Unfamiliar 3

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: General. Yeah I know, low bar, but it is what it is
2. Spritework: Enemy designs, primarily, but there’s some surprisingly good stuff here
3. Visual Storytelling: There’s hardly any, but there is a little bit. The helmet of the Deleter, the husk of Ridley’s second form, things like that

Story Negatives:

1. Voice Direction: This is one of those rare times when we can definitively and decisively point to the voice direction for the major issues here. Nobody can say their lines right, which is generally bad, but then there’s the bad presentation by the main cast… but let’s be real, all of that is buried by the abyssmal performance by Samus. What’s worse is Samus’ voice acting is bad in general, but even that is dwarfed by her narration which is some of the actual worst voice acting I’ve heard…
2. Voice Direction: …earning itself…
3. Voice Direction: …three negatives
4. Empty Text: Dear Diary Storytelling (credit to Lord Harromont). The sheer amount of dull repetition in Samus’ narration is ridiculous. It is, without hyperbole, a case where something will happen and then she will say out loud the thing that just happened
5. Cutscene: The opening cutscene. Excessive slow mo, entirely too flashy, and strangely too long and too short
6. Intro: The entire Intro is way, way too long, includes essentially no gameplay, and might actually be one of the worst single sequences in the game. The whole thing is too much to summarize… but here we go! First we start off with big flashy explosions which have nothing to do with anything and are never discussed. Then we have Samus as a child in the womb because we want to maximize awkward discomfort and anime visuals, shortly before transitioning into the end of Super and completely ruining one of the best scenes in that game. What ensues is too much slow mo and no pay off to flashy graphics, as discussed earlier, and finally we cut to Samus being checked out in the hospital, at which point the awful awful narration begins. We shortly then do a very quick mention of the destruction of Zebes (also known as her home), and a casual mention of the end of the first ‘arc’ villains (Mother Brain, Ridley, and Pirates, which dominated the earlier games in the timeline minus Prime). Then another too-flashy scene showcasing her equipping her armor and posing (for absolutely no reason), one awful tutorial later, and the creepy scientist guy consistently comes across as creepy and weird and you think he’s going to be some weird villain thing but no, he’s nobody. This is as good a time as any to mention that the Intro mentions the word ‘baby’ 9 friggin’ times. All of this followed by the Narration of Doom which I’ll rant about in a sec. All of this…
7. Intro: …earns a full…
8. Intro: …triple negative
9. Storytelling Mechanic: Narration. Yeah I usually don’t ding something for being, y’know, a basic trope of storytelling, but the usage of narration here is wrong for two reasons. First and most obviously, it’s BAD narration, with a lot of repetition and needless information being told instead of shown (or while also being shown). Second, narration does not suit a game of this style in general. Narration is a storytelling tool which can convey things that the visuals and gameplay cannot, and Metroid is a game series known primarily for conveying story in both visuals and gameplay. The usage of Narration at all in this game was a mistake
10. Pacing: Then there’s the massive, lengthy cutscenes, followed by huge swaths of nothing, followed by massive lengthy cutscenes
11. Character: Adam. Dude’s just an asshole, I have no in depth analysis to justify this
12. Character: Samus. I don’t even need to justify this one do I? Game goes out of its way to completely character assassinate this woman in quite literally every scene she’s in. Sakamoto’s insistence upon a gentler, kinder, more submissive character from SAMUS of all people was a colossal failure on every level. Samus wasn’t exactly super characterized before now, but what she had wasn’t this. And further, while I’m here, gentle and kind are not incompatible with being a total badass, which it’s worth noting she’s failing at here. And finally, even if you argue Samus had no character prior to now (something I would not agree with, given prior to now we’ve had Zero Mission, Fusion, all three Primes, and Super) the fact is, this is not a good character even in a vacuum. A mewling waif of an obnoxious brat who couldn’t emote her way out of a paper bag. All of this gives Samus…
13. Character: …the full…
14. Character: …three negatives
15. Gameplay Integration: The authorization method in general. This is a truly rare example of an Integration negative, but in this case the attempt to explain away the gameplay mechanic (starting over at zero, unlocking as you go) fails so hard and is so stupid on so many levels that it actually detracts from the game…
16. Gameplay Integration: …further (as pointed out by Bleydtorvall) the game flat out treats it like you’re too stupid to understand what items could help you in a situation, and so he (who I remind you is watching everything we do all the time) has to tell us how to use our own kit
17. Cutscene: The thumbs down explanation and yammering. I don’t feel like writing up a paragraph here, it’s a crap cutscene…
18. Cutscene: …and it’s entirely too long
19. Storyboarding: There’s so much weird nonsense in how they block so many of the cutscenes
20. Cutscene: AS YOU KNOW, power bombs can’t be used. Also, here’s where everyone will go, super intense action sequence, dununununu. Also did you notice that he can see their video feeds while COMMS are down? Good lord
21. Cutscene: So… Samus finds a random room, BUT WAIT, let’s show it’s a cage with a dead person, then narrate that it’s a cage with a dead person in it!
22. Cutscene: So like, wow man, nature is like, totally woah
23. Camera: The usage of the camera in cutscenes is legitimately nauseating. Lots of shaky cam, lots of wobbly cam, and it’s constant and awful…
24. Camera: …earning a full…
25. Camera: …three negatives
26. Storyboarding: Sudden cuts! Sudden movement! Sudden flashes!
27. Cutscene: So, James Pierce is ousted instantly as the betrayer (we don’t even know there is one yet!), Samus spends time pontificating about nonsense, and then we sit around yammering pointlessly for a while
28. Padding: It’s weird and rare I give this negative to story but hooly hell the story is padded
29. Cutscene: Four… FOUR separate flaming death areas where we slowly burn before Adam finally authorizes the Varia suit
30. Music Direction: I’ve been debating this for a bit. The music is… too bombastic and too overt, it’s big ‘epic’ action sequence for almost every scene, and it just ruins any tension or atmosphere. This never gets better, frankly this might be the worst Music Direction I’ve seen in gaming…
31. Music Direction: …earning a full…
32. Music Direction: …triple negative
33. Cutscene: Okay so you know that scene you just saw literally 2 minutes ago? Here’s the scene again, frame for frame, with frickin’ narration over it explaining the scene you’re now watching for the second time
34. Plot: The Deleter!! Seriously though, the ‘traitor’ plot takes up a gargantuan percentage of the screentime, which is fine if, y’know, it’s good. But it narratively cheats constantly (how did he escape the power loader exactly?) and it’s super obvious who it is, AND it doesn’t pay off at all, in fact if you’re not paying attention it quite literally just ends
35. Cutscene: So the flashback about the death of Adam’s brother. Where do I even begin? Bad voice acting, bad exposition, bad animation, bad music choice, bad transition, jarring and out of nowhere, bad dialogue for Higgs, bad dialogue for Samus, just… bad…
36. Cutscene: …for a full…
37. Cutscene: …three negatives
38. Cutscene: So. The Big Scene. Everyone in the world hates this scene (and for good reason) but let’s process this, shall we? First, Samus herself. Even in a vacuum, regardless of everything else going on, she is not a good character here. She takes the Idiotball and holds it tightly purely to push drama forwards
39. Cutscene: Then there’s the nonsense of the scene. Regardless of what it means (be it a PTSD attack, or a mid life crisis), the way they present it is the same directorial style as the rest of the game; nonsensical
40. Cutscene: Then there’s the fact that the entire scene
41. External Continuity: So, this isn’t Samus. This in fact totally ignores the entire Metroid franchise, before and after. And while the scene sucks in a vacuum (and lord, it does) the fact is… the thing that makes this scene sting so personally and so deeply is that it is a violation of the entire goddamned franchise. This is a rare usage of this but I think this one cutscene, by itself…
42. External Continuity: …deserves a full…
43. External Continuity: …triple negative
44. Cutscene Incompetence: Oh and while we’re at it. Ridley, Samus, AND Anthony are all incompetent in this scene
45. Localization: So this has been an issue the whole game. I’ve seen worse localizations, but this is not particularly good, and it saps any nuance or meaning of any scene. I happen to have studied the japanese version enough and while it’s not really ‘better’, they did not handle this well at all
46. Cutscene: The extraordinarily long cutscene where MB explains the plot to Samus. I’m… sort of tired of typing up a lengthy explanation for every single cutscene, especially when so many of them are multi minutes long and just keep repeating the same general mistakes over and over and over again. Bad dialogue, bad camera, bad direction, bad voice acting, bad writing. It’s a rare game where I give this many negatives to cutscenes but good lord this scene is LONG and AWFUL…
47. Cutscene: …earning…
48. Cutscene: …three negatives
49. Cutscene: Okay, bare with me here. So Samus sees a metroid… okay, cool, with it so far. Then she’s shot in the back and she struggles with this for a WEIRDLY long period of time, before actually passing the hell out. Passing out! From a single shot in the back! From a normal friggin’ gun! This is all so we can accomplish several awful things
50. Cutscene: First, Adam is better than her and can come in and save her
51. Writing: Second, it gives one last ‘is Adam the Deleter?!’ moment of false suspense before, no, he immediately answers that…
52. Writing: …it’s not him, he just shot her in the back cuz the enemy she was fighting can’t be iced. He knows this because after he iced the enemy they… can’t be iced so… they… what?
53. External Continuity: This is shortly followed by Samus being SO damaged by this attack that she is unable to even stand up straight (he’s also SHORTER than Adam somehow, further emphasizing how great he is), Adam literally has to hold her arm to keep her upright…
54. Moment: …all so Adam can go bravely off and die to save the day…
55. Internal Continuity: …and then literal SECONDS later she is able to suit up no problem cuz now it’s time to go
56. Moment: What… in the world was going on with that whole ‘suddenly the ship’s going to intercept the Galactic Federation’ nonsense?
57. World Building: Also why does the game consistently refer to Galactic Federation like it’s a town? No, seriously, they treat it like it’s a truck stop
58. Characters: Everyone… literally everyone in this game is a freaking idiot
59. Cutscene: I hope you like long, padded cutscenes explaining stuff we already knew slowly like we were 3 year olds
60. Cutscene: I hope you like overly long, flashy substance-less cutscenes showcasing nothing
61. External Continuity: General. The whole game connects to the other Metroids of course, but it connects badly, and that’s the part that really matters
62. Theme: Motherhood. I’ve so rarely seen a theme delivered with this level of anviliciousness
63. Outro: Everything to do with the… ‘ending’ is wrong. The main villain, who doesn’t even have a name. The awful voice acting on him (and bad quality mic). The weird ‘gotcha’ moment that’s probably supposed to be a comeuppance, but isn’t. The absolutely nonsensical gibberish of the narration. I hate this. I actively hate this…
64. Outro: …earning it a full…
65. Outro: …three negatives
66. Outro: Okay, now go back through the ship and fight Phantoon for… absolutely no reason

Gameplay Positives:

1. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Weirdly, this game has some top notch mid mission checkpointing. Per area, multiple saves, and even mid boss fights…
2. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …earning itself…
3. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …three positives
4. Music: While terribly used in cutscenes, and the audio balance is just off, there IS good music in all of this
5. Viscerality: For all its flaws, the viscerality is pretty solid
6. Combat: While it doesn’t work right thanks to control issues, the dodge, dodge shot, and melee moves are some Team Ninja quality
7. Enemy Design: In a game with better controls, these enemies would honestly be pretty fun to fight. They have their own gimmicks, avoidances, and workarounds and (when controlled properly) each fight only lasts a few seconds
8. Animations: Weirdly, some good stuff here. Essentially every enemy and boss in the game has indicators and tells
9. QoL: The recap for where you’re at in the game when reloading a save

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Tutorialization: This is a weird one-two punch. First, the beginning of the game opens with a really bad tutorial where you can only do one thing (the thing they want you to do) as well as being simultaneously over-mandated and under-explained…
2. Tutorialization: …then there’s the rest of the game, where there’s a combination of pop ups which are intrusive, and a total lack of tutorialization on multiple major game mechanics
3. Audio Spam: Tutorial and anytime another character is nearby
4. Sound: Bad balancing throughout the entire game. Good luck hearing the music, among other things
5. Controls: The NES problem. So, the game controls with the sideways wiimote… which is the worst possible configuration. Ignoring the obvious physical issues therewith, which is beyond the scope of the game’s review, it limits the game to functionally only having three buttons… and that’s awful. Even by this point in history, having closer to 6 was the norm and had been for over a decade, and as a result the game has what I can only call an absolutely terrible control layout. Too many context sensitive buttons, and too much irritation in general controls…
6. Controls: …for two negatives
7. Controls: Then there’s the missile problem. Back when I was playing this originally, I put the game down twice because of this. In order to fire missiles (or super missiles, or grapple), something that is absolutely mandatory for multiple puzzles, encounters, and bosses throughout the game, you… flip the controller to facing the screen to switch ‘modes’. I can’t put into words how awful this is. It’s unintuitive, it utterly interrupts the flow of gameplay, it requires reshifting and regripping the controller to go both there and back, and the sensor bar for the Wii is not exactly known for its accuracy to begin with. This awkward stuttering crap is arguably worse because this is in a high action game in which seconds count, seconds you’re losing because you’re shifting your damned controller. All of this earns…
8. Controls: …a full…
9. Controls: …three negatives
10. Gameplay Integration: The authorization method in general. This is a truly rare example of an Integration negative, but in this case the attempt to explain away the gameplay mechanic (starting over at zero, unlocking as you go) fails so hard and is so stupid on so many levels that it actually detracts from the game
11. Guidance: Or lack thereof. I’ve seen worse, but good luck on figuring out where secret entrances are, how to progress, or even just general per-room guidance thanks to the bad visual design
12. Core Mechanic: Exploration segments. This is straight up pixel hunting, a piss poor replacement for actual exploration, interrupts gameplay every time it happens
13. Core Combat: Auto aim. How do you make combat in a platformer bad? By removing the aiming. Megaman X7 made this exact same mistake, and it sucks here for the same reason it sucked there
14. Raspberry Jam: Low health beedleeps
15. Pacing: Speaking of Narration (from up in Story), the Narration drags any given scene or sequence to a crawl, completely interrupting the flow
16. Pacing: So do Exploration and missile segments
17. Encounter: The worm boss. Hope you enjoy randomly locking onto something in less than a second before it shoots you
18. Encounter: The peahat miniboss. They’re literally invulnerable until you can briefly shoot them while they’re shooting you
19. Boss: King Kihunter. Enemies that spam attacks while provoking unintentional dodges that lead to lost iframes and taking damage, alongside brief vuln periods which (naturally) require missiles, and then a final boss which (once again) requires missiles, with tons of spammy enemies blocking the way
20. Overworld: Or lack of proper cohesion or design. Huge swaths of empty corridors, usually with little speedbumps just to prevent dashing
21. Boss: Groganch… if you could call it that. Stand at a distance, fire, win
22. Padding: The forced tank march sequences are bad already but they DRAG and there’s so many of them
23. Boss: The, uh, ‘boss’ fight with the mystery creature (mostly a QTE but just… so, so badly designed on so many levels)
24. Core Mechanic: So, the post death exploration sequence deserves its own distinct negative. Nothing at all indicates you can turn around
25. Boss: Goyagma. Multiple ‘gotcha’ animations, entirely too many attacks designed to reset your charge beam, only one way to beat him, and general irritation
26. Walkthroughitis: I’ve seen worse, in this series even! But let’s be honest, there’s several moments of walkthroughitis throughout
27. Unskippable Cutscenes: Long, unskippable, and often…
28. Unskippable Cutscenes: …and double negative worthy
29. Difficulty: Overtuning out the wazoo. Good lord do enemies do a stupid amount of damage in this game
30. Difficulty: The dodge roll and issues therewith. The overtuning means the game leans heavily on the dodge mechanic, and the dodge mechanic… isn’t in the player’s control. It’s automatic, for some insane reason, and inconsistent as a result (and of course, further detracts from the player’s control)
31. Boss: Ridley commits several sins of boss design. The dodges are fast, mandatory, and automatic. The melee super is automatic. He doesn’t even exist while transitioning between air and ground, and all of his attacks do entirely too much damage. But worst of all, he requires a super missile to be attacked (period!) and has very, very few openings with which to arduously switch modes and switch back…
32. Boss: …earning him two negatives
33. Boss: Nightmare. Long invuln phases, mandatory first person mode for a huge portion of the fight which (as usual) controls terribly, far too much health, and worst of all… the arena’s bugged, so that the terrain can literally get in the way easily…
34. Boss: …earning it two negatives
35. Boss: The Metroid Queen. It’s actually not THAT bad really… except that first phase. Fighting multiple metroids with iframes who MUST be frozen THEN missiled? That’s a paddlin. But then there’s phase two which is just dull… and the final phase has absolutely no tutorialization aside from a single moment in the awful tutorial at the beginning
36. Backtracking: I’ve seen worse, but the backtracking that’s here is pure dull backtracking; no new nothing, the worst kind of it
37. Itemization: So, enemies don’t drop anything. This is already problematic for several reasons, but then add the bizarre spread of pick ups, a good chunk of which you’re not even supposed to get until the post game sequence, and it’s like… why
38. Outro: So… the Phantoon fight is ‘fine’. It’s dull but it’s fine. The problem is, it’s the last boss. So…

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: Surprisingly decent, even for today, especially the metroids themselves
2. Music: For how minute it is, the atmospheric music does work

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Guidance: Very minute, but it’s there. Color palette, areas accessible via certain unlocks, enemies indicating progression, tidbits like that
2. Kit: The ice beam (also everything else in general but primarily the ice beam)
3. Level: Repetition and irritation aside, there are some neat and clever platforming segments scattered here and there

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Penalty For Failure: The respawns are surprisingly fair (and retain progress), the ‘start at 30 energy’ is not. This one choice ruins the entire game, by itself, and I’m not joking about that. There’s a degree of progression, mapping, item drops which are clearly marked, enemy design, even bits of level design… but every failure and every mistake is severely punished, because getting health back is so terrible. The first reason…
2. Penalty For Failure: …is that ‘restart at 30 energy’ problem. 30 energy is a joke, even early on, and is absolute garbage later on in the game when enemies hit harder…
3. Penalty For Failure: …for triple negatives
4. Itemization: This is compounded by the way enemies drop, or don’t. First, they have a low chance of dropping anything at all… second, some enemies don’t drop anything period… third, they can drop missiles or energy regardless of which you need… and fourth and finally, they drop dinky little 5 energy ups. This is even in areas where you take 10 to 30 damage per hit…
5. Itemization: …for a full…
6. Itemization: …three negatives
7. Difficulty Curve: All of this compounds the core problem. The game isn’t hard, it’s unfair, entirely because of the lack of ability to recover health and the brutal punishment of dying…
8. Grind: …which requires arduous minutes or hours of grind…
9. Grind: …grind…
10. Grind: …grind
11. Early Game Hell: I know a lot of people who put this game down before they even try to get to a second zone, and the reason why is absolutely early game hell. Early enemies give so little in return for killing them, and it’s a fair bit of time before you get your first health or missile upgrade, and there’s a nice big swath of terrain to uncover early on. Further, while you’re pretty well directed towards the first two major columns there are then no less than five places to go from there… and it’s not like that’s easy to tell or discover (thanks to the samey platforms, padding of getting up or down the columns, and of course having pitifully low health with enemies that don’t drop much). All of this makes the first part of the game the worst by far, and further compounds the ever awful 30 Health Issue…
12. Early Game Hell: …earning itself…
13. Early Game Hell: …three negatives
14. Raspberry Jam: Low health beedleeps. There’s worse than this, but this is pretty bad…
15. Raspberry Jam: …for two negatives
16. Visual Continuity: Good luck figuring out what is a pathway and what isn’t without shoving your face into everything…
17. Guidance: …nevermind trying to actually find all the optional stuff
18. Info In Game: Good luck figuring out how anything works at all without trial and error
19. Level: Samey corridors and literal copy pasting in Brinstar. But it’s worse than this. Actually playing the game, you’ll see; the repetition is bad in its own right, but what’s repeated is not exactly great. Long, looong vertical corridors of the same three or four platforms and enemies, and then horizontal swaths of bleh…
20. Level: …for a full…
21. Level: …triple negative
22. Level: Hope you enjoy the same damned levels in Norfair. Yeah I know, same general negative as Brinstar, but it’s not my fault the entire game is copy pasted a bunch. I almost didn’t give these negatives (since it’s primarily hardware limitations, something we historically avoid dinging) but the fact is it REALLY makes navigation and exploration worse as you go through what looks like the same room for the third time in just a few minutes…
23. Level: …thus earning Norfair…
24. Level: …three negatives
25. Level: Kraid’s Lair is probably the best of the zones. It still has a lot of gotcha bullcrap, hidden exits, and other nonsense, but it’s at least not padded and repetitive to hell
26. Level: The game has honest to God troll rooms! As in more than one
27. Backtracking: Basic, but bad
28. Trash: Enemies in the game are essentially always punishing, requiring a decent amount of concentration to avoid and kill efficiently while giving very little in return… but the actual action of navigation and combat is dull as dishwater. This is classic Factory Worker Syndrome; one repetitive task that you have to do really well or else screw you, and it’s some of the worst I’ve seen in recent memory…
29. Trash: …earning a full…
30. Trash: …three negatives
31. Walkthroughitis: Varia suit, by itself. I give this its own negative because there is absolutely nothing indicating where this is, nothing. And yet the Varia suit is arguably the most critical upgrade in the entire game, easily MSQ status
32. Walkthroughitis: The entire game. Seriously, the degree to which this game gets better once you have a map is silly. And I know, ‘we drew our own’, I get it (I did too, back in the day). But that’s not what I’m talking about. I could navigate the world pretty well, in fact if you forced me to right now I could probably get from Point A to Point B pretty easily just from memory. No, this is for all the bullcrap hidden passageways with no indicator that they are one except for scanning every square inch of the entire map. It’s so much worse here than in Super though. In Super several power ups are hidden in this way, here the critical pathways to progress are. Further, even if you bomb each spot sometimes your bomb is just a liiiittle bit off and doesn’t reveal the spot (this happened more than once on stream), making you think it’s not a path forwards. It’s asinine…
33. Walkthroughitis: …earning itself…
34. Walkthroughitis: …three negatives
35. Level: Ridley’s Lair. Screw Ridley’s Lair so hard. It’s probably the actual worst part of the entire game in terms of level design. It’s not as bad about repetition (go figure), instead I hope you enjoy being absolutely enemy spammed from all directions, and of course then there’s the Corridor From Hell. A long, loooong corridor (it’s over half the width of the ENTIRE game in length), and it’s part of a ‘trap’ which is easy to fall into, otherwise containing only a single missile upgrade. Screw this place…
36. Level: …screw it hard
37. Bug: Lots. Too many to really list here, but even a casual playthrough can run into glitches
38. Boss: Yeah so, Kraid and Ridley. They’re basic, boring, have too much health, and have badly designed bullcrap arenas
39. Gotcha: This is a weird one. So you can only have Ice Beam or Wave Beam, not both. Now if you go back to the item to re-collect it, you can swap back to it, buuut it’s entirely too easy to pick up the Wave Beam thinking it’s an upgrade when it actually isn’t, AND Ice Beam is MANDATORY to beat the game, so… hope you remembered where it was!
40. Overworld: The connective tissue in the stage design, at best, isn’t. Samey corridors and columns and repeated platforms with far too many enemies there to health tax you
41. Outro: Mother Brain. There’s actually some fair stuff here (Metroids give a decent amount of stuff back if you kill them, and the barriers to her are considered red doors and so stay gone) but… good lord this fight is insane. The lava pits, the random jump height out of pits, the crazy damage, the narrow window of attack, the ‘trap’ of the super not safe spot

Story Positives:

1. Visual Storytelling: Counter and corpses
2. Spritework: Actually quite good. Enemies are fine, metroids are great, Samus is solid
3. Music: It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it does
4. MSQ: Area 9. The (mostly) dead zone, the metroids, the ambiance, the gloom
5. Outro: Yeah, it’s simple, but it works surprisingly well. The reveal of the larva Metroids and the counter changing, the lead up to the Queen, and of course the Hatchling
6. Visual Storytelling: The entire final few areas deserve their own Visual Storytelling positive. The empty halls, the giant chasm filled with water, the destroyed laboratory, the smashed statue, and of course in the very depths, the Queen

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorialiation: Not as good as later titles, but yeah they managed to have some solid stuff here
2. Guidance: Level layout, pretty standard for a Metroid game. There’s not much, really, but it is there
3. Controls: Solid, for what they are, issues aside
4. MSQ: The very concept of hunting down all the Metroids in a zone to progress is somewhat engaging, and having the ticker showing you
5. Kit: Ice beam, wave beam, spider climb, space jump, screw attack. Not too shabby this time around…
6. Kit: …for two positives
7. Itemization: Much better drop rate
8. Itemization: Much better progression of items and kits
9. Pacing: The combination of save spots, energy refill spots, and missile refill spots, keeps things flowing pretty smoothly
10. Overworld: Not a bad connective tissue, mostly in the central ‘pit’ that connects all the Areas
11. Enemy Design: The Metroids themselves. Their varying attacks, patterns, and health actually work pretty well here

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Walkthroughitis: Sure hope you enjoy bombing every square inch of the game to progress
2. Level: Area 2 is the worst area in the game. It has no real flow to it, and suffers the worst from the combination of no map as well as having repeat areas, leading to a whole lot of unintentional backtracking and frustration. This is made even worse by how many essential items are in the area, not the least of which being the Varia suit which is near-mandatory for the rest of the game. This whole area turbo sucks…
3. Level: …earning a full…
4. Level: …three negatives
5. Info In Game: I mean the game literally starts with absolutely no indicators or anything, but also what and how the items work are similarly not exposited upon
6. Level: Area 3. What in the world. It’s not as ‘good luck finding where to go’ as Area 2 was, but it’s got a whole lot of long, long column design. It’s in an area where you get the space jump, but all that does is make it possible, not less irritating
7. Level: Area 6. Good lord, Area 6. Our first Zeta metroids, insanely tall column areas which are boring, tremendous ease of falling, absolutely no indicators of what can be bombed or not, it’s everything wrong with early Metroids magnified…
8. Level: …for a full…
9. Level: …three negatives
10. Controls: So… Space Jump is wonky as hell. I’m used to it cuz of Super but let’s be honest, Super’s Space Jump isn’t good either
11. Visual Navigation: This game is… very hard to tell where you are at almost all times. The samey bricks and palette do not help anything
12. Visual Distinction: Related to the aforementioned. The single palette and awful distinction do not help anything, and at times I honestly couldn’t tell what I was looking at, and this also hurts exploration

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Brinstar. The lovely rocks, bricks, and corridors
2. Brickwork: Norfair. The color palette, the heat waves, the more mechanical bent here and there
3. Architecture: Good time to mention that Zero Mission really makes the relatively small game space feel much larger than it is, with elevators and backgrounds and solid design
4. Brickwork: Kraid’s Lair. Probably the place that looks most like straight up ruins, adding to the flavor of the former Chozo facility
5. Brickwork: Ridley’s Lair. This place, in total contrast to Kraid’s Lair, is almost entirely overgrown by tons and tons of foliage and organic life in general
6. Spritework: Some fantastic stuff, especially for the enemies
7. Spritework: Samus herself deserves her own spritework positives. There is so much to her and she is crazy good…
8. Spritework: …for a double positive
9. MSQ: Tourian. The drained space pirates, the much colder and more mechanical facility, and the usage of Metroids… wonderfully horrible place
10. Visual Storytelling: A lot of tiny brushstrokes throughout. The state of the various Chozo statues, the pathways and ruins, etc.
11. Moments: The little vignettes in between load screens for the first time you enter certain zones
12. Music Direction: Much better than Metroid 1, really adding to the…
13. Atmosphere: …atmosphere of the game. This feels a lot more like the gloomy Zebes trek that 1 was always intended to be, further assisted by…
14. Sound Design: …the sound design, especially on the enemies
15. MSQ: Everything about the return to the Chozo ruins and the drawings at the end
16. MSQ: The entire stealth sequence, while it has flaws, is a wonderfully tense sequence
17. Brickwork: Chozodia and the pirate mothership
18. External Continuity: Weirdly, but it fits; the game ties pretty nicely into Super

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Map: Pretty friggin’ good. Color coded, easy to understand, lots of good usage of icons, good navigation…
2. Map: …earning itself two positives
3. Minimap: It’s just the map again, but it’s still useful
4. Tutorialization: Hit and miss, but still some pretty good stuff, especially right around anytime you get a new item or ability
5. Intro: The entire Intro pops. This is exactly what a Metroid Intro should be. The initial guidance, the slow unlocking, the massively improved flow, the enemy placement and design, the slow unlocks, the push into and out of Norfair, it’s awesome…
6. Intro: …and it deserves…
7. Intro: …triple positives
8. Flow: While I’ve seen better, even amongst the Metroids, but the flow in this game is very smooth. Looping into, through, and out of zones is quite fluid…
9. Flow: …and deserves a double positive
10. Guidance: The Chozo statues giving a vague idea of where to go is a feature I always liked in Prime, and I like it here (also means you can backtrack to a statue to get help)
11. Guidance: I’ve seen slightly better, but this is still very good terrain Guidance. Placement of interactables, terrain, drops, even enemies indicating areas you can go to, it’s great stuff…
12. Guidance: …for double positives
13. Overworld: There’s actually not a lot of ‘overworld’ tissue in this game, but what’s there is still legit and smoothly connects each major level area
14. Music: I think it’s hurt by the GBA soundfont, buuut it’s still good music
15. Interface: Simple and efficient
16. Controls: I know this is going to raise some hackles, but I am merely going to give two positives for controls, for them being exceptionally good. Tight, responsive, and precise, but also very well thought out about which buttons should do which given their limited button selection…
17. Controls: …for two positives
18. Info In Game: Upon getting an item it actually tells you what it does and how! Isn’t that wild?
19. Itemization: Drops. They fixed what kind of things drop what, and of course they are implementing the ‘smart’ drops (drops what you need as a priority)…
20. Itemization: …for double positives
21. Itemization: Item distribution. The spread of what items you get where and how is well thought out
22. Kit: Grip, ice, wave… some seemingly basic stuff, but it really works for both traversal…
23. Kit: …and combat
24. Traversal: Thanks at least in part to the aforementioned Kit as well as the massively improved movement speed, the game feels fun going from Point A to Point B
25. Pacing: Even more improved pacing from Metroid 2. The traversal, exploration, and combat sequences interspersed with the new addition of the minibosses really keep the pace great. Highs, lows, and in betweens…
26. Pacing: …for two positives
27. Level: Norfair central loop. This is still functionally part of the Intro, alongside most of Brinstar, but it still works. Norfair also continues the all important escalation of themes
28. Level: Norfair west. This also bleeds a bit into Crateria. This whole segment flows very smoothly (I know I’m saying that a lot) but it’s true. The progression flows great, and feeds so naturally back into Brinstar
29. Level: Kraid’s Lair, northern. This is once again a great progression of the initial portion of the game. The platforming is starting to get tighter, and the enemy placement is smart
30. Level: Kraid’s Lair, southern. The trip down to Kraid himself is a lot better than back in the original, getting you pumped and breaking you down but not before a recovery period for the boss himself
31. Level: Ridley’s Lair, west loop. This used to be the bullcrap trap into the Hell Corridor, but now it’s just this awesome platforming sequence
32. Level: Ridley’s Lair, east loop. This is the build up to Ridley himself, and probably the single best portion of the game
33. Level: Ridley’s Lair, exodus. Ridley’s down, it’s time to head out, and the route can diverge a few times but it really rewards the precision
34. Level: Norfair east (return). The final segment before we head to Tourian, and the final bit of new stage before we can start backtracking for items
35. Viscerality: Missiles sound chonky by themselves, but the shots, the dashing, the explosions
36. Boss: General. There’s a lot, they’re all fairly simple, but they’re solid
37. Enemy Design: Metroids. As usual, the Metroids are pretty good by themselves
38. Visual Distinction: Damned good distinction, helped by the tight spritework of the GBA, and again very smart color usage to help indicate and guide…
39. Visual Distinction: …for a strong…
40. Visual Distinction: …triple positive
41. Level: So, I know it’s contentious, but I love the stealth segment. It could’ve flopped, and the enemies DO hit way too hard, but I love everything else about it. Fair movement and scripting to not be ridiculous, good checkpoint placement (which also fully heals you), the scripted safe segments, the stun gun, and the tense platforming to bypass getting spotted earlier alongside level design that works whether you are detected or not. All of this earns…
42. Level: …two positives
43. Hyperbeam Moment: Finally getting the doom suit, also unlocking Space Jump. This is built up brilliantly across the stealth segment, and the increased reduction in damage taken and the swarms of enemies super weak to everything you’re doing make this all feel awesome. But what really cinches it is the great usage of the Metroid theme throughout…
44. Hyperbeam Moment: …earning it two positives
45. Outro: The final escape sequence is just the right amount of intense, directed, and dangerous to be as fun as it should be
46. Postgame: After getting the final suit, the map starts indicating what you have and haven’t gotten per zone, and offers a checkmark to indicate completion
47. Core Combat: Fun, engaging, interesting, high paced, and a critical component of the whole mix
48. Encounter Design: Much, much better than in the original. Great usage of mixing enemies and terrain
49. Enemy Variety: Surprisingly good given how many of these are based entirely on Metroid 1’s enemies
50. Minigame: Weirdly enough, Metroid 1 is fully playable in the game and that… qualifies
51. Replayability: Generally fun to replay
52. Terrain: Wonderful usage of the vertical platforms, protrusions from the wall, platform placement, and visual layout to constantly help with all other aspects of gameplay, most especially when the Grip is acquired…
53. Terrain: …earning double positives

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Level: Kraid’s Lair. There’s a few irritations here, but the absolutely mandatory tiny passageway which requires bombing a single spot in the floor? Not great, and if I’m going to ding the glass in Super, I’m going to ding this
2. Boss: Mother Brain. They made her harder… which is fine, but then there’s the lava pit. And even the damage the lava pit was doing wasn’t bad, it’s the underwater jumping mechanics and the difficulty of getting OUT of the lava that is the problem, and it turns what should be an intense fight into a frustration fest
3. Level: So, while I do enjoy the whole mother ship stealth sequence, the fact is you take too much damage. The pirates hit like an absolute truck, and this means it’s entirely too easy to have to redo and redo and redo each of the segments
4. Raspberry Jam: Low health beedleeps. Heard worse, heard better
5. Outro: Mecha Ridley. He hits entirely too hard for how simple he is, and having to refight him if you mess up the escape is just aggravating

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: The Golden Temple and the Hydro Plant both do a great job encapsulating what these facilities were and how they’re still operating
2. Brickwork: General cavework. The S&R Hideout, the Mining Facility, and the various Metroid caves
3. Brickwork: The Industrial Complex and the Nest (I know, weird pairing) both aren’t the best, but easily get across the ideas of where they are
4. Brickwork: I’m particularly fond of the Distribution Center. Foreground, background, great detailing, the aquifer, it’s all great stuff
5. Architecture: A weird case but it absolutely qualifies. Thanks to the time you spend in each area they tend to feel like you really are delving really far into a planet’s crust…
6. Architecture: …and delving down into the depths, despite its relatively small size
7. Spritework: Samus. I’ve seen better, but this is still a very awesome sprite with lots of detail and animation…
8. Spritework: …earning her double positives
9. Spritework: General. Enemies and foreground
10. Spritework: Bosses. Special mention goes to the new bosses which really look awesome
11. Animation: Some good stuff in general, especially on Samus herself
12. Storytelling Mechanic: Logs and data entries. Great background lore
13. Music Direction: Usual good stuff for the Metroid series
14. Atmosphere: Some areas really ooze some fantastic atmosphere
15. External Continuity: The way this game connects with the Primes and Super is very well done, and the usage of general Chozo and Metroid lore is excellent…
16. External Continuity: …earning an easy double positive
17. Internal Continuity: There’s a lot of little things that really keep the internal continuity tight. Energy distribution plant, the pipes in the background, the Federation teams, little stuff like that
18. Visual Storytelling: Virtually every major metroid area is in a cave dug out near a Chozo facility, not actually in it
19. Visual Storytelling: The Tester deserves its own positive. This thing is so clearly the thing they designed in order to build Samus’ suit, and the way they showcase that is great
20. Visual Storytelling: The lower depths, where no more creatures remain, only robots
21. Moment: The power plant meltdown is scripted, but it’s good scripted
22. Prime Opt: The GFS Thoth, the motion sensor, the background lore… and Genesis
23. Moment: The reveal of the fate of the S&R squad, and the first Omega
24. World Building: The fleshing out of the Chozo facilities and operations

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. HUD: Tight, distinct, useful, and editable
2. Controls: Rebinding options bonus point
3. Controls: Extremely tight controls. Special mention must go to adding a button for ball rolling which seems like a little thing, but can really smooth over traversal. Regardless of this, the gameplay controls exceptionally tightly…
4. Controls: …earning itself two positives
5. Bestiary: More lore focused, but still contains gameplay benefit
6. Map: Good, detailed, indicative, nice icons, and the ability to put a marker down…
7. Map: …for two positives
8. Minimap: Solid and smooth, straight out of games like Zero Mission
9. Info In Game: Tells you how to use items as you get them
10. Visual Distinction: Solid stuff throughout, almost always doing a great job of being clear and distinct. I’d say this is one of the most distinct of the Metroids…
11. Visual Distinction: …easily earning it…
12. Visual Distinction: …three positives
13. Itemization: Drops. Uses the full dynamic drop concept from Super which can really smooth over playstyle…
14. Itemization: …earning itself…
15. Itemization: …three positives
16. Itemization: Items and their spread
17. QoL: Charge to draw in items
18. Level: Area 1, Golden Temple. Clear paths up and through, nice looping in the eastern half, multiple routes for progression, and nice variance between the more platform and puzzle heavy segment versus the acid dripping enemies area…
19. Level: …earning two positives
20. Save: Save Placement is generally decent, and saves refill you so that’s nice too
21. Music: Some bangers in this one. While it loses some of the atmosphere of other titles, it makes up for it in sheer quality…
22. Music: …for a double positive
23. Pacing: As with all the good Metroids, the pacing is king. Exploration, combat, traversal, bosses, puzzles, and wonderful flow between them, leading to tons of ups and downs and a very smooth pacing…
24. Pacing: …earning…
25. Pacing: …three positives
26. Kit: Spiderball, Space Jump, boost, dash… usual kit
27. Flow: Almost every zone flows fluidly into the others, and most zones have good flow internally as well…
28. Flow: …earning an easy double positive
29. Guidance: Enemy placement, terrain usage, cracks in the walls, color indication, generally good guidance…
30. Guidance: …for two positives
31. Replayability: I mean yeah. Of course the game’s enjoyable to replay. I might do so someday even
32. Terrain: Fantastic terrain design, right up there with Zero Mission’s level of quality. Flat where it needs to be, angled when it needs to be, sometimes encouraging jumps and often encouraging dashing. Absolutely deserves…
33. Terrain: …a full…
34. Terrain: …triple positives
35. Intro: Does exactly what it needs to. Some basics, some simple enemy and terrain, but all trying to guide you into your first Alpha encounter
36. Level: Area 2, the Hydro Plant. While still a bit labyrinthine, the new tilesets and map really help navigation of this area. The addition of more puzzles to break the water plant bit by bit help too, and I appreciate them continuing the trend of putting most of the metroids off in their own cave network that’s ‘after’ the Chozo facility
37. Level: Area 3, Industrial Complex. One of the more open ended areas thusfar, lots of routes for progression, and a good mix of terrain challenges. Also I thought I’d hate it, but the ‘darkness’ area in the usual Metroid cave was pretty solid…
38. Level: …for two positives
39. Princess Peach Segment: Bonus points for the robot control sequence of the Industrial Complex
40. Boss: Torizo is probably the single best boss in the game. The initial fight being a standard but good Chozo statue fight is already good, but then phase two hits and the whole thing cranks into overdrive. Great test on your mastery of the Space Jump, as well as rewarding to out maneuver…
41. Boss: …earning two positives
42. Boss: Arachnus. I had a few issues here, but then I was pretty low on E tanks… he’s still a good boss fight. Having to successively bump him up to the walls is creative and fun, and the boss himself is neat regardless
43. Boss: The Tester. This guy’s fantastic. Great variety and patterning to his attacks, ability to recover in mid fight, the stylings around the different Samus attacks, just tons of fun…
44. Boss: …earning it…
45. Boss: …triple positives
46. Enemy Design: Zetas. These are fun to fight, probably the best Metroid enemy in the game
47. Level: Area 6, the Tower. Aside from housing the best boss so far, this place is an interesting and tightly woven segment that loops in on itself nicely internally, and also serves a nice contrast; the Tower itself is a vertical column, but the adjacent Metroid caves are horizontal space-jump sequences
48. Level: Area 7, the Distribution Facility. This is already great before I’ve even finished it, adding honest to goodness puzzles with the energy balls needing to be ‘golfed’ into position
49. Level: Area 7, Distribution Facility. The rest of it, that is. The level loops into itself wonderfully, and is perfectly bisected by the two bubbles segments to encourage you to go the ‘right’ way, along with several creative mechanics (the ‘static’ areas, the water itself, and lots of fun shine sparking)…
50. Level: …earning itself a second (or third?) positive
51. Overworld: The connective ‘column’ is better constructed than in the original, and benefits from having the ‘hub’ section to help keep things connected. Further, the greater connective tissue within each zone is almost always well designed, with good enemy placement, items to find, and general exploration…
52. Overworld: …earning two positives
53. Tutorialization: Again, general. Pretty much the Metroid standard, but there’s several tidbits throughout
54. Viscerality: Not the best, but it’s still quite fun to blast things with ice plasma death
55. Visual Navigation: Different tilesets, color palettes, and lighting to help distinguish and navigate
56. Encounter: Generally good encounter design, especially in the middle zones (3, 4, and 5 come to mind immediately)
57. Secondary: Shine Spark puzzles. These are fun, interesting, and just rough enough without being awful to really be enjoyable…
58. Secondary: …for a solid double positive
59. Secondary: Puzzles in general. There’s a lot of these throughout, usually for some minor item like a missile upgrade, but once again these are fun and enjoyable

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Walkthroughitis: Almost entirely for the optional items, but this is one of the worse ones I’ve seen. I thought I was doing pretty well, and I was wrong; even while using a map I still missed several items, and some of these there really is nothing in the game at all to indicate they’re there…
2. Walkthroughitis: …earning two negatives
3. Enemy Design: Alphas. They hug your hitbox, they float around in circles, they can only be attacked from one angle, and they’re just… irritating
4. Enemy Design: Gammas. Same general problem with Alphas but even worse now with an even smaller weak point and the ability to grab Samus and drain the crap out of her then also stun her
5. Enemy Design: Health, small hit boxes. This applies in general, and is mitigated by the inclusion of the Spazer, but it still sucks up until then
6. Encounter: Hope you like enemy spam. Like, a lot of enemy spam
7. Boss: The Tester. The platforms stay for entirely too little time, and the space jump requirement just makes the boss irritating when it shouldn’t be
8. Bug: General, almost assuredly engine related, but it was a consistent backdrop to the run
9. Outro: Bit too much of a nothingburger gameplaywise towards the end, combined with no smooth save point for the final boss without backtracking
10. Outro: The final boss herself. She’s a perfect example of an unpolished boss in general; super hard hitting, relatively simple patterns that are easy but punishing to avoid, and way… way too much health

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Main Deck. Looks exactly like I’d picture a civilian space station
2. Architecture: The entire game is the BSL Station and it really feels like it. Multiple biomes, connective tissue, the elevators, good stuff
3. Brickwork: Sector 1, the SR388 division
4. Brickwork: Sector 2, the jungle
5. Brickwork: Sector 3, the desert and the flames
6. Brickwork: Sector 4, with the wonderful underwater biomes and aquifer pipes
7. Brickwork: Sector 5, the fridge zone
8. Brickwork: Sector 6, the caves and the dark, and wonderful usage of colors too
9. Spritework: Samus. As usual, she’s one of the most well designed sprites around…
10. Spritework: …earning an easy double positive
11. Spritework: Enemies in general. Absolutely great visuals here…
12. Spritework: …earning a strong double positive
13. Spritework: Bosses get their own notice for being exceptional
14. Music Direction: Really, really solid music direction…
15. Atmosphere: …which really builds the atmosphere
16. Character: X Parasites. I know this is a weird one, but the very concept of what the X Parasites are and how they operate and propagate is absolutely terrifying
17. Integration: Now being part Metroid, X Parasites actually function as both health/ammo restores as well as items (from bosses)
18. Moment: The first showcasing of the SA-X. Immediately we see; she has the Varia suit, she has Screw Attack, she has Super Missiles, and she is devastating (she destroys a wall and a door right off the bat)
19. Moment: The second we open up those green door locks? X Parasites. And they’re everywhere
20. MSQ: Slow progression of the X Parasite and how they adapt and change to fight you, specifically
21. Moment: Saving the animals! Plus continuity with Super
22. MSQ: The slow escalation of the SA-X
23. Internal Continuity: General logic and consistency in how the station works
24. Moment: Any objections, Lady? Also Adam chastising her for thinking too small really tickles me
25. Visual Storytelling: Lots. The Nightmare shadows, the SA-X only showing up after locks are opened, which enemies manifest in which zones…
26. Visual Storytelling: …all kinds of stuff

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Wordy narration, which is made worse because…
2. Intro: …so much of what is said not only could have been shown instead, but WAS shown instead
3. Empty Text: Mostly in the Adam briefings, but good lord does he like to repeat himself
4. Pacing: The mandatory Adam briefings do not help the narrative pacing at all, and entirely too often he’ll repeat himself (dragging the scene out) or say stuff we already know (ditto)
5. Localization: The lazy usage of ‘the Federation’ (as in the whole damned thing) being evil is… honestly pretty stupid, and makes less sense the more you think about it

Gameplay Positives:

1. Info In Game: Opening demo. As per usual for these types of demos, it really helps convey some of the kit and controls available
2. Viscerality: Love those missiles, really
3. Controls: Notable because, despite being different, the game controls quite well. Similar to Zero Mission, smart usage of button placement and wisely flattening the missiles into one button helps…
4. Controls: …for two positives
5. Core Combat: Pretty standard for the series, but still generally good combat
6. Enemy Variety: Great enemy variety in this one, more so than most of the games we’ve covered so far. And most enemies have their own tricks and tips and strats for dealing with them…
7. Enemy Variety: …easily earning two positives
8. Guidance: I’ve seen better, but there is still good guidance in general in terms of placement of blocks, enemies, and camera
9. HUD: Solid HUD, quick and indicative
10. Info In Game: Not much, but it is there, helping to figure out how different items work
11. Itemization: Progression. General, usual decent spread of when you get upgrades
12. Kit: Ice missiles on command, AOE ice missiles, sprint, shinespark, the usual kit, space jump, screw attack… it’s all good stuff…
13. Kit: …for two positives
14. Map: Solid, Super style map. Helpful, color coded, and indicative…
15. Map: …for two positives
16. Minimap: Usual positive for a solid minimap
17. Music: A bit hampered by the soundchip, but still good
18. Pacing: Exploration, combat, boss. The pattern stalls a bit after the halfway point, but it’s good up until then
19. Save: Placement is actually pretty good
20. Terrain: Generally excellent terrain design, right up there with Zero Mission. The placement, angles, and routing…
21. Terrain: …all earning double positives
22. Visual Distinction: Absolutely great visual distinction, as per usual for the GBA titles…
23. Visual Distinction: …easily earning…
24. Visual Distinction: …triple positives
25. Intro: Sector 1. Very tight, rapid fire platforming and combat challenges, with a quick but tidy escalation of theme in taking out the various atmospheric stabilizer infestations
26. Level: Sector 2. Lots of ‘come back laters’, but also generally good flow
27. Level: Sector 3, lightning water and general fun
28. Level: Sector 6, a quick in and out in the ‘dark’ with a new and interesting gimmick (the ice parasites)
29. Backtracking: Actually pretty solid Backtracking overall. Between our kit, the terrain changing, and the enemies changing, this is pretty solid…
30. Backtracking: …earning a solid double positive
31. Replayability: Generally replayable game

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Walkthroughitis: This is probably the second worst Walkthroughitisy game of the series to date. Not just for optional stuff, but actual progression. This is… not great…
2. Walkthroughitis: …and easily deserves…
3. Walkthroughitis: …triple negatives
4. Boss: Yakuza-X. Phase 1 is irritating, phase 2 is too punishing, and the runback is obnoxious…
5. Boss: …earning two negatives
6. MSQ: There’s a segment immediately after Yakuza where there is no recovery anywhere nearby that isn’t either A: A huge backtrack to the ship or B: hidden. This is immediately BEFORE an encounter with the SA-X which, as per escalation, is actively attacking you at this point, and hits like a truck. And then it gets worse; there IS no nearby recovery station, and the nearest Save station is well off (thanks to some of the doors still being locked down)…
7. MSQ: …earning it…
8. MSQ: …three negatives
9. Boss: Nettori-X. Boring and punishing in equal measure, all while being bullcrap (the spores have way too much horizontal movement, the plants literally suck you into them, and you cannot escape the plants except after a certain point in time… at which point they will immediately go back to sucking you back in)…
10. Boss: …for double negatives
11. Itemization: Enemies dropping 10 health (or missiles!) in addition to being respawny (initial kill leads to second spawn) and not replenishable makes replenishing anywhere outside of a recovery station a chore and a half
12. Gotcha: This is weird. They fixed this in Zero Mission, but in Fusion they didn’t; it’s entirely too easy to run into an enemy you cannot see just by moving up or down
13. Boss: Nightmare-X. Cramped space, giant boss that homes in on you, with a tiny hit box, tons of health, and he hits like a truck. All of this makes for a fairly bad boss…
14. Boss: …earning two negatives
15. Itemization: Drops. This is honestly the second worst drop rate in the series so far, after 1. Enemies can drop their x parasite form, cool, but only occasionally drop more than 10 health per drop… at a point at which you take dozens or over a hundred damage per hit, and have nigh unto a thousand health. Oh but it gets worse, because occasionally instead of dropping anything at all they turn into another enemy! And of course they can drop missiles instead, because screw you…
16. Itemization: …earning a double negative
17. Difficulty: The game is entirely too overtuned (it’s no wonder the later versions actually added in a mode that changes this exact thing). Enemies hit very hard, and there’s very little recovery, and everything has too much health. Thus earning it…
18. Difficulty: …two negatives
19. Boss: Ridley-X. Boring boss with tons of health, sure, but that shriek is honestly ear piercing, I cannot believe they included that
20. Guidance: There’s some truly ‘screw you’ parts regarding how to progress
21. Boss: The ‘final’ form of each boss… the stupid sphere things. These things have way, way too long of invulnerability frames after getting hit, do the boring ‘home in on you’ irritation, and counter attack on top of everything else. There’s also no…
22. Mid Mission Checkpoints: …for these or any boss. This is really frustrating on some of the longer phased fights, especially the SA-X
23. Boss: The SA-X. It’s… a weird combination of boring and brutal, and it just gets… irritating
24. Padding: Boss runbacks! You love boss runbacks, right?
25. Outro: No save after the SA-X. The final Omega fight being a failure of a Hyperbeam moment. Yeah this… is not a good Outro

Story Positives:

1. Intro: It’s simple, but I love it. Growing up as a clone in first person, the quiet but overwhelming vibe of being utilized like a tool by those ‘greater’ than you, the initial launch into Geonosis for your first deployment, the music, the voice acting, it’s all great…
2. Intro: …earning two positives
3. Voice Acting: Generally good throughout
4. Tone: The general tone and vibe of a war story which, competently executed, I always enjoy
5. Characters: Sev, Fixer, and Scorch all manage to have interesting personalities and variances… despite being the TMNT crew
6. Banter: Love the banter between troops, both static and dynamic…
7. Banter: …earning a double positive
8. Brickwork: Star Wars aesthetic in general is nice and helps offset some of the texture and lighting woes (this game sits pretty firmly in the brown era of gaming problem)
9. Spritework: Similar to the above, the units do just enough to work for me (special mention to the wookiees)
10. Atmosphere: The initial ship infiltration of campaign 2 is fantastically quiet, dark, and horrifying
11. MSQ: The second part of campaign 2 works just as well for totally different reasons, the intensity of being completely on the back foot as the enemies get worse and worse
12. Pacing: Campaign 2 in general is wonderfully paced, as it flows from event to event and as things escalate
13. External Continuity: As is usual for the good Star Wars games, ties up the events of Episode 2 and leads into Episode 3 nicely…
14. External Continuity: …easily earning two positives

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: What in the world is this ending? You make the rush in, shoot down the ship, woo… Sev is in trouble, okay let’s go help him, no we Fake Drama it up a bit before being told we’re heroically starting ‘the invasion’ (I remind you this is a defensive situation… so, huh?) and then credits. It’s SO jarring and so out of nowhere and ends horrifically unsatisfyingly…
2. Outro: …easily earning…
3. Outro: …triple negatives

Gameplay Positives:

1. Music: Vode An!
2. Intro: Quickly and efficiently get us right into the battle zone alongside our fellow clones, who are barely holding their own until we arrive and save the day by getting a quick and fun rampage through the initial lines
3. Save: Good auto saves, good quick saves, good quick loads…
4. Save: …for two good positives
5. Party AI: When it’s good, it’s really good
6. Sound Design: Barks and indicators, which help navigate enemy encounters and level interactions
7. Level: Factory. Tight corridors but in a good way, good enemy spread, and multiple nice long objective-ladden firing ranges
8. Controls: Smart squad controls. Quick, hotkeyed, and rapid
9. Core Mechanic: Squad combat in general. Ordering into cover or to interact with the terrain seems like a little thing, but it helps flesh out the gameplay past simple gunplay
10. Level: The first campaign of Geonosis has some cool stuff to offset the issues. Neat objectives, nice solo sequence, the timed run through the ship
11. HUD: Generally decent. Some good visibility and squad indicators
12. Core Combat: Weakpoints in enemy design is a fairly standard feature for a good FPS, but it’s still good
13. Enemy Variety: Not a ton, but enough to warrant notice
14. Enemy Design: There’s a couple of exceptions to this, but overall I enjoy the enemies in this one
15. Level: The ship infiltration. Enemy variety, a good weapon that drops which is useful against some of the enemies but not all, and good terrain usage and encounters and pacing and the whole thing is just great…
16. Level: …earning a solid double positive
17. Level: The first hold the line mission in Campaign 2. It’s simple but solid; you’re given about a minute to prep for an incoming droid invasion which comes in the form of the spawners, and there’s lots of toys you can use to deal with it
18. Level: Then there’s the second hold the line mission in Campaign 2. This one’s even better; on arrival the droids are already setting up shop, so you’re pushing up against the tide a bit, but the same layout and kit is present
19. Level: Then there’s the final one which keeps the theme perfectly; The droids are already entrenched in the third area, and you have to fight through them to even reach a safe spot to hole up, and it’s awesome, but it all culminates…
20. Hyperbeam Moment: …in the game giving you a frickin’ AT-TE to sweep the room with
21. Pacing: Campaign 2 in general has excellent pacing. Intense moments, exploration stretches, quiet gloomy periods, some brief character bits, and back to more action
22. Level: Kashyyyk initial. Kashyyyk doesn’t quite hit the same way Campaign 2 does but it’s still solid, it’s basically Geonisis but better
23. Level: Kashyyyk rescue continues the trend of being generally good level design
24. Guidance: Despite the total lack of map or minimap, the game does a good job of helping you forwards
25. Mid Mission Checkpointing: Decent, weirdly enough

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Controls: Mouse aiming is just… wrong
2. Party AI: When it’s bad, it’s absolutely awful
3. Enemy AI: The enemy sometimes can just completely bug out. Sometimes it just stares at you. Sometimes it beelines a spot then retreats only to beeline the spot again
4. Itemization: Ammo. This is mostly an issue on the first campaign, but it’s bad enough to warrant zooming in on this negative; Ammunition in game design is a whole thing, and here there just… wasn’t any. Ammo was here and there, but not in the right amounts and not in a way to indicate or incline towards exploration or gun usage
5. Padding: Health. Enemies just have far too much health, especially the elites
6. Difficulty Options: Lazy difficulty
7. Difficulty Curve: Up and down and up and down. Some rooms are fine, some are ridiculous
8. Music: No Music issues abound
9. Level: The first campaign of Geonosis has sections I can only refer to as ‘screw yous’. Dry ammo segments coupled with areas without proper setups for the squad, brutal enemy placement, and pressure mechanics and/or monster closets all make the experience kind of awful
10. Encounter Rate: Monster closet design, especially in the first campaign
11. Overly Skippable: All over the place, even when trying to avoid it
12. Enemy Design: Dispensers. These are just awful, and spawn an infinite amount of enemies while requiring you to interact with them (a timed ‘hold still and be worthless’ mechanic) to destroy them
13. Enemy Design: The flying elite Geonosians. This seems mean, but no, these enemies absolutely suck. They are a rapid moving flying unit that has a very powerful ray gun with infinite ammo that does a ton of damage and is hyper accurate. On top of this, they will beeline your squad members who, thanks to the very construction of the game, are functionally worthless unless they are standing still… where they will promptly MELT to said hyper accurate tons of damage
14. Viscerality: This is pathetic. The guns and abilities look bad, sound worse, and feel awful. They fail at every level of viscerality…
15. Viscerality: …and earn two negatives
16. Outro: I chewed on this one for a bit, but the problem is the final few missions are just more long stretches of the same stuff we’ve been doing and the whole campaign has worn out its welcome by this point

Story Positives:

1. Intro: Excellent intro. Introduces us to the main characters, their relationship with each other, and we get a lot of details in a short period of time; Link moving to defend Zelda immediately, the King knowing us by name thanks to our job and relationship with her, the general prosperity of the nation, etc…
2. Intro: …for a solid double positive
3. Brickwork: Town. Seriously, this town is nothing short of gorgeous. Different colors of roofs, wonderful grass and tiles in the roads, shelves…
4. Brickwork: …and of course the upper areas with the minish
5. Brickwork: Forest. I absolutely love the forest. It’s technically a few zones (like, three) but they’re all REALLY well done. Trees, grass, bushes, water, vines, just… this place is amazing…
6. Brickwork: …earning a solid…
7. Brickwork: …three positives
8. Brickwork: A general brickwork positive for all the picori stuff, especially the village, but also several of the small mini screens with the grass and leaves in the foreground
9. Brickwork: Mountains! These are some of the more boring looking things in the game… which is telling considering they’re STILL a positive to Brickwork and absolutely still pop
10. Brickwork: Swamp and Ruins. The glup, the vines, the overgrowth, the bits and pieces of the ruined buildings and stonework in the background, absolutely sells the vibe and tone…
11. Brickwork: …for a solid double positive
12. Brickwork: Cave of Flames! I tend to enjoy a good lava region and this is no exception, earning itself some fun alongside the good design of said dungeon
13. Brickwork: Temple of Droplets. Frozen, watery, and special mention of the walls
14. Brickwork: Palace of Winds. I wasn’t going to give this one at first, since it’s mostly the ruins visibles again, but I have to give credence for those clouds and the visible terrain in the distance
15. Architecture: This is almost entirely for Hyrule Castle Town but man they do a LOT to make this seem so much larger than it is. Tons of detail and character density, lots of interior spaces (usually with their own mini dungeons), lots of buildings, and plenty of the usual SNES RPG tricks
16. Spritework: Characters. Good lord is this some absolutely amazing spritework, and somehow making like 70% of the characters looking and feeling distinct is damned impressive…
17. Spritework: …for two positives
18. Spritework: Enemies! So many stylings and presence and visuals and bounciness…
19. Spritework: …for another double positive
20. Spritework: Special mention for the bosses, which appear nicely big, doomy, and impressive
21. Doodads: Town! In addition to those great bricks, there’s great everything else! Shelves, books, food, pebbles, leaves, smoke stacks, birds… holy crap this is some absolutely fantastic doodad design…
22. Doodads: …earning a solid…
23. Doodads: …triple positive
24. Doodads: Forest! Same basic reason as before, the amount of detail here across the southeastern zones really makes these foresty areas absolutely pop…
25. Doodads: …for a double positive
26. Doodads: Mountain. Rocks, crags, spikes, gravel, dried out chunks of foliage
27. Doodads: Swamp! Again, absolutely love this place
28. Doodads: General. This is for… basically everywhere else
29. Animation: In general the animation pops…
30. Animation: …but what really bangs here is Link himself, holy crap there is so much lovely animation here
31. Lindblum Effect: Town! Animals (you can talk to), tons and tons of people who change and move and discuss as things move onwards as well as giving just… so much flavor. I actually believe this place is a town where people actually live and function…
32. Lindblum Effect: …for two positives
33. Characters: A general one, but as mentioned a few times there’s a lot of small but memorable characters absolutely all over the place
34. World Building: It’s minor, but it’s there in the background like a constant thrum. We really get the feel, arguably for the first time, that Hyrule really is a prosperous and well connected country that’s got a whole culture and economy going for it
35. Humor: Yeah, the game’s quirks made me laugh quite a bit

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Controls: Holy crap, a solidly controlling Zelda with no issues at all! Tight, precise, responsive, shortcutted, and even swimming is solid! This is a fantastically controlling game…
2. Controls: …and earns a full…
3. Controls: …triple positive
4. Music: Y’know, it’s super rare I give a GBA game with its problematic soundfont this many positives, but this music pops and (I know this is pathetic but it’s true) never gets irritating, frustrating, piercing, or otherwise…
5. Music: …for two positives
6. HUD: Good, simplistic, solid, and a few little QoL features (like the sized hearts)
7. Map: I’m shocked at how good this map is for a GBA game. The basic map is whatever, the dungeon map is fine, but the ability to zoom in on the overworld map to show something actually reflective of the terrain is nice, AND it marks quests and sidequests on the map…
8. Map: …for a strong two positives
9. Pacing: Absolutely excellent pacing between overworld, puzzle, sidequest, combat, exploration, and bosses…
10. Pacing: …for a solid double positive
11. Penalty For Failure: Usual good Zelda penalty for death
12. Replayability: First Zelda game I really feel is worthy of replayability just in and of itself
13. Guidance: Excellent (and honestly standard) Zelda style guidance. Spots, interactions with the walls, blocks, enemies, flow of level and overworld routing, the whole shebang…
14. Guidance: …for a strong…
15. Guidance: …three positives
16. Terrain: As with the good Zeldas, great usage and design of the terrain. Smartly making sure you have enough room to finish a puzzle with the timing being tight but not too tight while also allowing for quick restarts on the puzzle all just thanks to the smart terrain design…
17. Terrain: …for a solid double positive
18. Kit: Usual quality here
19. Kit: The flip cane, the vacuum, and the digger gloves really keep things interesting
20. Overworld: This is at the very least in the running for the best Overworld design we’ve seen so far, right alongside Link’s Awakening. It’s so good we have to zoom in a bit more…
21. Overworld: …because obviously there’s the usual high quality semi-puzzle design, but not to the excessive degree of the Oracles games…
22. Overworld: …but also because the Overworld has tons to do, is very rewarding to explore and solve, and…
23. Backtracking: …has proper shortcutting design everywhere to ensure you only have to ‘solve’ a particular segment of the overworld once
24. Itemization: This is for the spread of kit and upgrades more than anything else, as you generally get an item in dungeons and then in betweens, and both work well to keep things fresh
25. Visual Distinction: The GBA visuals absolutely pop here. Can see everything clearly and distinctly and never have a moment of ‘huh’…
26. Visual Distinction: …earning a strong…
27. Visual Distinction: …triple positive
28. Visual Navigation: Similarly two things help with navigation and understanding where you are and how to get where you want to go; The overall variance in biomes, but also the specific design of each area and the miniature landmarks present therewith…
29. Visual Navigation: …for two positives
30. Hub: Hyrule town! Easy to navigate, the important things being nicely centralized, and with tons of stuff to do…
31. Minigame: …especially all the minigames! They’re not the best, but they’re still quite fun
32. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Dungeons having shortcuts isn’t new, dungeons having TWO shortcuts as a default option? That’s good
33. Core Combat: The swings, the speed of the swings, the moveset… it’s good fun
34. Difficulty Curve: There’s a few stumbles right at the end, but otherwise the entire game has a nice incline of difficulty
35. Encounter Design: There’s only a few examples of it, but here and there are quite a few good examples of enemy and encounter design
36. Enemy Design: Generally solid stuff, as per usual
37. Enemy Variety: Generally good stuff, as per usual
38. Fast Travel: Not quite as good as usual, with fewer spots and not getting it for a ways into the game but… still smart, quick, and useful
39. Intro: Not a lot of gameplay in the lead up to the first dungeon, but what’s there is still good and well tutorialized
40. Level: 1, Deepwood Shrine. Mushrooms, pollen, scratches on the ground, and the weapon logically opening up the entire dungeon
41. Boss: Green Chuchu. Nice, creative, and fun. Good way to kick things off
42. MSQ: Mt. Crenel. There’s some iffiness here and there but it’s still a nice mini puzzle
43. Level: 2, Cave of Flames. This sucker is very fun; The minecarts, the smart backtracking, the clever puzzle usage, the unique gimmick of the item, and generally being well paced…
44. Level: …earning it a solid double positive
45. Boss: Gleerok! This is a great example of a fun gimmicky boss; Flipping his shell, avoiding the expanding lava, good stuff
46. Prime Opt: There’s quite a few rewarding sidequests to do, almost entirely in town, that give heart pieces and other upgrades
47. Secondary: Weirdly enough, despite the simple nature of them, I do enjoy most of the kinstone side quests and the little mini puzzles associated therewith
48. Secondary: Open world exploration which is both fun…
49. Secondary: …and rewarding
50. MSQ: The route to Level 3. The swamp is smooth, well looped into itself, nicely indicative, rewarding (bow get!), and has optional stuff too…
51. MSQ: …for a double positive
52. Level: 3, Fortress of Winds. There’s a few niggles but some of the best individual puzzle design so far in the game…
53. Level: …for a solid double positive
54. MSQ: The library side quest! Lovely stuff, smooth and intuitive, and fun puzzles to solve and test your knowledge thereof…
55. MSQ: …for two positives
56. Boss: Mazaal! Probably the funnest boss so far, with good usage of weak points, attacks, phases, and escalation…
57. Boss: …for two positives
58. Level: 4, Temple of Droplets. Great internal loops, excellent escalation of puzzle themes, only one (minor) irritation, and even the two stumbling blocks (the red herring puzzle and the ice physics) never really detracted from the experience…
59. Level: …for double positives
60. Boss: Giant Octorok had some issues but was still a solid fight once it solidified
61. MSQ: The graveyard segment is short but sweet, as is the waterfall climb
62. MSQ: I actually really liked the entire cloud segment. It’s a seemingly open micro dungeon but there’s never a sense of backtracking even when you are because you’re always progressing forwards
63. Level: Level 5, the Palace of Winds. While there’s individually better moments and puzzles in some of the previous dungeons, this dungeon is where it all comes together. Flow, looping, reseting, puzzles, combat encounters, pacing… and what really pushes it ahead of the curve, tiny little polishing features that just make this dungeon a treat to play…
64. Level: …earning it a full…
65. Level: …three positives
66. Boss: Gyorg Pair! There’s a couple issues here, but it’s not quite the boss’ fault, and this is still creative and fun
67. Outro: Hyrule Castle. I’ve seen better final dungeons, but this one continues the good level design trend of the rest of the game

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Grind: Locking a frickin’ heart piece behind gacha mechanics
2. Padding: Extraordinarily low drop rate on top of grindy costs for too many of the collectibles
3. Audio Spam: Hyah! Fwah!
4. Walkthroughitis: General. Very, very few incidents, but enough across the entire game to warrant the negative
5. Walkthroughitis: Good luck figuring out how to unlock the library!
6. Secondary: Collectible padding garbage. There’s just so, so, so much padding garbage in the game for collecting everything and it takes up well over twice the duration of the entire rest of the game. It’s boring drek…
7. Secondary: …and it deserves…
8. Secondary: …three negatives
9. Seconds In Minutes: Charging the Four Swords mechanic. This takes way, way too long to charge, and you have to charge twice (technically three times), and can be interrupted by literally anything (moving into a block, moving too far off screen, taking damage, trying to use an item…)
10. Outro: A total lack of any sort of mid mission checkpoints across the entire final encounter, starting with the timed rooms, and all three phases of the final boss
11. Outro: The second phase of the final boss is both random and arduous…
12. Outro: …for two negatives
13. Outro: The third phase of the final boss is a sloggy arduous aggravation of bullcrap. Move slowly while charging an attack that takes long, looong seconds to charge before allowing you to swing at the boss. If the boss is off tempo, sucks to be you because you cannot move fast while quad’d. If you are hit by absolutely anything at any point, sucks to be you because you reset to the very beginning. And if you are high or low on health when the quad hits you shoot sword beams which interrupts the mechanic, and it sucks to be you! Oh also if you’re SLIGHTLY off center you fail the entire rotation. And finally and worst of all, the final boss is just plain boring…
14. Outro: …earning it the coveted…
15. Outro: …triple negatives
16. Enemy Design: Those god damned wall masters. There’s some mean ones here too, right at the end of dungeons
17. Raspberry Jam: Low health beedleeps

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Forest. I’ve seen better forests, but it still manages the vibe of the woods and the grasslands
2. Brickwork: Desert. Again, I’ve seen better, but they still manage the barren wastes, especially in the sandsea area
3. Brickwork: The past in general. Every area that showcases how the old bots used to live and function, with the stylish colors and paint, works really well
4. Brickwork: The Ancient Cistern gets its own points for the visuals here. The golden upper area, with beautific waters, and the caustic swamp below, with sharp rocks and corpses everywhere
5. Spritework: Really pops with a few characters in particular.
6. Doodads: The Bazaar! Love the detailing here, absolutely makes the place feel like an actual market
7. Animation: It’s come and go, but when it’s there it’s absolutely amazing
8. Intro: So for what it’s worth, the Intro does a lot right (in addition to doing a lot wrong). The characters, Zelda’s connection to us, Groose’s tidbits, the descent into the world below, and the revelation of the untamed wilds below the clouds
9. Storytelling Mechanic: Text rendering. I’ve seen better implementations of this same idea, but changing the font size or how it pops into the screen does a good job of showcasing tone of dialogue
10. Doodads: General. Trees, bushes, tumbleweeds, rocks, lava floes
11. Tone: Kikwis are cutewis! Seriously though, these guys are adorbs every time they’re on screen
12. Tone: Mogmas! Similarly cute, but in a totally different way
13. Tone: The bots! My goodness the bots. How sentient are they? How aware? And how awful that they’re still dedicated to their jobs, well after those jobs became irrelevant… the poor things
14. Music Direction: General, again. While there’s a lot of padding, at least we get some good music usage for it
15. Cutscene: Ghirahim fighting Impa, Zelda fleeing, and us coming to the rescue
16. Moment: Groose tackling us as we go back down after the sixth dungeon is just… hysterical
17. Secondary: The gratitude quests, the characterization and world building thereof
18. Secondary: The later gratitude quests do a really good job of establishing the building blocks of civilization, and connecting peoples from across their respective ‘worlds’
19. Moment: The pumpkin ranch… and the chandelier
20. Character: Groose. Even when he’s a dick he’s well animated and written, and then you get into his arc, which is just fantastic. The only thing that prevents this from being even better is his relative lack of screen time
21. Character: Supporting cast. Some good, memorable characters here fleshing things out
22. Internal Continuity: Weirdly the game is pretty consistent about its time travel (until the end…)
23. Outro: To my shock, I still feel something at Fi’s departure. For all she pisses me off, that was still a good moment
24. Outro: The final denouement is still quite pretty, nicely done, and enjoyable

Story Negatives:

1. Dialogue: Intro. For the rest of the game it’s fine, honestly, but the Intro has absolutely terrible dialogue
2. Empty Text: Intro, again. The sheer amount of drivel pouring out of these people’s mouths is crazy
3. World Building: Intro. How does any of this work? How can there be a cloud barrier, with NO knowledge of what’s below it, except things can and regularly do fall through it? Where’s their food come from? Water? How do they regulate temperature? How do they build houses, brick, wood, mortar? I don’t need a billion years of exposition to get all this, but a few tidbits or visual storytelling moments or even just making it a pocket dimension like it should’ve been would’ve gone a long way
4. Intro: The Intro fails at its most basic purpose; getting the player invested. While there’s some good stuff here, it fails at properly building up to the escalation and culmination point when we hit the surface. Things just kind of… happen
5. Fake Drama: Hey Link and Zelda are going to reunite! NOPE! Why? No reason
6. Theme: DESTINY. We are all but puppets on its strings
7. Atmosphere: Why is everyone such a dick? Why are so many quests so horrible? Jesus
8. Empty Text: Fi. Just… Fi. I can’t even joke about this, she will literally tell us what we’ve already seen in the most obvious manner possible. What’s really awful about this? This is the reduced version, and it shows… in the first half of the game. But right about the point you get to the Ancient Cistern, Fi’s empty text suddenly starts showing up in SPADES, to the point where it actually starts escalating in frequency. By the end of the Sandship she’s showing up every few MINUTES to tell you that that thing in front of you is a door (this is a real example). It’s insane…
9. Empty Text: …and it earns…
10. Empty Text: …three negatives
11. External Continuity: The three goddesses barely matter, there’s this new deity you’ve never heard of before who’s actually Zelda who’s responsible for everything, Link is a chosen hero of HER and will always manifest as a result, it spits on every Zelda game that hasn’t been about the big three, Ganondorf is just Demise again, etc…
12. External Continuity: …and also, regardless of personal feelings, I feel this attempt at a retcon is crudely done
13. Integration: The final padding segment is… awful. It functions as gameplay padding and has absolutely no reason to exist storywise, and the more you think about it the less sense it makes (get the song to get the song to get the song to get the song to get the songs to get the trial to get the stone to get the cannon to access the final dungeon)
14. Cutscene Incompetence: Ghirahim totally destroys Link who can barely even stand! With ONE hit! So we just… watch… as he does everything and obliterates Groose and steals Zelda who is passed out from ONE HIT…
15. Cutscene: …also this scene is SO dumb it deserves a second negative
16. Storyboarding: Everything about the Ghirahim resurrecting Demise cutscene is awful. If I feel like it I’ll type up more details later
17. Internal Continuity: So the whole game is consistent about its timeline and time travel… until the ending! And absolutely none of how the time travel of the ending goes makes any level of sense. So we obliterate Demise, but then he’s resurrected in the past and sealed in the sword which prevents him from ever being obliterated and… what?
18. Outro: Demise’s Curse deserves its own mention. Yes I’m aware the original japanese is different, but that is not the game we are reviewing here. Demise pours a distressingly uninteresting ‘status quo must continue’ speech and dies, and it’s super rare I can tolerate such a thing, but definitely not here where it actually turns out to be true
19. Outro: Also everything to do with just… the ending is both agonizingly slow paced and entirely too rushed, and it’s all in serve of shoving things under the rug and wrapping up as crudely as possible, with almost nothing answered and no satisfaction to be found

Gameplay Positives:

1. Tutorialization: Tutorial cave. Probably the best part of the entire Intro, it quickly and efficiently teaches you everything you need to know about how to play the game, from enemies to terrain to interactables
2. Info In Game: Fi. Surprisingly large amount of info here on what’s just happened, as well as what you can do going forwards, and how certain things work
3. Saves: Autosaves, pretty smart ones too
4. Map: Decent, and with a crude marker system
5. Music: Y’know, I wasn’t sold on it at first, but damned if there’s not some bangers here. Special praise to basically every dungeon…
6. Music: …easily earning…
7. Music: …triple positives
8. Kit: Beetle. Slow, but neat. And the whip, which has some fun interactions
9. Kit: The dual clawshot is, as it always has been, awesome
10. Enemy AI: Surprisingly good stuff. Reactive to both you and the environment
11. Visual Distinction: Mostly for the sword and blocking mechanics, but it’s definitely there
12. HUD: Simple but solid
13. Controls: Gyro aiming is still awesome
14. Minigame: There’s several, and they’re surprisingly fun
15. Enemy Design: While there’s kind of the same enemy over and over, it’s still a good enemy
16. MSQ: Lead up to Forest Temple. Searching, platforming, and enemies designed to tutorialize the ‘facing’ combat system
17. Level: Skyview Temple. Nothing fancy, but some good in and out branches and good open air usage of the new item
18. Boss: I cannot believe this but… Ghirahim. The confidence in his moveset forming his first phase, the telegraphing, and the countering
19. MSQ: Eldin volcano. Bomb mechanics, digging, and slanted slopes
20. MSQ: Lanayru mines, and the timeshift stones. There’s not much to it, but it’s sweet and it’s fun and I love the interplay between the two worlds
21. Yoshi Drums: Plenty, but the Bazaar and the past/present segments are good examples
22. Level: Lanayru refining facility. While it drags a bit too long at points its very dense and clever with its puzzle design, managing two themes simultaneously; the sand and the wind, both of which work brilliantly with the past/present mechanic…
23. Level: …earning a double positive
24. Boss: Moldarach! Thought I wouldn’t be into it at first, but the angles on the claws, the shield bash technique, the viscerality of it, fun stuff
25. MSQ: Woodlands trial of the spirit. The tutorial for the concept, plays with your knowledge of the area, and rewards routing
26. Level: Ancient Cistern. I honestly wish I liked this level more (and lord knows it did well on the Story axis), but some padding and repetition just hinders what is otherwise an excellent dungeon with some fun puzzles and very smart progression (most of the time)
27. Boss: Koloktos is a feast. Could have been frustrating (thanks to the controls…) but they accommodate that in the boss design itself. Multiple phases with multiple attack vectors, good spectacle, and nice ‘build a vuln spot’ gameplay…
28. Boss: …earns two positives
29. MSQ: Desert trial of the spirit. This one has more design to it in general, more thought and care needed, and more puzzley elements to grabbing some of the individual tears…
30. MSQ: …earning it two positives
31. Minigame: This is functionally an MSQ positive as well but the rollercoaster minigame (and MSQ section) are pretty fun
32. MSQ: The pirate’s lair is an absolutely fantastic tutorialization for the mobile time interactions and had some tight but smart switch, terrain, and enemy interactions with the two states…
33. MSQ: …earning two positives
34. Level: Looping Sandship level design. Tight, fast, awesome in and out
35. Level: Also smart level design in how it doesn’t waste your time and usually gives you the means to the solution within seconds, not minutes, of exploration and discovery time
36. Backtracking: Weirdly enough, the Sandship. The stage functionally has two layers, but the INITIAL run through involves doing most of the ship, backtracking, then doing it again… but the second time involves whole new mechanics, interactions, and layers that keeps this sucker very fun
37. Flow: The Sandship has wonderful flow to it
38. Core Mechanic: The time swapping of the Sandship is a fantastic gimmick that totally changes the dynamic of the level
39. Guidance: The Sandship does a wonderful job of guiding you both macro and micro
40. Boss: Tentalus. Some early issues aside in phase 1, still a fun and rewarding phase
41. MSQ: The volcano trial segment. Even more intense and well designed than the last time, with three distinct types of challenges and general intensity in how they’re laid out…
42. MSQ: …earning a solid…
43. MSQ: …triple positive
44. Level: The Fire Sanctuary! A couple of guidance issues aside, this is a great dungeon. Recurring motifs of fire (avoid), water (quench), and earth (bypass) which compliment each other as you try to progress past the various fire related obstacles throughout. I’m also particularly fond of some of the tutorializing and interaction help throughout…
45. Level: …earning it two positives
46. MSQ: The stealth section was actually pretty solid. Limited kit but good flow and redesign of the area, and nice gradient failstates
47. Boss: Imprisoned 3. The increased speed and additional mechanics make this one actually fun
48. MSQ: The dense puzzle sequence of escorting the timestone to the thunder dragon is legit. Lots of different uses of different kit all while barraged by enemies that CAN be ignored due to the moving nature of the ‘arena’, it’s great…
49. MSQ: …and earns a solid double positive
50. MSQ: The Skyloft trials sequence. Recontextualizing the town we’re so familiar with into a routing problem was a great idea…
51. MSQ: …and gets double positives
52. Outro: While it has some issues, I do rather like the final dungeon. Each puzzle room varies in quality but there’s some great stuff here, and I like being able to approach it differently based on the shifting rooms
53. Outro: Final Ghirahim. To my shock this was actually an interesting fight, more focused on flinging than fighting which actually worked

Gameplay Negatives:

1. MTX: Amiibo town portal functionality
2. Core Mechanic: Stamina. While it’s not used to awful effect sometimes, mitigating the negative, the fact is that there’s no friggin’ reason for stamina to be tied to basic things like climbing and running here…
3. Core Mechanic: …earning two negatives
4. Controls: Motion controls. They’re… not good. They’re better than they were on the Wii, but they’re still not good
5. Controls: Regular controls. Again, better than the alternative, but still not good
6. Raspberry Jam: Low health and low stamina beedleeps
7. Intro: A long, long segment of almost nothing to do isn’t bad necessarily, but you need to really make it pop to keep the player invested, which they do not. But no this actual negative is for how dead things are once you hit proper gameplay, aka when you hit the surface, and it STILL fails to grab you, with a weak first area and weak first dungeon…
8. Intro: …earning two negatives
9. MSQ: Eldin Volcano and finding the 5 key pieces
10. Boss: Scaldera. Jank plus hit box detection plus padding…
11. Boss: …equals two negatives
12. Minigame: Carrying five pumpkins!
13. Level: Lanaryu refining facility is just too long for what it is. It’s a lot of micro padding, but it’s everywhere. Even the size of the rooms is just too big
14. Tutorialization: Fi. Jesus Christ Fi I don’t need you to tell me that the thing I’m here to get is here to be gotten!
15. Padding: Redo the first dungeon again, but with ONE new key to get! Oh and a few enemies with higher health
16. MSQ: The entire sequence leading up to the Ancient Cistern. This is frustrating, irritating, marred by segments too long and too padded (see prior section)
17. Backtracking: Having to backtrack to the stormcloud song temple thing every single time we advance the quest is completely unnecessary
18. Fast Travel: Okay so fly back up to the sky, load screen, okay now turn around and fly a surprisingly large distance back to the spot you JUST left, okay NOW go back down to land somewhere else
19. Mid Mission Checkpoints: All of the Silent Trials. Screw up at any point? Start all over
20. Interface: No pause while swapping items or bottles, for… some reason
21. Padding: Okay so, first you reach the Fire Sanctuary and do a couple of neat little micro puzzles… aaand then have to go slog your way out of the dungeon, figure out where to go (good luck with that by the way!), to a warp point, to the sky, fly to Faron, land, swim to the dragon and ask for help, walk back out, fly to the sky again, fly to the volcano again, land AGAIN, and THEN you can start the escort quest…
22. Padding: …for two negatives
23. MSQ: Then we have the escort quest itself, which is already a bit aggravating but is mitigated by decent checkpointing and… absolutely AWFUL itemization. We quite literally almost softlocked here due to lacking resources to progress
24. Boss: Ghirahim 2. The first phase is just… irritating (swipe away a diamond then the same feint problems as earlier) and the second phase is incredibly boring (it’s quite literally the same ‘block from two directions’ fight we’ve had for hours from trash mobs now)
25. Enemy Variety: I waffled on this for a while but seeing how even major encounters started doing it, I think it deserves the negative. Enemies just… block except from one direction. And that’s it, that’s the enemy variety. Sometimes they block two directions, sometimes three, sometimes four (requiring a stab) but that’s… the enemies in this game. All of them
26. Boss: The Imprisoned, all of them, are janky fights and that can get in the way of the fights themselves
27. Overworld: Skyloft. It’s empty aside from picking up chests and a few scattered minigames, it’s visually disinteresting, and worst of all…
28. Traversal: …it’s boring to navigate. Boring…
29. Traversal: …AND slow
30. Seconds In Minutes: Lots, all over the place…
31. Seconds In Minutes: …for a full…
32. Seconds In Minutes: …three negatives
33. Guidance: For a game which has someone who will NOT shut up about the obvious, this game actually has really bad guidance repeatedly…
34. Guidance: …for a full…
35. Guidance: …triple negative
36. Core Combat: The absolute adherence to the control gimmick cuts the entire core combat loop off at its knees…
37. Core Combat: …for two negatives
38. Itemization: Drops and frequency thereof. Sometimes it’s fine, sometimes massive droughts
39. Integration: The final padding sequence is bizarre. It exists purely as padding for gameplay, and makes NO sense in lore at all
40. Outro: The Demise fight. It’s… I mean it’s not terrible, but it’s kind of boring, and it’s only really held up by its spectacle

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Great Sky Island. The place sells the new aesthetic of the Zonai and the long-since-ruined shtick these games are so fond of, but also manages the ‘shouldn’t be in the sky’ thing
2. Brickwork: Kakariko and Hateno, the Hylian villages. Lovely, simple, and sweet
3. Brickwork: Rito Village is a lovely little village, wonderfully themed and suitable for its inhabitants
4. Brickwork: Hyrule Castle. Good lord, the awful and oppressive ruins of Hyrule Castle
5. Brickwork: Jungle wastes of the southeast. You can just feel the hot muck of the area
6. Brickwork: Gerudo and the desert. I’ve seen better, but this is still a nice swath of landscape and I love the…
7. Brickwork: …architecture and stylings of the Gerudo town itself
8. Brickwork: The molten blasted plains of Death Mountain
9. Brickwork: There’s some visual distinction and lack of contrast issues, but I absolutely love how pretty Zora’s domain is. The angles, the metal, the crystal, the liquid
10. Architecture: More or less the exact same positive that Breath got since, y’know, similar map. Still all the same concepts follow
11. Spritework: General. The shading look works pretty well and gives everyone a fairly distinct style…
12. Spritework: …easily one of the stronger elements of the game…
13. Spritework: …and earning three positives by itself
14. Doodads: In town, as usual
15. NPC Set Dressing: Weather and acknowledgement thereof
16. NPC Set Dressing: Roamers in cities, as usual
17. Atmosphere: Korok adorableness. As much as I hate those buggers with a fiery passion, they’re still pretty adorbs
18. Atmosphere: Weather. As usual, good for story, bad for everything else
19. Intro: Not too shabby of an Intro, honestly. Ignoring the reset button, the hook of finding this ancient mummy and the new problems facing the world is engaging
20. Atmosphere: The ascent into the Sky Temple is fantastic. The slowly darkening sky, the receding ground, the floating platforms complimented by flying ships…
21. Music Direction: …and the music that slowly swells the further up you get, really adding to the build up
22. NPC Set Dressing: The newspaper, the woman in every stable reading it, and the acknowledgement of quests and events
23. Music Direction: The Temples usage of Yoshi Drums really adds to the scenes of each
24. Brickwork: The entirety of the Sky Temple and the aesthetic thereof. The viking styled mayan longboat airships and the storm all around
25. Brickwork: There’s some variety and some similarities, but the Temples as a whole deserve a Brickwork nod for their Zonai designs
26. Cutscene: Okay I’ll give you this, Demise–er, Ganondorf’s sweeping the world scene was cool
27. Lighting: Believe it or not, the Depths. It’s not just black (which is good) and it’s very atmospheric and gloomy…
28. Atmosphere: …which combined with the music, visuals, and gloom, makes it even better
29. Cutscene: So it has issues, don’t mistake me, but I do like when they (finally) show the imprisoning scene with the Sages, Rauru, and Ganondorf
30. Character: Tulin. Weirdly wholesome and worthwhile for what he is
31. Character: Generally good supporting cast
32. Character: Kohga is… just… the best villain in the game, it’s bizarre. He’s just the right mix of entertaining, ridiculous, and evil
33. Character: Riju and Sidon kind of get bundled together here, but they both have their moments. Sidon being wholesome and supportive instantly, Riju being on top of things and having our back at a moment’s notice, good stuff
34. Voice Acting: Special mention to Riju and Ganondorf who I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk about how good they both do
35. Animation: Motion capture. It’s actually weirdly good, and with a larger quantity of cutscenes to take advantage of it, it’s even better. Honestly the animation does a better job of characterizing a lot of individuals in cutscenes than their dialogue or voice acting…
36. Animation: …and so earns…
37. Animation: …a solid triple positive
38. Camera: Not super great, but still good stuff
39. Secondary: The big side quest chains (the paper and the ruins) are both interesting and have some neat character and humorous bits to them
40. External Continuity: Characters from Breath. There’s quite a few of them and they’ve all moved a bit forwards in their stories since Breath
41. Secondary: The mayoral ‘election’ is appropriately cute and amusing, and surprisingly fun for what it is
42. Humor: Aggregate, but there’s plenty of little bits here and there
43. Secondary: The Lurelin restoration quest in general. Nice, wholesome, clean
44. Tone: Whereas Breath was all about the empty and dead land, but Tears is much more about the reclamation, and this is visible everywhere. The survey teams, the cross coordination of the different towns, the increased travel and trade…
45. Tone: …and the emphasis on archeology, basically everywhere
46. Outro: Honestly several elements of the final approach work quite well for me. The tone, the gloom, the escalating music…
47. Outro: …and weirdly enough the inclusion of the sages in the second final fight, which deserves its own mention
48. Outro: And I have to give special mention to that final spectacle fight with Dragon Ganon. It’s exactly what a victory lap final boss should be; a big spectacle of fun
49. Outro: Moment: So as unearned as it is, I have to admit, I really do like diving to catch Zelda at the end

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: External Continuity: Worfing. There’s good ways to depower us and this isn’t one of them. In fact honestly it ties into another problem I have…
2. External Continuity: …people not remembering us. There’s a few that do, of course, and then there’s everybody else. In fact quite a few people specifically act as if we never existed, tying into another weird problem the game has…
3. External Continuity: …it’s barely a sequel. The events of Breath have no tangible effect on Tears, almost to its detriment. The Sheikah tech? All gone, and not even mentioned. The defeat of Calamity Ganon? A resounding shrug. The restoration from the apocalypse? Never heard of it. If not for the asset re-use it’s a different game
4. Writing: Super ancient tech that’s still operating…
5. Writing: …except it’s actually WORSE now because it’s even MORE super ancient tech which ran on batteries of all things
6. World Building: Timeline gaps, as per usual for this franchise
7. Dialogue: Issues continue. I swear, Zelda games used to have good dialogue and localization, but that trait has long since been lost
8. Empty Text: Repetition. Like, entirely too much…
9. Empty Text: …earning a full…
10. Empty Text: …triple negative
11. Cutscene: Pointless recap for events of the tutorial immediately after the tutorial
12. Story Sequencing: Cutscenes out of order, of course, and easy to do out of order too. Yes I know there’s a guide (that you can easily skip and is hard to read) but it’s still WAY too easy to just be like ‘hey what’s that giant emblem, oh hey a thing I can interact with, whoops story’s out of order’ as we demonstrated on camera
13. Cutscenes: So, the post dungeon cutscenes are nice, buuut they’re also near identical. It’s NOT that hard or new to create a different variant based on sequential unlock, but no, instead each cutscene plays as if it was the first one you’ve seen. This is actually worse than in Breath because these are nice, looong cutscenes that add absolutely no value past the first viewing…
14. Cutscenes: …earning two negatives
15. Brickwork: The sky. I’m sorry, it’s neat and all, really, but it’s also the same damned thing over and over and over again and it gets old seeing copy pasted islands as I explore the sky
16. Cutscene: Memory 7, A Show Of Fealty, is a terrible cutscene. What could have been a character, political, and/or world building scene does none of the above and just wastes time on memberberries and obvious, bad dialogue
17. Cutscene Incompetence: So yeah, Sonia’s dead, because after blocking ONE attack they had to sit and brag about it. For a while
18. Storyboarding: Everything about the past cutscenes storyboarding is off. From the more actiony sequences (if you can even call them that) to the weird positioning in talky scenes
19. Character: Zelda. Regardless of all other things, I just do NOT like Zelda here. She’s too dim witted, too ‘here just to watch’, has no agency of her own, and aside from ONE cutscene in the beginning of the game she has no personality…
20. External Continuity: …which is in stark contrast to the Zelda from Breath (which this is, of course) who DID have a personality and I actually liked as a character
21. Writing: Idiot Balling across the entirety of the past cutscenes
22. Writing: So, Ganondorf just absolutely bodies the entire hero squad, which is already worfing, buuut what really makes it flop is it’s done entirely off camera and doesn’t earn a lick of it
23. Cutscene: Finally all of the past cutscenes… suck. Just top to bottom, they suck. They aren’t interesting, they do a dis-service to the fans and the plot and the world building and the characters, and they just suck…
24. Cutscene: …earning a solid…
25. Cutscene: …triple negatives
26. Story Sequencing: Okay so hear me out. This is a linear story, but nothing really enforces that linearity. This causes all kinds of issues in all directions, as it’s easy to do the story out of order, completely bypass entire swaths of story accidentally, and generally ruin the flow of events. There are many, many ways they could have fixed this (ranging from very difficult to incredibly easy) and they did not do any of them…
27. Story Sequencing: …for a solid…
28. Story Sequencing: …three negatives
29. Moment: Why is Phantom Zelda being revealed treated as a big reveal?
30. World Building: Or lack thereof. There is a general lack of thought put into a large quantity of what is where and how in the game, and while for the most part I’m willing to just move past it, at times it becomes aggravating enough to detract from the experience and be a negative…
31. World Building: …or two
32. Outro: So Zelda’s condition is ‘irreversible’ and cannot be fixed… yeah anyways, then Sonia and Rauru’s ghost show up and just fix her magically… sure. This would already be eyebrow raising but doing so after stating (multiple times) that it’s the kind of thing you can’t undo just makes it worse…
33. Outro: …earning two negatives
34. Segregation: So this is a weird one but… the world is… in service of gameplay, to the expense of the story. There are so many examples everywhere that to list all of them would take quite a while, suffice it to say it’s one of the worse examples of it I’ve seen in a while…
35. Segregation: …and thus deserves…
36. Segregation: …a full triple negative
37. Voice Acting: Some inconsistent quality throughout

Gameplay Positives:

1. QoL: Looting. It’s fast, it’s efficient, it can be done while mounted or flying, and it just dumps into your inventory quickly. Given the updates to vehicles and the like this is even better than before…
2. QoL: …earning two positives
3. Log: Text log when talking to NPCs in case you missed something
4. Map: This is, no joke, one of the best maps in gaming. You can put down custom markers and pins and it’s highly detailed and well marked and contains info on where you’ve been and the teleport spots and it’s just so awesome…
5. Map: …for a full…
6. Map: …three positives
7. HUD: Pins and stamps deserve special mention for the map. Stamps can be wherever and are mostly for your sake, but pins show up regardless of distance and can be swapped between stamps and pins quickly and easily
8. Minimap: For basically all the reasons the map is great, the minimap is great…
9. Minimap: …for two positives
10. HUD: Temp, time, health, sound
11. Kit: Ultrahand. Just, the tool itself and the development of Magnesis. Being able to grab, hold, move, maneuver…
12. Kit: …easily earns…
13. Kit: …three positives
14. Kit: Ultrahand, offensive possibilities. Dropping items on enemies, flinging things over cliffs, pulling supports out from under them
15. Kit: Ultrahand, adhesive. The mere ability to adhere items to other items is a huge game changer, and completely alters how you interact with the world at basically every level…
16. Kit: …earning another…
17. Kit: …triple positive
18. HUD: Ultrahand has a pretty solid HUD. The axis rotators, the green ‘shadow’ showcasing where it is on nearby surfaces, and the glowpoints indicating where it will adhere to
19. Controls: Quick and intuitive controls. This game definitely has some control issues, but not during Ultrahand, with simple and efficient methods to grab, drag, attach, detach, and rotate
20. QoL: Activating devices! Doesn’t take durability (big deal) and, more importantly, you can hit any part of the combined device to activate the attached devices
21. Itemization: Zonai devices, quality. There is such generally good design in what these things can do
22. Itemization: Zonai devices, variety. There is so much good variety in what these things can do
23. Core Mechanic: Building. Yes, for all the Ultrahand positives we’ve already given, we haven’t even touched on the concept of vehicles yet, which deserves its own section for functionally being a combination of all the previous mechanics. There are so, so many possible combinations and options for building and the availability for increasing traversal, alone, is astounding…
24. Core Mechanic: …and easily deserves…
25. Core Mechanic: …three positives
26. Core Mechanic: Building, vehicles, weaponized. Because then there’s options for actually fighting, whether it be on a rolling tank of doom, or a turret, or a giant mech, or even just a roombot…
27. Core Mechanic: …earning another solid…
28. Core Mechanic: …triple positive
29. Core Mechanic: Building, utility. Then there’s the options for utility in doing all the miscellaneous things that don’t quite fall under movement or damage…
30. Core Mechanic: …for another…
31. Core Mechanic: …triple positive
32. Core Mechanic: Building, combinations. And finally, the sheer quantity and variety of how you can combine what is absolutely insane…
33. Core Mechanic: …and easily deserves…
34. Core Mechanic: …three positives
35. Kit: Autobuild, Schematics, favorites, last build. These options are a great QoL and make building a LOT better across the board…
36. Kit: …earning a solid double positive
37. Kit: Fuse. As discussed later, Fuse completely changes how you interact with combat and weapons, and in addition to the obvious gameplay benefits it can add to utility (attach gems or parts) and fun (gigantic spear that’s twenty feet long? Sure!)…
38. Kit: …earning it…
39. Kit: …three positives
40. Respec: The ability to unfuse items at Terry Town!
41. Kit: Ascend. It’s limited range limits its use, but it’s still extraordinarily useful in a lot of situations (especially given the new caves system) and the addition to traversal options…
42. Kit: …lands it a second positive
43. Kit: Rewind. It’s impossible to overstate how broken and useful this mechanic is, and the depths to which it can be used is crazy…
44. Kit: …earning a full…
45. Kit: …three positives
46. Kit: Shields and bows. Just as before, good spread and good variety…
47. Kit: …for two positives
48. Kit: Weapons in general. Same general spread as before in types and styles…
49. Kit: …for two positives
50. Sound Design: Some generally good indicative sound design throughout
51. Fast Travel: Checks all the right boxes; prolific, find to unlock, optional, easy to use…
52. Fast Travel: …for a full…
53. Fast Travel: …three positives
54. Yoshi Drums: Quite a few examples all over the place, but it’s good stuff. Most noticeable in the four temples
55. Guidance: Each tower, which you’re obviously inclined to interact with, tends to have vector quests and/or NPCs helping to guide you to nearby activities and MSQ
56. Guidance: There are NPCs absolutely everywhere that tell you about all kinds of other things. Where to find dispensers or inns or enemies or drops or whatever
57. Visual Navigation: Landmark design. While a bit changed from the original it’s still turbo there, especially with the visually distinct islands in the sky…
58. Visual Navigation: …earning a solid…
59. Visual Navigation: …three positives
60. Guidance: The scanning mechanic by itself is great. It can help you find items you log, of course, and shrines, which is invaluable
61. Info In Game: Tooltips, which do a lot to help players know what can do what, with new details too like whether or not a weapon is merged and what type of things it does…
62. Info In Game: …for two positives
63. Itemization: Cooking ingredients
64. Core Mechanic: Cooking continues to be a great feature, with great combinations and usefulness…
65. Core Mechanic: …earning two positives
66. Interface: Things that are unknown get a ??? before being discovered, at which point they show the item name as a hover over said item
67. Traversal: Climbing anywhere. No, seriously, it’s bonkers how much of a game changer this is in how you navigate the world. Stuck behind a house? Climb climb climb. Want to go up that sheer cliff instead of around? Climb climb climb. Trying to dodge lava? Climb climb climb. Love it…
68. Traversal: …for a solid…
69. Traversal: …three positives
70. Kit: The glider. Another seemingly simple bit of kit that really shines in how much it adds to the game. In addition to adding vertical movement, it effectively removes falling damage from the equation (meaning going DOWN is now just as feasible as up), and allows you to (quickly) traverse horizontal areas as well…
71. Kit: …for a solid double positive
72. Flow: Unlock shrines without doing them
73. Save: Good save system
74. Save: Good autosaves (multiple and periodic)
75. Power Progression Curve: Stamina. Just as in the previous game, stamina is a huge deal and is massively useful in a nice and granular sense for almost all of the gameplay (the sole things not directly improved by additional stamina are battery charge and weapon damage), even more so than in the previous game thanks to the increased layers of both the Depths and the Sky. Thus even more so than before Stamina is a great form of power progression…
76. Power Progression Curve: …and earns…
77. Power Progression Curve: …a full three positives
78. Core Combat: Essentially unchanged from before, with one noticeable difference; the new weapon merging means the reach can be changed as well, which can fundamentally change how you engage in combat, which is awesome. It’s still great combat…
79. Core Combat: …and it still earns…
80. Core Combat: …three positives
81. Enemy AI: As before, there’s a lot of intelligence that goes into the enemies, but now that mechanisms and vehicles are in the mix…
82. Enemy AI: …it’s even better than before
83. Interface: Fuse sorting by attack power, type, and most used
84. Intro: The Great Sky Island isn’t at the level of the Plateau, but that’s not saying much. It’s very directed, but at each point there’s multiple solutions and resources to use to progress, and each subsequent area is designed around utilizing whatever bit of kit you probably just got. This is on top of tutorializing every major aspect of gameplay; building, fighting, foraging, and traversal… thus earning it…
85. Intro: …a solid…
86. Intro: …triple positive
87. Itemization: Weapon drops. There is a MUCH greater amount of thought put into the drops and basically everywhere you’ll find something actually worthwhile, even if you avoid combat regularly
88. Itemization: Weapon merging is its own Kit positive, but it has to be mentioned how the drops of horns (among other things) plays into that beautifully. Almost every enemy drops a horn, and those horns have immediate impact on the nature of how your weapons work…
89. Itemization: …and this is even further added to by the large quantity of OTHER non monster stuff you can use to the same effect (Amber, for example, is plentiful AND everywhere)…
90. Itemization: …for a solid three positives
91. Itemization: But there’s another fascinating aspect here that I cannot believe I’m mentioning. So, I still to this day believe durability shouldn’t really be in the game, but the fact that they actually LOWERED the durability on almost every weapon on the game (basically all the ‘drop’ items) actually works in the game’s FAVOR, bizarrely enough, because it leads to a near constant ‘churn’ of new weapons replacing the old. This would suck… if not for the quantity and quality of said weapons dropping, and the near constant flow of Fusion items to increase the damage of even a basic stick to something respectable. It is far, far harder to ‘build into a corner’ on weapons in this game than it was in Breath
92. Itemization: Distribution of… basically everything. Fusion items, sure, but also useful stuff and consumables
93. Kit: The consumables! The puff shrooms, the muddle buds, stuff like that which adds even more options for how to deal with combat
94. All Roads Lead To Rome: As with before, the options here are absolutely bonkers. Let’s talk this one out. First and most importantly; when you get off the Great Sky Island the first thing you run into is an area with TONS of direction on where to go next, but lots of options, and none of them really mandatory except for the one to get the glider
95. All Roads Lead To Rome: Then there’s each region, of which there are four. Simply the option to decide which order you want to do them is already good…
96. Guidance: …and it should be mentioned that there are actually a LOT of vector NPCs and quests to help you get to where the content is. The sign posts are everywhere, built right into the game (roaming NPCs, literal signs, or just looking around at the big obvious problems in visible range)
97. All Roads Lead To Rome: Then there’s each individual area, which has their own benefits of doing it in whatever order you want to. For example, right at the beginning you get at least one tidbit guiding you in each direction, but SIX guiding you to the Rito, meaning you’re more likely to head to Rito (either you’re more likely to see one of those, or you’ll see the increased volume if you’re talking to everyone) so now you’re in the frozen areas, and it’s immediately apparent there’s a blizzard, shrines, and towers all of which can be done in roughly any order, up to and including the Sky Temple
98. All Roads Lead To Rome: This trick is repeated with each region. The Goron area? Lots of lava, sure, but also lots of shrines and optionals to do in any order, once again up to and including the Fire Temple
99. All Roads Lead To Rome: Zora? Lots of people guide you towards Sidon, the king, the town itself, and the historian, all of whom cross connect and can be done in roughly any order, and all of it eventually leads to the Water Temple
100. All Roads Lead To Rome: And then there’s special mention for the Depths. The Depths are their own animal; it’s obvious where and how to get down there, but once you do the options are ALL over the place. Almost every drop spot has at least one light bulb in immediate visual range, and from there you can do whatever the heck you want in basically whatever order you want to…
101. All Roads Lead To Rome: ..for its own…
102. All Roads Lead To Rome: …triple positive
103. All Roads Lead To Rome: The Sky is a weird one, because getting up there is a whole thing, and navigating it is similarly a thing, but once you figure out how to access the content you can do it in basically any order, and it’s both unique and rewarding
104. Secondary: Dude holding signs side quests. Simple, fun, always has stuff nearby to help do it, and rewarding. Also these are EVERYwhere so no matter where you go you’ll run into some to profit from them
105. Secondary: Korok seeds. No, hear me out, like before they’re all over but while there’s still some of the basic ‘hidden’ types, now they have the ‘escort’ type and made the critical decision to allow them to be grabbed by Ultrahand. This is a game changer, because now it’s all about building around getting them to their destination, but also you can literally just pick them up and carry them… or, of course, torture them horribly. This is weirdly fun, AND they have indicators so you can tell where they are from a distance (helping with guidance) as well as their destination (which only shows up when you talk to them, avoiding clutter while retaining guidance)…
106. Secondary: …and so, bizarrely…
107. Secondary: …earns three positives
108. Enemy Design: Same generally good design as in Breath
109. Enemy Variety: Same generally good variety as in Breath
110. Tutorialization: Tornado shrine and segments, as you’re ascending up the cyclone (and at just the right point no less) serving as an indicator of how to progress
111. Kit: Tulin! His ability really opens up horizontal movement, and can be used while in mid air…
112. Kit: …on top of being a crack shot and doing some decent sniper damage
113. Kit: Yunobo has some issues (placement and spacing mostly) but he’s still a nice ‘bomb’ ability and great on vehicles
114. Kit: Riju is weirdly useful. She’s difficult to use, but hits a HUGE area and does tons of damage which is also lightning. She is, functionally, artillery, and is as rewarding and difficult as that should be
115. Kit: The party in general. Just having the extra targets there helps, and they can be some nice ‘bonus’ aid in combat
116. MSQ: The Wind Temple ascent is much better than I thought it’d be. Multiple routes thanks to the freeform nature of it, actually fun platforming by using the wind and Tulin and the glider as primary mechanics, optional encounters which give decent drops, and generally good guidance and flow…
117. MSQ: …make this entire section just a treat
118. Level: The Wind Temple itself is relatively short (and a bit too large for the content therein) but it’s actually quite solid and follows through on the ‘do whatever’ solutions to progression
119. Boss: Colgera is quite fun. Multiple methods to damage, surprising mobility and smart usage of the wind and terrain, good music, good spectacle, and doesn’t take too long…
120. Boss: …for a solid double positive
121. Level: The Fire Temple has some unique and interesting puzzles, lots of shortcutting, and a lot of ways to bypass them…
122. Level: …for a solid double positive
123. Boss: Marbled Gohma is, like Colgera, simple fun spectacle
124. Boss: Koga! The smash derby car fight is exactly the right amount of fun and silly
125. Boss: Koga, part 2. This time he’s in a plane, and has some nice escalation with the shields to prevent sniping
126. Boss: Koga mk. 3, this time on the water, and he brought some friends… who all bail on him the second you reach him, hah
127. Level: Shrines. Let’s discuss this in aggregate first; the Shrines are much better than they were in Breath, essentially across the board. More interesting puzzles, the removal of the annoying shrines (combat and motion controlled), and shorter. There are a few bad ones don’t mistake me, but this means the shrines in general just kind of nail it. So, just like in Breath, let’s categorize this by region. First we have the Kakariko region…
128. Level: …for double positives
129. Level: Then there’s the Hyrule Field shrines…
130. Level: …for a full…
131. Level: …triple
132. Level: Then there’s the Southeastern…
133. Level: …for another double
134. Level: The Zora regional stuff…
135. Level: ….for a double
136. Level: The frozen Gerudo Highlands shrines…
137. Level: …for another double
138. Level: The Goron shrines…
139. Level: …for another double
140. Level: And of course there’s the Hebra region…
141. Level: …for another double
142. Level: Shrines, sky. These were some of the funnest and most interesting of shrines for me, with tons of good tutorialization, creativity, and general fun factor…
143. Level: …for a solid…
144. Level: …triple positive
145. Boss: Koga 4! This time he’s in a frickin’ mech suit and I am in love with it
146. MSQ: The lead up to the Water Temple had a couple of hiccups but offers lots of methods to ascent (waterfalls that can be opened, floating bubbles, flying mechanisms) and all feed into the skyward progression nicely
147. Level: The Water Temple might actually be the best dungeon so far. Great flow (no pun intended), multiple solutions to most problems, good distribution of items and enemies, and fantastic centralized design that means no time wasted and no padding…
148. Level: …earning it a solid…
149. Level: …triple positive
150. Boss: Mucktorok. This is a weirdly fun boss fight, with a simple gimmick but lots of ways to bypass it, and good escalation and general fun…
151. Boss: …for two positives
152. MSQ: The lead up to the Gerudo segment is already good, dovetailing nicely with your existing kit (shoot to strike) and giving one (of several) ways to deal with the Gibdo
153. MSQ: Then there’s the ‘hold the town’ mission, which gives you options, positioning for friendly troops, and multiple waves that you’re supposed to deal with. It’s weirdly fun for how simple it is and I enjoyed it
154. MSQ: Finally we have the last sequence leading up to the Lightning Temple itself. This is a simple but fun puzzle, followed by a neat boss fight
155. Level: The Lightning Temple. Great usage of light and flame and a strong ‘ascending’ motif which fits the pyramid aesthetic, as well as continuing the usage of magic (and lightning) to progress through both enemies and obstacles…
156. Level: …earning a solid…
157. Level: …three positives
158. Boss: The Gibdo Queen is another solid boss fight. Light, fire, and lightning along with adds and the ability to turn the boss’s power into a weakness…
159. Boss: …maks for an easy two positives
160. Level: This is a rough one, because it’s four very small and bite sized but very clever dungeons in a row, for Mineru’s golem parts. I think combined we’ll go ahead and give them…
161. Level: …two positives, for sheer quality and variety to the puzzle design
162. Boss: Seized Construct. Issues with Mineru aside, the fight itself is fun. Specific weak point but lots of ways to expose it and counter, drops more items to allow for more tactics as the fight progresses, and a nice big viscerality
163. Music: This is honestly some of the best music in the franchise, to my shock. All the issues I had with Breath’s soundtrack are gone, replaced by fantastic boss, dungeon, roaming, overworld, traveling, sky, and depths songs…
164. Music: …earning a solid…
165. Music: …triple positive
166. Overworld: Okay so, the Depths. Let’s start by saying the basic connective tissue is ‘fine’ here, arguably better than the Overworld itself despite being its inverse
167. Itemization: The Depths are also VERY rewarding, which is fantastic. Zonaite, weapons, pristine weapons, monster drops, and a great source of bombs and flowers…
168. Itemization: …earning itself a solid…
169. Itemization: …triple positive
170. Early Game: So this is a weird category to put this under, but hear me out; the early game of the Depths is just fantastic. It is terrifying, dangerous, risky, and very rewarding. It is exactly what this kind of ‘underdark’ hell should be and it’s awesome
171. Mid Game: As the player progresses, they reach a point where the Depths become more manageable. Now they can explore more, harvest more, and fight more, and get even more rewards from doing so
172. Minigame: House building. Simple, very limited, but still fun and useful
173. Enemy Design: Lynels. More or less the same fights as last time, and still good for it
174. Enemy Design: Hinox, Frox, and Talus’s are some fun, varied, and rewarding minibosses
175. Enemy Design: The three types of Construct bosses (the cube things) are similarly fun, interesting, and reward lateral thinking
176. Enemy Design: I didn’t think I’d like it at first, but the Phantom Ganon fights are pretty fun
177. Boss: And finally we have the Gleeoks. These are great fights, functionally bosses in and of themselves, with varied moves depending on their type (or all three) and a fun last phase which, again, varies based on type. Love these fights…
178. Boss: …for an easy double positive
179. Secondary: Caves. I didn’t spend TOO much in these, but there’s a bunch of them and they’re decent stuff, and almost always carry good rewards
180. Tutorialization: All over the place, especially in Shrines but even outside of that. In almost every case if you can’t progress, looking around will reveal the idea of how to continue
181. Secondary: Rebuilding Lurelin town is surprisingly fun and interesting and almost entirely constructive…
182. Hub: …and gives us the best hub in the game, with good layout and useful rewards
183. Minigames: Several, varied, and fun
184. Outro: Level: The final descent. Quick, deadly, powerful, good music
185. Outro: Encounter: The final swarm army is reasonably fun, especially so because A: The Sage help is optional and gradient dependant upon how much you do and B: The Sages themselves are super useful
186. Outro: Boss: Ganondorf 1. Fairly simple and basic but still fun, and plays with the flurry and counter flurry mechanic
187. Outro: Boss: Ganondorf 2. The inclusion of his phantoms, the addition of the Sages, and the wonderful weapon swapping makes the entire fight substantially more interesting and generally fun
188. Optional Mode: The Hero’s Path feature continues to be amazing, just as it was in Breath

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Save: One save slot, as usual
2. Controls: Crab claw and weird decisions abound. Seriously, you know how you dash jump? You hold X and hit B (or vice versa). Think about that
3. Secondary: Korok seeds. Yeah I know they’re better AND I gave them three positives, but there’s still a thousand of these stupid things
4. Graphics: Overbloom. It’s not as bad as before…
5. Graphics: …but it’s still bad, especially in snow or desert areas
6. Visual Distinction: Bloom and fog continue to be a problem in quite a few areas. No, not the Depths (weirdly enough), but almost entirely up top (the Sky has this the worst)
7. Seconds In Minutes: Cooking. You still have to manually grab each item, hold them, then dump them, then skip, then accept the item
8. Info In Game: Cooking. Experimentation is key of course but good luck figuring that out
9. Traversal: This is a weird one, because to some extent walking isn’t as bad as before, but everytime you are just walking, it’s exactly as bad as before…
10. Traversal: …earning a full…
11. Traversal: …three negatives
12. Padding: Climb climb climb. Seriously climb speed is entirely too slow
13. Hub: Town layouts in general are not great for smooth access of usefulness
14. Secondary: X of Y quests. They’re better overall and so get less negatives, but there’s still several X of Ys
15. Traversal: Rain. Yes, it continues to be a problem
16. Seconds In Minutes: Upgrades. Why does this take so long?
17. Seconds In Minutes: Armor Swapping. Just the same as before
18. Seconds In Minutes: Fusing to arrows. Each… individual… arrow… one… at… a… time…
19. Seconds In Minutes: Fusing to weapons! Open menu, find item to fuse, hit hold, grab one, leave menu, drop, enter fuse menu, fuse weapon. This is very jury rig and irritating to do besides
20. Controls: Entirely too little thought put into some button interactions. Good specific example; The loot button is the same as the ‘blow a gust of wind’ button with, which specific circumstance, can lead to loot going flying
21. Power Progression Curve: Stamina or hearts problem especially considering…
22. Difficulty: …truck hitting. Every enemy hits entirely too hard, and all of this contributes to…
23. Early Game Hell: …this being even worse than in Breath. I’m not 100% sure what specific things were changed to make this so much worse, but early game it’s just SO easy to get absolutely destroyed by anything even while staying in relatively safe areas, nevermind roaming anywhere you need to to actually progress
24. Itemization: Rupees. They fixed arrows (yay!) but rupee grinding is arguably WORSE than it was before considering how fewer ways there are of grinding it. It’s telling when the ‘best’ method per time is to use a Recall glitch on a minigame to get 200 rupees at a time, in a game where things cost thousands
25. Options: A game that came out in 2023 on the Switch has less options than a game that came out in 1994 on the SNES. I’m sorry this is just as unacceptable as it always has been…
26. Options: …and still deserves two negatives
27. Itemization: Distribution of stats on armor and buffs
28. Unskippable Cutscenes: Only some, for some reason, notably the nearly a solid minute cutscene everytime you hit a tower
29. MTX: Amiibos, as per usual
30. MTX: Lootbox Amiibos, as with the previous game
31. Traversal: Stamina for running, again, for some stupid reason
32. Traversal: Horses. They’re still kinda suck (actually they’re even worse because there’s no teleport saddle now) and are mostly there for fluff
33. Level: Shrines. This is an aggregate negative, for there are several, and they are frustrating. The battlebots one comes to mind immediately
34. Controls: RDR issue continues to be a problem. As much as I love doing a nice big slow turn and falling to my death everytime I turn around, I’d rather just have precise controls
35. Core Mechanic: Stealth has no impact on visibility
36. Difficulty Curve: Too easy or too hard entirely on armor
37. Grind: There is still definitely a grind issue. It’s… debatable, heavily, but the truth is they made sure that the game’s stuff costs way too much, you get way too few, and that’s still on them
38. Itemization: Pristine weapons and how they spawn. So, you have to have found a weapon (sure), scanned it? (unsure about this), aaand then break that sucker (apparently unfused, too) in order for it to enter the spawning pool for down below, AND then those weapons are randomly generated and randomly buffed (based on world level). This is not great
39. Secondary: Tower ‘side quests’. There are several that are annoying (just walk through this rain to set it on fire, make sure every nano-millimeter of the thorns are covered!)
40. Core Mechanic: For all the fun the fusing system is, at a certain point in the game it becomes flat mandatory and, frankly, a bit of a chore to put up with
41. Itemization: Zonai distribution and procurement…
42. Power Progression Curve: …combined with the overall cost of Autobuilding (as well as locations of supply rooms and lack of any kind of reclamation mechanic)
43. Respec: Disassembly costs money, which is already scarce in this game, and can only do it at one spot, and it’s slow and irritating to do
44. Grind: Zonai devices gacha balls. The gacha itself is already bleh, but the source of charges is a grindy resource to get into
45. Core Mechanic: For all the amazingness the building has (and trust me, it’s amazing) it is still pretty jank and irritating to do on anything other than a flat surface
46. Traversal: Range limit on Zonai devices. It’s far too frustrating in far too many builds and far too limiting
47. Power Progression Curve: Battery. Of course perusing the Depths is the best way to progress this but things drain battery at an insane rate and, worst of all, even with tons of upgrades you barely feel the difference in how much farther you can utilize them
48. Guidance: This is part of the Story Sequencing problem up in Story. While there are a LOT of metaphorical sign posts in the game, the truth is it is still VERY easy to completely miss bottleneck or vector quests and just bumble past them, missing content (permanently)
49. Controls: Controlling the squad is honestly far more frustrating than it should be. It boils down to running around mashing A in combat
50. Durability: Alright. Let’s talk about the Durability Problem. Let me begin this by saying that it’s no where near as bad as it was in Breath, but a lot of the same problems do exist and need mentioning. First and most importantly of all, durability exists, and is low…
51. Durability: …and this deserves…
52. Durability: …the same triple negative
53. Core Mechanic: Now, durability has been smoothed over in several respects, so we’re skipping over several negatives here, but we still lack a functional repair mechanic and so that still qualifies as a problem. Further…
54. Controls: …it’s still entirely too easy to accidentally throw your weapon, which is doubly frustrating due to how throwing ITEMS involves prepping to throw a weapon…
55. Info In Game: …and this is made worse, as usual, by a lack of in game information. How much durability do you still have? No idea. Screw you, no tactics or planning around it past ‘low’ (which means 3 hits or less left on it). Now, we’re skipping over a good five or so negatives here, but we do have to mention…
56. Inventory: …the extremely limited inventory space, which is juuust awful. It has to be absolutely hammered in how terrible this is…
57. Inventory: …for a double positive (since it’s not as bad as in Breath due to mitigating factors). It’s okay, it’s still mitigable by…
58. Grind: …the friggin’ Korok seeds. Enough said here I think
59. Power Progression Curve: By the way the Master Sword still has durability and still doesn’t recharge until it’s empty so that’s… cool
60. Replayability: Starting all over with no abilities and no inventory space does not sound super appealing to me
61. Mid Mission Checkpoints: So this is a weird one, but due to a combination of the game not saving state when you save and everything resetting if anything goes wrong means have fun redoing everything if something goes wrong
62. Hyperfail Moment: Mineru. We spend an entire MSQ and dungeon unlocking a giant mech and she sucks because…
63. Controls: …she controls very awkwardly and cumbersomely (I get that she’s functionally a weapon) and…
64. Kit: …she is just… kind of crap. She has some utility but still falls into the durability problems, is slow as molasses, gets in the way during combat, and worst of all…
65. Kit: …she does CRAP damage. Like, really crap damage, she might as well not even been there
66. Overworld: The Sky. Repeat interactions, weird placement of islands, lots of copy pasting, and irritating to navigate
67. Late Game: Unfortunately while the Depths nails it pretty well early on, the late Depths just sort of sucks. There’s no additional developments or interactions, and there is way… way way too much of it, and this drags the entire experience down. Once you’ve reached mid game in the Depths it never gets better, and eventually just becomes a chore that you do to fuel your Zonaite or battery expansions and that’s kind of it…
68. Late Game: …unfortunately making it one big padded pile…
69. Late Game: …of three negatives
70. Seconds In Minutes: Almost every side quest has this
71. Grind: Rupees. I sat on this for over 100 hours of playtime, and while it could be argued the Rupee grind isn’t ‘that’ bad… it’s still some of the worst money grinding I’ve seen in video games, easily at MMO levels…
72. Grind: …and thus earns…
73. Grind: …three negatives
74. Grind: Charges, that is to say, for your Battery. These are invaluable, and require (you guessed it) grind. Now there’s multiple vectors here; roaming the Depths, turning in Large and Small Zonaite, but both involve spending hours upon hours upon hours of mulching (mostly the Depths which has its own Late Game issue listed above) and this, like the Rupees, is really bad…
75. Grind: …for a solid…
76. Grind: …triple negative
77. Grind: Zonaite. This is the crux of so much of the game and you need hundreds or thousands of it. It’s plentiful in the Depths of course but, once again, this involves many many hours of grind. And Zonaite is useful for many other things, serving as one of the primary currencies in the game. It can be turned into charges (which then can extend battery or buy items), it can be turned into sparks (which can extend battery permanently or buy items), it can be directly converted into vehicle parts, and it’s used for several quests and upgrades. Zonaite is immensely useful and you need SO much of it…
78. Grind: …leading to…
79. Grind: …a triple negative…
80. Itemization: …and one last negative for how Zonaite is so useful it really should have been balanced more. Either you get more of it, or the cost of things reduced, or both
81. Secondary: A large portion of the ‘side quests’ are mostly dull X of Y tasks just like in Breath…
82. Secondary: …and deserve two negatives
83. Walkthroughitis: So this is kind of an aggregate negative, but it’s for the entire game as a whole. Having a walkthrough is just so, so helpful on so many levels, from knowing where to find enemies and items to finding quests to where those quests go and where to find shrines and just so much of this game is so much better if you know what you’re doing and where you’re doing…
84. Walkthroughitis: …earning itself a solid…
85. Walkthroughitis: …three negatives
86. Itemization: The Froggy suit. It serves the same general purpose and problem as the Swift Sail back in Windwaker; do a quest to make the game less arduous. And just like there, it’s frustrating to do here
87. Segregation: So this is a weird one but… the world is… in service of gameplay, to the expense of the story. There are so many examples everywhere that to list all of them would take quite a while, suffice it to say it’s one of the worse examples of it I’ve seen in a while…
88. Segregation: …earning a solid…
89. Segregation: …triple negatives

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Detroit. The broken down concrete city ruins are a bit bog standard (especially in this era) but there’s enough attention to detail and atmosphere adding that it still works for me
2. Brickwork: By contrast, Hengsha does a substantially better job with the ‘ruined city’ styling. There’s a lot less wasted space, and the view of the upper city above really adds to it…
3. Brickwork: …for two positives
4. Doodads: Detroit similarly has wonderful doodad usage and placement
5. Doodads: And, again, Hengsha just does the same concept much better, with tons and tons of local flavor and detailing in posters, adverts, trash, pipes, infrastructure, and everything else…
6. Doodads: …for another two positives
7. NPC Set Dressing: General. Mostly in Detroit and Hengsha, where they have a good variety of people with a good variety of flavor dialogue
8. Voice Acting: This is a weird one, because some of the voice acting is… huh? But then some of it is quite good, it’s a mixed bag
9. Music Direction: Excellent in general at setting tone for almost every single hub area…
10. Music Direction: …for an easy double positive
11. Character: Supporting cast in Detroit. More than just the nameless NPCs, there’s quite a few people with a few lines of dialogue or a small relevance to one quest chain or another that add to things
12. Character: Supporting cast in Hengsha. Same general idea as Detroit, and again well done and fleshed out weirdly well
13. Intro: Foreshadowing: Quite a bit, too much to detail here, but there’s a lot of bricks laid early for the story
14. Intro: General, and some good details. Did you notice the older, more experienced staffers deferring to Megan? How about the implication of how under-staffed and badly treated the workers are? And then there’s the background details about extremist groups
15. Intro: Doodads: The entire opening sequence is absolutely littered with story-assisting doodads and I love it
16. Intro: Brickwork. The cybernetic labs. The perfect combination of cold research area, medical facility, and office space
17. World Building: Background lore about a world on the brink of widespread cybernetic augmentations
18. Background Lore: There is so, so much throughout. It’s mostly flavor lore, but we get a lot of insight into the culture and stylings of the world…
19. World Building: …and there’s a surprisingly complex amount of said lore throughout…
20. World Building: …earning a solid triple positive
21. Visual Storytelling: Jensen’s apartment alone. The mirror, the clocks, the boxes
22. Secondary: Mallik’s friend and fate
23. Secondary: General (Jenny’s quest chain, the Brothel clean up chain)
24. MSQ: Montreal Picus offices (emails of flavor, atmosphere of emptiness and wrongness, and a facility where we can literally see them faking news)
25. Character: Eliza. They do a weirdly good job with her writing, as her dialogue is just human enough to be empathetic but just robot enough to be inhuman, and the usage of phrases and word choice work really well
26. Moment: Eliza’s big reveal and subsequence consequences for Sarif Industries and Detroit
27. Cutscenes: Little details. There’s a lot and they deserve mention
28. Atmosphere: Detroit 2. The city is on fire in more ways than one
29. Moment: The boss battle with Taggart. Yes it’s primarily a gameplay element, but the whole thing plays beautifully and dovetails into him, the situation, and the tension thereof
30. Foreshadowing: The tech ‘blips’ we experience are whatever, but it really becomes far more obvious when every augmented person in visible range gets knocked over when the next blip happens
31. MSQ: Missing Link (atmosphere, tension, foreshadowing). This place is absolutely horrifying on every level
32. Character: Malik & Sarif. Malik is very cool, though not given enough screen time, and Sarif is weirdly decent, except when he’s not
33. Character: Pritchard. Probably the best individual character in the game; the jerk with a heart of gold, who is probably one of the only people who plays straight with us the entire game

Story Negatives:

1. Cutscene Incompetence: What in God’s name is Jensen doing in this game? The sheer quantity of moments where his incompetence directly leads to the plot happening is so bad I think it’s honestly one of the worst examples I’ve seen in recent memory…
2. Cutscene Incompetence: …and I give it…
3. Cutscene Incompetence: …the full triple negative
4. Animation: Endless fidgeting during dialogue cutscenes. It’s actually pretty terrible and so distracting I stopped watching the cutscenes…
5. Animation: …for two negatives, but in addition to that…
6. Camera: …the way the camera will NOT stop bouncing around like it’s on crack makes the scenes even worse. To be clear these issues (animation and camera) are for the ‘Bioware cutscenes’, not the bespoke cutscenes (which are either pre-rendered, or mandated first person), thus it earns…
7. Camera: …another double negative
8. Story Sequencing: Dialogue rigging is… a bit off. In one smooth seemingly uninterrupted sentence you can bounce between topics and dialogues based on moods and choices
9. Sound Design: Audio balancing is, as it so often is, a problem
10. Character: Jensen himself has some… consistency issues. He acts like he’s a professional, except when he’s a hotheaded idiot, except when he’s several steps ahead of the situation, except when he has no idea what’s going on despite the obviousness of it
11. Voice Acting: For every voice actor that’s good, there’s another one or two who… aren’t
12. MSQ: So uh… the transition into and out of the DLC are both pretty jarring
13. Writing: Strawmanning. There are some legitimate and real concerns and concepts in this game that they sort of brush off in favor of having idiots argue in a way that defeats their own case. Nowhere is this more obvious…
14. Outro: …in the final stage, when you talk to the three billionaires and hear their views to gain access to the three endings
15. Outro: Cutscenes: Okay so let’s break this down, shall we? First we have the entire presentation aspect; The stock footage, the Endingtron 5000, the presentation is super cheap
16. Outro: Writing: Second, we have the awful writing in three of the endings. It’s meaningless drivel, to be nice about it, and written in a way to sound deep without being so. It really needed a few more polishing passes that it obviously did not receive
17. Outro: Then there’s the endings themselves. These, to put it nicely, suck. They’re rushed, they don’t really resolve anything, the construction of significance between footage and dialogue barely exists, it barely acknowledges your choices, and the whole thing feels like a slap in the face

Gameplay Positives:

1. Encounter Design: Easily one of the best aspects of the game. While there isn’t much in terms of enemy variety, they get very smart across the entire game with how to mix and match computers, lasers, bombs, automatons, enemies, and their patrol routes. At no point did I feel frustrated or upset at the encounter design itself and I loved it all the way through Singapore…
2. Encounter Design: …earning it a solid…
3. Encounter Design: …triple positive
4. Music: This is just one hell of a soundtrack and it really adds to scenes and missions…
5. Music: …for an easy double positive
6. Yoshi Drums: Almost every song has multiple layers depending on proximity to guards, alert level, and mission…
7. Yoshi Drums: …for another solid double positive
8. Saves: Quick load and save. The load times are… honestly pretty awful but they’re still there
9. Optional Modes: Director’s commentary, as usual
10. HUD: Indicators of what you can do with items right on mouseover
11. Kit: So I went into this expecting a Dishonored problem with kit distribution, but to my surprise it actually works pretty well whether your goal is avoidance, nonlethal, or assassination. We have weapons for killing, weapons for knocking out, energy expenditure for stealth and loud takedowns, and a few other little tidbits throughout. This isn’t quite at the level of some of the greats of stealth games…
12. Kit: …but it’s still good stuff and still deserves two positives
13. Terrain: Generally good terrain design throughout. The vents, the opaque walkways, the ladder, the ramps
14. Inventory: Tetris. I’ve seen better implementations of this concept but I do still like it
15. Intro: The initial firefight sequences, while, simple, are fairly solid tutorialization
16. Level: The hostage rescue mission. Good layout, good patrol routes of troops, good alternate routes. It’s simple but it’s good simple and I’m down
17. Boss: The first encounter with Sanders is a good example of how this game handles dialogue bosses, and does a good job with it. There’s multiple vectors through these and it can go different ways, relying on the player to be paying attention and/or have the aug to bypass some of that. So this is more a plus for the dialogue bosses in general
18. Level: The Police Station. There’s a lot of people here, but only a few actually restricted areas (you can talk your way into the rest), several vents but also several detection grids, lots of good placement of cover, nice patrol routes, and several options for ingress and exfiltration…
19. Level: …for a solid double positive
20. Level: Derelict Row and related areas. Does several things I enjoy; multiple routes, good terrain design, the usual good stuff
21. Level: The FEMA Barracks starts off pretty strong, but quickly funnels you into combat, giving you much more limited options. Still, the early portions of the level are pretty solid and offer a lot of height and avoidance
22. Level: Tai Yong Medical. It’s… pretty linear compared to previous things, but there’s still several alternate routes and some smart encounter design as you get further up. I don’t even mind the forced alert status at the end because it starts a whole room away from you, giving you time and space to prep and strategize
23. Level: Montreal. A bit shorter than the previous major levels, but honestly for the better. We have quite a few options here, really ramping up the rewards for increasing hacking / cloaking / heavy lifting, good spread of enemies on multiple levels, and best of all an enormous part of it is completely avoidable if you’re quick or careful enough…
24. Level: …earning a solid double positive
25. Guidance: Both major hubs have street names, sign posts, and terrain design helping to navigate
26. Boss: Taggart. This is probably the best dialogue boss in the game, lots of directions it can take with or without pheremones, and feels properly tense and dynamic…
27. Boss: …earning a double positive
28. Choices: Similarly, there’s a fair amount of impact your choices have on future quests and encounters
29. Level: Singapore. The two distinct areas and the multitude of different patrols, stealth or loud options, and distractions available in both makes for another fun and interesting level…
30. Level: …for a solid double positive
31. Boss: Namir. The issues with its setup aside, the fight itself is actually pretty well designed. He has a lot of counters and kit to your setup, but the arena is well designed with lots of cover and hiding places, and a ton of ammo and resources all over to help you
32. NG+: Carry over augmentations after finishing the game
33. Replayability: While it’s fairly linear there is still enough variety and options to warrant a second playthrough

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Intro: Entirely too long and essentially a camera-sim
2. Interface: Bad resolution scaling. Or perhaps more accurately, NO resolution scaling. This causes issues with…
3. HUD: …the HUD, which the game leans on heavily for navigating stealth sequences, which is this tiny little postage stamp in the corner. I actually had to buy several upgrades to the radar just to make it usable
4. Map: Not the worst ever, but irritating to navigate and pan
5. Unskippable Cutscenes: Quite a few, and fairly long ones. Doubly weird since so many are in fact skippable
6. Hub: Detroit. A bit too spread out, routes from one section to the other aren’t super intuitive and until you memorize what’s where it’s just constantly checking the map. And why does one of the main throughways involve sneaking through a vent?
7. Traversal: Walk walk walk. Also sprinting! There’s no visible stamina bar, but it’s there
8. Power Progression Curve: Some of the upgrades are either too situational, too weak, or cost too much (or some combination thereof) and yet also are functionally necessary
9. Seconds In Minutes: Quite a few, but the elevators and ‘load screens’ are the weirdest by far
10. Kit: Mandated upgrades and route thereof. It’s not necessarily ‘mandatory’ but there are so, so many obstacles that are introduced in a staggered method, right about when you gain enough praxis to gain the skills to avoid them, and so you can’t really ‘build’ so much as follow a semi linear path
11. Itemization: It’s terrible, to be blunt. Enemies drop the wrong types of enemies and ammo (entirely infeasible to properly loot and sell), extremely limited inventory size, and ammo just does not stack as high as it needs to. All of this leads to a massive aggravation in playing the ‘wrong’ way (as stated by the devs themselves) which also tends to pidgeonhole the player into (or out of) certain playstyles…
12. Itemization: …earning a solid double negative
13. Terrain: So this is a weird one but hear me out; airducts. They’re not an alternative path most of the time, they’re The Correct Path, and it diminishes a lot of the routing and design of several levels
14. Boss: Barrett. Screw this boss. First of all, being forced into the encounter at all is questionable in a game where it’s not only encouraged to stealth but rewarded. Second it’s VERY easy to be built into a corner for this fight, and he comes with a heavy machine gun and grenades and can obliterate you in seconds. Third his AI is braindead. And fourth, he has entirely too much health. All of this makes for a fight that’s an awful combination of boring and frustrating…
15. Boss: …earning a second negative
16. Backtracking: Lots, almost exclusively in the hubs, and it adds to the…
17. Seconds In Minutes: …problem with just navigating said hubs
18. Backtracking: A second negative for Hengsha
19. Enemy AI: Psychic guards, and only two states of existence (hostile or not)
20. Guidance: Reliance upon and leaning on quest markers for guidance. It’s not as bad as it could be (there are actual signposts and street names for example) but especially when it comes to sidequests or navigation of missions, the markers are either actively misleading or completely necessary
21. DLC: MSQ: Missing Link (removal of kit and levels without really properly designing the mission around it… the levels are just the same types and tiers of encounters we’ve been facing, but now we just have a lot less to deal with them). Also they dump your levels AND your gear, whiiich also means all the ammo (a rare and precious resource) you had in those guns is just poofed out of existence. That’s nevermind the massive inventory woes this causes twice (first entering, then leaving, the DLC)
22. DLC: Backtracking: Missing Link, again. The amount of times you have to go baaack and fooorth and baaack and fooorth across the same three zones is kind of ridiculous
23. DLC: Difficulty: Finally, the Missing Link is a noticeable spike up in difficulty (layout, quantity of soldiers, things like that) as is true for most DLCs, but what this means practically is now you have high difficulty enemies and encounters with less tools to deal with it. Usually games will offset this kind of problem with either unique kit for this sequence (like a giant mech or new gun) or with new, unique design to the terrain (like new context interactions with the environment to allow for avoidance and/or removal). But here it’s just another stage, albeit harder
24. Boss: Namir. Forced boss fight (always problematic in these types of games) but also the chip can be problematic depending
25. Outro: Level: Long, boring, linear hallways
26. Outro: Enemy Design: Hope you like zombies!
27. Outro: Encounter Design: Hope you like fighting large crowds of zombies who interact weirdly with the system in such a way that killing large groups at a time is actually irritating
28. Outro: Choices: One last negative for the Endingtron 5000. I am just… not a fan of how barely different these are and how much it throws your actions back in your face

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: General. I’ve seen better, but the visuals do a good job of conveying the scenes and arenas
2. Spritework: This is all on the fighter design and their quality, with several high detailed and quality fighter jets
3. Banter: Some fun stuff characterizing our base and our flight
4. Atmosphere: Military campaign vibes and tone
5. Tone: Branching dialogue based on actions? (only 1 so far)
6. Cutscenes: Briefings. The usual quality here… not quite TIE Fighter level, but still at Ace Combat levels
7. World Building: Background, but it’s there. Details about the history, the cordium, the world’s state, etc.
8. Storytelling Mechanic: While I dislike how it doesn’t tell you when or what is added to it, the in game codex still has some neat lore and tidbits
9. MSQ: Mission 15, Consequence of Power. The slowly escalating onslaught, the Federation officer refusing to participate in what is to come, the Cordium bombardment…
10. Moment: …and the Second Calamity
11. Moment: Diplomat just blowing up at Crimson 1 after Crimson 1’s wild rantings was far more satisfying and enjoyable than it probably should be
12. Outro: The final battle, the tight lead up, the sudden cease fire, all of that works really well for me…

Story Negatives:

1. Outro: …unlike the actual ending, or lack thereof. Crimson 1 just shoves his way center stage because why not, the city is nuked for (really) no good reason, and then the game just stops

Gameplay Positives:

1. HUD: Generally good HUD design
2. Controls: Pretty much the standard, awesome controls of the standard Ace Combat series…
3. Controls: …for two positives
4. Enemy AI: Generally good quality AI in the fighters
5. Kit: Planes and weapons are decent, on par with the Ace Combat usual…
6. Kit: …for a double positive
7. Party AI: Surprisingly good ally AI. Not like, super amazing, but they’re at least contributing
8. Minimap: Generally good and useful, per the series standard
9. Difficulty Mutator: Optional objectives and bonus currency
10. Difficulty Mutators: Modifiers available in new game plus
11. Difficulty Option: The normal options are fine, relatively, but Mercenary difficulty is where it really shines. Redesigning loadouts, enemy placement, and other level variances
12. Music: Some real bangers in this one. The Furball mission, the night raid, King…
13. Music: …good stuff
14. NG+: Decent new game plus and mission select…
15. NG+: …for two positives
16. Viscerality: It could be better, but the explosions are nice and the railguns are legit
17. Sound Design: Surprisingly good design here. A lot of sounds playing often, but distinct enough to not be terrible

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Or lack thereof! (And proud of it!) This is actually some of the worst of the ‘series’, with really long missions and lots and lots of opportunities to die quickly and to very minor mistakes…
2. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …easily earning…
3. Mid Mission Checkpoint: …triple negatives
4. Interface: Resolution scaling issues
5. Padding: Mission length. Seriously, missions are just too long in this game. This is also expressed in the…
6. Boss: …bosses, who like to take forever while crazy dodging and…
7. Padding: …have entirely too much health
8. Difficulty: Locking story content behind the two seater planes and hard difficulty
9. Outro: So I’ve been quiet about the level design for the most part (every mission is essentially your classic Kill All) but making the final mission just another Kill All falls flat for me

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: The ship! Honestly this is one of the best examples of Brickwork in the game, absolutely nailing the visuals and feel of a Starfleet ship in Modern Trek. Down to the wood accents, the carpet, the usage of the LCARs (with actual detailing!)…
2. Brickwork: …for two positives
3. Brickwork: The enemy ship and mining area both manage a good job of being visually distinct from the Resolute as well as selling the tone of the simpler, more utilitarian Hotari
4. Brickwork: Crystalline areas and planet soundstage. Both manage a good ‘mystical, ancient power’ vibe, and are quite distinct from the previous two types of areas
5. Voice Acting: No individual actor really jumps out here (except possibly Josh Keaton), but it’s still a solid voice cast across the board. Everyone does their job and does a good job of it…
6. Voice Acting: …for an aggregate…
7. Voice Acting: …three positives
8. Character: Captain Soland. I didn’t think I’d like him at first, but the antagonistic captain who’s blocking our progress at every corner while having his own, believable motives and foibles
9. Character: Cmd. Westbrook, CSO. I didn’t think I’d like him either, but they managed to turn him from a dick into exactly the kind of person I’d want on my senior staff; Someone willing to speak their mind, provide actionable answers, and do what is ordered when things come down to the line
10. Character: Cmd. Urmott, CMO Duvall, general supporting cast. This is functionally an aggregate positive for all the supporting cast, just like the voice acting, a bunch of them all work
11. Character: Tylas. At first she’s just another NPC, but then she quickly becomes something much more interesting; a civilian in a combat scenario, and the game does a very good job with this. She feels exactly how she should, given that
12. Character: Diaz. Definitely the more interesting of our PCs, and someone who was consistently interesting, reliable, relatable, and competent without going over the line. Helped by his voice actor of course
13. Character: Major Arminta. He starts off as a fairly antagonistic force, but he quickly turns into one of our staunchest allies, and is just enough alien enough to really work for what they were going for, and I really enjoyed him in essentially every scene
14. Character: Portal 63. I can’t believe they took this one off jackass from a terrible TNG episode and turned him into this. He really carries the weight of the last member of a long dead race, while still being present enough to have an impact on the herein now
15. External Continuity: The usage of the TKon in general (and several other little tidbits) really add to the work, but…
16. External Continuity: …the thing that really sells it is the entire game absolutely oozes Trek from every pore…
17. Atmosphere: …leading into atmosphere that is fantastic and quite literally feels like an episode of TNG (for good and bad), which is further helped by…
18. Sound Design: …the soundscape in this game which is shockingly good. The thrum of the engines, the bleeping of the computers, the sound effects of the tech, it’s all fantastic…
19. Sound Design: …for two positives, and of course the final vibe here…
20. Music Direction: …is the music. This is straight up KotOR levels of music direction, where it sounds like Trek music but actually isn’t, which is exactly what it needs to be…
21. Music Direction: …earning two positives
22. Intro: The entire initial storm threat is actually surprisingly well constructed and a decent dilemma, with a relative minimum of technobabble and some basic but well constructed problem. It’s also probably the single strongest part of the entire game, and I was fully engaged the entire time…
23. Intro: …for two full positives
24. Moment: The Queen’s manipulations in the throne room and the interesting interplay of the two sides
25. Storyboarding: The whole game has weirdly good storyboarding. The animations aren’t great, but the construction of who is where, how action scenes play out, and even the space battles are all well thought out and directed…
26. NPC Set Dressing: …which ties into the idea of how much thought is put into the background characters, almost all of whom do a good job of filling out the scenes and making it feel like a proper ship
27. Moment: The first ‘casualty’ of infiltrating the mines, Tylas’ reaction to it, and the acknowledgement of the significance of the stun setting
28. Plot: I wasn’t sure about this one at first, but it grew on me. It’s just threatening enough to be engaging, and personal enough to be interesting (outside of the second act dip)
29. MSQ: The entire sequence with Portal and the related dialogue boss. Honestly everything about this sold me on Portal
30. Moment: Edsilar talking about what it’s like being a Trill and losing her sister to the joining. It’s her best scene in the game, for what that’s worth
31. MSQ: The battle against the enemy ship is surprisingly good. Portal gives us an edge, but doesn’t just snap the problem away. The enemy ship’s primary advantage is one we can work around. And we have an infiltrator helping us on the other ship, while also out-thinking and out-maneuvering them
32. Cutscene: …competence? Periodic, but good
33. Moment: Portal turning on his fellows, after one key line. “All you have to do is nothing”
34. Moment: And Portal’s last stand, and farewell
35. Moment: Diaz’s final moments
36. Pacing: Bouncing camera concept. There’s two main characters and the camera bounces between them fairly frequently, while staying on the same central plot. This works really well, and is something I’ve said would work in Trek for years, and I love…
37. Pacing: …how they executed it
38. Dialogue: Generally good dialogue for most of the game
39. Doodads: Generally good doodad usage (especially in the LCARs and other background elements)
40. Outro: It’s mostly just ‘fine’, but what really makes it work is the final sacrifice sequence on board the enemy ship

Story Negatives:

1. Animation: There’s no getting around this; the animations in this game are actively terrible. They’re rough, crude, jittery, and, and literally bugged at places…
2. Animation: …earning a solid double positive
3. MSQ: The rescue of the Alydian ship. Everything about this sequence is awful. The false dilemmas, the awful dragging shuttle sequences (plural), the weird sequencing, the whole thing stinks…
4. MSQ: …for two negatives
5. Fake Drama: Telltale standard, really. Barely has anything to do with the game in general, it’s just their style
6. MSQ: Second act stuff in general. The first act is solid, the final act is surprisingly good, the middle act drags pretty hard. It almost feels like they had to get all their bleh out of the way in one bundle…
7. MSQ: …and so they did
8. Cutscene Incompetence: Periodic. Very Trek, but still bad. There are far too many cutscenes to count where they had several things they could and should have done and didn’t to drive the usual…
9. Cutscene Incompetence: …drama issues

Gameplay Positives:

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Graphics: Flickering or framerate loss, pick your poison
2. Save: No ability to load, rewind, or try out other choices without starting a whole episode (or the whole game) over
3. Overly Skippable Cutscenes: Once you ‘succeed’ at interactions you miss out on all other dialogue during said interaction
4. Camera: In the second act for some reason they started doing this weird drunk camera thing
5. Minigame: The shuttle sequence. Long, slow, boring, hard to see, restart from the beginning if you screw up, and nothing to do while it’s happening (the LAST shuttle mission had a conversation going, for example)

Story Positives:

1. Spritework: General, but decent, especially with the new enemies

Story Negatives:

1. Brickwork: So this brickwork… honestly sucks. Big, boring, and bland, in many cases not even giving a good indication of where you are or even what type of place you’re at, and that’s on top of the generally bad artistry on display…
2. Brickwork: …for two negatives

Gameplay Positives:

1. Mods: Accessibility. There’s literally a mod selector and loader in the game which lists uploaded and featured mods, as well as the easy drag and drop for new ones…
2. Mods: …for a solid…
3. Mods: …triple positive
4. Mods: Depth. There’s a fair amount you can do with WADs and we’ve seen some creative stuff over the years
5. Controls: Simple but solid, did a good job porting modern conveniences to a thirty year old game
6. Options: Lots of good options and customization and only a few relatively minor complaints within…
7. Options: …earning a second positive
8. Options: The ability to swap the music on the fly
9. NG+: Level Select
10. Difficulty: Changes items and enemy placement and amounts (and items, apparently too!)…
11. Difficulty: …for a double positive
12. Difficulty: Mutators! Individual, fun mutators to vary up the difficulty like ‘forced Pistol start’ or making monsters respawn
13. Tutorialization: Opening attract demo. I’ve seen better, but it’s still good and informative
14. Map: Indicators of completion on the map
15. Co-Op: Full campaign co-op mode, both online and split screen…
16. Co-Op: …so that’s a solid double positive
17. Minigame: Built in speedrun timer and mission end % indicators
18. HUD: Simple yet functional
19. Music: Honestly not quite as good as the first game’s, but still some bangers (especially in the remixed music)
20. Save: This is (and has been for a long time) a golden standard of save design. Manual saves of course, but quicksave and quickload with near instant load times (across games, even) that is, functionally, a savestate. This easily earns…
21. Save: …a solid double positive
22. Sound: Some legitimately excellent sound design here. Indicators of switches, enemy locations, enemy actions (teleporting, activating, fighting each other), in many ways sound is more useful to navigate than sight…
23. Sound: …for a solid…
24. Sound: …triple positive
25. Guidance: Items and corpses. These are placed very specifically in levels to serve as signposts for where you’ve been and where you’re going
26. Enemy AI: Same AI from before (exactly, I do believe) and still good for it
27. Encounter Design: The same Doom quality of encounter design is on display here, if a little bit better in a few ways. There’s some real thought put into the massive rooms of 30+ enemies and how to best clear them, with nearby stuff to help do so…
28. Encounter Design: …for a solid double positive
29. Optional: The Id Vault is some fun and cool additional tidbits, mostly behind the scenes and prototype artwork kind of stuff
30. Kit: The very basic guns are at least functional and done well enough for a positive
31. Viscerality: Finally some actual oomph, owing almost entirely to the Super Shotgun, but some of the new enemies as well
32. Enemy Design: Same basic group from before…
33. Enemy Design: …but the addition of the new enemy types (Knights, who still hit hard but have less health… spider demons, functioning as mobile turrets… Mancubuses and their spread fire of doom… and of course the awful Archviles and their unavoidable damage and resurrection capacity) mixes things up nicely\
34. Itemization: General, but most noticeable in the later Hell levels
35. Level: Map 14, the Inmost Dens, is unironically the best level so far. You start off by having lots of buildings like the previous level, however unlike then each building has windows. This means you can shoot in (and be shot from within) and see what’s where, helping navigation. Right off the bat you see a red gateway, so we now have a goal. Going the only other way to go we get a good example of Peeking and can see our new destination; the red key, visible on a nearby walkway. Clearing out the area and jumping across we get the key, backtrack to the red door, get the blue key, progress to the blue door, and win. And all of this is navigable and smooth to maneuver through with good enemy and item placement
36. Level: Map 23, Barrels O’ Fun. Actually utilizes the game mechanics to make an interesting gimmick; You’re in a room with barrels, and hostile enemies. Have fun! It’s even properly escalated, in that the first few iterations the enemies are non-activated so you have a moment to realize what’s coming, before later iterations where the enemies open fire immediately
37. Level: Map 27, Monster Condo. Probably the best ‘maze’ level so far, with good interweaving of the central area and a nice, staggered escalation of the obstacles as you slowly unveil more and more of the central room, gaining new access

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Level: Encounter: Enemy spam. So, so, so much enemy spam…
2. Trash: …it actually delves into a bit of the trash problem at a certain point. You just mulch through so much mindless monster meat that at a certain point it gets dull
3. Level: Gotcha!: There’s always been Gotcha! traps in Doom games, but this one takes it to a whole new level of dickheadedness. Especially with the damned chaingunners
4. Level: Map 8, Tricks & Traps. Tons of Gotcha bullcrap combined with nice big empty areas and, of course, right at the end is an inescapable death pit if you screw up even slightly
5. Difficulty Curve: What in the world is going on with this difficulty curve? Some levels are teeth punching, others are a breeze, some are actively boring, and some are just right
6. Level: Map 12, the Factory. Big, sprawling, and boring
7. Level: Samey corridors and samey textures…
8. Visual Distinction: …hurting distinction and…
9. Level: …general navigation
10. Level: Map 13, Downtown. Good God. There’s hardly any guidance on what to do or when, which leads to very bad flow, which leads to a ton of backtracking, which makes the whole thing padded. We cleared most of the level before even finding the very first key thanks to missing a VERY easy to skip hole in the ground. A grey hole, in a grey room, that lead to the first key…
11. Level: …all building up to two negatives for this stage alone
12. Level: Map 17, Tenements. So, so much backtracking in this one, with that ‘flower’ design of ‘go to area then come back, go to second area then come back’… and the ending of the stage is quite literally going in and out of three hallways over and over
13. Level: Map 19, Citadel. This is a textbook example of bad Peeking. You get one key relatively easy, the other two require secrets and teleports to find. This is already irritating and involves a ton of backtracking, but what makes it worse is that they involve Peeking to spot the blue key… with absolutely no idea of how to reach it. What instead should be done is you get a Peeking towards the teleporter to progress, not the key you teleport to. As is it just frustrates the player by showing them something they cannot access or navigate towards naturally
14. Visual Distinction: All over the place but… what’s an interactable? What isn’t? Sometimes things are a door, sometimes they aren’t, and the only way to tell is to interact with EVERYthing
15. Level: Map 24, The Chasm. How do I count the ways? We have tightrope sections over death pits, some of those deathpits are straight inescapable unless you’ve already filled them in, large swaths of samey corridors, teleporter mazes, and dead ends that are there for no reason all make for a long, boring, irritating slog…
16. Level: …for a full…
17. Level: …triple negative
18. Walkthroughitis: Quite a few scattered throughout, especially in the City stages, and a few of the Hell stages…
19. Walkthroughitis: …for a double negative
20. Outro: Boss: The Icon of Sin is a truly terrible boss fight. First, and most importantly, it’s an enemy spam fight, which is already irritating. Then add in the randomness of which enemies spawn which can drastically alter how the fight goes. Then on top of that is the irritating layout of the arena, designed to force you to run back and forth to get to the top to even start the column from rising. And then all of that boils down to tanking dozens of shots while trying to get a weirdly precise shot from only one weapon into a narrow area while not at the right height for it. And all of this is compounded by the fact that NOTHING indicates what you’re supposed to do here. Even if you are aware of what’s required this fight sucks, but imagine walking in here not knowing. This fight can go directly to hell…
21. Outro: …and gain…
22. Outro: …three negatives

Story Positives:

1. Storytelling Mechanic: ATL. This is an astonishing amount of lore, and can be accessed mid cutscene, and updates on the fly…
2. Storytelling Mechanic: …earning a solid…
3. Storytelling Mechanic: …triple positive
4. Banter: Lots of good general banter as you’re roaming around. This is an almost constant element…
5. Banter: …and earns…
6. Banter: …an easy triple positive
7. Storytelling Mechanic: Flavor lore on item tooltips. I love these little bits of flavor lore
8. Animation: Okay so, I’ll mention a few individual moments that are above and beyond, but the motion capture for almost every major scene in the game is fantastic…
9. Animation: …and deserves…
10. Animation: …its own positives
11. Cutscene: Very early on we get a quick and dirty exposition of Bearers and slavery, as well as indications of how ‘good’ it is here… which helps indicate how bad it is everywhere else
12. Background Lore: Crystals, magic, and mundanity. Lots of everyday usage of magic going on in the background constantly, from trimming the hedges to freezing the fish
13. Cutscene: The throne room scene. The sound (quiet, muted) the pomp (despite no audience) and the inference of politics (the mother, the test, the political balance)
14. Cutscene: The Ifrit and Phoenix fight is some high profile spectacle…
15. Music Direction: …helped by the music choice and application
16. Intro: Generally decent exposition (across 90 friggin’ minutes), establishes a lot of the world and characters, and definitely sets the tone
17. Brickwork: Medieval architecture of Rosalith (and in general). Lovely bricks (some worn, some not), vines, and wooden supports
18. Doodads: Rosalith once again manages Doodad approach well and wonderfully
19. World Building: Bearer and slavery status. This is done absolutely everywhere and quite (possibly too) thoroughly
20. World Building: Over-reliance on magic. Way, way over-reliance on magic, and plenty of people struggle to survive without it
21. World Building: Dominants. Different perspectives, different usages, different expressions based on region, who all have logical ways of treating what is effectively a walking nuke…
22. World Building: …and absolutely destroying the land in the process. This entire world is doomed. Doomed economically, doomed culturally, doomed environmentally. These are rotting ants on a sinking ship…
23. World Building: …for a solid…
24. World Building: …triple positive
25. Character: Clive. This is a weird one; he spends a HUGE swath of the game being characterless, but he also manages to avoid a lot of negative tropes that usually cling to a main character like the plague, and there’s several good moments of humanizing as well
26. Voice Actor: Clive’s actor does a wonderful job with his role. He’s obviously mostly gravelly, but every time he’s allowed to actually emote he’s fantastic…
27. Voice Actor: …for a solid double positive
28. Character: Cid. Cid is just kind of awesome, potentially one of the best Cids in the franchise. Grizzled, without being cantankerous. Pragmatic, without losing his idealism. He hits a lot of notes and hits them well…
29. Character: …and earns a solid…
30. Character: …triple positive
31. Voice Actor: I also have to give credit to Cid’s voice actor for just sort of nailing it. It’s just Ralph Ineson being Ralph Ineson, but damned if he doesn’t nail it…
32. Voice Actor: …for two positives
33. Brickwork: The woods finally make something interesting to look at. Very dense, to the point of being overgrowth, and nicely green
34. Visual Storytelling: The broken, ruined husk of fortresses in a world constantly at war
35. MSQ: “Margrace”, Cid and Benedikta…
36. Cutscene: …and her completely losing it, alongside us being discovered by Mysterious Voice and “Margrace”
37. Character: Benedikta was surprisingly interesting for how seemingly simple she was. The woman who wanted stability, failed at finding it, and eventually simply collapsed in on herself. This leads immediately into…
38. Cutscene: …the Garuda fight. Brutal, flashy, well storyboarded, and feels awesome
39. Character: Torgal is weirdly delightful for how little characterization he gets. He’s still the goodest boy though
40. Character: Gav. A lot of games have the ‘bro’ archetype, and Gav fits that to a T. He’s got our back, he’s helpful, and he’s friendly… but he’s also just delightful in general. Good layers, nuance, and general presentation…
41. Character: …for a double positive
42. Brickwork: Grassy fields and swaths of wheat. These areas give a good contrast to the relative wealth of Oriflamme relative to the neighboring territories
43. Doodads: Martha’s Rest & Eastpool. These villages have visible foodstuffs, baskets, markets, walkways, and all kinds of wonderful doodads
44. World Building: The attitude towards Bearers…
45. World Building: …furthered by their inevitable fate. They are forced to produce magic, something that inevitably drains them of their life in a horrible and slow death, but which leaves them as nothing but statues and eventually dust, making them the perfectly disposable people. It’s awful, and it explains so much about how the setting operates
46. Storyboarding: Attention to detail. There’s so, so many tiny details that calling each one out would be silly, but I wanted to at least give an aggregate for all these little details
47. Cutscene: Lady Hanna’s scene. She’s so happy to see them, and she realizes just how awful things have been for them without them saying it, and they are so grateful and guilty for their roles in her life. This also leads immediately into…
48. Moment: …Clive and Jill getting their first real moment together under the stars. Clive’s guilt, both’s trauma, and how they support one another
49. MSQ: The entire Phoenix Gate sequence (the, uh, second one) is one of the better story beats in the game. The game does a lot to really delve into just how messed up this entire situation is for Clive. We start with Clive’s trauma…
50. Moment: …then, as he is exposed to the truth, Clive’s tolerance…
51. Moment: …and finally, as he embraces the truth and himself, Clive’s acceptance. It also does a nice job of showcasing how much good Cid’s been doing, even when he’s not even present
52. Music Direction: And a bonus for the music direction of this entire sequence
53. Secondary: The child and her Chloe. This single quest does… a lot of heavy lifting. I admit some of the hammering in of how bad things are dragged on me, but this one quest does so much in what is effectively just three scenes with no gameplay than the previous hour did. A girl wants to find her pet, you’re told where to find it, it’s actually a person… and the child is upset, but not due to evil, but ignorance. Once the reality is explained to her she starts crying, and one casual line (“Daddy says Bearers don’t have parents”) speaks volumes
54. Brickwork: The Mother Crystal (the first one, with Typhon) did a lot of good work in contrast to the rest of the game, and really helps sell the size of the the thing and its alien nature
55. Cutscene: Typhon fight. As per usual this is nicely big and flashy and fancy, but the thing that really helps sell it…
56. Music Direction: …is the style of the music, completely alien to the rest of the soundtrack to emphasize Ultima’s alien nature
57. Storytelling Mechanic: Vivian’s Situation Map. This is a really cool, visual way to present the story thusfar (and to get up to date as it goes), with actual physical location markers, dates, a navigable timeline, and summaries…
58. Storytelling Mechanic: …for a solid…
59. Storytelling Mechanic: …three positives
60. Storytelling Mechanic: The Grand Cast. This is another awesome feature. The ability to get these small little snippets from each character’s perspective on each other relevant character at each given point in time is fantastic…
61. Storytelling Mechanic: …and earns an easy double positive
62. Moment: Everything to do with Byron’s introduction. The build up (the role he plays, the horribleness of his everyday life, and then someone’s impersonating his nephew?!) but then the reveal, appropriately dorky and personal…
63. Moment: …and his rejoinder, in tears, as this one bright spot of sunshine graces his brow
64. Moment: “May the blessing of the crystal go with you” HAH
65. Cutscene: Hugo’s power move… for his own personal benefit, and Annabelle’s power move… for HER own personal benefit
66. Moment: While I don’t think it’s earned for us, the players, it is still nice seeing Clive unabashedly hating Hugo after all the enmity the two have for each other
67. Secondary: The branded side quests. There’s several, they happen at the same time, and they give even more insight into how stupidly insidious the (literally) poisoned tattooed brands
68. Visual Storytelling: Fallen ruins are absolutely everywhere in bits and pieces, constant visual reminders of the shadow they cast on the whole continent
69. Brickwork: The sandy dunes are actually pretty well done for a desert. More than just sand, good usage of dunes and the like…
70. Doodads: …and footsteps, ruins, and of course the oasis market
71. Cutscene: The inn and near miss with Joshua (nice camera bouncing)
72. Moment: Byron scarfing down the food before the brawl…
73. Moment: …and paying the innkeeper while offering suggestions on seasoning the soup
74. Voice Acting: Ultima’s voice acting is actually quite good, and is pretty much the only good thing about it
75. Cutscene: Titan’s first fight is, as per usual for the Eikon fights, nicely visceral. I love the introduction of the crane to get across the sense of scale
76. Cutscene: Titan Lost is even more ridiculously over the top spectacle. The Sonic section, the Azura’s Wrath section, the fact that we’re fighting an entire friggin’ mountain, I don’t know what to add to that…
77. Cutscene: …except a second positive
78. Cutscene: Dion, Terance, and Joshua. Dion being the torn prince of a corrupt government, Terance being his support, and Joshua showing up to try and drag him into the narrative
79. Secondary: Quinten sidequest. It starts off fine, it ends fantastically. It’s fascinating seeing this arguably villainous person who is so clearly intent on doing good for his people
80. Secondary: Cid, Otto, and debt sidequest..
81. Moment: …and Otto pontificating on Cid, and their role as support
82. MSQ: The refugee, bandits, child thieves, and border crossing sequence is filler, but it’s solid filler. It’s weirdly placed, but nicely down to earth
83. Secondary: Boklad sidequests. These do not fit this part of the game, at all, but the’yre wonderfully down to earth and weirdly delightful. Educating the goblins, learning about the lore of the crater and the Fallen, and of course sharing a bottle of wine
84. Character: Byron. There’s only two types of uncles in fiction, and Byron is the ‘cool uncle’. Boisterous, friendly, helpful, amusing, and in quite a few awesome scenes…
85. Character: …for a double positive
86. Character: Dion is such a weird character for a game like this. In very, very few scenes he is well characterized and has a character arc to boot. The man’s scenes are almost all ‘meat’, and he’s a delight pretty much every time he’s on camera. I will admit I would prefer he be our main character over Clive, but in absence thereof…
87. Character: …I will simply give him two positives
88. MSQ: So first we have some brilliant setup on the approach to the city. The coup has started, we get snippets of what’s going on, but then things get much worse…
89. Moment: …but first we get a great moment where Jill holds Annabella at swordpoint so that Clive can get his much-needed venting rant at her, which weirdly enough works quite well as his moment of catharsis…
90. Cutscene: …and now we have to fight Bahamut. And this is already bad enough, but then he decides…
91. Cutscene: …to take to the air, so now we have to fight him as Phoenix. This is fine, we manage this of course, buuut then…
92. Cutscene: …we escalate. Again. Aaaand now we’re fighting Bahamut in space. And I’m sorry this whole thing is some really, really good spectacle…
93. Cutscene: …for its own…
94. Cutscene: …triple positive
95. MSQ: Convincing the Dalimil residents to help themselves (and Clive’s fantastic acting)
96. Secondary: Special bonus for the kids learning quest on the Hideaway. It’s refreshing seeing kids actually talk like kids
97. Character: Charon. I wasn’t sure about this early on but, no, she grew on me pretty well and pretty often. She’s just the right brand of cranky old woman and legitimately caring grandmother
98. Character: Blackthorne. He was already awesome, but what really sells him is how he’s cantankerous, without being too much so
99. Character: Otto. The perfect miserly quartermaster who runs himself ragged keeping things running
100. Character: Hideaway supporting cast. There’s a few dozen, and they’re all good for what they are
101. Voice Acting: Hideaway cast. Fantastic acting here across the board…
102. Voice Acting: …for an easy…
103. Voice Acting: …triple positive
104. Consequence Storytelling: Fallout of the kingdoms collapse. With the three kingdoms knocked over, there’s a lot of story beats that follow through on it
105. Secondary: The survivor of Hugo’s regiment is one of the more fascinating sidequests. You save his life, but once he realizes who you are he freaks out and demands that he kill you or you kill him. It’s a powerful moment, moreso in how you just walk away from it
106. Character: Harbard does a lot with what screen time he’s given, which is funnier given the nature of his existence
107. Character: Jote. She mostly leaves the narrative after Joshua joins, but she was a great companion character to Joshua’s more grave seriousness
108. Music Direction: As with another game I could mention, the game’s music works better in how it accents the scenes rather than of its own self…
109. Music Direction: …and earns a solid…
110. Music Direction: …triple positive
111. Prime Opt: Seeding the new society. Several of the post red sky side quests do a great job of weaving a gradual idea of rebuilding a new society in the bones of the old one, acknowledging the loss of the cities and kingdoms and magic
112. Prime Opt: Blackthorne and his village, and the single step (as well as the world building about smithies)…
113. Prime Opt: …followed by even more awesomeness as the chain continues
114. Character: Barnabas is such a weirdly good villain for how terribly utilized he is. The mad king devoted to the idea of removal of free will, to the point of zealotry
115. Moment: The comfort Jill and Clive showcase in being with each other while nude is actually quite sweet, and them comforting each other before the fire is a good moment
116. Cutscene: Martha rallying the Bearers to fight for what they have alongside their fellows, as equals, might be one of the most thematically significant moments in the entire game. And keep in mind, this game had people fighting a battle on top of a symbol of slavery made out of the literal embodiment of that slavery
117. Character: Supporting cast for Quinten’s area, but if we’re being honest this is mostly for Quinten himself. A good man devoured by revenge, or so he thinks
118. Character: I debated this for a while because Wade is such a simple character, but his humility and goodness are just a delight
119. Voice Acting: Main cast in general, sans Clive (who gets his own positives) and Cid (ditto)
120. Character: Martha’s supporting cast. The bedraggled and survivors of her little outpost
121. Voice Acting: Martha’s outpost cast, including Sir Wade
122. Character: Northreach supporting cast. The Dame, Phillipe, the local soldiery which aren’t good people but are well characterized
123. Voice Acting: Northreach supporting cast, also counting the aforementioned
124. Character: Dalimil supporting cast. The innkeeper, the local soldiers, Lubor, merchants
125. Voice Acting: Again, Dalimil supporting cast
126. Character: Boklad supporting cast. The trader, gate guard, sister and brother duo
127. Voice Acting: Some truly fantastic voice acting for this group. Even Lyse’s actress does so well here…
128. Voice Acting: …easily earning a double positive
129. Localization: This is close to a grey area, but I think it still qualifies on general presentation. This is at the level of quality of FFVIIR1 and FFXII, and deserves…
130. Localization: …a full…
131. Localization: …triple positive
132. Prime Opt: The attempt to free the slaves with Theodore and Eloise in Boklad. The entire chain is solid, but the conclusion is gold
133. MSQ: Ultima’s reveal of the truth is whatever (and a bit late), but it’s well presented and the music really adds to it
134. Prime Opt: The final Northrend quest conclusion sticks the landing in a way most of the other regional quests failed to. Most of the characters present were not one dimensional idiots, things weren’t completely wrapped up too quickly or too slow, and it made sense given the build up
135. Moment: Gav, Clive, and two mugs of ale
136. Moment: Harpocrates, Dion, and a wyvern’s tail. “Our roots do not define us”
137. Moment: Clive and Joshua’s moment with their father’s grave is good, but what pushes it into positive territory is how it shows Clive still putting himself in his father’s shadow despite all that he’s done by this point in time
138. Moment: As much as I have other issues with it, Jill’s moment with Clive on the hill was nice
139. MSQ: DLC: Sagespire in its entirety. Music, horror, very Allagan and all that implies
140. Brickwork: And again, the Fallen architecture combined with the high tech and the organic bleck
141. Cutscene: As usual, Omega is just some fantastic spectacle, but I have to give it a bonus…
142. Cutscene: …for being the only Eikon we fight on foot
143. Cutscene: Similarly, Leviathan’s insanity and scale are very much on display, and the raging storm are absolutely bonkers
144. Outro: Moment: Dion’s sacrifice has its own issues, but him outmaneuvering and outplaying Ultima is perfect for him
145. Outro: Cutscene: Joshua’s death. While it drags on and includes needless exposition, it’s still a powerful moment and Clive’s actor just NAILS it in demonstrating the grief needed

Story Negatives:

1. Pacing: So this is a weird one but all of the big flashy fights have this thing where the fight functionally ends… and it usually ends on a big hit… aaand then it keeps going. And the only real distinction from the last hit to the previous ones is that the fight does indeed end…
2. Padding: …and it just… drags a bit
3. Writing: Some issues with exposition early on. It’s not terrible, but there are several instances of weird and clunky exposition early on
4. Cutscene: It’s a little thing, but the ‘death of the phoenix’ scene is a narrative cheat. We see a third party perspective while watching, passively implying he is not Ifrit, despite… y’know, it being blindingly obvious
5. Tone: I’ve been chewing on this for a while. The game is well executed on its tone, but at the same time it also hits the point so often and so hard that it gets a bit… dull. It’s hard to be horrified when all you see is horror. This continues for quite some time and thus…
6. Tone: …earns two negatives
7. Brickwork: Early issues. The visuals are… very, very drab early on. Lots of areas which are dark, grey bricks or dull brown pathway. It makes the entire first dozen or so hours dull…
8. Brickwork: …and drags things pretty badly
9. Architecture: There’s another related issue. Due in part to the pseudo open world zone design most of the towns and cities… aren’t. If anything I’m most reminded of Kingdom Hearts 2, where it feels like you’re playing around on a high school stage with some props implying the rest of the actual city
10. Dialogue: Periodic issues, mostly early on
11. Secondary: I should mention that a lot of the side quests in the early half of the game are, honestly, dull…
12. Empty Text: …made worse by a tendency for scenes to just ramble on long past where they need to
13. Character: Jill may eventually become a character, but she has full on Penelo Syndrome for the entire first 30 hours of the game
14. Story Sequencing: So, the entire game has this weird issue with things not being placed where they ‘should’ be. This results in a lot of narrative dissonance as you’re smashing army forces early on, struggling with bandits later on, and story beats get placed… weirdly. This is an aggregate due to it happening all over the place…
15. Story Sequencing: …for a full…
16. Story Sequencing: …triple negative
17. Writing: So, five year timeskip. I’m not a big fan of this one, not because of the timeskip, but because it’s an awful combination of unnecessary and poorly executed…
18. Writing: …and thus it earns a double negative
19. Storytelling Mechanic: This is a weird complaint but why, exactly, did we not get the Vivian maps until over halfway through the game?
20. Moment: The entire hostage taking sequence with Kupka and Jill is very forced and comes out of nowhere
21. Character: Jill. Yes I know we already gave her a negative, but she’s so incredibly inconsistent in how the story uses her that it gets irritating
22. Character: Hugo. He’s actually interesting for several scenes, but he’s entirely mis-used in the narrative. A huge portion of the game (over 30 hours) builds him up as the major villain, personally for Clive and the group as well as our biggest obstacle to overcome, but he might as well have no screen presence
23. Pacing: I’m not sure if this qualifies as traditional pacing, but there’s some… odd choices in this game. Some events take too long, others are run by without letting them digest. Normally I’d say the game is too condensed and doesn’t give its characters and story beats time to breathe, but the problem is there are hours upon hours of time where they COULD have done that and chose not to. It’s a very strange approach and really started to drag me out of the overall plot
24. Moment: Anabella’s death. The whole thing falls flat for a myriad of reasons and could have been better, but instead it just cheats the narrative by having her off herself and that’s it, move on. The central villain (arguably) of the entire game and the person most singularly responsible for most of the ills we’ve seen so far (personally and systemically) AND the face of the central enemy of the game (systemic racism and slavery)… just slits her own throat, the end. This is flat, at best…
25. Character: …and runs into another problem the game has in general; lack of development for its villains. This woman is (to repeat) is THE single most crucial villain in the story, both personally and for the plot, and they just do not do what they need to to make her work. This is alongside the same general issues with…
26. Character: …the Emperor. He’s got the beginnings of what could be an interesting character, but just fails completely to fulfill on that potential, and at least part of this is due to his near total lack of on screen development. This also leads me to talk about…
27. Character: …Barnabus…. Or is it?!? No, this is a negative for Ultima. As with another comparison I’ll make in another game, the issue isn’t Barnabas himself (who’s both interesting and engaging), but the character that ruins him simply by existing; Ultima
28. MSQ: Building Mid’s engine. This is probably the single most overt chunk of padding in the entire story, and while I admit a personal unfondness for this type of wheel spinning, regardless of my personal feelings this sequence serves as a weird slog in between otherwise more interesting story beats
29. Cutscene: So, Barnabas gets what is effectively his introduction cutscene… like 45 hours into the game, after having taken down Bahamut, it just feels like worfing. Barnabas BODIES us, to the point where he’s casually toying with us… keep in mind he’s the next boss, not that far off. This scene would work much better if shown much earlier
30. MSQ: So why did Jill get kidnapped again? No, seriously, ignoring the obvious problems Jill has had the entire game, she’s kidnapped so we can flee from Barnabas so we can… chase down Barnabas and rescue her, and then lose to him. Again. Why is this even here?
31. Writing: I’m not sure what category to put this under, so we’ll just call this writing. There’s some very strange sequencing and plot beats around the Barnabas stuff. We rush out and get bodied by him (see above), then we lose Jill and rush out to rescue her and get a supposed-to-lose fight, then we rush out and go fight him again and this time we get him! It’s a weird form of padding, as stuff is happening but it’s not only too condensed but it’s also in the wrong place. These scenes needed to be stretched out across the narrative, not slammed right next to each other back to back, and its placement actively hurts things…
32. Writing: …for a full…
33. Writing: …three negatives
34. Moment: Why uh… why did Joshua argue with Clive (literally slugging him) and then have it be resolved in literal seconds, and then less than a few minutes later bails on the party (which is exactly what he was saying Clive shouldn’t do)?
35. Cutscene: Ultima’s big attempt to convert Clive just… does not work. His methods are so crude that the Clive we’ve seen across the last 60 hours absolutely would not fall for this crap
36. Pacing: Some sequences (in general) are just too squished, and others are too stretched. It nails it periodically, but elsewise it’s just weird
37. Prime Opt: The Dalimil conclusion is way, way too forced. They go cartoonishly hard on hating him, change their minds in literally a single scene (a scene during which they literally stone him by the way), and then elect him Mayor! As mentioned above in the pacing problem, this was entirely too squished
38. Cutscene Incompetence: This is an aggregate, but there are several small examples of it across the game
39. Writing: So, uh. This is a weird one but hear me out. Most games that have fast travel have some type of lore explanation for what’s happening, such as caravans or airships or literal teleportation. This isn’t mandatory, per say, but it’s a nice way to help maintain the all important suspension of disbelief so that we’re not questioning how they’re doing things like, random example, traipsing across the entire continent… FOUR TIMES IN A ROW… while on a critical world-ending deadline. This is actually several things slamming into each other to make this worse. We have a deadline (an end of the world deadline, mind), we have no fast means of travel (the game even goes out of its way to point out that several of these journeys take days or WEEKS to give us a sense of scale), and many of the late game sidequests mandate the aforementioned traipsing up and down the entire continent. This is absolutely ridiculous…
40. Writing: …and completely destroys…
41. Writing: …my suspension of disbelief
42. Character: So this is sort of an aggregate negative for many characters tainted by the same brush; Lack of development. This came up towards the end thanks to Jill, but this applies to almost everyone and really drags down several characters from what should be awesomeness and into ‘okay?’ range…
43. Character: …earning a solid…
44. Character: …triple negative
45. MSQ: The Omega DLC. Don’t mistake me, there’s good stuff here… and then there’s Famiel, who they keep trying to play off as comic relief but he never drifts from ‘incredibly irritating’, up to and including the end
46. Brickwork: The red filter, which just… stops having impact after a while. A huge, huge swath of the game has the red filter, on an already fairly colorless game, and it just becomes whatever after a point
47. Secondary: A tremendous amount of dull, boring filler sidequests in the Rising Tides DLC. And they just… keep… going… forever…
48. Secondary: …to the point where it’s just white noise. They don’t even convey interesting points for the most part. Let me use a specific example. In one quest we go to get rid of another remnant of Leviathan, sure. While there we realize that it’s leftover of his rage, lingering in a spot of significance. THEN after coming back we have an entirely too long cutscene where they explain… everything that I just told you. Again, and slowly. This is what I mean by saying this is just straight up filler. Let me share another anecdote…
49. Secondary: …so I did several side quests off camera instead of taking a lunch break, to spare the viewers. Upon finishing the FIRST turn in, MULTIPLE new side quests popped up. I was so angry and despondent that they were STILL going, and when that’s the feeling new content evokes, something is wrong somewhere
50. Story Sequencing: So, this is a weird one, but we debated this on camera. The two DLCs cannot be accessed… at all, mind you… until the VERY end of the game. As in, after doing optional side quests that only open up when the final boss fight is the next step, immediately at the point of no return. This means that you’re in a massive narrative hurry (which is its own problem) which is already a bit of disbelief breaking, but then you go do functionally two entire side arcs that are their own stories by themselves, riiight before the final boss. This is hugely jarring…
51. Story Sequencing: …and deserves its own…
52. Story Sequencing: …triple negative
53. Outro: Cutscene: So, there’s a big spectacle fight between the trio and Ultima in Ifrit mode and it’s just… noise, plus a lot of very basic ‘fight’ choreography (big balls of attacks, energy beams combatting each other, etc.)
54. Outro: Cutscene: Joshua’s death is powerful and well acted and… too damned long. It gets hard to feel for the moment when it drags, including needless exposition no less
55. Character: Ultima is a terrible villain. A mish mash of multiple previously existing villainous tropes without knowing how to make that mix work. I was saving more thoughts on this until the end but honestly the fact that they flipped between the alien, to the spurned god, to the petulant child, really did him no favors. The central villain of a work needs to do more than just be another generic would-be god, especially given how much screen time he has pontificating. And then you bake into that his descent into GenericO, The One-Note Villainous Wonder, and he goes from being bad…
56. Character: …to being one of the worst villains in the series. Honestly Barthandelus was more engaging than this, and that’s pathetic…
57. Character: …thus earning a solid triple negative
58. Padding: General, but everywhere. Empty text issues, seconds in minutes issues, quests that have no real meat to them, it’s just a constant vibe…
59. Padding: …earning a solid…
60. Padding: …triple negative
61. Outro: The ending is… there, certainly, but it’s entirely too absent to really qualify as anything other than lackluster

Gameplay Positives:

1. Options: Lots. Good stuff too. There’s some fantastic accessibility and customization options here…
2. Options: …for a solid double positive
3. Music: So this is a weird one. The music in this game is good, certainly, but it’s better for how it’s used (up in the Story axis) and less for its own sake
4. Yoshi Drums: I also have to give plenty of credit to how the game likes to weave in and out of a ‘combat’ and a ‘peaceful’ version of the dungeon and event songs during most of the levels in the game…
5. Yoshi Drums: …for a double positive
6. Controls: Shortcutting is always nice, and generally good control design
7. Info In Game: Crafting, mouseover information, skill ability information, and even the ability to double check what upgrading an ability will do exactly…
8. Info In Game: …for an easy double positive
9. Save: Save anywhere, relatively quickly, so long as you’re out of combat…
10. Save: …and good autosaves, and lots of them (10 I believe)…
11. Save: …for triple positives
12. Mid-Mission Checkpointing: Mid boss, even! What’s even better…
13. Mid-Mission Checkpointing: …is it refills potions when you do (so you’re not encouraged to not use items on your ‘first attempt’)…
14. Mid-Mission Checkpointing: …for triple positives
15. Core Combat: Snapping to enemies attacks, weaving magic and melee, parrying. The second-to-second combat is very fun, rewarding, and engaging. It lacks in a few connected parts, but the core combat itself is solid…
16. Core Combat: …and earns an easy double positive
17. Core Combat: Staggering adds to the overall combat, for the most part. Different stagger damage, special breakpoints to knock enemies over or reduce cooldown while staggered, it’s a nice centerpiece to the combat
18. Itemization: Potions heal a percentage (meaning they always stay useful)
19. QoL: Loadouts! Always nice having loadouts that you can swap (out of combat)
20. QoL: Fast quest turn-in and…
21. QoL: …indicators on where quests are, complete with fast travel to quests
22. Info In Game: Quests have icons showcasing what they are and what to expect from them too
23. Built In Cheats: Rings. There are several, they can be swapped at any time on and off while not in combat, and each gives their own particular brand of cheating, be it helping you or just straight up playing parts of the game for you. And this means this is a really granular, toggleable form of difficulty option…
24. Built In Cheats: …and as such…
25. Built In Cheats:…earns a solid triple positive
26. Kit: Ifrit is ol’ reliable. Most of his kit remains useful throughout the entire game, with Will O’ The Wykes for both defense and stagger, Ignition for trash bowling, and the all important limit break
27. Kit: Phoenix. The closer, a nice big single target hit, a nice spread aoe hit, the near-certainty of getting the knockdown hits. And then there’s a nice big aoe hit that heals you
28. Kit: Garuda. As with Ifrit, this is our workhorse Eikon thanks to its good stagger output. Yank, lots of fast hits, and good avoidance skills…
29. Kit: …for a double positive
30. Kit: Titan. The block is fun, its counter is fun, and his unique pacing of charge-then-hit is well rewarded (even later on some of these hits are some of the biggest hits in the game)…
31. Kit: …for a double positive
32. Kit: Bahamut. This is a weird one because it’s a lot of smaller hits, but there’s still a lot of them you can do simultaneously, and Gigaflare is arguably the best ultimate in the game (slows time, hits a lot, and short cooldown)
33. Kit: Shiva. The giant aoe is one of the best stagger killers in the game, the yank-all is nice utility, and the dodge-freeze is nice tech
34. Kit: Odin. Odin is your classic builder-spender combo. Almost everything he does builds Zantetsuken, but also combos well with a few other abilities. Then Zantetsuken absolutely nukes things in the face
35. Builds: This could be better (since all your builds are centered around abilities) but there’s still some good and varied combos and builds based on your playstyle…
36. Builds: …and it’s still good stuff
37. Enemy Design: There’s a few general types of enemies but they do vary enough to keep things interesting at least
38. Map: Basic, but descriptive (very FFX), and can fast travel on it and set markers which are visible in gameplay
39. Respec: Doable individually or as a group any time out of combat, which is absolutely fantastic (especially given how more and more leveling spots are opened up, thus encouraging the player to not hold onto xp ‘just in case’ and letting them play around with ideas…
40. Respec: …for a solid…
41. Respec: …triple positive
42. Tutorialization: The Arete Stone allows you to just… play around with things in Training Mode. It also lets you customize yourself and your enemy…
43. Tutorialization: …and this is awesome…
44. Tutorialization: …and deserves a triple positive
45. Minigame: Arcade Mode, allowing you to refight bosses whenever you want to for points and fun
46. NG+: There’s, for all intents and purposes, a stage select in the Arete Stone too. Best part? You keep progress made in it…
47. NG+: …for double positives
48. Intro: Once we get there! But seriously, the goblin area is a good starter sequence. Basic enemies, combo enemies, simple but solid first ‘boss’
49. Boss: The Dragoon serves as our first ‘real’ boss, and does a good job with what’s there. Escalation of attacks, delayed attacks, parrying windows, and some nice spectacle
50. MSQ: Jill and Tiamat fights. Jill is more spectacly sure, but in gameplay terms she’s all about avoidance and timing input. By contrast Tiamat is completely controllable, and rewards smart dodging and parrying
51. Boss: Garuda twins. This is a fascinating little one-two punch, both using similar attacks but overlapped, giving you just enough time to press or recover depending on your tactics
52. Boss: Benedikta is another simple but solid fight. Lots of movement, but nice big openings to counter in, and good escalation as she progresses through her phases
53. Boss: Garuda proper was more fun than I thought it’d be. Big on spectacle, and most of her attacks are telegraphed a mile in advance, but they’re so painful and the timing on them is interesting that it makes the whole fight intense
54. Boss: Dark Clive. Yet another solid duel fight. Each of his attacks comes with their own timing and patterns, not much for telegraphing but lots of options to react…
55. Boss: …which gets even better when he primes. Same basic attacks, but the reach and timing has changed…
56. Hyperbeam Moment: …which of course then immediately leads to YOU priming, and with infinite limit break going ham on his face
57. Boss: Typhon. For the first time in the game, we have an actual Eikon boss battle, and lo and behold it’s actually quite fun. It’s mostly simple avoidance mechanics, but it was still very satisfying and rewarding to avoid and deal with, and that’s on top of the different timing of Ifrit
58. Boss: Lava Salamander. It’s a remix of an earlier boss, but the new moves and layers add some fun flavor, and it’s a good example of a fairly typical big-ass Monster Hunter style boss fight, complete with avoidances
59. Boss: Liquid Flame is some good stuff, one of the better fights so far. Multiple forms with multiple attacks (and types of attacks) which he slowly escalates more and more, both in frequency and in weaving those attacks around…
60. Boss: …making for a double positive boss fight
61. Boss: Titan. To be clear, this is the Hugo fight, and it’s awesome. He has a fairly varied kit right out of the gate, with clear styles to his attacks (some are better avoided entirely, some should be confronted, you can dodge or jump around several of them, avoid or navigate) and then he starts escalating as his health gets lower, stacking mechanics on top of each other. Then he gets even more serious, with each of his attacks being mutated to be slightly harder to deal with, while continuing to layer them on each other. This fight is the best fight in the game so far…
62. Boss: …and easily earns…
63. Boss: …a solid triple positive
64. Boss: Titan Lost is simple but fun. The lead up boost sequence, the fights on outcroppings, and interspersed with Star Fox sections
65. Boss: Necrophobe. Another in the ‘weirdly good if out of nowhere’ boss fights of this game. Starts off fairly basic, easy to block and dodge with a few avoidance mechanics, but then he starts using ice, fire, and lightning attacks and all of the sudden every mechanic is changed, and THEN this escalates into layering these mechanics on top of each other…
66. Boss: …for a double positive boss fight
67. Boss: Bahamut. I was torn on this one at first, because it’s mostly another Eikon fight, buuut the specifics of his attacks, his layering of attacks, the escalation into space, the additional work put into positioning kit for the player after combining…
68. Boss: …pushes it above the rest
69. Boss: Odin is the other ‘best fight in the game so far’ candidate. The first phase is mostly reminder (and padding, since we did it before in the supposed-to-lose fight) but the second phase starts getting interesting, and we barely spend any time Eikon’d which actually works in the fight’s favor. But the last phase… that’s where it really kicks off, as he starts using all kinds of attacks and techniques alongside his existing, escalated kit, and the all important layering…
70. Boss: …earning it…
71. Boss: …a solid triple positive
72. Boss: Sigma. Big, slow attacks following nice, fast ones, and weaving back and forth
73. Boss: Omicron. Very, very fast, hits very hard, and has tons of reach, but almost no defenses and low health to boot
74. Boss: Angra Mainyu (some slight irritations aside) is mechanically fantastic. Mostly summons indirect attacks, including Roulette, but with lots of vuln windows while it’s barraging you
75. Boss: Omega 1. Relatively simple attacks, but they hit very hard, and they serve as tutorial for the next phase…
76. Boss: …Omega 2. This is the meat of the fight, when things get crazy. Insanely huge reaching, damaging, and difficult attacks, but all of it is designed to be brutal but fair. Good weakness windows, heavier emphasis on the stagger being a phase transition, and lots of opportunities to press…
77. Boss: …making for an easy…
78. Boss: …triple positive fight. Which makes it funnier when he has yet another phase…
79. Boss: …Omega 3. Now he starts layering his attacks and adds some even bigger, harder to avoid attacks, culminating in a DPS check from hell while blasting you in the face the entire time
80. Kit: Leviathan. It’s functionally a shotgun (which absolutely shreds stagger), plus the ability to group a bunch of enemies together in a large area, and a short cooldown room sweeper
81. Boss: While I was certainly getting a bit dulled by the time I got there, the Timekeeper is still a really solid boss fight. It’s fairly standard Soulslike actually; varied delays in timing, those delays change across phases, and layering attacks in the final phase, all alongside nice big recovery windows…
82. Boss: …for a double positive
83. Boss: Leviathan 2. Some general, fun Eikon goodness
84. Boss: Leviathan 4 is actually really awesome, right up there with Bahamut. Tons of layered attacks, escalation of previous phases, and much increased intensity…
85. Boss: …for an easy double positive
86. Minigame: Chronoliths. Simple, fun, brutally difficult trials for those who want the post game challenge, alongside…
87. Minigame: …Kairos Gate. Twenty horrifying fights of doom as a post game challenge mode with rogue progression and reset mechanics
88. Outro: Boss: Ultima is… fine as a final boss. There’s nothing really bad about it, he has good escalation and good variety of moveset, but it’s held back from being as awesome as several prior fights
89. Kit: Okay so Ultima is surprisingly good kit for being essentially New Game Plus mode only. The new attack mode, the amazing ultimate, the low cooldown abilities…
90. Kit: …earning an easy double positive
91. NG+: A very good new game plus mode. Carry forward everything of course, but also you can just straight up skip the entire prologue…
92. NG+: …earning an easy…
93. NG+: …triple positive
94. Difficulty Options: Final Fantasy Mode. Higher stats, sure, but also new gear, new levels for you, new encounter design, and new attacks and AI for bosses…
95. Difficulty Options: …which is a very good hard mode
96. Difficulty Curve: Smooth through almost the entire game
97. Fast Travel: Generally good fast travel. Can fast travel in combat too!
98. Replayability: A generally replayable game, especially with new game plus mode
99. Viscerality: Especially on the visual axis, some fun flashy viscerality

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Graphics: Optimization issues. The game is just… a bit too much. Even when cranking the graphics down it has stutters and frame drops. And this is after they locked cutscenes at 30 fps
2. Lighting: Several entire swaths of the early part of the game are dark. Way, way too dark, like actually difficult to tell what’s going on dark
3. Visual Distinction: Related to the aforementioned, it’s actually hard to tell what the hell is going on for several segments of the game (too much crap going on or getting in the way)
4. Audio Spam: Go get ‘em boy! You got it boy!
5. Secondary: Side quests in the first half of the game are… not good. They’re an awful combination of boring, uninvolved, and time consuming…
6. Secondary: …and so deserve…
7. Secondary: …an easy three negatives
8. Itemization: Gear is… not badly spaced, but it’s just entirely too dull, to the point where getting new gear is just another function of leveling up
9. Padding: Enemy health. I chewed on this for a while, and while the trash is fine at a certain point, then there’s the ‘fat’ trash… and some of this bleeds over into minibosses and bosses. It’s not TOO bad, but honestly every enemy in the game needs a bit of an editing pass in exactly how much health they have…
10. Padding: …for a solid…
11. Padding: …triple negative
12. Pacing: So this is a weird one but hear me out. The gameplay, in and of itself, is actually paced quite well. The story, in and of itself, is fine. But the problem is this is a video game where both dwell. And so 15 hours of gameplay are stretched across 40 hours of story, and it starts to cause issues that bleed into the experience. Each increase in power we get (a new mechanic or new Eikon) or new enemy type is good, and varies things up, but these happen hours upon hours apart from each other. These ‘valleys’ in between these moments are a bit too spread out, and contribute to combat feeling samey after a certain point. Thus combat is awesome, then gets boring, then gets awesome, then gets boring, and this pattern repeats…
13. Pacing: …thus earning…
14. Pacing: …triple negative
15. Core Combat: Feedback issues. This is related to the overall issues with viscerality. Things sure look flashy, but there’s some problems with specific feedback on certain types of attacks, vuln states, cooldowns, etc.
16. Early Game: Early game being somewhat dull is nothing new to RPGs in general and JRPGs in particular, but due to the issue below this is stretched to the point where I honestly wanted to put the game down at certain points due to how much it dragged
17. Boss: Titan… 3. 4? Man I dunno, the last Titan ‘fight’, aka the plummeting through the mountain fight. Honestly this fight shouldn’t even be here at all (we had a very satisfying conclusion after Titan Lost), but as is it would be fine if he had SUBSTANTIALLY less health. Like, 25% of the health he currently does. As is the fight drags, which sort of sours the entire (7 phase) boss
18. Factory Worker Syndrome: The ‘mid’ enemies we encounter periodically. This is a weird one because there’s nothing really wrong with them in their own right; they’re well designed minibosses and fun to fight… once, maybe twice. But they never stop being the same general level of intensity thanks to levels and stats, and they never really vary either, which means 50 hours into the game you’re still fighting the same enemies which require the same level of attention multiple times across multiple hours…
19. Factory Worker Syndrome: …thus earning…
20. Factory Worker Syndrome: …a full three negatives
21. Padding: Reverie. I get what they’re going for but it’s a bit too long and a bit too much
22. Padding: Speaking of, the entire march towards the final crystal is way, way too dull for what it is. Narratively the idea makes sense but in gameplay I was honestly just bored after 20 solid minutes of combat through trash
23. Music: The ruined music. There’s actually several new songs, but good luck distinguishing them from each other. They’re all the same low mournful piano tune, and that’s neat and all, but it plays for over a dozen hours across huge swaths of gameplay
24. Secondary: So, almost all of the endgame sidequests have the same problem; Go fight a bunch of the exact same mobs you’ve been fighting for hours upon hours. The fights aren’t terrible, not really, but by this point in the game it’s just gotten old
25. Boss: You know those same basic big enemies and boss fights you fight like a dozen times, each, across the game? Yeah, they never really change either, so…
26. Boss: …they qualify…
27. Boss: …for three negatives
28. Graphics: The red filter. It’s literally hard on the eyes, and makes visual distinction worse too
29. Music: Sadly. There’s just too many songs that repeat too often across too long of a game, and it starts to get to the point where I want to mute the game
30. Enemy Design: There’s only a handful of enemy designs in the game, which is fine, except we fight them over… and over and over and over andoverandoverandover, far past reasonability…
31. Enemy Design: …for double negatives. This bleeds over into…
32. Encounter Rate: …just how much trash is in this game. I wasn’t sure about this negative at first, but right about when I caught myself deliberately avoiding trash just because I was sick of fighting the same 3 mobs for the hundredth time I realized just how bad this is…
33. Encounter Rate: …so that’s a solid…
34. Encounter Rate: …triple negative. What’s worse…
35. Encounter: …there’s almost no good thought put into encounter design. Here’s some trash, oh and two of them in the back have one gimmick or mechanic to them. That’s it, that’s the encounter design. When encounters in FFIV have more design put into them, something’s wrong somewhere…
36. Encounter: …so that’s another…
37. Encounter: …triple.
38. Boss: Leviathan 1. He hits way too hard, the fight is way too long, and he has huge periods of not being attackable
39. Boss: Leviathan 3. This entire phase is this stupid bubble shield, and it sucks. So it’s a flat DPS race, which is ‘fine’ but ultimately disinteresting, but then it’s a VERY tight window for making it. As in, if you added but 5 more seconds it’d be a lot more reasonable. Then Levia constantly shoves you way, way away from him, padding out the encounter. Also he’s attacking you the entire time, because you can dodge to get bonus damage (and you should). And finally and worst of all, every failure means a mandatory and unskippable cutscene before getting to start all over again. This absolutely sucks…
40. Boss: …and deserves its own…
41. Boss: …triple negative
42. Itemization: So, this is a weird one, but we debated this on camera. The two DLCs cannot be accessed… at all, mind you… until the VERY end of the game. As in, after doing optional side quests that only open up when the final boss fight is the next step, immediately at the point of no return. This robs the player of interesting accessories and an Eikon until they have already beaten the game, making them only really useful for NG+
43. Outro: Boss: Ultima HP gates. A lot. And it’s really irritating
44. Overworld Design: Several issues, especially with ledges or gaps you just cannot cross because… uh, no real reason given
45. Traversal: Walking and chocobo are both not super great when you’re just roaming
46. Replayability: While NG+ does smooth out some of this, there is just a whole lot of padding and drag that hurts replayability

Story Positives:

1. Animation: Surprisingly good, for how tiny the characters are. Little details, like folding their legs or leaning back when tired or reacting during cutscenes
2. Dialogue: While there are a few issues with the writing, most of the dialogue remains distinct regionally. So each area has different sounding people, even though it’s all text
3. Spritework: The same plastic look, but very well done and varied across the different species
4. Story Sequencing: Succeeds at something Tears failed at; nonlinear progression. Several of the ‘chapters’ can be approached in whatever order and it all ends up making a degree of sense and leading to the same place
5. Intro: The Intro is probably the single strongest part of the game, narratively, as of me typing this up. We start off with Link who’s just bulldozing through a dungeon, who gets into a fight with Ganon and honestly curbstomps him. But as Ganon dies he drags Link into a Rift, so Link with zero hesitation frees Zelda… who barely escapes in time, and is found by her soldiers shortly thereafter after a nice panning shot of the kingdom. Very little dialogue is spoken here but a lot of info is conveyed…
6. Intro: …and it immediately sets the tone and stakes, as well as characterizes Link surprisingly well
7. Doodads: Castle Town is fantastic. Each house has its own distinct personality, with thought and effort put into every single placement, and the near perfect layout of trees and bushes and flowers and food and just… everything
8. Cutscene: The seemingly positive wrap up in the castle, followed immediately by the stakes getting raised and the status quo abruptly changing
9. Moment: Impa being a badass deserves its own mention
10. Doodads: Suthorn village continues the trend of fantastic doodad design of interiors. Whoever worked on these things deserves a damned raise
11. Brickwork: Grassy forests, in general. This is the majority of the overworld in total, but it’s still peaceful, pristine, pretty, and exactly what it needs to be
12. Brickwork: The Still World is wonderfully creepy. Chunks of the (relevant) terrain in the background, warped and distorted magic in the distance, and pieces of things and people scattered everywhere
13. Brickwork: The desert is quite delightful for what it is. Good sand dunes, good spread of items, even the architecture feels crafted from sand-resistant materials
14. Doodads: And of course the Gerudo village continues the trend of interiors looking fantastic. And varied! New, locally-appropriate doodads are all over
15. Internal Continuity: Link’s adventure and what came before. We get snippets of it throughout, and it’s fairly consistent in how it’s presented and connects to our adventure
16. Moment: The reveal of Facette, and the immediacy of dealing with it. This could have easily been a fake drama moment, and instead it’s dealt with promptly and properly
17. Character: The supporting cast of the Gerudo. Several memorable people here (the guard who’s scared of beetles, the one who loves tumbleweeds, the one afraid of ghosts)
18. Doodads: Seesyde Village. This is good, of course, but what really sells it even more…
19. Doodads: …is the doodads for the southern Zora which probably have the best overall doodads so far. Seriously, all new assets and exceptionally well crafted in all cases, an easy double positive
20. Character: Once again, the supporting cast of the Zoras. The two leaders, their main supporters, the child afraid to swim, the mother looking for her adventurous son
21. MSQ: The return to Hyrule Castle is surprisingly interesting of a story beat. It starts off thinking it’s going to be another fake drama bit or a cassandra truth but nope, that’s thrown out the window immediately in favor of competency. This also leads to a substantial status quo change for the story (as most good halfway points are) and informs where we’re going next because…
22. Moment: …we finally see that this ‘Ganon’ isn’t, Link is still active and operating in the Still World, and there’s something else afoot
23. Visual Storytelling: The Rifts in general, but moreso the people in them. Horrified, in stasis, but aware (at least somewhat) and this black ichor dropping out of them bit by bit… and we know the longer you’re in a Rift the worse you are when you get out, IF you get out
24. Secondary: Sidequests in general add some wonderful flavor to basically everything
25. Doodads: Kakariko! Of course the town has great doodad design and, continuing the trend, varies it up from the previous towns
26. Doodads: Goron City! As per usual, the variety and stylings change based on the region, and here we see the comfortable caves (supported by metal frames of course), ropes, climbing gear, mining gear, you get it
27. MSQ: Darston’s finding his identity and self confidence is a nice, bite-sized story arc for the Gorons
28. Brickwork: The frozen north. Simple but solid, reminds me of LTTP’s approach to brickwork. Frozen lakes, snow everywhere, and icicles
29. Character: Conde! Dude manages to carry the weight of an entire chapter by himself. Poor guy
30. Character: Tri. Sufficiently alien (robotlike, really) without being annoying like, say, Fi, and slowly developing across the game works better than it has any right to
31. World Building: This is a weird one, but.. The Dekus are probably the most fleshed out of the culture groups we see and have good distinction to them, but all the culture groups are different really
32. Brickwork: The wonderful jungle. Different tiles, much denser foliage, and lovely usage of trees and rocks for domiciles
33. Pacing: Variety in chapters. Sometimes it’s one guy, sometimes it’s a few, sometimes it’s a fashion craze, sometimes it’s about dealing with a crisis
34. Tone: Cute! Especially the Dekus oh my god they’re so cute
35. Outro: Null. This is exactly the type of eldritch abomination that works so well in this role, as others failed to like Malledeus and Bellum
36. Outro: The world consumed by void, the escalating fight with Null, the world restored
37. Outro: The final ending reel. The people we’ve helped, the resolution to their stories, great stuff

Story Negatives:

1. Empty Text: There’s… a bit of an empty text problem. It’s not super bad, but it’s noticeable how many times the characters like to say 5 things to mean 1…
2. Empty Text: …and it gets aggravating given how much dialogue is in the game
3. Banter: God Tri, please shut up when you don’t need to talk

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Options: Hero mode is nice, but swapping on the fly is better
2. Music: There’s a few good songs here and there. Weirdly enough they tend to be more towards the latter half of the game’s dungeons
3. Yoshi Drums: Big keys, among other instances
4. Saves: Good saves!
5. Saves: Good auto saves, and multiple of them…
6. Saves: …for a double positive
7. Fast Travel: Find it to unlock it design, plenty of them across the world, real thought put into the placement of them, and it’s a quick input and quick load screen to do it…
8. Fast Travel: …for an easy…
9. Fast Travel: …triple positive
10. Controls: Good controls, good shortcutting, good thought about usage and placement…
11. Controls: …for double positives
12. Sound Design: The Zelda series is known for its amazing sound design, and this one is no exception
13. Party AI: Surprisingly good, for what it is…
14. Enemy AI: …dovetailing into how the enemies, especially the void versions, actually attack differently
15. Interface: Generally good and informative interface. Quick and easy to navigate and well laid out…
16. Interface: …for a double positive
17. Info In Game: Plenty of info for how items, recipes, buffs, and equipment operate (including visual indicators)…
18. Info In Game: …for another double positive
19. HUD: Surprisingly good for how minimalist it is. The relevant things pop up as needed (for collectibles), and the rest is quick and easy to parse
20. Mid Mission Checkpoints: Surprisingly, yeah. This dovetails a bit into the autosaves, but even if you don’t use those there’s still good checkpointing
21. Map: Not quite at the level of Breath or Tears, but still an excellent map. Well laid out, easy to read (height, for example, is indicated by outlines and darkness of color), it’s the right layout for the overworld (no interpreting or guesswork), you can lay down pins, and you can whip it out and navigate it quickly and easily…
22. Map: …for an easy double positive
23. Minimap: While only useful in the overworld, we do spend quite a bit of time there in this one, and it still shows the terrain and your pins…
24. Minimap: …and so earns an easy double positive
25. Guidance: Generally excellent guidance everywhere. Layout, color usage, see a single spot of dirt somewhere? Maybe dig there. See some bushes surrounding a bigger bush? What’s behind it? It’s excellent across the board…
26. Guidance: …for an easy…
27. Guidance: …triple positive
28. Flow: Generally great flow. This’ll get a few individual positives later but the whole game flows so smoothly from one area to the next…
29. Pacing: …and it really helps the overall pacing. Zelda games usually excel at this but this one feels like it does a better job than usual…
30. Pacing: …for an easy…
31. Pacing: …triple positive. I think this is at least in part due to…
32. Kit: Echoing items. You can echo objects, and they interact with the world exactly how you’d expect. This massively blows the lid off ways you can approach navigation and puzzle solution…
33. Kit: …and earns a solid…
34. Kit: …triple positive by itself
35. Kit: Then there’s the enemies. There’s a good chunk of them (127 in fact) but a lot are either not as useful, side-grades, or straight upgrades. That’s fine, of course, I’m just pointing out that it’s ‘merely’…
36. Kit: …triple positive…
37. Kit: …territory. Especially since a lot of these are redundant… not in a bad way, mind, it allows for preference and choice, which is always nice
38. Builds: Between all this, the sword form, the options for echoes, and the options for automatons, there’s a lot of ways to play this game
39. Enemy Design: I should probably mention that the same applies to the enemy design, which is nothing short of fantastic…
40. Enemy Design: …earning an easy double positive, reinforced by…
41. Enemy Variety: …the variety on display. This is some great variety, with heavies, fast movers, fliers, ranged, mages, all kinds of stuff…
42. Enemy Variety: …for another double positive
43. Kit: Grab mode? I don’t know what to call this… it’s when Tri grabs something. It’s such a seemingly simple thing, but it’s VERY puzzle’y in how it interacts with objects, enemies, the terrain, and yourself. There’s a ton you can do with simply picking something up and carrying it around, or letting it carry you
44. Intro: So, it starts off simple yet sweet. A built in tutorial for the next time we’ll do this dungeon and the next time we’ll get Link’s moveset, AND the next time we fight Ganon. All of this is on top of it being astonishingly well tutorialized with little more than simple visual cues and design
45. Tutorialization: The entire intro sequence, but also beds! And, really, there’s tons of this stuff absolutely everywhere…
46. Tutorialization: …one of my favorite examples is there’s a room you enter where the lever you have to pull back to keep a door open is already partially closed. This means thanks to sight and sound you’re immediately drawn to it, and instantly figure out how the mechanism works and what the room wants of you, and you get right into execution. It’s tutorialization in the space of a second and I’m so here for it…
47. Tutorialization: …thus earning an easy triple positive
48. Overworld: Suthorn area. Good guidance, good escalation of ideas, good tutorialization of what the whole game will expect of you
49. Level: Suthorn Ruins are surprisingly good for an early dungeon. They’re clever, they’re paced well, and they mix and match types of encounters and puzzles as you go through…
50. Level: …for an easy double positive
51. Boss: The first three bosses all have a nice design in that they have multiple vectors by which you can fight and defeat them
52. Overworld: The Gerudo Desert sequence is more combat heavy than what we’ve seen so far, but it’s quite good for what it is…
53. Level: …and involves several fun minidungeons leading up to…
54. Level: The Gerudo Ruins. There’s some really creative stuff here, probably the first time I felt like I had to really think and expand my usage of kit to progress, and I love the continued sand motif…
55. Level: …easy double positive
56. Level: Eastern Palace minidungeon. This is our first major side minidungeon and it has a good, tight density of fun and interesting puzzles and a neat miniboss at the end
57. Overworld: The Zora region in general has more design to it than I thought it would. Good movement vertically as you go further north (up river) and more platforming when you go south (down river to the ocean)
58. Level: Jabul Sanctum. Surprisingly short for what it is, but with five distinct types and varieties of puzzles in each of the branches, each one allowing further progress… oh and the whole thing’s skippable…
59. Level: …for an easy double positive
60. Level: Hyrule Castle. I feel like I’m repeating myself here but the same good design practices are all over the place here. Escalation of the previous stealth segment (with good checkpoints), good looping in and out of the same areas, fun and interesting puzzles (especially some more severe platforming ones)…
61. Level: …an easy…
62. Level: …triple positive
63. Boss: Phantom Ganon! Same general moves as before, multiple ways to attack him, great escalation, tight timing, and four fun phases
64. Level: The Sunken Ship forms our second major minidungeon and, like the previous, manages to be a great, dense puzzlefest with a fun miniboss at the end
65. Minigame: Surprisingly well designed minigames in both acorns (find ‘em in the time limit!) and mangos (get rid of all of ‘em in the time limit!) Speaking of time limit…
66. Minigame: …I need to give a bonus positive for how most of the minigames have a ‘get this to get the item, but do this even harder version to get a better item’ mechanic AND a clear indicator of what’s required to get that second hardmode requirement
67. Minigame: Kakariko slumber duels. These are a fun re-fight mutator series with rewards and, try to be surprised, ‘do a harder version to get a better item’ mechanics built in
68. Minigame: Horse riding! Yeah I dunno, these are just simple fun to me. And damn those hard races are razor-thin in their margins
69. Level: Goron Sanctum. Great density and variety, great usage of the sidescrolling, fun creativity in the lava and working with and around it…
70. Level: …an easy double positive dungeon
71. Boss: Volvagia has a couple of minor issues but is still a very good fight. Great terrain, good variety of attacks, multiple ways to avoid and attack
72. Boss: Miniboss more like, but the frozen slime in the Lanayru Ruins is a solid fight. Freeze, split, but each subsequent iteration gets faster
73. Level: Lanayru Ruins. This stage has some very fantastic gimmicks. Lots of usage of fire and ice, progression that moves smoothly forwards as it loops in and out of its own routes, and even requiring tighter execution than most puzzles thusfar…
74. Level: …for an easy…
75. Level: …triple positive, but I have to give a bonus positive…
76. Encounter: …for the puzzles. These are very, very well done and dense and awesome. Lots of solutions, clever tutorializing, great stuff
77. Boss: Skorchill is a great boss fight. Two distinct phases with different attacks and ways to defeat (and keeping on theme), and then a third combined phase which bounces between both
78. Secondary: Now’s as good a time as any to give a nod to the side quests. There’s some decent variety here, and I like the pseudo puzzle of figuring out what echoes to use and the fact that multiple different echoes count for success
79. MSQ: The imprisoned sequence with the Dekus. The ‘stealth’ segment is fine, but the mini puzzles to get out are a great way to remove all our kit and still make interesting puzzles
80. Level: Faron Temple. This is probably the most complicated dungeon so far, with multiple routes through it and an interior and exterior segment to keep track of. Most of the puzzles are far more execution heavy than the combat heavy volcano or the puzzle heavy frozen wastes, keeping the theme of the trio focusing on their respective strengths. This makes for an easy…
81. Level: …double positive dungeon, but I have to give special credit for…
82. Boss: …the miniboss. Diababa is clever, has multiple ways to defeat it, and doesn’t overstay its welcome
83. Boss: Special bonus points to Gohma. Electrify and burn (keeping the dungeon’s theme), shoot its weak points or just bypass them, fun stuff
84. Minigame: A bonus positive for the several fun, little minigames scattered throughout. Gliding, racing the goron, hide and seek, that sort of thing
85. Outro: Level: The last dungeon is a weird example of short but sweet. Multiple paths through a fairly simple area, and immediately afterwards a brief but fun co-op dungeon
86. Outro: Boss: Null. Intense, powerful, multiple phases, lots going on, not too brutal or easy, and great spectacle…
87. Outro: Boss: …make for an easy…
88. Outro: Boss: …triple positive final boss
89. Replayability: The game is generally replayable…
90. Replayability: …and has sufficient variance in playstyle and order of events to warrant a second positive
91. Terrain: Some really solid terrain design here, especially taking advantage of how the game naturally adds height and width to your mobility with the echoes and is clearly designed around that…
92. Terrain: …for an easy double positive

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Options: Or lack thereof! Nintendo, you used to have options (in the SNES era for God’s sakes) so fix it
2. Graphics: The BLUUURRR. This isn’t THE worst blur I’ve ever seen, but it is unironically the second worst. It is a nonstop headache-inducing nightmare and totally unnecessary, especially given how vertical the game can get (meaning good luck seeing where you’re going, because it’s all blurry). Now here’s the weird part, with the update for the Switch 2 this is still here but not as bad, so it’s gone from a triple down to merely a single
3. Camera: This also dovetails into some camera issues (the angle is wonky for quite a few jumps)
4. Graphics: Optimization, or lack thereof. There’s very little excuse at this point, although this game was probably optimized for the Switch 2 so who knows. Still sucks though
5. Music: There’s some good songs in this game. There’s also large swaths of parts of the game which play short loop, repetitive, irritating songs
6. Interface: So, selecting Echoes needs some work. It’s actually a good interface (really) it’s just also bad at the same time. The absence of features like being able to favorite some, or easy ‘return to beginning’ without resorting it several times, combined with the huge number of Echoes you get (127!) means that it can get irritating to scroll through
7. Visual Distinction: Issues at times, mostly related to the depth of field issues

Story Positives:

1. Voice Acting: Weirdly enough there’s some decent voice acting in this one, especially on Chairman Drek
2. Brickwork: So, this is functionally an aggregate, but they do some good stuff with the backgrounds in this one, far better than I’d expect from an early PS2 game. There’s good biomes, good variety of them…
3. Brickwork: …good skyboxes…
4. Brickwork: …overall good stuff
5. Brickwork: Special bonus point for the cityscape areas
6. Spritework: Again, surprisingly good, but here we are. Special bonus for the various robots
7. Animation: Better lip flaps and general animation than I was expecting
8. World Building: Such as it is. The entire world seems to run on a combination of rampant capitalism and bolts, and robots are absolutely everywhere
9. Tone: Ridiculousness. It’s one of the only things making the game not score worse, if I’m honest, in how overtly and obviously ridiculous everything is

Story Negatives:

1. Intro: Cutscene: Nonsense. Just… a whole lot of nonsense, to the point where I honestly just want to skip the whole thing. It barely even sets up the events of the game
2. Story Sequencing: Things just… happen with no rhyme or reason to them, constantly
3. Humor: Juvenile and poorly constructed. There’s also a lot of mean-spirited ‘humor’ throughout
4. Cutscene: Pacing. The cutscenes are either too dragged out or too chopped short
5. Character: Ratchet. Screw Ratchet in this game. I’ve heard defenses of him for years, mostly after the movie game came out, but none of that changes the fact that he is a complete asshole for the overwhelming majority of the entire game…
6. Character: …easily a double negative character. I just want him off my screen
7. NPC Set Dressing: Or lack thereof. Worlds feel devoid of anything, which makes sense given they barely have a narrative, but it just feels disconnected
8. Fake Drama: Ratchet and Clank (roll credits!). The fake drama between these two is understandable at first, irritating as it drags on, and outright facepalming as it stretches across most of the game
9. Dialogue: Presumptive dialogue. So, almost every cutscene has the characters knowing what we, the players, do, and acting accordingly. This is fairly textbook bad dialogue
10. Cutscene: Cutscenes in general suck. The animations are good, but everything else is just… off. I’d list every individual component but I think it really is better to just say ‘they completely suck’ and give…
11. Cutscene: …a full…
12. Cutscene: …triple
13. Plot: What plot?! Yes I know Chairman Drek is doing his thing but it’s such a background element and barely even drives the events of the narrative
14. Outro: Not really… big on this ending. I know it’s a simple jokey ending but it’s over edited, over dramatic, and doesn’t even manage a heartwarming or a humor moment

Gameplay Positives:

1. Controls: Chewed on this for a bit, but there are enough good controls and sequences with good controls to qualify
2. Music: I mean of course it has good music. Especially if you’re into beat or synth or whatever this is called. Not-quite-jazz maybe? I dunno
3. Sound: Good sound design, mostly in feedback
4. Viscerality: Pickups, smashing, and kit. Pickups have a very satisfying clank, smashing stuff feels satisfying, and most of the guns have nice oomph to them…
5. Viscerality: …for a solid double
6. QoL: Smart ammo drops in general, but also another small smattering of quality of life features
7. Kit: I was chewing on this one for a bit too. The kit is… not the best I’ve seen, but it’s surprisingly varied in what they’re used for and general fun factor, so I think it deserves…
8. Kit: …a solid double
9. Traversal: Jetpacking, gliding, long jumping, you get it
10. Enemy Variety: Good enemy variety. Fliers, shooters, tanks, little swarmers, all kinds of stuff
11. Level: Shortcutting. Even the levels I’d consider ‘bad’ still have good shortcutting and it deserves mention
12. Map: This is the second early PS2 title I’ve covered inside of a week with a weirdly good map. Shows where you’ve already been, things you can do that you haven’t yet, and decent terrain presentation
13. Intro: Novalis, three paths, one is safe platforming leading to using bolts to progress and showcases a shortcut return. One leads to a minor combat and destructible / swimming tutorial…
14. Intro: …culminating in a third route which serves as a nice capstone to the two spokes (combat and platforming)
15. Intro: Tutorialization: Novalis. Really solid tutorialization across the three routes too
16. Level: Aridia. Two paths to go, good density of platforming and enemy placement…
17. Level: …good stuff
18. Level: Kerwan is close to my favorite stage so far. Good platforming puzzle sequence with the obstacle course, good combat sequence leading up to the train, fun little train sequence…
19. Level: …good stuff
20. Level: Eudora, the logging area. Getting meaner with enemy design and platforming, but both in a good way. I admit the level design has started to dip a bit (waiting on resetting platforms, among other things) but still good
21. Level: Batalia, the fortress stage. The rail grinding section was fun, and I enjoyed the swarms of enemies to crush in the combat sequence
22. Level: Gaspar, the lava planet. I actually enjoyed this more than I thought I would, with the usual Mario 64 approach to lava and some fun sequences
23. Level: Pokitaru is a great return to form when it comes to level design and encounter design. This whole planet is just fun…
24. Level: …easily a double
25. Level: Oltanis Orbit. Again, a nice return to form with level design, and I like how clever they’re getting with combat puzzles (where they’re designed so brute forcing really isn’t viable)
26. Hyperbeam Moment: Quartu and Giant Clank is a great sequence. It’s not completely mindless, but they give your attacks a nice big arc, and lots of enemies to smash with them
27. Level: Kalebo III, aka the Gadgetron planet. I actually really liked most of this world, dodgy hitboxes aside, with good variety of enemy encounters and platforming
28. Level: So this is going to be a negative too, but for what it’s worth I did enjoy the stealth sequence of Quartu. Which is funny, it means Quartu had a stealth and a hyperbeam sequence
29. Level: Okay call me crazy but I really like Drek’s Fleet. Good, complex, and avoidable stealth sequence (tense if you stealth, possible to bulldoze if you’re fast, possible to assassinate if you don’t want to)…
30. Level: …for a solid double
31. Level: Several areas have optional underwater races which… are actually surprisingly fun
32. Outro: Level: Veldin, weirdly. I actually rather like several of the challenges and mix and match nature of it
33. NG+: Choice to retain bolts, weapons, and some unlocks
34. Alternate Leveling: So this is a weird one, but gold bolts qualify. Do optional hard and fun exploratory challenges (with a few hints on where they are) and unlock a way to get even more variety for your weapons
35. Replayability: I mean, yeah. Short enough, plus a bunch of different weapons to play around with

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Boss: Boring minibosses in general
2. Boss: Boring bosses in general
3. MSQ: The Rilgar race can go directly to hell. I was originally going to ding it more but it’s apparently optional, go figure
4. Level: The water race in Rilgar. Irritating, easy to fall behind in, and no checkpoints
5. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Only a few issues early on, but there are a fair few in the first several stages
6. Level: Orxon 1. Slow, badly paced, and generally disinteresting Clank segment
7. QoL: So, you have weapons and you have tools. Some of those tools can take up a slot in your quick select wheel (and in one case, probably should) to avoid constantly pausing the game to swap. But other than the one these are basically just keys. Nothing prevents them from being passive unlocks that just let you do the puzzle or grab the water or whatever. In fact this very game does exactly that with some of the actual passives you get
8. Control: Single inversion in first person. So I know I gave the controls a positive, buuut also when you’re in first person mode the camera is single inverted. This is the worst possible setup, as people who prefer double normal or double inverted with be screwed up constantly. Further, there’s no options to fix this (we ended up doing some very janky controller rebinding to avoid it)
9. Level: Mid Mission Checkpoint: Orxon 2. So we revisit Orxon and have a nice long doomy section to do, cool. This section kind of sucks but what really clinches it is there’s no checkpointing along the entire stretch
10. Level: Orxon 2 also just sucks in general. Irritating enemies, irritating platforming, and a camera that seems to have grown to hate you
11. Level: Mid Mission Checkpoint: Hoven. Yeah I know but honestly the lack of checkpointing is getting worse, I swear
12. Enemy Design: Enemies just out of reach, or who attack in their incoming vector, or otherwise just feel like they weren’t quite… designed. This blurs a bit into encounter design but it’s primarily how the enemies are built. Ironically a proper strafe feature and better hurtboxing on the wrench would fix this pretty easily
13. Core Combat: Lack of i-frames, among other issues. It’s legitimately irritating fighting most things in this game
14. Itemization: Bolt economy. The game needed to give… maybe 15, 20% more bolts in normal play than it does. A normal player is very likely to buy each new gun as they become available to try them out, but the player is also heavily incentivized to constantly buy ammo at each ammo vendor (especially since it’s the one true penalty for failure; All spent ammo remains spent). So you end up not getting health upgrades and not getting good weapons and in some cases not being able to progress at all because almost every quest item requires bolts, which you don’t have
15. Level: Oltanis routes and pacing issues. The entire Oltanis segment is weirdly padded. This runs into a problem the whole game has; Time To Solve is just too high on almost every puzzle, and going through Oltanis really highlighted how long it takes to do a segment you’ve long since figured out how to do
16. Level: Mid Mission Checkpoint: Oltanis also has bad mid mission checkpoints because of course it does
17. Level: So, Quartu 2 (the stealth sequence) is nice and tense and… long and boring. The movement speed of the bot is SO bad and failure is SO punishing due to lack of checkpoints
18. Outro: Mid Mission Checkpoints: Veldin. I mean, of course. It’s even in the final boss

Story Positives:

1. Intro: Cutscene. I’ve seen better (in the first game, even) but it’s still solid for what it’s going for
2. Brickwork: The bridge and city are properly gorgeous and detailed, especially the scale of destruction…
3. Brickwork: …for a solid double
4. Brickwork: The hive city. First we see it (literally in the higher atmosphere) and can look down and see the clouds below us…
5. Brickwork: …gorgeous stuff, sure, but then we see further down and looking UP at the hive city scaling up…
6. Brickwork: …into the clouds above us
7. Brickwork: The chaos ruins in general. Or should I say…
8. Brickwork: …the Necron ruins
9. Doodads: Tiny details everywhere. Cables, debris, corpses, we’ve got it all…
10. Doodads: …for a solid…
11. Doodads: …triple
12. NPC Set Dressing: Swarmtech in general deserves its own mention. It’s such a great tech and they use it to such good effect…
13. NPC Set Dressing: …that I have to double it
14. Animation: Movement and sound. The way everything moves has just the right amount of weight and oomph to it
15. Animation: Also cutscene animation is weirdly good. A lot of silent storytelling conveyed in motion, especially between the three principles…
16. Animation: …an easy double
17. Voice Acting: Mechanicus, as usual, have great voice acting…
18. Voice Acting: …but honestly I was also impressed with the main cast as well, which is impressive considering how gravelly and grizzled they had to sound
19. Moment: The swarm charging up the wall in the first mission is just such a moment by itself. I visibly reacted when I realized these things were actual enemies, not just a cool backdrop setpiece
20. Cutscene: Titus kicking ass before the Carnifex fight
21. Moment: Last stand against the Carnifex itself
22. Atmosphere: The ship has some wonderful atmosphere to it in between missions
23. Banter: Almost entirely between mission, again, but still great stuff
24. Tone: So here’s the deal. A lot of individual moments deserve mention and positives, but the whole game just kind of nails the spectacle inherent to Warhammer 40k. A tank running through a door, parts of a bridge collapsing, soldiers holding off swarms of enemies upon a wall…
25. Tone: …the whole thing…
26. Tone: …is just great
27. External Continuity: And it ties in to how much it uses Warhammer 40k as a setting in general
28. Background Lore: Dataslate audio logs. They’re not as good as some other games, but there’s some gems in here
29. Character: General. Leuze, Gadriel, Chairon, and Sarkaana being the standouts
30. Moment: Baneblade speech. It’s exactly as awesome as a Guard speech should be. Just… don’t listen to it in german
31. Moment: Gadriel’s jumpjet awesome moment is cool and all but what really works…
32. Moment: …is immediately after it, with Gadriel and Titus’ confrontation and follow through
33. MSQ: The Necron stuff in general. The Necrons being anti warp and being the thing to use against Chaos here just kind of works
34. MSQ: Spectacle and vibe of the Guard and the Smurfs holding against chaos
35. Moment: Calgar showing up is nice, but Titus having Gadriel’s back was even better
36. Moment: The dreadnaught. Just… the dreadnaught
37. Outro: Weirdly wholesome and satisfying, with Calgar sure, but especially with Gadriel and Chairon. And I absolutely love how the voice acting and subtle facial animation convey how big of a deal this is to Titus
38. Visual Storytelling: General, but constant. Lots of details that help sell the scene in a lot of cases
39. MSQ: Operation 9 has some fantastic dialogue and banter, with the servo skull and the mechanicus

Story Negatives:

1. Character: So there’s some good character stuff, I think. Then there’s the rest. And honestly the rest of the time they’re not BAD per say but they are dull as dishwater
2. Dialogue: As you know is trotted out entirely too often (probably because this was intended as an onboard for the setting)
3. Pacing: Stretched too long at parts, and entirely too rushed at others

Gameplay Positives:

1. Viscerality: So I really like the visuals of this one…
2. Viscerality: …and I absolutely adore the audio design…
3. Viscerality: …though I don’t feel the third category, I think the audio one deserves a double
4. Kit: Decent. There’s a lot of guns but don’t really have a lot of variety to them. The melees are better designed, with the combos changing per type and substantially altering how you play
5. Enemy Design: Actually pretty solid. Good enemies with good styles and types of attacks and requiring different approaches and tactics
6. Enemy Variety: Surprisingly decent, though it could be better. Still some solid stuff, especially between the Tyrannids and Chaos
7. Difficulty Options: Change difficulty on the fly
8. Co-Op: Co-Op exists…
9. Co-Op: …and is in campaign mode…
10. Co-Op: …and has hot drop in and out
11. Co-Op: And there’s an entire Operations mode just for more co-op
12. Core Combat: Some issues, admittedly, but the melee stuff is actually quite solid. Dodging, parrying, parry shooting, and combos
13. Pacing: Crescendo design throughout. This is pretty much straight out of the Left 4 Dead concept (also Vermintide) and involves sections of relative quiet (usually with items and recovery stuff), followed by a bunch of trash, followed by an objective which is very high intensity, then another pacing segment
14. Secondary: Achievements to get collectible lore. These are fun side objectives and the reward is neat
15. Party AI: Surprisingly good. Which is helpful considering how much you’re saddled with it if you don’t pug or have friends to play with
16. Enemy AI: Also pretty solid, regardless of which difficulty you’re on
17. Alternate Leveling: So… some of these are better than others, and there’s some decent playstyle changers, but ultimately it’s a bit too little and a bit too grindy. It’s still good though
18. Level: Campaign 1 Hold the line against the wall with the guard, and some other solid sequences
19. Level: Campaign 1, setup the antenna and another few tidbits
20. Boss: Liktor! This was actually a really solid fight. Sure it cloaks, but there’s visual indicators and, way better, audio ones that showcase where it’s coming from
21. Level: Campaign 2, the flamer and the swarms. There’s some issues with this (listed in negatives) but it’s still a fun mission
22. Cosmetics: Custom bling is fine, but the custom colors are great (only for Operations and pvp though)
23. Level: Operation 2, against the tyrant and bombing the bridge
24. Level: Campaign 3, elevator fights and…
25. Level: Campaign 3, …the no lights segment. It’s small, but exactly the right length, and they do some great fun with it thanks to good lighting design
26. Level: Campaign 4, carnifex fight and build up thereto
27. Boss: Imurah. Nice variety of attacks, great mobility
28. Level: Campaign 5, charge through the floating ruins and a Necron tomb
29. Level: Campaign 6, chaos charge into the depths
30. Boss: The Hellbrute. We actually fight these more than once, but it’s still a solid fight for what it is
31. Boss: Imurah and the greater demon fight which has some cool stuff (like teleporting individual characters away) in addition to general fun
32. Level: Operation 4 and the environmental hazards culminating in…
33. Boss: …a helldrake
34. Level: Operation 5 is one of the better missions overall despite its length. Good encounter design and layout, nice gimmick with the payload segment, good gimmicks…
35. Level: …easy double
36. Level: Operation 6. Hold the lines, advances, good terrain design, lovely gimmick with the dust…
37. Level: …easy double
38. Level: Operation 7 is a nice big spectacle fight but what I also love is the entire Titan fight at the end. Holding the line while having to adjust and direct the cannons on the titan
39. Level: Operation 8 is another solid level. Good lead up, good maze segment with the torch, good brutal arena at the end with a miniboss…
40. Level: …solid stuff
41. Level: Operation 9 is probably the best level in the game. Mean corridors, good objectives, usage of several great gimmicks, and a fantastic boss fight…
42. Level: …easily earning…
43. Level: …a triple
44. Replayability: Generally replayable…
45. Replayability: …and good additional replay encouragement in co-op, mission select, and operations

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Difficulty Options: Lazy difficulty in campaign mode
2. Tutorialization: Big, obvious popups that interrupt the flow and force you to literally hold down a button for a second to acknowledge that you read it
3. Visual Distinction: So, the entire game has a pretty bad color distinction issue, from the first stage to the last. Grey and red on red and grey, or blue on blue on blue. It gets in the way, especially given how hard this game can get on harder difficulties…
4. Visual Distinction: …earning a double negative
5. Level: AI issues in Campaign 2. The flamer’s nice but doing this solo really sucks as you have to keep it up while doing all the other sides of the mission since the party AI won’t
6. MTX: Usual cosmetic stuff
7. Grind: Operations, per class, per weapon. The worst part is…
8. Power Progression Curve: …it feels very unnatural and tacked on, as if the system wasn’t designed with it in mind
9. Interface: Some weird selection and menu issues
10. Unskippable Cutscenes: Weirdly, quite a few. All the in gameplay ones in fact
11. Balance: So there’s some issues with the way the game is designed (especially on harder difficulties). Guns just aren’t as good as they should be, and melee is punishing to do anything other than parry

Story Positives:

1. Voice Acting: Absolutely terrible voice acting
2. Cutscenes: Drawn stills for the major cutscenes
3. Plot: It’s that type of military campaign story I enjoy when executed properly (which I’d argue this is)

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Controls: There’s a couple of small issues thanks to it being on the PSP but it’s still a solid control setup
2. Enemy AI: As usual, good enemy dogfighter design
3. Kit: Good spread of planes as per the series standard…
4. Kit: …for a double
5. Kit: Also a little bonus for the options to change gear and weapons
6. NG+: Mission Select, as per usual
7. Music: Some bangers overall
8. Core Mechanic: Level routing. I’m shocked more of these games don’t do this, the missions not only allow you to choose the order but the order you do changes said missions…
9. Core Mechanic: …very cool stuff
10. Level: 6A, taking out the Gleipnir’s big cannon. Having to track a cloaked ship by sight, then taking out its parts while staying below it for safety
11. Level: 3B, weirdly. Take out a bunch of ground units hiding in YOUR base while minimizing damage
12. Level: 4B, identify the correct plane based on flight patterns
13. Level: General, for every mission not listed here. Solid design throughout
14. Level: 7A, the Gleipnir final battle. Bunch of fun side targets and, most importantly, the Gleipnir itself and its vertical shock cannon
15. Level: 9A. Navigate the radar while staying low and dodging patrol boats
16. Level: 10B. First some big lumbering cargo planes (that gain a frickin’ laser), then a race against our own people to prevent them from dying
17. Level: 12B. The variety is already good, but the cannons and the boosters make this wonderfully intense
18. Level: 14A. Tight maneuvering and the ability to use your targets’ deaths to also defeat the enemy forces
19. Outro: Level: Both of them. Super planes and a trench run, or another fight against a super cannon. There’s better stages in the game, but this is still decent enough for what it’s going for
20. Replayability: Easily gets the second positive
21. HUD: Readable and solid
22. Minimap: Usual Ace Combat design to it

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Sound: Audio balance issues. It’s legitimately hard to hear at times
2. Mid Mission Checkpoint: Not as bad as, say, 5, but still problematic at times
3. Audio Spam: The lady just will not shut up about pulling up, among other things

Story Positives:

1. Brickwork: Towns, taverns, shops, et cetera. There’s even some nice details that help give you a visual indicator of how well off a particular place is
2. Brickwork: Overworld and map. I’m honestly surprised at how good this is really, with rolling waves, storms, different types of clouds, the grass and jungle and beach of the landmasses, the towns themselves (which also vary based on their rating)…
3. Brickwork: …solid double
4. Spritework: Also the ships (and even the people) really help add to the overall…
5. Atmosphere: …vibe. The whole game just screams ‘high seas adventures on the Caribbean’ in a way I’m not sure any other game has managed…
6. Atmosphere: …for a solid double
7. Animation: Also lovely animations for… basically everything, but special mention to the duels
8. Humor: And it got a laugh out of me more than once

Story Negatives:

Gameplay Positives:

1. Difficulty Options: Good, well designed, and varied. The only shame of it is it doesn’t actually list what they do in the game
2. Saves: Decent in general; Quick, can be done basically whenever, lots of save slots…
3. Saves: …plus good autosave options (entering combat, arriving at a town, exiting the game)
4. Core Mechanic: Sailing. I have some irritations with it for sure but the core gameplay loop all revolves around sailing around. Navigating, identifying, working with the wind, it’s solid stuff
5. Core Mechanic: Ship fighting. This is the definition of simple but solid. There’s not much going on here (three weapon types, aim, and the rest is up to stats and wind) and that’s sort of it… but it’s still fun enough, and there’s enough tactics and precision to make it engaging for a while
6. Core Mechanic: Dueling. There’s a weirdly large amount of depth to a minigame that has tons of gear and options to make it easier, but it makes sense; You’ll be doing it the most. There’s ways to avoid it (completely, even) but lots of routes and options lead to it
7. Core Mechanic: Crew management. Their happiness, caused by an increasing demand in held gold, while simultaneously keeping them fed and… uh, alive. Plus managing recruitment (which itself has a few layers depending on a port’s nationality, rank, and how long it’s been since you recruited)
8. Map: A weirdly good map. Filters, nice icons indicating plenty of stuff and latest info (including which ports sell what at what prices)…
9. Map: …solid stuff
10. Early Game: Unlike a lot of games like these, early game isn’t super strong, but it is strong. Your first few moves can go a lot of directions depending on where you want to go, and it leads very naturally into…
11. Mid Game: …a very strong mid game. As is normal for games like these, mid game is the strongest point. The Caribbean is open to you and you can do whatever you feel like in whatever order…
12. Mid Game: …earning a solid double
13. Encounter: The types of ships, what they do, the ‘missions’…
14. Core Mechanic: …which develop the world around you…
15. Choice: …which you can change at your whim
16. Overworld: Surprisingly solidly designed given it’s just based on real life
17. Itemization: Fleet management and economy. There’s a sort of escalating timer in the form of happiness but there’s also ways to manage it, leading to an almost roguelite looping economy
18. Guidance: Barmaids, daughters, travellers, barkeeps. All of these give tons of info in all directions to help you with what you want to do (there are, however, issues with the priority system… more on that later)
19. Sound Design: Surprisingly good for a game like this. Sounds indicate tons, like crew happiness, reload rates, damage, wind…
20. Sound Design: …great stuff
21. Penalty For Failure: Aging, and failure costing time. So I have a few issues with this overall but using time as the primary failure for any screw up (damage in battle, mismanaged crew, falling behind on happiness, being marooned, or being captured) works well when there’s a built in timer
22. Viscerality: Actually yeah. Cannon fire, the ships themselves, the roar of the storm
23. Replayability: I mean, yeah. It’s arguably the main thrust of the game (there’s even a built in soft-replay feature in Dividing)

Gameplay Negatives:

1. Info In Game: It’s not a huge issue but for a game with this much simulation and these many stats they could stand to tell us more about the nitty gritty
2. Interface: It’s… functional. And old. And it has a few issues here and there, especially lack of confirmation dialogue in a game where you can screw yourself over pretty hard with a single button press
3. Traversal: Going east in general sucks. I get it, wind’s a major mechanic, but it means roughly half the time spent in the game just… sucks. I would go so far as to say this is one of the worst factors of the game, because even though tacking is a thing…
4. Traversal: …it still means spending huge swaths of time doing basically nothing
5. Minigame: Exploring land. This is… honestly pretty awful. I get what they were going for but the terrible draw distance, render radius, awful camera angle, slow movement, and the fact that the landmarks are literally identical AND the ‘scale’ of any map can vary makes this way too much ‘roaming blindly’ and way too little ‘actually deducing where the damned thing is’…
6. Minigame: …so…
7. Minigame: …screw this
8. MSQ: RAYMONDO! Okay but for real screw this quest chain. You have to fight Raymando to get a piece of a map to where your family member is. These are sequential, but the piece of a map you get is random, and not all map pieces are useful. This means you have to do this whole song and dance 1 to (variable depending on difficulty) times just to find your friggin’ family member. This is already irritating thanks to the RNG I just described, but then you consider how this quest overrides EVERY other quest flag, meaning you’re stuck doing this or nothing with a lot of content. Finally it’s always the same dude just… over and over…
9. MSQ: …so… yeah this all sucks
10. Backtracking: Inevitable in a game like this, but entirely too many quests are designed to deliberately waste your time by forcing long, loooong trips across the Caribbean (which bumps into the Traversal issue above)
11. Late Game: Honestly there’s… no real Late Game to speak of. And that’s the problem. As with so many games of this type you plateau pretty early into Mid Game and it never really changes…
12. Late Game: …earning a solid double negative