things better. And so we do. The moment we hit the Dead Sea in CC all of that is flung out the window in favor of bleak existentialism where we’re told that, no, each time we changed history we condemned countless lives to oblivion. I cannot describe this as anything other than spitting in the face of CT…
10. External Continuity: …so…
11. External Continuity: …screw this
12. Writing: Miguel’s significance to the Dead Sea. Why is he the lynchpin? Why was he preserved here when other things happened to the others? In fact why is he here at all considering he should be at Chronopolis? Not answered
13. Writing: What exactly the Dead Sea is and why it operates the way it does? Why is it a physical place where time has collapsed and condensed into itself into a nonsense smorgasborg? Why does it have anything to do with anything? Why can it be physically destroyed by FATE? Not answered
14. External Continuity: Humans are created by the metaphorical devil, which is a retcon of course but more to the point is a bad retcon
15. External Continuity: Killing off Lucca and burning the orphanage down is honestly just spitting in the face of Trigger in such a spiteful and pointless way
16. Writing: ‘Lynx’ not going directly to his goal and instead just roaming around being evil (see: plot grafting)
17. External Continuity: The plot of Chrono Trigger. I could spend some time explaining how much this doesn’t make sense on any level, between bad retcons, nonsensical grafting, and otherwise…
18. External Continuity: …so…
19. External Continuity: …there’s that negative
20. External Continuity: The plot of Radical Dreamers. Yes it also doesn’t connect well here
21. Plot: Hokay, I’m not going to type all of these up, so lemme instead make this clear. When Trigger was mandated to be bolted on to whatever this game was originally called, a lot of plot holes fell into the gaps. So let’s just cover them in brief shall we? First, Serge. Why is Serge significant? Why is he the one Schala reached out to, of the dozens and hundreds and thousands of people? Not answered
22. Plot: The Darkness Beyond All Time is where Schala ended up. Why? Not answered. It’s ALSO where Lavos ended up despite being physically destroyed. Why? Not answered.
23. Plot: Why does Kid exist at all? In the original version where Kid was the main protag this is fine. Even with Kid being the ally to Serge it’s fine. But the daughter-clone of Schala? What the hell
24. Plot: Why did the dimensions split, once, with this one change by Kid? If the presumption is that it was the time travel that’s awful (and not discussed), if every decision makes a split there was no need for the massive effort to make these two specific dimensions
25. Plot: Why and how did the dimensions re-merge at the end?
26. Plot: What is the Crono Cross and why does it have the power to do… anything that it does? What does being a piece of two OTHER artifacts (who’s demonstrated power is ‘changing bodies’) fulfill it being the super macguffin?
27. Plot: Why was Lucca’s orphanage targeted AND why did she go down like a punk?
28. Plot: Why did Crono, Marle, and the entire kingdom go down like chumps to Porre? (do note Dalton isn’t even mentioned in Cross, but if you consider the Dalton plot point this actually makes LESS sense)
29. Writing: Lynx being our dad (except not really) has NO significance whatsoever
30. Outro: True ending nonsense. Weird, vague comments that drift in and out of character and also is super vague and nonsensical…
31. Outro: …plus that awful final shot…
32. Outro: …of frickin’ Shibuya
33. Internal Continuity: Issues related to Trigger. By the way, this is funny in its own way because in several cases even if you ignore how much they conflict with CT, they also conflict with CC! Why did Schala and Lavos end up in the Darkness Beyond Time despite going there two totally different ways? And Schala ended up willingly merging with Lavos but then resisted it constantly? And just… a lot of other problems…
34. Internal Continuity: …so enjoy that double

Gameplay Positives:

1. Grind: This is arguably a bad thing too (see more in the negatives), but the game is very anti grind. Major bosses (there’s some asterisks here, let’s just skip over that) give star levels, aka party level. Your whole party is the level of your Party Level so no need to catch someone up or grind because you’re already there. After a boss you get a few small stat ups from trash (which ‘run out’ at a certain point, meaning you get nothing from trash from then onwards). While there are some issues here, this is still a great system…
2. QoL: …and also allows you to bring whichever party members you want to
3. QoL: Auto healing after battle (with or without items) to use up excess elements. This also encourages you to build up elemental grid during a battle even if you don’t use it in battle (so it can be used after battle to heal. This can also impact element slotting strategy)
4. Core Mechanic: Elemental grids themselves. Functionally this is D&D spell slots, but a lot more malleable. The slots themselves are the usual, the grid varying based on character is obvious, but also…
5. Kit: …each Element has a range of slots it can go into. So your Fireball can be 1 to 8, for example, but some things can only be 1, or some require a higher thing and can be 4 to 8, or whatever. This allows for a lot of options in kitting out your team
6. Itemization: Loot distribution is actually pretty solid. Most dungeons have plenty and most enemies drop crafting mats…
7. Itemization: …for a double
8. Info In Game: This is so weird considering it’s also a negative, but on some things the game is quite informative on what does what and how
9. Kit: There’s not a lot of cool stuff here, and there’s some obvious design flaws in it (I could really go into detail here but let’s just say FF7 and CT both do a better job of the same concepts) but there’s still some nice buffs, debuffs, environment changers, etc.
10. Replayability: This is a perfect example of how this review system works. I will NEVER touch this game again, but that doesn’t change the fact that the game does quite a bit to encourage replay, earning it the second replayability positive
11. Music: Similarly, there is a decent amount of decent music throughout
12. NG+: More or less the same positives CT got. Just about everything carries over into a new game and it doesn’t screw with you, charge you, or mandate things…
13. NG+: …for an easy…
14. NG+: …triple
15. QoL: Fleeing from bosses. This doesn’t always work, and sometimes all you can do is hit the menu, but this is still a great quality of life feature. In a LOT of games there’s moments where a boss comes out of nowhere, when you’re least expecting it, and that can suck. But what’s MUCH worse is when a boss attacks you (whether you know it’s coming or not) and has some specific weakness or attack or gimmick you couldn’t possibly have known about. Rather than forcing you back to the last save, having this ability to flee makes it so you can essentially hit ‘redo’ on the fight and have another go at it
16. QoL: The ‘optimize’ button, aka the ‘fill all’ for elements button. It’s not perfect, but it’s a nice way to fill out the rest quickly, in variety, and/or if you don’t care about the specifics
17. Encounter Rate: Avoidable encounters in dungeons. This varies from dungeon to dungeon, but overall it stays good with exceptions…
18. Encounter Rate: …throughout
19. Core Combat: The core combat in this game is honestly really solid. You have stamina which you spend to do actions (1, 2, or 3 depending on the strength of the attack, or 7 for a spell). Stamina is recovered by someone ELSE taking an action (such as spending Stamina) or defending. You can then attack with Elements, and/or the aforementioned attacks. All of this makes for a startlingly dynamic, intuitive, and interesting combat system…
20. Core Combat: …for a full…
21. Core Combat: …triple positive
22. Level: Viper Manor. Multiple side areas, decent loot, nice variety of ‘talky’ and ‘fighty’ and ‘trappy’. Also had some minigame stuff leading up to it
23. Level: The Earth Dragon Place. It’s not much but there’s some actual level design here. Loops, traps, enemies being part of the solution, even some NPCs to help out
24. Level: Another minor but still extant level with some actual design to it; Chronopolis. The bot puzzle, the elevators, the enemies with clear weaknesses, the bosses that aren’t bullcrap marathons
25. Difficulty Curve: With a few exceptions, it’s pretty smooth of a curve
26. Enemy Design: Honestly yeah. Almost all of what they can do is based on what you can do and it works
27. Enemy Variety: Similarly there’s plenty of types of enemies you need to balance around
28. Sound: Feedback design is pretty legit

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Seconds In Minutes: Combat. Every little thing just takes too long, a very common problem in this era of PS1 RPGs really
2. Unskippable Cutscenes: Usual
3. Walkthroughitis: Recruiting party members in general (and getting summons and level 7 techs)
4. Save: Save point distribution is… not great. Often an entire dungeon has only one save, occasionally two
5. Difficulty Curve: There are several key moments where the difficulty curve very suddenly gets way too easy or way too hard
6. Info In Game: Mechanics and spell effects. I’ve seen worse, but honestly there’s just weird holes in how much the game explains and doesn’t. It feels like an early SNES RPG, not a late PS1 RPG
7. Itemization: Stealing. Only three characters can steal, one is a periodic character who you sometimes don’t have and one is optional. So this already sucks…
8. Core Mechanic: …but then stealing itself is just aggravating. It has a chance to succeed, enemies can have multiple items that it’s possible to steal from them, but upon spawning the enemy (not sure exactly when) they spawn which item they have on them. And they only have that one item
9. Core Combat: Magic field and enemy usage thereof. So the magic field is a neat idea in several ways, but what really doesn’t work about it is a lot of enemies (and especially bosses) are color X (the specific color does not matter) and use attacks of color X. Meaning they just sort of slowly, naturally take over the field. YOU are encouraged to also color the field an entire color, but you basically cannot because the enemy is constantly throwing interruptions in your field. With a bit of polish I think this could really work, as is it’s almost not worth bothering with to the extent that it could be (Or, phrased a different way, this could be a huge tactical thing and instead it’s just surface level)
10. Core Combat: “Falling behind” in the stamina loop if anybody dies. Due to the (cool, interesting) way you regain stamina, if a party member dies your entire party starts literally falling behind the curve in stamina generation, snowballing your defeat
11. Power Progression Curve: First, staircase leveling. I know what you’re thinking, isn’t that a good thing? Well normally yes, but the thing is each power increase is so substantial that it becomes more or less mandatory… and, uh, well…
12. Grind: …there is no alternative. If you’re a bit behind or have some issues or whatever then it sucks to be you because there IS no grinding. There’s no backup option. This gets worse when you consider…
13. Walkthroughitis: …how aggravating it is even knowing what upgrades are or how to get them. Those weapon upgrades, for example, are an incredibly boost to output and outside of the beginning of the game good luck finding these without a guide. This also runs into two other big problems…
14. Power Progression Curve: …first, if you have a party member who’s dead when a boss dies, that massive bundle of stats you would have gained are just gone. Your ‘level’ goes up, but you don’t get those bonus stats. They’re gone, poof! This actually gets even worse because these bonus stats almost always include health, making that character MORE likely to die in the next boss fight, leading to them…
15. Power Progression Curve: …falling behind and never getting caught back up
16. Kit: Also spells in general taper off in usefulness pretty hard pretty early. The moment I started focusing on support magic and meleeing is the moment the game got a lot less irritating
17. Graphics: Gross. I’m sorry, the Isle of the Dead is gross. It looks gross and it sounds gross
18. Intro: This is… an acceptable Intro. Kind of. I’m not super impressed and they throw some weird enemies at you early and a strange dungeon and generally don’t tutorialize anything, but the flash forward offers at least a taste of what’s to come
19. Encounter: Beeba. It has absolutely no mechanics to it, it’s just a giant pile of health that summons adds who ALSO have a giant pile of health
20. Boss: Wingapede. This is just a mean fight out of nowhere, who is difficult to control and has a desperation attack that can absolutely body you
21. Boss: Pentapus is… awful. I mean sure it’s a giant pile of health that hits you for 70 a smack but like, the real problem is it’s weak to red. Let me be clear; the game makes it very clear what enemies and bosses are weak to, it’s right in their tooltip when you select them. So you KNOW it’s weak to red. If you attack it with red it counterattacks with a superdoom nuke. What… in the world is this nonsense? In what world is the player actively penalized for using the weakness of the boss on said boss? Screw this fight…
22. Boss: …and everything about it
23. Level: Encounter Rate: For some reason the ghost pirate ship just absolutely spams you with enemies. Enemies in tight corridors where you can’t dodge them, and enemies that spawn on your face while you’re in a conversation with an NPC
24. Seconds In Minutes: So here we are again. My old friend. The game was honestly ‘fine’ about this until about the point we hit the Viper Manor, at which point everything just… started taking longer. Too many floors of dungeons where you have to walk for too long across it to even see the puzzle, or lengthy walkbacks in order to interact with a switch, or constant pauses to enter and navigate the menu, or taking too long to simply navigate a town, or taking too long for entering and exiting combat, and a dozen more. The entire game constantly wastes your time in hundreds of little ways which is exactly what Seconds In Minutes MEANS fundamentally. So consider this…
25. Seconds In Minutes: …an aggregate…
26. Seconds In Minutes: …triple. I may give more on a case by case basis
27. Level: Seconds In Minutes: So yeah, Viper Manor. Not helped by gigantic health pool enemies or having to ‘loop’ several times
28. Level: Backtracking: Also the ghost ship. This is NONSENSE because this ship is SO small yet it feels like it’s huge because it requires going back and forth through it a bare minimum of three times
29. Level: Seconds In Minutes: Speaking of which; Fort Dragonia. Most of these puzzles are relatively easy to piece together (more on that in a second) but they take entirely too long to implement once you do
30. Level: Also one of the puzzles is absolutely impossible unless you know what the select button does. Nothing indicates what the select button does. You can figure out ‘what to do’ (have the party in the right order) almost immediately too
31. Padding: Enemy health in general. Everything just has way, way too much health and even if you’re on the cutting edge of gear and stats every single fight is dragged out (especially bosses, though I’ll be noting those individually from now on)…
32. Padding: …so…
33. Padding: …enjoy that triple
34. MSQ: The entirety of the Zelbess segment is very moon logic in how its progression works (and is mandatory) and takes too long
35. Boss: Highwayman, and the boss health of doom
36. Boss: All the Viper Manor 3 bosses and the wonderful health pools
37. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out what to do and how to find the dragons in general
38. Boss: Black Dragon and the eternal health. (This boss fight took us TEN minutes of just… fighting and healing)
39. Boss: Also the Red and Yellow and Blue Dragons
40. Walkthroughitis: Good luck even figuring out how to START finding the Green Dragon
41. Kit: Summons in general. Set up an entirely monochromatic field, cast, and then they suck
42. Crafting: Summons also being (sort of) mandatory for crafting rainbow gear, which is ALREADY locked behind super rare rainbow shells, optional recruits, an entire side quest, AND a hidden cutscene
43. Walkthroughitis: By the way, everything I just said
44. Seconds In Minutes: Traveling between dimensions, for how often we do it, really should not take this long
45. Outro: Level: Long swaths of nothing, irritating enemies, boring music (or absence of music!), no actual level design to speak of. This wouldn’t be a good level in general…
46. Outro: Level: …and it’s even worse…
47. Outro: Level: …as the final dungeon
48. Outro: Walkthroughitis: All the bosses at the end are very ‘hope you know the fight and brought the right kit for them’
49. Outro: Boss: Where do I even start with this thing. Okay so first, the Time Devourer has a ton of health if you want to go that route, but let’s be honest… that’s not why it’s here. If it was just a giant pile of health that does random stats this would merely be a single negative for being a boring final boss (and much worse than the Dragon God right before it). But what really drags it down…
50. Outro: Boss: …is the sequencing. This is so finicky and partially RNG based because you need the right hits to hit at the right times for the right amounts in order to line everything up to bypass the Time Devourer screwing you over by counter-casting and screwing up your entire sequence. You need to hit the six spells in order, TD can interrupt you, and any screw up means starting over…
51. Outro: Boss: …screw this nonsense
52. Outro: Walkthroughitis: Also good luck figuring any of this out. It’s relatively easy to figure out that you want to do something with the spells and sounds, but specifics? Especially with TD interrupting you? Nah, bring a guide

Story Positives:

1. Dialogue: Let’s get this out of the way; this game has EXTREMELY good dialogue. Some of the best in the business, even to this day. Let’s just go ahead…
2. Dialogue: …and give this…
3. Dialogue: …a solid triple
4. Dialogue: But wait, there’s more! Because there’s also distinct dialects depending on where people are from
5. Babylon 5 Effect: Plenty. Honestly this game starts off so en medias res I’m shocked anybody could latch onto it their first time, but everything lines up very neatly the second time around…
6. Babylon 5 Effect: …for an easy double
7. World Building: General. There’s not much in the first third of the game, but there is some, and what’s there (the Dustmen, the city, the Lady of Pain) is good stuff
8. Tone: Normalcy alongside the weird. This is the key ingredient so many ‘weird’ fictions miss; it needs to have the normal, everyday, understandable alongside the fantastical to really make it work for the viewer/player/reader. And there’s a wonderfully mundane way that all the insane stuff works in this game
9. Music Direction: Atmospheric, creepy, and horrifying all in one bundle
10. Storytelling Mechanic: Truth, Lies, Vows, et cetera. These options add some wonderful roleplaying flavor to the player
11. Intro: I mentioned earlier that it’s weird how in the middle the plot starts, but it does manage to establish several very good hooks very quickly. Who you are, where you are, and where’s my stuff. These hit three different archetypes of players pretty well too (philosophical, logical, pragmatic)…
12. Intro: …and add onto that the Intro doing everything in its power to set the tone as adamantly as it possibly can. I mean seriously, the game starts off in a morgue where the mindless undead are your primary NPCs, and most of the people here who CAN talk are desiccated husks or rotting shamblers
13. Secondary: Angyar’s little side quest is fascinating and yet another bit of insight into the Dustmen and, frankly, how much financial power they really have over the Hive. The showcasing of their own little hubs, their own enforcers, the large numbers of enslaved undead, and all from the perspective of a simple wife who wanted to save her husband
14. Secondary: Ingress is another wonderfully down to earth yet also weird story arc. The woman who stumbled here by accident and has been lost ever since, whom we can kindly help return home
15. Plot: The tragedy of Deionarra
16. Prime Opt: Mebbeth’s quest chain. It’s… not great gameplay wise, but each step really is substantial and significant to what magic is (the Art as they call it) and helping someone to learn how to use said magic. The importance of belief and will, the relevance of meaning behind ritual, and being sufficiently observant to recognize the value in things that might otherwise seem unimportant
17. Integration: The in lore explanation of how playing a Mage works
18. Prime Opt: Dak’kon’s story about Limbo, about the Githzerei, and about how the Practical Incarnation enslaved him is wonderfully haunting and horrifying
19. Prime Opt: The Silent King and the Many-as-One are a great duo and functional capstone to the first act (indeed, two of the major quests towards the end of Act 1 revolve around dealing with both). On the one hand is a pile of bones which undead slavishly follow, and on the other is a swarm of cranium rats who are no where near as powerful as they portray themselves to be. In both cases they live unpleasant lives and make life worse for everyone else nearby
20. MSQ: The entire sequence of arcs across the first act manage one thing very well; they invest me. The entire story is extremely personal, and almost every step on that path is similarly personal (helping a man find his sister, helping a monk recover his necklace, helping an old woman get her wash from the marketplace, et cetera). All of this drags the camera way down to ground level and keeps it there…
21. MSQ: …and that’s…
22. MSQ: …awesome
23. Secondary: I’m going to give a bonus positive for the dozen or so nice, simple, and fun quests throughout Act 1 and the Hive…
24. Secondary: …and by that I mean…
25. Secondary: …three
26. Moment: “Don’t trust the skull”
27. NPC Set Dressing: The Lower Ward
28. Prime Opt: Recruiting Falls From Grace’s quest chain. There’s some really well written, fascinating stuff here, and the brothel itself is such an engaging idea; A place where people can converse to satisfy the mind
29. Cutscene: Morte’s revelation, the… stark and horrifying contrast between what he says and what we remember our previous self doing, and of course the final step. “Trust the skull”
30. Moment: Unfulfilled Desire is such a horrifying concept. She eats your ability to want something, and the way it’s described is amazing
31. Background Lore: So the Paranoid Incarnation dips his toes into the story a few times in the Wards. We find out how he died (first, actually) because he attacked a former incarnation’s lover… and that starts the trend of tragic irony. The Paranoid consistently screws only one person over with his insanity. Himself. Meanwhile we also find out that he left a scroll behind for one of the people ‘wanting to steal his body’ (future incarnations) which nearly kills us. We also see he left a specific trap in the Sensorium to trap us there forever, where we get to interact with ‘him’ for the first time directly. We also find his journal in this segment, which gives plenty of insight into how diseased of a person he really was. And it’s all so horribly frustrating because the Practical did a lot to make sure future incarnations would be set, and the Paranoid UNdid so much of it. And the final amusing beat? Paranoid also is the reason we can retain memory across deaths, but he did it so HE would retain his memory. Imagine the horror if he’d succeeded; a truly immortal Paranoid. Either way this is all great stuff…
32. Background Lore: …easy…
33. Background Lore: …triple
34. Internal Continuity: While it causes some issues on the gameplay axis, it’s worth noting the game keeps very tight note of what happens within it. I’ve heard some people say it has Small World Syndrome because of how many interconnecting threads there are (and how many of those have to do with our previous incarnations) but I disagree on two points. First, SWS is entirely overblown in general. Second, we only interact with a miniscule fraction of the people in Sigil, so it’s not like everyone in this stupid city knows us. Either way…
35. Internal Continuity: …easy double
36. Cutscene: Deionarra’s sensation is the single best scene in the entire game. I cannot do it justice, but suffice to say that it is a horrifying and powerful insight into three people; Practical, her, and us…
37. Cutscene: …so that’s…
38. Cutscene: …an easy triple, but wait…
39. Writing: …I have to give bonus credit to how incredibly well it writes the fluid perspective shifts between the three throughout the scene
40. Cutscene: Ravel torturing someone into leaving a memory in the Sensorium is already brilliant, her utilizing this to connect across time and talk with us is even cooler
41. MSQ: Ravel. The entire Ravel segment is nothing short of fantastic. For the second time I feel any summary I give will not be sufficient…
42. MSQ: …so…
43. MSQ: …just take that triple
44. Writing: No I lied, here’s a bonus point for how incredibly creative Avellone is with Ravel’s dialogue
45. MSQ: The entire lead up to the finale, with desperately trying to fix Curst and its placement in the planes
46. Writing: How our immortality works. This is wonderfully horrifying, well written, consistent, and reframes half the game…
47. Writing: …easy double
48. Character: Morte. The skull filled with regret, who will do whatever he can to help, while being hilarious
49. Character: The Nameless One himself shows a lot of personality in several of his dialogue options. There’s plenty to be inferred here about him and what it tends to come across as is he’s the straightman. The only sane person in a sea of insanity and that’s brilliant because… that’s us. We, the players, live in mundane reality and look at all the weird abnormal stuff of Planescape and boggle our eyes at things that, to them, is just a tuesday
50. Character: The Hive has a wonderful array of interesting and memorable characters…
51. Character: …easy double
52. Character: Lower Ward has a nice spread too
53. Character: Clerk’s Ward has some wild ones
54. Character: Fall From Grace is another fascinating example of a character. Deliberately pushing against her nature for her own reasons
55. Character: Ravel. This is a great example of a multifaceted, horrifying, tragic character
56. Character: Paranoid and Practical. Both of them are fascinating in how horrible they are for totally different reasons, and the sheer amount of pain and tragedy both cause is crazy to consider
57. Outro: The final dungeon is wonderfully horrible and brilliant in its last few tidbits, leading to…
58. Outro: …the final encounter with our previous dominant Incarnations
59. Outro: The final boss. Yes, this is a story positive for it, because they do some wonderful stuff here and brought their A Game in making this feel like the climax it is…
60. Outro: Writing: …also bonus points for how much of a triumphant victory lap it can feel like
61. External Continuity: The Planescape setting in general is quite well used here
62. Theme: Belief, regret, torment. These three thematic beats are recurrent, echoing in literally every single major interaction with every character in the game (except for the weird empty segment of Curst)

Story Negatives:

1. Voice Acting: Inconsistent voice acting
2. Brickwork: I’m sorry but the game looks… bad. Murky, blurry, grey, and brown. I get that it’s supposed to be a slum and a dump but wow, the game just looks terrible
3. Spritework: Honestly, bit of a ditto here. I get that it’s just the era but you couldn’t have come up with more than this nonsense? In some cases the descriptors describe someone who looks nothing like their generic appearances
4. Brickwork: I have to give special mention to how amazingly boring so many of the areas post-Curst look. Earlier areas were bleh looking but this looks like someone threw it together in an afternoon
5. Pacing: Post Curst is just… weird. This whole segment is a weird section of non-story and is paced VERY strangely
6. Outro: The actual final ending is entirely too abrupt and unsatisfying for what it is, especially since it’s possible to reach this point with no actual explanation for what’s going on

Gameplay Positives:

1. QoL: Quickloot is such an under-rated quality of life feature. Pop it up and it just sits there, showcasing all loot on the ground in a radius around you, and you can then click or drag loot straight from that bar
2. Saves: Quick and easy saves
3. Saves: Quicksaves and quickloads…
4. Saves: …and multiple quicksave/load slots
5. Choice: Probably the single best element of gameplay in the game, the Choice Gameplay. As I’ve said dozens of times, having well designed and varied choices which have an impact on what happens (in stats, reactions, and routes) is awesome and it’s one of the things CRPGs should be good at. Fortunately Planescape is this in spades, so we’ll be giving these on a per area basis. First up, the Mortuary, which has plenty of options and methods that can change things up
6. Choice: Speaking of which, the entire Vows, Truth/Lie system is fantastic. It’s not just a roleplaying thing, but it has stat impact and can change how quests go later
7. Choice: The Hive has tons of good Choice Gameplay. In honesty most of these are one or two options per quest, but there’s a solid dozen or two quests in the area…
8. Choice: …so that’s awesome
9. Intro: All Roads Lead To Rome: The Mortuary does a lot right to indicate what the game is and how to proceed. Multiple paths, options, etc. You’re really only limited by the vehicles available (talk, skill check, and kill) and any combination of those three is fine if you can swing it
10. All Roads Lead To Rome: Hive quests. There’s a lot and most only really have one or two choices, but that adds up to some decent gameplay over time
11. Integration: The in gameplay explanation of how playing a class works (when switching by talking to trainer NPCs / party members)
12. All Roads Lead To Rome: The Lower Ward quests, of course
13. Choice: And of course there’s plenty of choice gameplay here
14. All Roads Lead To Rome: I’m just repeating myself at this point but the Clerk’s Ward also has some solid branching
15. Choice: And the Clerk’s Ward also has plenty of Choice gameplay… in fact it has a bit more than the Lower Ward…
16. Choice: …for a solid double
17. Boss: Ravel. No, not the actual fight, that’s pathetic. No the boss encounter is fantastic, with an absolutely insane number of options here and plenty of failure points
18. Replayability: The second positive, as any CRPG really should receive
19. Outro: Boss: The Transcendent One. Again, a dialogue boss, and a very well done one

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Interface: Lack of feedback on skill checks and whether or not something is succeedable
2. Interface: A truly awful interface in general. Interactions, clicks, navigation… it’s a bit better than it would have been back in the day but it’s still something you really need to get used to and just settle into the mindset of…
3. Interface: …so enjoy…
4. Interface: …that 90s interface fun
5. HUD: The HUD isn’t… actually nearly as bad as some others of the era. But it’s still pretty hard to parse what’s going on, most especially in combat (which is real time with pause so unless you pause constantly it’s easy to fall behind). The fact that it’s difficult to tell basic things like ‘who’s attacking whom’ at a glance is not great in a game where you can die so quickly and easily if you fall behind…
6. HUD: …nevermind things like spell effects and the all too brief damage numbers
7. Controls: Nothing overtly bad, just a lot of little issues
8. Inventory: VERY limited inventory. In fact you have not only limited inventory weight, but size as well. And you can carry a TON of things…
9. Inventory: …and quest items take up space, of course
10. Audio: UPDATED MY JOURNAL
11. Core Combat: It’s… not good. That’s the nicest way I can put it. Melee combat involves clicking something and waiting until it dies. Mage combat involves two button presses (which is nice) and casting your spells… and then about 5 casts later just standing there because you’re tapped. This is uninteresting, uninvolved, and is probably at least one of the reasons so many people for so many years have said…
12. Core Combat: …the game…
13. Core Combat: …would be better without it. And now we know, because Disco Elysium exists
14. Overworld: Vendor placement and… actually everything placement, really. Where what is seems to have had no thought put into the gameplay aspect of things at all. This also runs into…
15. Visual Navigation: …issues telling where you can go in several zones. Arches that can be passed under and ones that can’t have no real visual distinction, and where exits and doors are is mostly a matter of just mousing over and finding out
16. Encounter Rate: Hive Thugs (who run!) are entirely too prolific in the Hive. They become useless inside of a single level up and drop absolute crap
17. Enemy Design: Or lack thereof. Would you like ‘enemy’ or ‘enemy who has spells’?
18. Backtracking: Quite a bit in the quest design of the Hive. There are multiple quests which are, literally, talk to someone in another zone, talk to someone in yet another zone, and then go back to a third zone to talk to someone…
19. Backtracking: …I’ve seen worse, but not often
20. Guidance: Good lord. Good luck figuring out what to do early on, as only your incredibly vague guide of ‘find Pherod’ just involves you talking to every single person in the game world and asking them the same two questions, and to be honest even of this moment I couldn’t tell you which of those peoples’ responses led me to finally finding the guy
21. Early Game: The early game hell is not great. Lots of trash encounters and very few options, but it’s even worse if you didn’t specifically build yourself towards either talking through everything or fighting through everything. The game actually double dips on its Early Game Hell because of this…
22. Early Game: …earning it a double
23. Itemization: Spells. Oh don’t mistake me you eventually get a nice arsenal but there’s an entirely too large swath of the game where you get jack, and are honestly better served by not even being a mage. (I’m not even getting into mage balance, we’ll cover that later)
24. Secondary: Quests are… not good. They’re not awful, they’re just boring
25. Kit: So, hey, spells. Some of the later spells are cool (see above) but honestly that’s… it for kit, and there’s just such a huge detriment to being a mage for so long. This also dovetails into…
26. Kit: …early DnD mages in general. I’m sorry, nothing will ever convince me that DnD mages were anything other than awful. Extremely limited spell selection (to use, I mean, obviously your actual spellbook is extensive) and the added frustration of having to pre-memorize is not great. It either means you just live without, focus on doing one thing really well and hope you get lucky (hope you aren’t fighting fire elementals with those 4 fireballs you memorized, for example)…
27. Padding: …or you force padding by making the player constantly go rest to change and refill spells, which is a whole thing in Planescape…
28. Walkthroughitis: …OR you force the player to keep an eye on a walkthrough at all times to see what’s coming and be prepared
29. Core Mechanic: THAC0 and AC are both ass backwards and stupid. Yes I know this is a second edition thing but it’s still in the GAME
30. Inventory: Limited space, quest items take up space…
31. Walkthroughitis: …and GOOD LUCK knowing what’s a quest item or not. This wouldn’t be as bad if junk items didn’t exist (no I don’t mean Junk, but like items with no use, of which there are several) but because there are, and because they take up space, and because of the inventory limitations, there’s
32. Walkthroughitis: Lower Ward. This is just me repeating myself but good luck figuring out how to do half of this crap
33. Walkthroughitis: Clerk’s Ward. Again. Because good lord the way these things connect has no real logic at all
34. Prime Opt: Modron Dungeon. No, seriously, this is just a long, boring, empty maze…
35. Level: …and, worse, it’s actually really easy to get pretty turned around in this nonsense due to it being non-geographic
36. MSQ: Curst. There’s… nothing to this friggin’ place, but normally that’d be a non positive/negative situation but… well, the quests that are here are legitimately badly designed. It gets worse coming up…
37. Level: Encounter Rate: …under Curst Prison. This place is AWFUL. There are literally dozens upon dozens of the same damned enemy who is just a giant pile of stats in relatively small and narrow corridors…
38. Enemy Design: …so between the quantity and the bleck of the design, this whole segment sucks
39. Walkthroughitis: Curst, Prison, and Pillar. All of these steps have plenty of ‘screw you’ moments if you don’t know what you’re doing
40. MSQ: Baator and the Pillar. Honestly this is just another array of boring empty areas with ton upon ton of boring, stat’d enemies
41. Pacing: Post Curst. Seriously, this whole sequence is bizarre in its pacing…
42. Padding: …and large swaths of it are dragged out to make it feel longer than it is
43. Outro: Encounter Rate: The final dungeon’s encounter rate is bonkers. There are far too many Shadows here. Oh I know what you’re thinking, ‘maybe don’t die so much’, but no. We only had one non-mandatory death and it was STILL swarmed. Imagine how bad it is for a player who doesn’t know what’s coming…
44. Outro: …so, for that extra bit of trolling, enjoy that double
45. Enemy Variety: The whole game doesn’t understand what ‘variety’ means in combat
46. Kit: Also Thiefs just straight up suck
47. Viscerality: Lacking on all three axis

Story Positives:

1. Storytelling Mechanic: Portraits and expressions. I’m also particularly fond of how they manage to get different emotions out of the same portraits based on context
2. Background Lore: Books and newspapers. These are some nice foreshadowing, flavor lore, and general immersion
3. Doodads: Rolent and related areas. The whole place really gets across that rural wilderness vibe
4. Brickwork: Rolent, again, and for basically the same reasons
5. World Building: Rolent… again. The rural area with an agricultural focus, plenty of exports, and mayors (barons!) which are elected
6. Cutscene: Estelle reciting her final memories of her mother on the clocktower. I’ll be honest, this game has a bit of an issue with not just Empty Text but also generally poorly written and/or localized segments, but then there’s moments like this scene and these just shine
7. Brickwork: Bose, the mercantile trade hub…
8. Doodads: …with some good doodading of market stalls and traders
9. MSQ: Politics in Bose. This entire sequence gets an aggregate for some generally nice storytelling in how the place operates, why it’s such an issue to progress, and of course this is probably my favorite part of the plot overall since it’s one of the few times we actually have a proper regional story arc (keeping with the overall vibe of the down to earth, local storytelling)
10. World Building: Bose. Again, the trade hub which has an inherited mayor (baroness!) who has more overall authority than the Rolent mayor, and far more military presence (which makes sense given the proximity to Erebonia)
11. Moment: Estelle’s reaction to the kid (Lewey) in Ravennue. The kid was mocked by the authority figures (military) and is obviously still hurt by it (he starts crying on the spot) and she immediately moves to comfort him
12. Foreshadowing: Lots, honestly. I won’t cover details for obvious reasons but there’s quite a bit, especially regarding…
13. Writing: …Joshua. Sometimes they’re overt, sometimes they’re bloody subtle, but it’s appreciated in both cases
14. Character: Joshua. He remains an interesting character throughout. A bit of a cold fish, observant, and with plenty going on behind those eyes of his
15. Babylon 5 Effect: Not that much, but there’s some… especially regarding characters
16. MSQ: The burning of the orphanage is exactly as horrifying as it needs to be. Plus the visual storytelling of how exactly the fire is placed
17. Cutscene: The entire confrontation with the mayor (baron!) Dalmore is honestly one of my favorite scenes in the game to date. The fact that the entire orphanage arson plot was about real estate is deliciously mundane and incredibly believable, the fact that jackass himself was still functionally going to ‘get away with it’ until his pride was pricked at which point he immediately escalated to attempted murder is wonderful. Despite the issues with the scene (later implications that it’s the mind control thing again) this was still…
18. Cutscene: …a great moment
19. Brickwork: Grancel Castle. The lightly lavender tone gives across the idea of polished marble and honestly this place just LOOKS expensive (exactly as it should)
20. Plot: The coup plot itself. There’s tons of hints of it throughout, and while I enjoy the more grounded regional idea I honestly don’t think this game actually executed it as well. What it DID do well is the ‘main plot’ (which doesn’t even really start until the end of chapter 3, sigh). The motivations, the build up, and the pay off…
21. Plot: …good stuff, especially regarding…
22. Character: Colonel Richard. This guy has ‘well intentioned extremist’ written all over him, but they manage to add enough layers and character to him to make it work, and he even has nice little moments, such as…
23. Cutscene: Richard’s discussion with Estelle and Joshua in private. This is honestly part of why Richard is such an engaging villain right here; because despite what Joshua says, this is Richard being completely honest. He is fully engaged in his overall plan to ensure that no more tragedies like the one that hit Cassius repeat (among other reasons)
24. Internal Continuity: Good time as any to mention that the game does a pretty damned good job of keeping track of its internal continuity (characters, measurements, locations, dates, etc.)…
25. Internal Continuity: …an easy double
26. Character: Kloe. Adorable, delightful, polite, firm, and massively lacking in self esteem
27. Character: Maybelle. I know it’s weird to single her out but she’s probably my favorite supporting character in the game. Consistently well written and enjoyable, though she’s not alone because…
28. Character: …the entire supporting cast is legit. There are precious few exceptions (and honestly they get their own negatives)…
29. Character: …so enjoy…
30. Character: …this triple
31. Moment: I do like how the entire team supports Estelle ‘taking charge’. It’s entirely symbolic but it’s a necessary step in her growth and they all know that
32. Doodads: Consider this a catch-all aggregate for the areas I missed
33. Foreshadowing: A bonus point for the build up (across almost the entire game, really) for the coup
34. Banter: For as much as there is, there’s still some decent banter throughout
35. Outro: The playable ending with tons of people to talk to and lots and lots of flavor lore and follow up
36. Outro: Writing: The final scene (the actual final scene, with Estelle and Joshua) is noticeably better written than the entire rest of the game

Story Negatives:

1. Character: Estelle and exaggerated character traits. I’ve been chewing on this for a bit and while she does get better later, honestly having to endure over a dozen hours of her being a prat is not good
2. Character: The thief squad. They’re a bit mis-used, go along with things entirely too much, and especially Cosette just causes irritation everytime they (or she) are on screen
3. Empty Text: Rolent area. Yeah I know but we’re going to have a lot of empty text negatives here so I’ll be paying attention per areas as we go
4. Pacing: So the one zone they do well is Bose precisely because it’s a local, regional story that works very well for the overall vibe, plot, tone, and characters (the whole game is low tier, the ‘main plot’ is all about them finishing their requirements to rank up as bracers, this fits the tone of the work being very slice of life, and of course the characters with few exceptions are all very low tier). So after all that praise the thing is… the OTHER zones… don’t. Consider this a negative in particular for Rolent
5. Fake Drama: The General, Estelle, and general nonsense. Yes I get that she’s an idiot (discussed in another point) and yes I understand that the general’s his own brand of idiocy but first of all the game actually treats him like an idiot but treats her like she’s adorable, and second this is just (like the category says) fake drama to needlessly drag out this part of the plot rather than anything logical or reasonable. I honestly cannot believe Shera and Joshua didn’t just leave Estelle outside while visiting the military leader of the friggin’ kingdom
6. Tone: Misogyny for laughs. No further notes
7. Empty Text: The Bose region
8. Cutscene: Duke Asshole’s first appearance. Ignoring the obvious presence of him, the Butler just tries to brush his complete childishness under the rug and literally pay us off. This then gets EVEN worse when we REFUSE the payment and let him have the nice room, giving the tantrum-throwing baby his way just because. This is a dick move to the characters and to the player (especially in a game where Mira is somewhat hard to come by)
9. MSQ: The entire academy segment is very badly placed overall. The entire narrative effectively pauses to do a ‘brief’ school arc combined with a play. Now these types of breather segments can work (and often do, in fact) but here it feels smashed into the narrative very crudely. There’s almost no attempt to connect this to the events prior or after (which are, I remind, one singular plot thread). In fact I was paying attention and they only even REFERENCE the orphanage mystery once in the entire segment. It’s…
10. MSQ: …filler. And not very good filler
11. Empty Text: The Ruan region
12. Character: Agate. He’s abrasive the entire game and doesn’t get better by the 30 hour mark. Screw ‘im
13. Character: The black squads. These people are just designed to be irritating, without the catharsis that comes from defeating them because EVERY time we beat them they just get back up and win immediately. They’re Kai Leng lite
14. Writing: Speaking of, the ENTIRE game has a problem with us beating the crap out of people and then them being totally fine (and winning!) after said battle. What was even the point of said battle then, exactly?
15. Empty Text: Grancel region
16. Cutscene: Duke Asshole flagrantly and openly hitting on teenage (to his knowledge) maids is just over the friggin’ line, and helps cement…
17. Character: …how much of a negative the Duke himself really is. There’s ‘making a character to be hated’ and then there’s ‘get the hell off my screen’ and the Duke crosses this line. Throughout the work, in every one of his scenes, there were opportunities to make him interesting or worthwhile or relevant to the narrative and all of those opportunities were missed…
18. Character: …and that’s on top of him just being unpleasant and generally detracting from every scene he’s in
19. Humor: Okay so the WHOLE game has done this but I think this is officially the moment which pushes me too hard. The game loves to portray sexual harassment as a joke and… no game. No
20. Pacing: The pacing of this game is difficult to even properly describe to someone who hasn’t played it. I am most reminded of Xenogears, a game where literal hours can pass with nothing happening, alongside entirely too much being crammed into entirely too few…
21. Pacing: …for a double
22. Padding: There is absolutely no getting around this; This game is too long. As always the length itself isn’t the issue, but the gigantic marshmallow piles of story that pad out every single segment of the entire game probably double the overall length of the work…
23. Padding: …and drag it out…
24. Padding: …excessively
25. Outro: The Alba twist. I’ll summarize to avoid spoilers but I don’t feel this was properly built up nor do I think it’s a particularly good scene. It feels like narrative cheating in that, to quote Hitchcock, neither us nor the characters knew the bomb was under the table

Gameplay Positives:

1. Info In Game: Quite a bit, actually. Good tooltips (when they actually show) and…
2. Info In Game: …an entire manual built into the game that lets you peruse tons of helpful information, alongside…
3. Bestiary: …a pretty decent bestiary as well
4. Core Combat: True initiative and turn order effects (such as casting taking a ‘turn’)
5. HUD: Enemy health, stats, weaknesses in combat (assuming you have the quartz that allows it)
6. Core Mechanic: Cooking as a recovery mechanic. This is basically a bonus healing mechanic, but there’s a lot of design baked into it. It’s almost always cheaper than buying straight healing items, and as you eat items (which there are plenty of ways to procure) you learn recipes
7. Encounter Rate: Visible enemies on the overworld and avoidability thereof (though you really need a separate quartz for this to really be useful)
8. Penalty For Failure: The Retry option and the ‘turn down the diff’ Retry option are both great things to help players out
9. QoL: Fast forward. This is honestly somewhat invaluable and really helps pull down the Seconds In Minutes
10. Minimap: Good, for what it is
11. Map: Also good (including the actual world map)
12. Music: Generally good music
13. Saves: Good, easily accessible, and quick saves and loads…
14. Saves: …for a double
15. Saves: Good autosaves (per scene transition)…
16. Saves: …and multiple slots thereof
17. QoL: So you can escape with 100% success rate from enemies, instantly. This is a seemingly small thing but it’s actually a great feature for a lot of reasons (makes most encounters optional, lets you regroup if you’re falling apart, and doesn’t waste the player’s time by penalizing them for attempting to flee)
18. Viscerality: Not too shabby, mostly on the visual and impact side of things. It helps that both Arts and Crafts reign supreme
19. Outro: Playable (mostly optional) endings tend to be nice
20. NG+: Can carry over with a finished save and toggle what carries over (though it doesn’t include everything, it is nice to see individual selections like this)…
21. NG+: …for a solid double

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Difficulty Options: Lazy difficulty, and can only change at the start (of a long game)
2. Controls: The whole game controls… off. On M&K or controller there’s always issues and jank (and probably some bugs, though I’m not 100% sure)
3. Kit: Okay, let’s talk about the Combat Problem this game has. I’m not even sure if I should call it that because it’s such a large scale Problem and dips its toes into so many aspects of game design, but let’s just jump into this and be as thorough as we can, shall we? First, the Kit is wildly unbalanced. Some Arts are useful, some Crafts are useful, and then some are not. Very not. This range…
4. Walkthroughitis: …contributes a bit to the trial and error (or ‘use a walkthrough’) in determining what’s useful and what is not. This itself is a very minor issue, but dovetails into…
5. Grind: …how much the game demands of you early on to be able to have the necessary Sepith to both unlock slots and experiment with Quartz. This is made even worse because…
6. Grind: …not every individual enemy drops all kinds of Sepith (which makes sense) which means you might have to find specific enemies to progress in the type you want/need, which may or may not be readily available or even defeatable based on where you’re at, because on top of that…
7. Enemy Design: …enemies are overtuned. Their health is actually fine (go figure) but their damage output is stupid. Almost every encounter where you get a first strike you’re good, anything else is going to be painful. All of this means you’re struggling to keep up…
8. Power Progression Curve: …which is made even worse because you need that Sepith to progress. Again, Sepith is your PRIMARY form of power progression, and yet is entirely too unrewarding to simply go through the game normally fighting everything you see
9. Seconds In Minutes: As an aside, all of this is made worse due to the lack of QoL which makes combat take just a bit longer than it should thanks to heavy reliance on Arts
10. Power Progression Curve: Back into it. So you have to fight too hard for too little, OR you can go grind shiny poms. I did some math here; killing just one Shiny Pom is worth roughly 20 times as much as an entire trash pack in terms of overall growth (because they give EACH Sepith type per drop). This means that in terms of time investment and reward it’s way more lucrative to take down shinies than it is to just hit normal enemies. This…
11. Enemy Design: …honestly goes against the very point and purpose of what a metal slime is supposed to be. Generally a metal slime is there to provide a nice bonus if the player gets it, or a point specific form of grinding if you use a specific strategy for taking that down (usually in late game), not as ‘the primary leveling loop’. Because they are SO lucrative they overshadow everything else but at early game there’s really only one method of taking them down; S Crafts. What this means…
12. Grind: …is you end up grinding trash mobs to gain CP to be able to kill the Shinies to gain the Sepith to be able to progress. And all of THIS is just the power progression curve issue, because this all also stumbles into another few issues that are part of this Problem…
13. Core Combat: …such as the core combat itself being threadbare at best. There’s very little actual depth here past menuing and…
14. Terrain: …the usage of the grid is functionally useless. There’s no actual terrain just ‘range’ and they don’t do anything with it, but even this is a minor issue until you consider…
15. Core Combat: …how much the game penalizes you for the various methods you have (and as we already discussed are basically mandated to use). Your EP is miniscule and getting the items and/or money to support refilling constantly is a huge deal in early to mid game, so you find yourself falling behind in overall output simply by running dry, and remember…
16. Core Combat: …white damage is USELESS in this game (except to generate CP). It does SO little damage it’s embarrassing, and the difference between living or dying on a trash fight boils down to casting or not. But then we run into…
17. Itemization: …one last problem. And that is that the items that enemies drop and are found in dungeons are just insufficient. I’m reminded of Xenogears in that it feels like there’s no real thought put into what is where, merely scattering random items about. All of this, ultimately, just makes the gameplay axis of the entire game not grindy or boring but an awful combination of both, making it actually frustrating to just… play the game
18. Encounter Design: Enemy quantity and action economy problems
19. Kit: AOEs and targeting vs. when they go off. To wit; there’s a delay in when a spell goes off, and there’s no real predicting enemy movement unless you happen to have a taunt handy (which isn’t a guarantee), and honestly this is just more irritating than anything
20. Encounter: There’s a few ‘escort’ encounters in the game, where you have friendly (or neutral) NPCs with you. They’re totally random, and what the enemies do with them is also totally random. This can be fine, or it can lead to a game over, depending on one thing; random. Not great
21. Walkthroughitis: Finding the books and papers at all, considering
22. Walkthroughitis: Finding side quests isn’t too bad. Finding them at the right TIME (because most are permanently missable) is much worse
23. Level: I won’t be too unkind here but this game does not know what dungeon design means. It reminds me of the worse of the Suikoden games levels. Dull hallways with a handful of encounters, a couple of branching paths with not-thought-out treasure, and nothing to pull them up from the norm. So we’ll be giving negatives everytime there’s either a dungeon or a group of dungeons worthy of calling out. This particular negative is for the Esmelas Tower in Rolent
24. Level: And this one is for the Mine and, far more egregious, the sky bandits’ base
25. Level: One more for the (admittedly optional) Sapphirl Tower
26. Bug: Periodic resolution glitches
27. Itemization: Sepith. Early on (Rolent, specifically) there just is not enough of the right types of Sepith available unless you follow the grind chain (mentioned above) and hit up Shiny Poms
28. Itemization: Sepith. Again. This is for Ruan and, in this case, wind Sepith for the same reasons (I actually checked by the way, there is ONE non miniboss or boss enemy in this region that drops wind. It’s better, as usual, to just hit the Shiny Poms)
29. Itemization: Mira. There’s a lot worth buying and you just do not get the money to offset that
30. Secondary: Though not all are like this, there are several Secondary quests (often unlabeled) which have very limited windows in which you can even do them at all. This is a constant issue but to zoom in on one exact example of this, your have two windows to do quests in Zeiss; Once, when you’re there, have talked to the office, but have NOT gone to the factory (which is the immediate next step) or a solid hour later, before turning in another part of the MSQ
31. Enemy Design: Enemies are very much like FFMQ. They rely a lot on status effects (which is ‘fine’) but also tend to either be extremely weak or ridiculously strong
32. Enemy Variety: They also love to throw the same enemies at us over and over (especially in those damned chests)
33. Encounter Design: They ALSO love to throw giant mobs of enemies at us which really aggravates the whole system (low action economy plus large mobs equals gaaah)
34. Level: I know, try to be shocked, but Carmelia Tower isn’t great either. Let’s ignore the boring level design and instead focus on something else; the difficulty cliff. There are two very irritating chest mobs in here, followed by a boss which combines ranged AOEs that hit like a truck AND guys with high speed who can push your turns back
35. Walkthroughitis: The functional Sten Section of the Zeiss area. At almost every step of the way you are severely hindered on what you can access and when. This is obviously irritating for doing side quests but it also limits the player’s options if they want to do things like buy up stock or unlock slots or even just go grind a bit
36. QoL: The game has a regular function of swapping party members per region (which is fine… good, even) buuut it also lacks all the QoL features necessary to make this quick and smooth like it should be (and, this is not something I 100% verified, but it seems like it’s inconsistent in how often it dumps the equipment and quartz off leaving party members into your inventory)
37. Gotcha: It’s VERY easy to fall into the noob trap of selling Sepith for cash (due to the fact that mira is hard to come by and sepith seemingly isn’t)
38. Encounter: Pretty much every single fight from a certain point onwards is not very well designed. The enemies lean very heavily into status effects (which you can too of course) and more or less rely on either breaking the system to progress or… luck. And nothing feels particularly satisfying about winning because of luck…
39. Difficulty Curve: …and MSQ fights like these probably shouldn’t rely on gameplay exploits in order to progress
40. Camera: Problematic when it’s usable, irritating when it isn’t
41. Level: The sewers! Small, narrow corridors in a samey area with enemies that can petrify, poison, or insta-kill you… great place really
42. Boss: These are both aggregate negatives for… honestly almost every boss in the game, but it gets especially bad from the Penguin (Chapter 3) and onwards. Too much health, too much damage, too many adds, too fast, and nothing to them except piles of stats…
43. Boss: …bleh
44. Outro: The final dungeon is long. Like, way too long, far more so than any other dungeon in the game… and not in a good way
45. Outro: Level: This place is absolutely labryinthine AND has no map AND has samey corridors which (if you don’t have the ‘no encounters’ quartz also runs into being too narrow to properly dodge enemies)…
46. Outro: Level: …for a solid…
47. Outro: Level: …triple
48. Outro: Encounter: 8 enemies that suck all together? How about only 5? What do you mean these enemies all make each encounter a hellscape? They’re only just…
49. Outro: Enemy Design: …incredibly irritating. Tons of status effects and turn cancelling on top of some pure ass RNG…
50. Outro: Enemy Design: …for a double
51. Outro: Boss: Oh lord where do I begin. Three battles back to back is whatever, but all of them are a great encapsulation of all the issues with combat across the game entire. Enemies with Arts cancelling AOEs, trash that has too much health, bosses with too much health, attacks that can just murder you randomly, and the whole thing just drags…
52. Outro: Boss: …on…
53. Outro: Boss: …and on

Story Positives:

1. Background Lore: Historical tidbits in the missions. Most missions have them and there’s some cool little flavor in these…
2. Storytelling Mechanic: …plus the maps. I love the maps showing the progression and locations
3. Brickwork: The Grasslands tileset is legit. Lovely grass (and hills and water and etc)
4. Spritework: Unit designs look fantastic, detailed, and appropriate…
5. Spritework: …easy…
6. Spritework: …triple territory
7. Spritework: The terrain stuff (trees, bushes, resources) are also a treat to behold and make the difference between a desert, an empty plain, or a lush forest
8. Humor: Voice acting. Wololo. Erectus!
9. Background Lore: The ‘fail’ messages are weirdly enjoyable for what they are

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Side Content: Map editor. I’ve seen worse, I’ve seen better, but it’s nice that it’s there and allows some very crude scripting and functionality. The interface kind of drags it down a bit though
2. Minigame: Skirmish mode and options
3. QoL: Villager indicators in the upper left. Shows how many workers you have on what resources, and which ones are idle, along with an idle villager button to select just them
4. Save: Not great, not terrible. Plenty of save slots though
5. Music: Bug aside, the music is pretty legit
6. Info In Game: Not the best, not the worst
7. Tutorialization: Honestly, the first half of the Egyptian campaign is not a bad ‘this is your first RTS’ tutorial. I’ve seen better tutorials, usually doing stuff in mission, but there’s still nothing wrong with this approach
8. Level: Egypt’s campaign has some decent levels. Overall, as an aggregate
9. Level: Greek 6 (Siege of Athens). They couldn’t do an actual Hold The Line mission so instead they give two enemies a massive army, and leave the particulars to you. You can rush in and grab the ‘supplies’ (artifacts) or just wait out the army, as they have no resupply
10. Level: Greek 7 (Xenophon’s March). There’s some legitimately cool enemy placement and terrain design. It’s a weird combination of a No Build and a typical mission (though it is hampered by the issue mentioned in the negatives)
11. Level: Babylon 6 (The Caravan) is… actually decent. The first camp is there to get you some catapults, the second gives you access to a temple, and you start with resources sufficient to fully upgrade your priests and build up to 3 more. Plus you start with 2 priests and a solid army, AND the enemy has nice big delicious mind control targets (elephants) in your way
12. Level: Yamato 1 (The Assassins) is a weirdly solid mission. You start with a hero unit with huge range and visibility, and there are buildings and healers (who can’t move, hah) along the way to help you progress
13. Level: Yamato 2 (Island Hopping) is a solid No Build mission. You start with some pretty solid units (no reinforcements of course) and the enemy is sufficiently passive and spread out to encourage tactics in picking them off as you progress
14. Level: Yamato 3 (Capture) is another one of those decent No Builds. Unlike Babylon 1, you start with multiple Priests and the enemy and terrain are designed to specifically prevent the issues that happened in Babylon 1
15. Level: Yamato 5 (The Canyon of Death) is another solid No Build. We start off on one side of a lot of fortifications in a line (and for once the canyon isn’t too narrow for the pathfinding), followed by a massive brutal slugfest with whatever’s left… but you’re given additional troops (including priests and siege) to deal with it
16. Unit Design: I’ve been chewing on this for a while. We have long established precedent that individual units can garner positives, but in this case I think nothing qualifies. We have ranged, melee, and catapult, and varying speeds of each. That’s it. That being said there is ENOUGH design in several aspects of this that I think the unit roster, as a whole, deserves a positive
17. Level: Rise of Rome 1 (The Birth of Rome) is a much better example of a Rush Build mission, and succeeds where Yamato 6 failed by removing the 3 minute cycle and 16 second timer and replacing it with a soft enrage of slowly escalating enemy attacks
18. Level: Ave Caesar 2 (The Invasion of Britain) still suffers from the same issues that the whole game suffers from, but there’s good design here at least. A good starting spread, useful and varied units which help, nice individual enemies to take down and each with benefits
19. Level: Enemies of Rome 1 (Crossing The Alps) is, despite some frustrations, actually decent. You’re given one hell of an elephant force, the enemy can basically harass you without penalty but mostly in either static ways you can bypass or from a base you’re well equipped to knock over. The finale is the only bullcrap moment but ultimately you can just rush through to the finish line

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Pathfinding: I’ve seen worse. But the pathfinding in this game is pretty damned bad. Units getting traffic jammed, going completely the wrong way, or straight up roaming…
2. Pathfinding: …awful stuff
3. Viscerality: Audio. Battles… don’t sound like battles. They sound awful
4. Viscerality: Visual. I know some people who literally can’t even see the arrows until they get the fire upgrade, and everyone doing the exact same swinging animation over and over doesn’t help anything
5. Core Mechanic: Population cap is one giant pile of awful hanging over the entire game, to the point where it’s almost as bad as the various control and enemy AI issues listed lower. Lemme go into this a bit; So your population cap is 50. It takes very little to reach it (only 390 wood at absolute most) so that’s fine, if weird, but the problem is the cap itself. Every unit takes 1 pop… including workers. You NEED a strong resource line thanks to the other related issues with the game, meaning your actual pop size is about 27 or so, or three full squads of units. And that is incredibly limiting in a game where you want massed units to deal with the increasingly entrenched enemy bases. In reality land this boils down to having three squads assaulting while the next three are already in production to replace them as they die, which contributes to more of the other issue I’ll discuss in a sec. Either way this is so severely limiting on army comp, resource collection, and more or less mandating you focus all your forces into one platoon…
6. Core Mechanic: …earns this…
7. Core Mechanic: …a triple
8. Seconds In Minutes: So, pursuant to what I just mentioned, entirely too much of the game is deliberately designed to take longer than it needs to. Killing, moving, teching, having to rebuild to attack again, the enemy constantly rebuilding (more on that later), everything just…
9. Seconds In Minutes: …pads out…
10. Seconds In Minutes: …the runtime
11. Unit Design: Catapults in general. Or rather, any unit that flings a stone (there are several, static and mobile). These attacks do heavy AOE, like to target the closest enemy which is almost always right on something of yours, leading to a lot of friendly fire incidents. This is on top of the fact that they’re actually pretty niche, and can be totally avoided for the most part, so there’s nothing to make up for their wonkiness
12. Unit Design: Infantry are not good. At absolute best they can function as tanks, but they do not have the speed or damage output to be worth the resource cost, especially considering that there are better options in cavalry (basically just faster infantry) and archers (WAY better at killing). Infantry in a game like this need something special (maybe siege damage?) but as is they’re next to worthless
13. Controls: Selecting units is more irritating than it should be, especially in the heat of battle
14. Controls: Ordering units is more irritating than it should be, especially in the heat of battle. This one’s worse than the previous one because it’s so easy to solve (in fact RTSs that predate this already had solved it), but the issue is you have to select the graphic of the enemy to attack them, not their tile, which is finicky at the best of times…
15. Controls: …so… that sucks
16. Controls: Formations, or issues related thereto. So units tend to stay in formation as they move (cool) but anything can interrupt that, changing their formation (not cool). This can lead to absolutely wild situations like your group of troops being completely separate from each other, and the only way to fix it is to select the ‘stray’ units (see negative 3) to manually shove them back into something approaching formation
17. Controls: Micro. The game actually rewards micro quite a bit (as most RTSs do) but the problem is it’s a colossal pain to do in this game thanks to the aforementioned control issues and the general lack of QoL features, which means EVERY battle is a pain. ALL of them. Because…
18. Enemy AI: …the enemy AI is extremely predictable in a very frustrating way. They will mass a set number of units (determined by the map), select one of your units to attack (almost always a villager or other unit deep inside your line), and just beeline towards it. The only thing that will ‘interrupt’ this is if they cannot reach it (harder to do than it sounds but possible) at which point they’ll attack what’s in the way, or if they come under repeated attack (at which point they’ll counter attack). This means every battle is the worst combination of irritating and boring, all because the enemy AI just keeps up this absolutely nonstop pressure…
19. Enemy AI: …constantly and unendingly. Why, you ask? Well, because of another issue…
20. Difficulty: …the enemy cheats. Yeah I know it’s common for older RTSs but it’s damned annoying here. They do not care about resources or supply lines (they build them essentially as a cosmetic) and they can replenish units quickly and perfectly to rebuild whatever they’re ‘supposed’ to have (set by the mission) and whatever they’re supposed to attack you with (ditto). So the enemy is constantly irritating you and doing so even AS you’re tearing into their bases, because they can do that. They don’t care that you knocked out their supply chain or resource hubs, as long as even a single villager is left the ENTIRE enemy base can be rebuilt from ground up. Quickly. This is exactly as frustrating as it sounds…
21. Factory Worker Syndrome: …and all of this makes almost every mission the worst combination of dull and difficult…
22. Factory Worker Syndrome: …deserving…
23. Factory Worker Syndrome: …a triple negative
24. Bug: No Music issues. What’ll happen is every time a mission is loaded ONE song will play, then it won’t play the rest of the mission (unless you save and reload)
25. Audio Spam: Not as bad thanks to lots of units not having barks, but it’s still there… especially in the attack sounds
26. Level: Egypt 5 (Skirmish), our first Kill All. It’s an irritating, small map where the enemies can spread out and be hard to find and… I mean, it’s a Kill All
27. Level: Egypt 8 (Religion) is… not great. The enemy forces slowly expand towards you, more or less mandating interaction, which activates the enemy, which then leads to them sweeping you, also it’s an inverse escort mission, also priests are mandatory for capturing in a map with VERY little gold (also there’s precious little teching and resources so you’re very limited in your kit). Also the enemy quickly snowballs. This mission…
28. Level: …really…
29. Level: …sucks
30. Level: Egypt 10 (Naval Battle) is almost copy paste from an irritating Warcraft 2 map. You’re on a small island with limited resources, the enemy is on another island, and they harass you constantly. Have fun!
31. Difficulty Curve: Egypt. The difficulty roller-coaster of the Egyptian campaign alone is crazy, having maps that are hard, boring, decent, and frustrating all in one campaign
32. Level: Greek 1 (Claiming Territory) is honestly a typical map, but that’s the problem really. The whole game is like this. Enemies which are laser focused on screwing you over, can attack from multiple vectors, and your objective is to take down defended spots with no siege support at all (pretty much mandating massive food-capped armies) while the enemy is infinitely rebuilding their spots
33. Level: Greek 2 (Acropolis). Nothing uniquely bad, except for the enemy port being behind tons of towers. Otherwise it’s the same irritation every map has
34. Level: Greek 5 (Colonization of Ionia). So we start off on a fairly small island with fairly small amounts of resources. The yellow enemy is pretty pathetic but will harass constantly (as per usual), red (the actual target) is incredibly well entrenched. This whole map is just harassment bait, constantly pushing up against a nonstop tide of enemy skirmishers while slowmoding your way through a silly amount of hardened defenses, and all while facing the soft enrage of limited resources
35. Level: Greek 7 (Xenophon’s March) is BORING. It takes entirely too long to go through. It was a solid 40 minute match when it should have been 10, tops
36. Level: Greek 8 (Alexander the Great) is… weird. Resources are all over the place, but most of the enemies don’t really… do anything. Meanwhile the first few minutes of the match are insanely tight due to having an actual timer in the form of the enemy Wonder
37. Level: Babylon 1 (The Holy Man). This mission is absolutely terrible, and what’s awful is it’s so close to being great. You start with one priest, and there’s two VERY undefended and low tech towns nearby to wipe out or convert. The problems are several. First, you start with no resources at all, which becomes an issue later. Second you have NO support at all, meaning if any enemies aggro your priest he is dead (they will NOT de-aggro, ever, and they will eventually catch up and kill him). Third, the conversion time is random, meaning sometimes you’ll die WHILE converting someone. Fourth, there’s a random chance that when converting a villager (or club dude, from the west side) the ENTIRE enemy force will aggro you, resulting in the second problem. All of this means it’s absolutely frustrating…
38. Level: …through no fault of the player. The easy fix would be to give us a few guards as a screen, or even a second priest, but no
39. Level: Babylon 2 (The Tigris Valley). It’s actually ‘fine’ for the most part, but it’s severely padded, and honestly the whole thing just becomes boring
40. Level: Babylon 3 (Vengeance) is… just a skirmish map. Just straight up a skirmish map, except the enemy starts with infrastructure
41. Level: Babylon 4 (I Shall Return) is… just another skirmish map where you start in the Iron Age
42. Level: Babylon 5 (The Great Hunt) has the beginnings of good design that falls apart the second it requires you to build up to hit the enemy base…
43. Level: Terrain: …THEN having an absolutely atrocious final area. It has one landing spot, walls crowding it, buildings everywhere, tons of enemies and towers, all making for a very narrow and cramped terrain in THIS game with THIS pathfinding while encouraging you to bring tons of troops and probably siege weapons
44. Level: Babylon 7 (Lord of the Euphrates) is a boring kill all where one of the enemies is like 100 feet from your starter base
45. Level: Babylon 8 (The Conquest of Nineveh) is just a slog. Just a nonstop slog, one of the longest missions to date
46. Level: Yamato 4 (The Mountain Temple) is yet another dull slog map
47. Level: Yamato 6 (Coup) is very close to a good mission, and instead is absolutely awful. You have to tribute 250 gold every 3 minutes or the enemy (who surrounds you with tons of troops and buildings) goes hostile and kills you. This is already awful on its own, but then the mission spreads the actual gold nodes all over the place (basically mandating knowing where they are in advance), and only has three gold nodes period (so there’s a soft enrage built in), and finally…
48. Level: …you’re given exactly 16 seconds to respond or they go hostile. 16 seconds or they nuke your face off. What in God’s name is that bullcrap. The final result is a decent mission IF you already know what you’re doing AND have a strategy in mind walking in, but just doing the mission normally it’s littered with irritation
49. Level: Hittite 1 (Opening Moves) has all the makings of a great mission… absolutely ruined by the same priest bug that screwed over Babylon 1. And so all the same issues from that mission apply here as well…
50. Level: …making for another miserable, neigh unplayable experience
51. Level: Hittite 2 (Raid On Babylon) is another harrassment, boring slog, bad AI mission
52. Level: Rise of Rome 2 (Pyrrhus of Epirus) is another ‘has the makings of good but…’ missions. You start off on the back foot but with great defenses and tons of resources, but the enemy is SO far ahead of you that you’ll bleed yourself dry trying to crack her down and the AI (of course) can just rebuild infinitely so any attack must be a complete one
53. Level: Rise of Rome 3 (The Siege of Syracuse) is one long miserable slog. The only thing that prevents it from being even worse is that you’re given options (hit the super defended west, or the super defended east)
54. Level: Rise of Rome 4 (The Battle of the Metaurus) is a skirmish map. Enough said
55. Level: Ave Caesar 3 (The Siege of Alesia) is certainly interesting but the problem is the sheer size of the siege combined with being completely surrounded means, in practice, it’s just an absolutely ginormous front to defend against and the enemies quickly upgrade from harassment to swarming
56. Level: Ave Caesar 4 (The Battle of Pharsalus) starts you off with few resources and facing an immediate, massive entrenchment which you’re expected to knock over (quickly) to claim their resources. THEN you have to knock out a massive, stupidly entrenched city, and you guessed it, it’s a slogfest
57. Level: Imperium Romanum 1 (The Battle Of Actium) is just built around sloggy irritation. You start off completely surrounded by two entrenched people (one naval, one ground) and they will harass you constantly and consistently while forcing you to split your forces between water and land. This actually is even worse than the usual because of the forced army/navy split because of the population cap problem…
58. Level: …so enjoy that negative
59. Level: Imperium Romanum 2 (The Year Of The Four Emperors) is one of those ‘seems like a good idea but isn’t in reality’ levels. You start off with a hell of a force, but the enemy has an absolutely massive defended base and two harasser bases on the sides. This already spells a negative of slog and irritation…
60. Level: …but then consider that you have to knock over AND build a Wonder after all that. Which means resources and time. And because of both you almost assuredly cannot beeline the objective but have to sweep, which will make it take even longer AND chew up resources that could’ve gone to the wonder
61. Level: Imperium Romanum 3 (Ransom at Ctesiphon) is a bog standard ‘you have to wipe out the enemy base but you start with nothing’ mission except with a delay built in so you’re even slower than usual
62. Level: Imperium Romanum 4 (Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra) is a perfect encapsulation of what’s wrong with this game’s later campaigns. You start off with two bases (isolated), each base has a nearby enemy base who’s job is to be the harassers which just peck at you to irritate you, and finally there’s a massive enemy base designed to be slogged through. This is textbook AoE1 mission design; Smaller bases who only exist so the AI can send its endless troops at you, and one big target designed to take forever. And it sucks
63. Level: Imperium Romanum 5 (The Coming Of The Huns) is, yes, yet another dull Kill All mission
64. Level: Enemies of Rome 2 (Third Macedonian War) is another bog standard two harasser, one slogger map
65. Level: The First Punic War 2 (The Battle of Mylae) is a weird example of the usual map design problems of the entire game. You start off relatively isolated, but extremely exposed (no real chokepoints or defensive spots), and completely hemmed in (with walls that actually hinder you more than anything else), and very few starting resources and real estate. The enemy, meanwhile, has huge swaths of setup and land and will send ships and troops to harass you constantly
66. Level: The First Punic War 3 (The Battle of Tunic) is just another bog standard mission. To be nice I won’t consider this the final mission (even though it is) and just ding it normally
67. Difficulty Curve: This is for the various other campaigns which, while not as bad as the initial two, are still pretty rollercoastery
68. Pacing: Huge swaths of boredom followed by entirely too intense frenetic hard-to-control irritation followed by boredom is one pattern. The OTHER pattern…
69. Pacing: …is nonstop harassment endlessly and forever

Story Positives:

Story Negatives:

1. Brickwork: Space is not super good looking. Seriously it’s pretty hard to screw up space but here we are
2. Plot: Normally I give nothingburger plots a bit of a pass (Mario frees Peach, yadda yadda) but this is actually attempting to have a narrative and it’s complete nonsense. To wit; You have to procure gems for a time machine the princess has from each of the kingdoms, then go fight TIE Fighters for a while to prove your worth to the princess (who you have to rescue FROM the kingdom??) in order to use the time machine and save the world

Gameplay Positives:

1. Power Progression Curve: Weirdly, yeah. The loop of defeating enemies to get gold to buy new gear, food, and health is pretty solid, and each up you gain in stats or gear is a pretty noticeable bump

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Gotcha: Inns and women. It’s even worse because you’re encouraged to talk to them to figure out what the heck to do and you’re penalized for it
2. Info In Game: There is none. Nothing is explained. Not what stats do or how weapons or armor work or which ship is what in the space section or absolutely anything at all…
3. Info In Game: …so that’s an easy…
4. Info In Game: …triple
5. Guidance: Speaking of. The game has a near total lack of signposting with regards to what it’s even possible to do in the game or how to do it…
6. Guidance: …so that’s another…
7. Guidance: …triple
8. Walkthroughitis: Yeah you knew this was coming. Lemme line this up for you; Your goal is to talk to four of the kings (out of 8), get their quests, do them, then buy a Shuttle (and a spacesuit!) and grind up a bunch of gold to head to space, kill 20 TIE Fighters, then land (in the shuttle!) before killing a jester in any castle to get the key to free the princess to use the time machine to beat the last boss. Good luck figuring ANY of that out…
9. Walkthroughitis: …like, it’s not even something you can accidentally bumble into…
10. Walkthroughitis: …so screw us I guess
11. Grind: There’s two grind spots in this game. There’s… worse out there (which is sort of sad when you think about it) but they take up the bulk of the playtime. You grind initially to get the ball rolling, and you have to grind the TIE Fighters (more on that later)
12. Level: The dungeon. The only dungeon. It’s plain, deep, and very easy to get lost in. Have fun
13. Penalty For Failure: This is a weird one. Similar to old games you ‘basically’ start over upon dying, which sucks. But it’s arguably worse here because you don’t ACTUALLY lose all progress. Rather your HP is set to a very low number (99), ditto for Food, you lose your gear, and you lose ALL your money. So it’s actually WORSE than just resetting (because resetting is literally better)…
14. Penalty For Failure: …so…
15. Penalty For Failure: …that sucks
16. MSQ: Docking the shuttle. Seriously just docking with the stations in general is way too awful. We’ll cover more in a second but first is the next thing you do in space…
17. MSQ: …which is fight TIE Fighters. Let me explain why this is awful. First, each sector with fighters in it (check that awful map to see) only has so many. And you need 20. Second, they can spawn at the edges of your screen and your cursor takes time to move to fire at them (and costs fuel!). Finally the TIEs vanish when they get too far towards the edge of your screen (hm). But THEN there’s the fact that just navigating across sectors is this colossal pain of aim, first person, jump, de-aim…
18. MSQ: …so this whole thing…
19. MSQ: …kinda sucks
20. Controls: General. Seriously, tap in a direction or hit a key for every movement. Individually
21. Controls: Space controls are even worse by the way. There’s momentum (y’know, like in space) and precision docking, and all of that is running into the fact that you burn fuel by the truckloads doing ANYthing, and I sure hope you brought enough gold up or you’re screwed. Also as mentioned earlier just fighting the fighters is awful…
22. Controls: …so enjoy that…
23. Controls: …triple
24. Padding: Space. Twenty friggin’ Fighters. That may not sound like a lot but considering you can get ZERO in a sector thanks to RNG, it sure sucks. It’s literally the second major grind point in the game…
25. Padding: …and it sucks
26. Map: There is no map on the planet and that actually sucks pretty badly considering the quests and benefits thereof, but the map that DOES exist in space is actively awful unless you already know how it works
27. Gotcha: Landing in anything other than the shuttle instantly kills you
28. Gotcha: The massive damage from the final gem in the past can kill you if you’re not ready for it
29. Viscerality: Audio that’s actually painful, visuals that basically don’t exist, and nothing you do feels like it’s even happening
30. Hud: Actually terrible feedback of interactions (sometimes the text will literally scroll off the screen so you can’t even see it)
31. Outro: Boss: Dude just straight up runs from you, dragging it out, once he hits bat form…
32. Outro: Boss: …also good lord he has too much health and avoids you constantly and aaaggghhhh
33. Audio Spam: Quite a bit. Like… even just basic movement, really
34. Core Combat: I chewed on this one for a while. But this is as awful as combat can get, really. You hit A, then tap a direction. And that is it. That is combat…
35. Core Combat: …so…
36. Core Combat: …that sucks

Story Positives:

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Info In Game: Believe it or not the Civlopedia dates all the way back to the first game! It even has accurate information in it
2. Core Mechanic: Tech tree. It’s not much but there IS a tech tree and provides a major focus of the gameplay
3. Core Mechanic: Managing the economy in general. It’s not super obvious what’s required but once you get trade routes going and can figure out how to juggle your income and upkeep
4. Kit: Buildings, wonders, units. There’s not a TON of design here but units do have variable attack/defense/move, some ignore zones of control, buildings provide and Wonders provide up until a certain point. There’s enough here to be worthwhile I think
5. Controls: Honestly most of the controls are pretty intuitive and well designed (they even made it so disband is a capital D instead of lower case to make sure you don’t accidentally tap it)
6. Replayability: I was pretty torn on this but honestly yeah. It deserves the second positive if nothing else
7. HUD: So this is a massive aggregate, because the game generally doesn’t have super good visual indicators and HUD stuff, but it DOES have some things here and there. The asterisk by a Wonder that’s out of date, the icons showcasing what squares produce or require what, the clear visual distinction on the map

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Music: Awful or None, take your pick
2. Controls: Issues, especially with the mouse (thankfully it’s optional)
3. Interface: I’ve seen worse but this is… not good. The whole thing is a bit intimidating to someone not familiar to the franchise, and there’s some things that nothing anywhere (in the game) indicates what it is at all
4. Early Game: Lots and lots and lots of just ‘end turn’ gameplay
5. Mid Game: You never really develop past the initial gameplay. While this is ‘fine’ it does mean that Mid Game is mostly Early Game but… more…
6. Mid Game: …so that sucks
7. Late Game: So, almost every large strategy game (ever) has problems with its Late Game where it just starts getting boring. And this might be one of the worst examples of that I’ve seen which, y’know, makes sense. It still sucks though…
8. Late Game: …so it still earns…
9. Late Game: …a triple
10. Core Combat: Combat is very static, and if you kill something everything on that stack also dies
11. Outro: Space victory by itself deserves its own negative. It is onerously lengthy and mostly just involves hitting end turn for however long
12. Bug: The Pollution Bug
13. Pacing: The game doesn’t have enough real variety or depth to its sides to keep it paced
14. Starting Options: I chewed on this for a bit but I do think the near total absence of starting options deserves a negative

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: This falls apart later but I will absolutely give the first few stages the fact that there’s some decent stuff here. Really feels like you’re perusing the city streets, halls, malls

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: The opening cinematic (such as it is) is overly-edited shakey cam garbage and just patched together shots of the game to boot
2. Intro: Cutscene: The opening actual cutscene between the team and Aya is not any better. Weird timing, awkward dialogue, As You Know, it almost hits a checklist of awful
3. Intro: Writing: I hope you love awkward, nonsensical exposition in general by the way
4. Intro: The first stage doesn’t fare any better. The characters are weirdly talking about weird things and over-dramatizing while also not actually explaining anything at all
5. Dialogue: The dialogue in this game is absolutely terrible. I’m not going to sugarcoat it, I’m not going to go into detail except where it matters, the dialogue in this game is BAD…
6. Dialogue: …bad…
7. Dialogue: …bad. Oh also…
8. Localization: …the localization sucks too. And this was the era when Square had finally figured out how to do localization (even in voiced works!) so there’s no excuse on that front…
9. Voice Direction: …especially given how absolutely awful…
10. Voice Direction: …the voice direction is in english
11. Tone: Clothing damage. This has gameplay consequences but I’m sorry, what is this nonsense? The worst part is it’s not even sexy. No I mean obviously everyone has different views of what’s sexually appealing or isn’t, what I mean is this is DISTURBING. She looks cut up and bloody and then there’s the bizarre half buttocks showing thing
12. Tone: Moaning Moaningly. Seriously the amount of sexy moaning in this game is completely over the top…
13. Tone: …to the point of being distracting
14. Empty Text: It’s not as bad as some games but there’s plenty of ‘huh?’ in this one
15. Cutscene: Random flashbacks! And there is life beyond death!
16. Character: Aya (yes I know, shush). This is just not a good character regardless of the character assassinatory parts of it
17. Cutscene: Random nonsense flashback with a little girl and blood stained glass
18. Cutscene: Random nonsense introduction to the boss who pulls a gun on us for NO explained reason then just wanders off
19. Theme: Random total nonsense while trying to sound philosophical seems to be a recurring trend here???
20. Story Sequencing: There are NO proper steps or beats in between scenes. Often times you will go from a boss to a cutscene to a totally different cutscene to being threatened with death to ANOTHER cutscene and informed that YOU told them that YOU ended up getting someone killed by changing the past (none of this is shown at all) and it’s just a jumble of badly thought out structure. In fact I’m going to start dinging it individually instead of blanketing three negatives on it
21. Moment: Gabrielle randomly pontificating to herself while talking about protecting Aya and then us deciding to… hop… into her?? What?!
22. Story Sequencing: So we knock out some pods, then warp into Babel (??), then we defeat a thing, then we warp OUT and the dude we’re there to rescue is feet away, THEN we have to go kill our friend who just saved us
23. Plot: So why did the Evil Guy sell us out again? There’s a vague reference to budget but that’s really it
24. Cutscene: So then there’s a cutscene where Gabrielle slowly resets in the future (let’s just… ignore how changes in time take a while to take effect for a moment) and then she has this… drug trip dreamscape conversation with Kyle and Eve and it’s just… not even attempting to make sense
25. Visual Continuity: Zone lines… or lack thereof. There is NO indicator that a zone line exists and it can be severely disorienting because there’s not even a transition animation you’re just booped into the new zone
26. Cutscene: Oh my gosh it’s Cray! And he’s killed everyone! But then he gives you a pep talk! I’m sorry WHAT?
27. Story Sequencing: So now we’re stuck in the present and can still soul dive but only to the present because Evil Boss (motivation not found) has destroyed the device that let us TIME TRAVEL because why would you want THAT for God’s sakes and now we’re trying to destroy Babel in the present? Please keep in mind this is the THIRD time we’re trying to kill this stupid thing
28. Cutscene: I’m not even going to try to summarize this drivel. We are sexually harassed by Kyle, then kill him, then mourn him, then the Babels merge, and…
29. Cutscene: …screw all of this
30. Consequence Storytelling: This is a good time to mention that it’s a major background plot point that the entire east coast is getting devoured by this stuff at, and I quote, an ‘exponential rate’. Nothing anywhere indicates this (in fact all the Babels and their surrounding Twisted are pretty static) but like… sure
31. Cutscene: So first we have the not-scientist literally lie (“Science is never wrong!”) and then pontificate weirdly on pseudo philosophy, then we have him being a creepy weirdo for no reason
32. Tone: By the way why is the creepy weirdo just… tolerated by Aya like it’s funny?
33. Story Sequencing: So apparently there’s a time loop, and we’ve always had a vendetta against dudeface, and now every time we kill a High One it empowers the Mega Babel or whatever and…
34. Plot: …I’m sorry what?
35. External Continuity: So yeah. We have character assassination, we have mis-use of the setting, we have the near total absence of mitochondria, we have no significance of the previous games…
36. External Continuity: …so, uh, yeah
37. Outro: Plot: Bad. Bad… bad bad. So! Spoilers from here on out in the off chance you haven’t played this game and intend to (and if you do, Godspeed). Okay, last warniiiiiing okay so spoilers. It turns out that the entire plot of the game is that back in the past Aya was killed by a SWAT Team, Eve tried to save her, and in so doing smeared her (Aya) across time and spread her (Eve’s) body across the people present. So the Twisted are the shattered pieces of Aya’s soul and the High Ones are people infused with Eve. I…
38. Outro: Plot: …don’t know…
39. Outro: Plot: …what to add to that
40. Outro: Writing: Except I do! This is complete nonsense and fails at several elements of basic logic and literary convention…
41. Outro: Writing: …so that’s…
42. Outro: Writing: …another triple
43. Outro: Consequence Storytelling: The cops by the way? The SWAT team that kills Aya and Kyle (and the poor priest!) and sets off the events of the ENTIRE game? There is NO explanation for this. This is a complete non sequitur. They also go away in the changed timeline! I’m sorry…
44. Outro: Consequence Storytelling: …but…
45. Outro: Consequence Storytelling: …what?
46. Outro: Pacing: KH Syndrome. The ENTIRE plot of the game happens AFTER the last boss. Lemme repeat that. The entire plot of the game is after the final boss…
47. Outro: Pacing: …that is…
48. Outro: Pacing: …awful
49. Outro: Story Sequencing: Also there’s a time ‘loop’ which is barely explained and barely matters
50. Outro: Tone: WHY do they make Villainface sound like such a frickin’ creep?
51. Tone: Oh right! This is a good time to mention that the ENTIRE GAME they’ve been oversexualizing EVE. THE KID. God DAMN it game…
52. Tone: …stop…
53. Tone: …being like this. This is not Dirge of Cerberus
54. Outro: Moment: So anyways, Aya comes back to life for absolutely no reason other than to save the day (okay I did like that part) but there’s ZERO explanation for how she just… gets back up after having been SMEARED ACROSS TIME
55. Outro: Okay so then the final solution is to erase Aya from existence. The last time we did it accidentally so Aya was smeared across time, but now we do it deliberately so we just expunge Aya from reality, which obviously means no Twisted ever exist and means none of the events of the game ever happened (except the awful wedding of course)
56. Outro: Moment: Then of course we have a conversation with Kyle (somehow??) then Aya (somehow???) and…
57. Outro: Tone: …then they like play pretend get married for… SOME reason? I guess?! (Maybe they wanted to not confuse the Priest)
58. Outro: Consequence Storytelling: By the way EVERYone remembers everything from before the time reset. Because that’s how TIME WORKS
59. Moment: Everything about the shower cutscene. How you earn it, the softcore porn of it itself, and the fact that it’s a friggin’ 3 year old
60. Outro: Character: Also hey, literal character assassination for Aya… cool
61. Outro: Oh and Aya’s back! For… some reason!
62. Banter: The in mission banter is legitimately awful
63. Storyboarding: Most of these are covered by individual cutscenes but honestly the editor and camera director need to be fired
64. World Building: Near absent, but also contradictory

Gameplay Positives:

1. NG+: Chapter select. It’s a little threadbare but it IS there
2. NG+: Aaaand it does have a decent NG+ system
3. Alternate Leveling: So the DNA system is poorly explained and has some issues but… it is a neat little way to customize your playstyle
4. Enemy Variety: I’m loathe to admit it, but yes. There is some interesting variety in how enemies attack and have weak points and the like
5. Music: Okay, I’ll admit it, there are a couple of solid songs in this one
6. Replayability: The second positive. There are additional modes, unlocks, and chapter select designed to encourage repeat playthroughs

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Intro: Tutorialization: Flies by, pure text, and easy to miss
2. Intro: Level: The first stage is short, generic, and boring
3. Music: The repetition problem. Some of the songs are distressingly short loops, and a lot of them play over entirely too much time
4. Viscerality: The game sounds bad
5. Viscerality: The game looks bad
6. Viscerality: The game feels bad
7. Core Mechanic: Body hopping as a concept was fine but like… they do NOTHING with it here. First outside of hardest difficulty, optional hard ‘cheats’, or achieves, all the extra dudes serve as is repositioners (mostly for puzzle stuff) or for 1-ups. And that’s… it. If you fire your pistol until you have 3 shots left in your clip and then body hop guess what? You have your pistol equipped and at 3 shots left in your clip. The ONLY part of the body swapping that means anything is it changes ONE of their guns, which gets you access to special guns
8. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Not the worst I’ve seen but some stages can go nice long swaths without one
9. Difficulty Options: There’s a ton of difficulties in this game. They all suck. Most of them are badly balanced (more on that in a sec) but they start with ‘normal’ (aka easy) and then ramp up to ridiculous amounts quickly, and only the actual highest difficulty does anything (and in that mode any enemy can one shot you)
10. Padding: So I hope you like enemies with tons upon tons…
11. Padding: …upon tons of health
12. Enemy Design: Also enemies are just… not very well designed in this game. Several have attacks you can do NOTHING about other than just be at range, in a game where you’re in small confined arenas most of the time
13. Kit: Guns suck in this game. I know that’s a thing in a lot of third person shooters but they’re really really dull in this one. This is a level of gun design that the original Doom had surpassed, and I mean that sincerely. In Doom guns had different types of fire (projectile or hitscan) and rates of fire and rates of projectile, which meant there were decisions you needed to make while firing. In this game all guns are functionally the same except for range (which is meaningless in a game where 95% of combat is in melee range), clip size (which just means you spend every now and again not firing), and the ‘recoil’ of assault rifles (which also means not firing periodically). There’s no… gameplay to the guns…
14. Kit: …and I find that absolutely baffling. This dovetails into…
15. Core Combat: …the core combat is awful. There is NOTHING to it. Hold down L to target, hold down R (or tap it rapidly, more on that in a sec) to shoot. That’s… it. There’s no abilities, positioning doesn’t matter. You can manually aim with a sniper rifle to hit weak points but good luck with that in the aforementioned primarily melee focused combat. You can dodge roll (though it acts weird when you’re locked onto an enemy)…
16. Core Combat: …so…
17. Core Combat: …screw this
18. Controls: The controls are actually ‘fine’ except for the fact that they’re on the PSP and I’m not going to hold that against them. No what I’m going to ding is how awkward some of the interactions are, like requiring the player to use the same button to move and look, or encouraging button mashing
19. Animation: Stunlocking. Almost everything that attacks you stuns you (you can dodge roll out of SOME of these) and that obviously can easily lead into stunlocking, especially when there’s lots of enemies on screen (which there ALWAYS are)…
20. Animation: …so that by itself is awful, but then…
21. Animation: …the game lets you stunlock YOURSELF. Using certain attacks, dodging too much, diving, all come with an animation lock after using them. This is even worse than you think because…
22. Kit: …Liberation Mode, y’know your super mode? It ticks down in real time completely regardless of all factors. So you can be stunned or in an attack animation and you’re losing Liberation time
23. Kit: Also the Liberation Mode sucks. The attacks are stronger, sure, but barely, and moving around is INCREDIBLY disorienting (and honestly a seizure-warning)
24. Tutorialization: Despite the awful tutorialization there’s whole swaths of gameplay mechanics the game NEVER explains at all (like the DNA thing)
25. Level: The first stage sucks. Small, narrow corridors where you have to fight entirely too many enemies to take out orbs to be able to progress. And that’s… it…
26. Level: …until the Reaper escape! So let’s count the ways. First, it has ZERO room for error as you’re escaping. If you delay even a little you are dead, start over from the beginning
27. Level: Second, there’s no real indicator of how any of this… works at all. The barriers just pop up for some reason at some point with no rhyme or reason to them, to hold back a teleporting enemy… also you occasionally have to just dodge roll around a sec while waiting for someone to teleport into. Did I mention the mob hits you like a truck? Also…
28. Level: …dodge rolling is mandatory to make it in time, and once you reach the ladder it’s actually a friggin’ trap and the Reaper can knock you off it. So if you go for the ladder you’re dead
29. Boss: Helix. This fight is SO BAD. Okay so you have to be to the side of him to hit his legs to stun him which puts you in range of his instant-kill attack. Then you successfully kill his head only for it to do absolutely nothing. Then you have to climb up behind it and shoot down (mostly blindly thanks to the camera) at its weak spot, while it periodically climbs up to harass you. And it’s the most horrible combination of boring…
30. Boss: …awkward…
31. Boss: …and annoying
32. Boss: Emily Jefferson. Just… what a giant pile of silliness. It’s this big thing with difficult to avoid melee attacks that destroy cover and a HUGE invuln sequence which you have to stagger to break her out of but… as of this moment I don’t know what caused the stagger because knocking out the whirlwinds didn’t do anything and neither did attacking
33. Level: The entire stinker bug sequence sucks. The enemies have nothing indicating where they are and they are entirely too far up in the sky and are the same color as the skybox
34. Encounter: The ‘blow up all the pods’ sequence (yes I know there’s lots of them) where we first get the laser sight gun. Enemies with homing projectiles that can hit you from across the arena, and enemies that respawn almost instantly, all while trying to deal with stuff that’s high up and hard to target
35. Boss: Queen. Almost no feedback on anything happening here at all (it’s hard to even tell if you’re moving… for the record you are not, you can only warp between people)
36. Encounter: There’s a portion of level 2 where you have to kill smoke dudes while being bombarded by artillery dudes. It’s absolutely awful. The sniper rifle moves so slowly you will get hit before you can aim high enough to hit the smoke dudes, and they respawn as long as the artillery dudes are up. The artillery dudes…
37. Encounter: …have perfect aim across the entire arena, by the way
38. Boss: Gabrielle is honestly the best boss so far. She zooms around a lot, requires you to kill adds to live, and has entirely too aggressive attacks for how much health she has. She is merely a bad fight
39. Level: What’s that? You want lengthy pseudo escape sequences with irritating enemies and difficult-to-discern terrain? Hell yes
40. Encounter: So there’s this fight with one of the artillery dudes who is up top (his weakness is on his top), he teleports around periodically, and he likes to throw up his shields to prevent damage taken. Then immediately after this you have to fight like five friggin’ trapper dudes…
41. Encounter: …screw this fight so hard
42. Encounter: So. The entire fourth stage you’re fighting Worms, but they keep giving you things like tons of dudes to help, tanks, and attack helicopters. This is fine but towards the end of the mission you have to fight one in an enclosed space on foot with some braindead allies who do not respawn. This is already absolutely awful and a complete slog fest (there’s a reason these things required hardware earlier) but then about halfway through killing him a SECOND one spawns and thanks to how physics and reality work there’s a VERY high chance the first time this happens he’ll spawn on your face (because you’re hiding from the first one). Also Worms can instantly kill you and there’s no way to avoid this. So this encounter is awful…
43. Encounter: …easy to die in…
44. Gotcha: …and has an honest-to-God gotcha! moment in it
45. Level: The second to last mission is just the same like three enemies in nearly identical arena rooms (red rooms, of course) over…
46. Level: …and over…
47. Level: …and over
48. Hyperfail Moment: So when you finally fight the Reaper it’s… bad. He can teleport spam, only one type of weapon can do ANY damage in his first phase (and it’s a slow, cumbersome laser which doesn’t have enough ammo to kill him which mandates deliberately getting your guy killed to respawn a new one with a new gun with fresh ammo), and then his phase 2 is just more teleport spam nonsense
49. Boss: Also not a great boss, while I’m at it
50. Outro: So hey. The final, uh, dungeon? Yeah that’s the stage we’ve been doing
51. Outro: Boss: So the first final boss is the queen… …again…
52. Outro: Boss: So the first fight against Villainface isn’t what I’d call terrible, but for final boss material it’s not fantastic
53. Outro: Boss: Then there’s the actual final boss. This has a combination of interface screw and near-unavoidable damage combined with limited 1-ups and just… the whole thing is unnecessarily arduous and irritating…
54. Outro: Boss: …for another double negative
55. Camera: Off, awkward, and janky to control
56. Pacing: Almost every stage is fighting orbs, fighting enemies, or both…
57. Pacing: …in endless samey arenas
58. Terrain: Irritating to navigate and almost entirely just an impediment to reaching enemies

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: Y’know… honestly I think these sprites look good to this day. They’re not at Warcraft 2’s level of quality but they’re pretty solid
2. Atmosphere: Holy crap the Orc missions actually have a little bit of flavor to them. It’s not much, but it’s there

Story Negatives:

1. Atmosphere: The Human mission briefings are just kind of… dull. I know there’s not a lot of plot in these early games but even (say) Warcraft 2 or Age of Empires 1 has some honest to goodness flavor to the briefings and missions
2. Internal Continuity: This is a weird one but the victory jingles are SO generic that they’re actively inaccurate at times and it just pulls me out of it

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: Y’know between the original and the remastered tracks I’m kinda with it
2. Minimap: Functional and readable
3. Visual Distinction: Quite good actually. The two factions are very visually distinct and there’s no point at which I lose anything anywhere
4. Options: Zooming! This option alone is a weirdly good God-send, and honestly serves as a bit of a difficulty option too
5. QoL: Several smaller things they added in the remaster which makes the game play MUCH better
6. Save: Basic but decent save and load
7. Save: It’s almost hidden, but there IS an autosave! I have no idea what triggers it though
8. Unit Design: Clerics and gradient heal spell. The spell only uses as much mana as it heals health, meaning it’s a smart gradient heal
9. Level: Human 12, Blackrock Spire is… weirdly good. While yes you’re up against a whopping three enemy bases they also give you a very defensible position which you can take good advantage of and actually good amounts of resources to work with
10. Level: Orc 11, Goldshire and Moonbrook is, once again, bizarrely well designed. A solid chokepoint combined with good resource placement and enemies that don’t stagger attack you

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: Lack of proper resolution options
2. Launch: Mandatory always online for a single player game
3. Options: Also full screen mode makes the mouse INVISIBLE
4. Pathfinding: Remember when we gave negatives to Age of Empires 1’s pathfinding? Or Iron Harvest’s? Yeah this is Warcraft ONE. This blows all of those out the window. It would take legitimate effort to surpass this in terms of pathfinding. So we’ll start with the obvious…
5. Pathfinding: …and just give a triple…
6. Pathfinding: …for generalized bad pathfinding…
7. Pathfinding: …but wait, there’s more! So units not only can get stuck on themselves and the terrain but they might not understand how to ‘go around’ something depending on what is essentially random chance AND they can just stall out completely and stop all actions and movements even when you give an order
8. Controls: So sometimes they follow your orders. Attack move BARELY works. Sometimes they’ll just straight ignore orders or go the opposite direction
9. Sound: So every single unit has the same voice actor. This means every bark (unit built, under attack, etc.) is said by the same person in the same tone. This actually causes bad feedback as it can be difficult in combat to tell what’s going on audibly. This is an obvious problem…
10. Sound: …especially since when bouncing between your own units to control them you have issues telling who’s who audibly, but it causes another pretty bad issue…
11. Sound: …and that’s the fact that when every single unit is the same voice…
12. Audio Spam: …the audio spam is real. Because it’s not just the same lines over and over from twenty different units, it’s the SAME lines from the SAME actor copy pasted endlessly. And you will hear these lines forever…
13. Audio Spam: …and ever…
14. Audio Spam: …and ever
15. Party AI: So! Your units are stupid. REALLY stupid. They will sit nearby and do nothing while an enemy is one tile away (unless they’re ranged). They will totally ignore friendly units being attacked right next to them. And while that sounds like a minor thing it means you have to manually micro basically everything which gets especially frustrating given the enemy is doing the same thing perfectly thanks to being an AI. Speaking of which…
16. Enemy AI: As usual the enemy AI cheats resources and does not care about visibility or anything. Pretty much the usual issues with older RTS games that we just covered in Age of Empires 1…
17. Enemy AI: …and bad for the same reasons
18. Party AI: By the way Peons/Peasants auto run when attacked. This is WAY more frustrating than it sounds because they run fast enough so their chasers cannot get them, the direction they run into is random (spreading them all over), and this basically ensures you cannot actually deal with whatever’s attacking them cuz they’re bailing
19. Difficulty Curve: The Human Campaign’s curve is wonky as was… honestly pretty normal back in the day. In fact if anything I’m shocked at how not-awful it is with the new QoL features
20. Controls: Formations and lack thereof. This is actually the same problem we had over in Age of Empires 1 but a bit worse because of the unit design. You have the same basic issue (units cannot retain a formation to save their lives… uh, literally… and the moment they have to bypass anything, including themselves, they just spread out into a crude line) but also some units are massively weaker in armor and/or health and some don’t even shoot right in melee. So you REALLY want a formation. Without it things become such a jumbled mess that it de-values all the melee units (all, uh, two of them) and makes it more worthwhile to archer spam…
21. Controls: …so that’s a double
22. Terrain: The whole game barely uses terrain. I mean it’s there, there’s occasionally chokepoints, but that’s kind of it
23. Core Mechanic: Economy and building. Building limitations combine with pathfinding issues to make base layout a pain. Buildings also cost entirely too much in general (especially lumber) and while you can eventually snowball into having a functional economy the slowdown plus pathfinding plus building limitations make it frustrating and lengthy which also means dealing with the RNG of enemy waves of attacks while you wait…
24. Core Mechanic: …and it drags down several missions
25. Building: This is shocking to me. The moment you START building a building it spawns in at full health. Needs to be killed from full. This… really makes sweeping enemy bases a chore
26. Unit Design: Peasants/Peons. Expensive, slow, low health, immediately targeted by the enemy. Seriously a Peasant costs as much as a Footman and, this is important, CANNOT fight back (there’s a reason every game after this gave at least a basic attack to worker units). This leads to…
27. Early Game Hell: …every single mission has a point in the early mission where it’s shockingly easy to get into a failstate (well before you actually lose the map) thanks to workers being totally incapable of defending themselves
28. Unit Design: Walls. These cost entirely too much (100 gold per tile) and can only be built like any other building, meaning daisy chaining buildings out to actual chokepoints to build them. It’s even worse because since they have to be built near buildings…
29. Unit Design: …you have to build BUILDINGS out to be able to build walls around them
30. Unit Design: Footman/Grunt. Slow, ponderous, controls badly, and not worth the expense
31. Info In Game: There’s some (more than in the original version!) but there’s still an absence of quite a bit of info
32. Core Mechanic: Food, enemy AI, and turtling. So this is kind of one of those Problem issues. The food limitation and related lumber and space requirements to raise that combined with the enemy beelining your Peons lend themselves towards punishing players who explore and venture out early. The game naturally slants the player towards turtling (one of the first RTSs to do so in fact) but also gives the player very few tools to actually do so outside of just keeping a mobile defense force going. This makes most missions a fairly boring ‘build up’ portion (see the earlier issues with economy and building design) peppered with irritation followed by the actual tactics of attacking the enemy. And this causes the whole game to drag a bit…
33. Core Mechanic: …and is a constant drain
34. Power Progression Curve: Units unlocking pace. Thanks to the design of the units by Mission 6 you’re up to a whopping… three units. This is the Homeworld Cataclysm problem; Because early units are invalidated by later ones you’re not really gaining a new unit, you’re just replacing one. So by mission six we have Knights, Archers, and Clerics. And that’s it. (This also means up to Mission 5 we only have two units; Footman/Knight or Archer)
35. Level: Human 2, Grand Hamlet, already begins the AI bullcrap. It also starts to highlight an issue I fear we’ll have going forwards; The maps start with you knowing very little about the surrounding area and actively penalizes you for exploring before you’re ready. It also, as mentioned earlier, makes the enemies prioritize killing your (expensive) workers first, which can quickly lead to a death spiral or failstate
36. Level: Human 3, Kyross, is a dull kill-all which also serves as a weird jump up in difficulty for what is only the third mission
37. Controls: Clerics and healing individually and manually (and also the enemy can do this perfectly)
38. Level: Human 5, The Forest of Elwynn is a typical dull kill-all without much in the way of mission layout
39. Level: Human 6, Northshire Abbey, introduces enemies who harass you constantly, entirely too bad a spread of resources, and enemy catapults which literally cheat…
40. Level: …screw this stage
41. Level: Human 7, Sunnyglade tries very hard to be an interesting mission but instead it just boils down to forcing you to start on the back foot (no workers and no way to make them) and the only new ‘unit’ you get for this mission to help… is the friggin’ wall (which is WAY too expensive for what it is by the way)
42. Level: Human 8, Medivh’s Tower. It’s actually a simple, competent No Build mission… except for the INSANELY overpowered elementals (which are almost a gotcha given this is our first time encountering them) and the fact that Medivh will be summoning Daemons periodically and let me tell you, these are some hella super units. And remember; this is a No Build, so no replenishment
43. Level: Human 9, Black Morass. This map is an excellent example of a game where you can lose well before realize it. The enemy also decides what to build randomly which can WILDLY change the difficulty of the map
44. Level: Human 10, Temple of the Damned. This is probably one of the best maps in the Human campaign… and it fails because they have to give you a TON of units to be capable of dealing with the base they’ve thrown you against, and controlling them sucks, AND the enemy will very quickly outpace you if you don’t race to sweep them
45. Level: Human 11, Rockard and Stonard. My God. The enemy has two bases and hammers you with them constantly, and your base layout is insanely open and hard to defend and the gold placement is legitimately awful. All of this on top of the enemy flinging super units at you and perfectly invulning and you get a recipe for irritation…
46. Level: …yeesh
47. Level: Orc 5, Redridge. This is an excellent example of how Warcraft 1 doesn’t have map design. There’s just this weird spread of gold mines, one chokepoint, and the absence of ability to create expansions which (coupled with the pathfinding issues and enemy now having access to invisibility)
48. Level: Orc 6, Sunnyglade. This is basically Human 6 again; the enemy gets (and prioritizes) catapults and irritates the hell out of you with them…
49. Level: …so that sucks
50. Level: Orc 7, The Black Morass is another awful catapult ridden pseudo defensive frustration mission. At this point I’d just be repeating myself (this is basically just like any other map in this game, just worse)…
51. Level: …so this sucks
52. Padding: This is a good of time as any to mention an issue with Warcraft 1’s two campaigns. Some of them are sufficiently distinct to be considered their own things… but then there’s the ones that are almost copy pasted from each other. And that’s ignoring the fact that several of these missions are copy pasted from their OWN campaigns. There’s… not a lot of map design in older RTSs, and it shows…
53. Padding: …in how…
54. Padding: …repetitive it gets. Thank God there’s only 12 missions per campaign
55. Level: Orc 9, Northern Elwynn Forest. This is the worst mission in the game as of this point in time. You start off in a very vulnerable position with irritating gold placement. The enemies start with full bases that are very defensible. The enemy also has access to Invisible and the enemy AI already beelines your peon production. This map is absolutely bonkers in how hard it is to stay afloat while pushing up against the tide of enemies, and not in a fun way. I had to save scum my way through several key points…
56. Level: …so…
57. Level: …screw this map
58. Enemy AI: I have to give special mention to how the enemy can perfectly invisible and heal their units from perfect range. This is so terrible, because the enemy AI will use spells the moment they can, invisibility removes the ability to attack, and enemy units beeline your back line (Peons). In practice what this means is enemy units will seemingly ‘spawn’ INSIDE your base, at your peons, and start mass murdering them
59. Level: Orc 12, Stormwind Keep. It’s not as bad as previous missions, but there’s still some bullcrap here. The usual invisible enemy bullcrap, and Elemental rushes, and it still sucks
60. Unit Design: Catapults are genuinely awful. They’re hard to control (there’s a literal delay in them receiving orders… yes I know all units do that but Catapults are worse about it) and they’re expensive as hell and they have tons of splash damage and they do WAY too much damage and they can attack PAST their visibility range…
61. Unit Design: …and they’re the worst thing about several stages as a result
62. Balance: Casters. The only units with real difference (the casters) are WILDLY out of balance with each other, especially against the AI who can perfectly use their abilities
63. Unit Design: Casters in specific are… not very well designed and (thanks to everything else in the game) are honestly awful to control
64. Viscerality: Disinteresting visuals and ear piercing audio…
65. Viscerality: …no thanks