Just picked up Fidel Dungeon Rescue the other day and I'm hooked!

It's this clever little dungeon-crawler puzzle rougelike, where you play as a dog diving through dungeons to save your human. There's both the right amount of depth and limitation to make it really easy to get into but still create a sense of wonder as you work out how all of the enemies work. Even after you beat it there are cool ways to self-incur additional difficulty and plenty of secrets to find. Even just trying to complete it quicker and more optimally is a blast! I'm definitely going to be playing this whenever I need a quick study-break for the foreseeable future.

Apologies for resurrecting this dead thread, but I just got around to playing Virginia.

Virginia is a tough game to write about. I don't think there's a critique one could make about this game that I'd take issue with. Almost every aspect of Virginia could be a strength or a weakness depending on the beholder. Swimming in sevens has become something of a meme, but Huber's always talked about how sevens have character and take risks that bigger, higher rated games can't. With a 74 on metacritic, Virginia epitomizes the seven. And I think the creators knew this too. In their Letter to the Player found in the main menu they write:

It's been a strange and confounding experience making Virginia. We hope it's resulted in a strange and confounding game.

Say what you will about Virginia: good game; bad game. Virginia is a game created with seeming indifference towards commercial success. It's the fulfillment of inspiration with little-to-no artistic compromise and I appreciate it's existence on that merit, regardless of anything else.

I love story driven games. I love single-sitting games. I love dialogue-less narratives. I love everything Virginia is on paper, and heck, I might still love Virginia in form, but that love is certainly not without some extreme reservation. I've always believed the media should justify its medium, and I just don't think Virginia justifies itself as a game. I realize that a major design choice from the inception of Virginia was using cinematic editing, and I loved that; that is not where my issue lies. Virginia has sluggish controls, minimal interactivity, and worst of all, little direction provided. None of those things are necessarily awful on their own, but the combination really hurts Virginia as a game. Throughout the first half of the game I spent most of my time wondering what I was supposed to be doing, when I would have liked to have been thinking about what was going on and putting pieces of the puzzle together. The lousy controls add to the disorientation (and the queasiness for me), and the lack of interactivity causes for some very non-cinematic periods of just wandering, accomplishing nothing. Once I started to get my bearings (and this may just be a problem with me) I found I was so concerned with keeping the game's cinematic feeling that I didn't want to explore the environments. It's as though the game qualities and the movie qualities are fighting with and even undermining each other. At the end of the day I believe I would have enjoyed watching a well-played, cinematic let's play more than I enjoyed my time with the game.

@tokeeffe9 The Lynch vibes are definitely there and the creators have talked about their love of Twin Peaks and other Lynch films in interviews. However, Jonathan Burroughs & Terry Kenny have credited Brendon Chung (who appeared once on GT Live with Quadrilateral Cowboy), and his game Thirty Flights of Love as the "inspiration [which] illuminates this work," with regards to the cinematic editing. I haven't played Thirty Flights of Love yet, but the story segments of Quadrilateral Cowboy are very similar to Virginia in how they're cut.

A few closing notes. The soundtrack is amazing, and I love how they take advantage of this editing style in the composition of the OST. The outdoor environments are super beautiful and I dig the art style as a whole. I have no clue what is real and what isn't and although it still had an emotional impact on me I would prefer a clearer conclusion.

I'm extremely excited for The Lost Legacy! Uncharted 4 was my game of the year, last year, and so getting more Uncharted in any form is exciting.

I'll admit that I wasn't sold by the reveal. So much of Uncharted is about its tone and I wasn't convinced that they would be able to capture those same vibes without Nathan Drake. The first 40 seconds of the E3 2017 trailer showed me everything I needed to see. This is an Uncharted game!

Honestly, I believe The Lost Legacy might serve as a great example of how to take a series with an established male lead and create a new entry with a female lead without reinventing the world. Chloe holds a great balance of familiar and mysterious. I absolutely adored Nadine while playing Uncharted 4 and I'm so excited we get to know her better. Just please leave Nate, Elena, and Sully out of this game. Let this game be its own thing. Sam could be interesting though... hmm...

This game is coming so soon! So much hype!

@Mbun @logic__error Yeah, the dash challenge is definitely a test in both patience and zen-like concentration. I don't know why or how, but I did it, and honestly, the accomplishment was worth it. I think my PB is 1100, but a speedrunner I follow has managed 5765 on controller which is just madness.

Still, I think beating the game deathless is an even more absurd trophy.

@tokeeffe9 As you know, I am very excited to hear all of your thoughts on this game.

HLD is one of my favourite games of all time. i played it right when it came out and still think about it all the time. It's so pretty, yet mysterious. Organic, yet mechanical. The combat and movement are so fluid and rhythmic. I've never really put my thoughts on HLD into words, so maybe I'll finally do that for this thread.

There are an endless amount of spoilers in this post. Avoid if you've not finished, and honestly, probably avoid it regardless.

I’ve finally finished Persona 5 and it is a massive game. I am so sorry, but his is going to be an equally massive post, as I have a lot of thoughts. I realise that I’m probably going to come off as unfairly critical, so I want to preface this whole thing by saying that I think this is a brilliant, fun game with some aspects that are just shy of perfection. Some background: I’m a particularly slow player logging 130 hours on medium difficulty for the majority of the game (more on that later), and honestly, I mostly feel relief now that I’m done. I have never played a Persona game, a SMT game, or really any JRPGs beyond Pokémon and Paper Mario, so I don’t have a lot to compare this too. I RP’d the role of the protagonist fairly heavily, meaning I intentionally played sub-optimally (even missing entire SLs) and avoided guides. My opinions - although strong - are just opinions, so all the love & respect for anyone who disagrees, and I would love to discuss anything I say here in greater detail with any of you.

Presentation:
Persona 5 is gorgeous. The menus and UI impressed me for the entire 130 hours of my playthrough. Seriously the standard for games moving forward. The highlights are the two big shop menus, the post battle summaries, and the IM app. Special mention to the dialogue design in general too. Oh, and the combat UI. Just wow. I guess my only complaint is that constantly having the date on screen makes for easy huge spoilers. Like, I saw some 12/24 screens and knowing that that was coming on that exact day kinda sucks.
The soundtrack is solid across the board. Persona just presents itself almost flawlessly. Worth the price of admission just for that, and I will be comparing games’ menus to Persona 5’s standard for the foreseeable future.

Combat:
Combat is an interesting topic for me. I’m certainly not an expert, and I didn’t grind (although I never avoided fights) but I found fights to be generally very easy. That said, the line between flawless victory and game over always felt very thin. One lucky turn or getting ambushed - whether from being careless or having a shadow appear on top of you - is enough to end you if things go sufficiently wrong. I appreciate that smart play on the player’s part can make combat go quickly, but it feels very bad when you miss twice then an enemy get three crits in a row and then kills off the player character with nothing you can do about it, and that exact thing happened to me two separate times. I believe I game overed 5 times. Only 1 of those felt entirely like my fault and 2 of them I felt there was nothing I could have done to prevent it (besides making the player character block every single turn for the entire game). One of those two instances happened during Shido’s palace in one of the very long spans between safe rooms and I lost almost 2 hours of progress. Already 110 hours into the game and feeling fatigued I didn’t have the patience for that and put down Persona for about three weeks. When I came back I turned the difficulty down to easy so I wouldn’t have to worry as much about cheap deaths. It’s lucky I did because I had some turns that surely would have killed me if I were still on the higher difficulty (though I admittedly played more carelessly after turning the difficulty down).
So it’s odd. I appreciate all of the tools to make the majority of combat encounters as quick and painless as possible, and I like that the enemies fight by essentially the same rules as you, yet it still feels rough when the enemies turn the one more system back onto you. Exploiting weaknesses, sure. But chaining criticals is gross. So honestly I would probably remove criticals as a one more trigger from both sides. They feel unearned either way and the increased damage should be enough. That said, I wouldn’t mind if technicals knocked down characters and triggered a one more. That would reward smart play better than criticals.

Other Mechanics:
All of the systems surrounding the use of personas are great. The negotiation system is interesting and even at the end of the game I was never entirely sure which answer was correct. Fusing personas was scary at first, but I quickly learnt to not worry at all and love expanding my database. Being able to resummon personas alleviated a lot of the worry I had. Oh and completing the strength arcana was some of the most fun I had in the game. Great system.

I really enjoyed the palaces. Great variety between them and they all had exciting sections to make you feel like a phantom thief. The puzzles were always clever, if trivial in difficulty. I’m most disappointed by the boss fights, especially in the later palaces. Most of the bosses don’t really have strengths or weaknesses (except for block all physical or all magic types) so it really is just a matter or brute forcing them down. Which, if you have a capable healer - as you absolutely should - are essentially dangerless slogs. Past the first two palaces they were also relatively easy to go through in a single go (especially after getting SP3 patches, which basically break the game). And then of course it’s always odd when you beat the palace in 2 days and have 20 days of hearing nothing from the high-profile victim. I get that this is perhaps pedantic, but surely there’s a more elegant solution?
Mementos is a cool concept that mostly just feels like a grind. That said, it’s nice that they provide a place to grind, and to allow the phantom thieves to do more good deeds. The payoff and story implications for Mementos were worthwhile in my opinion though.

Story:
What happens in between the palaces and all the fighting is the reason I played Persona 5, so let’s dig into that. First off I want to say that I love getting to choose what I’m doing every day. I love that I don’t know if I’m making good decisions, that I can’t do everything I want to, and that I just have to live with the choices I make. I also believe that choosing who you spend your time with forces the player to consider their relationships carefully, and creates a deeper investment in these relationships. It’s refreshing to have a game where there is urgency to the main story and how you spend your time matters.
I found the major story arc (the cognitive god of control’s game between the trickster and the detective prince) and its major themes (freedom, the power of rebellion, and never compromising on your ideals) quite interesting and well told. From the end of Shido’s palace to the defeat of Yaldabaoth is thrilling. What an absolutely anime boss kill.
The ending sequence after the final boss kills the momentum and doesn’t offer enough of an emotional payoff for how long it is, in my opinion.
And then there’s the rest of the story, on which my opinions are much more complicated. There’s nothing particularly wrong with any part of the story, but I didn’t find it exceptional and I had a hard time getting invested, which is disappointing in a game that asks for over 100 hours of your time. A lot of the difficulty I had getting invested in the story has to do with the fact that that I find almost all of the characters boring and not particularly likable. I’m going to go into how I feel about each character one-by-one, but before that here’s an important note about how I played Persona. If I didn’t want to get to know a character I simply wouldn’t. I don’t care if “their SL is good,” or “there’s a reason they’re like that.” In a narrative piece of media, if a character’s presentation doesn’t make me want to dig deeper, that is the character’s fault - not mine - and whatever revelations there are regarding that character does not matter to me. It’s harsh, but it’s how I feel about any media.
TLDR for the next section:
A lot of the characters feel very one-note. I find the writing often attempts to make you laugh at the expense of a character, but there are very few moments where characters make jokes and are genuinely funny. These few moments are very effective in creating a connection with the characters so I wish there were more of those moments. The silent protagonist means there are a lot of “dialogues” that feel more like monologues, so I really didn’t feel like I was playing a role in the story. If anything it felt like I was answering test questions, and the fact that how well I did gets reflected in little music notes doesn’t really help negate that feeling that there’s a right and wrong answer in a lot of situations.
Ryuji:
I got to rank 7 with Ryuji and that was mostly near the end of the game when no one I’d rather hang out with was inviting me out. I found him to be an obnoxious fool who I never took a hint. He was repeatedly rude to people who didn’t deserve it and nearly ruined everything by revealing our identity because he has no idea how to be quiet. I’ve heard the argument that he is the first person who doesn’t judge you for your criminal record, and that’s what makes him likable, but he also happened to have a supernatural experience with you (before he even knows who you are) and nobody else would ever believe him, so that seems to be the big reason why he clings on to you. Despite all of this, I was legitimately sad when I thought he died at the end of Shido’s palace.
Ann:
I maxed out Ann. She was a welcome change from Ryuji, so we bonded quite a bit early on. Ann is boring and dumb. She’s not unlikable, but other than her devotion to help others (which she is not unique in having) there’s not a whole lot to admire.
Morgana:
Maxed out Morgana; I assume that’s a given though. Cute cat, but Morgana is a creep and a self-important egoist. I was so happy when Futaba joined the party and I no longer had to hear “You’re so gorgeous, Panther.”
Yusuke:
I got to rank 7 with Yusuke. He’s a dummy, but I appreciate the arts so I was okay hanging out with him, and he is probably my favourite character to laugh at the expense of. Really he’s just a caricature though. He’d probably feel quite at home in Big Bang Theory.
Makoto:
I maxed out and dated Makoto. I have a few things to bring up with Makoto. More than any other character you are shown a lot of scenes from Makoto’s life - both before and after she joins the party. Because of this you understand her situation and her motivations and so it’s easy to immediately care for her. It’s a little odd that the game gives her this advantage, so it really feels like she’s almost the intended romantic partner. Makoto is smart, driven, caring, and honestly a badass. Compared to the other party members at this point she’s amazing. But although she’s a good person, she’s not a particularly fun or sentimental person.
There’s another thing that bothers me about the writing in this game that I think Makoto exhibits well. On a few occasions Makoto got mad at me for a moment and then almost instantly collected herself and apologised for being unfair. That is not how people work! Nobody has that sort of composure. I get that this is somewhat to do with there being a silent protagonist (I honestly believe the silent protagonist needs to go away), but I wish that the she would have actually gotten mad and we could have talked through what I said or at least that she would have taken more than a second to apologise. The one-sided-ness of conversations in general bothered me. It felt like I was answer a test more often than playing a role in a story and Makoto just really highlights that feeling for me.
This is a relatively minor complaint, but dating - and the way they interacted with each other - felt so stiff. Like, just cuddle a bit instead of sitting properly on the couch next to each other you fools!
Futaba:
I got to rank 6 with Futaba. I think she could have been a super funny character, but her localisation just doesn’t seem quite right. Her inability to talk without constantly memeing really made it hard to spend time with her, despite me wanting to help her out. Oh, and that is not a comfortable way to wear headphones, though I sit like her all the time.
Haru:
I only got to rank 5 with Haru. I think she really suffered for being introduced rather late and she really didn’t force herself into your life all that much so I found it way too easy to just ignore her. And I actually feel bad about not getting to know Haru more because I legitimately like her in a way that I don’t like any other character. Haru is genuinely funny. She jokes around with you, I joked around with her. She makes callbacks to other times we’ve hung out. Like, we developed inside jokes. It seems so simple, but none of the other characters do that. And that’s honestly why I don’t care for most of the other characters. None of the others make me laugh, other than the occasional chuckle at their expense. I just wish more characters were funny. It really makes Haru feel real.
Akechi:
Cool character. Very clearly significant from the very beginning. I actually noticed that he heard Morgana speaking in our first encounter but I had such little faith in the localisation that I thought it might be an error. Regardless, I was pretty sure he was a villain from quite early on. I think he is the over-the-top sort of villain that he needed to be. I honestly enjoyed every interaction with him, and he was even sort of funny from time to time.
Caroline & Justine:
I maxed them out. I loved the challenges and think it’s a great way to motivate me into uncovering more story. They’re cool characters, and they do very well to create intrigue.
Sojiro:
Reached rank 9. Kinda sad I didn’t finish him off because I really like him. He started out as a bit of a creep, and I don’t really know if the localisers just forgot to keep that going or if that was just an act.
Chihaya (Fortune):
Reached rank 6. She really didn’t leave much of an impact.
Iwai (Hanged Man):
Only reached rank 3. I didn’t really use guns except to exploit weaknesses, and his SL didn’t really feel worth my character’s time, so I didn’t bother.
Takemi (Death):
Maxed it out. I like Tae. Her SL benefits are clearly linked to her character, so I was invested to help out the thieves, but I got in deep enough that I wanted to help right the wrongs she’d been dealt.
Ohya (Devil):
Reached rank 3. I didn’t find her interesting and didn’t see how she could help me.
Shinya (Tower):
Reaced rank 4. He was fine, but I basically just put him after everyone else. For whatever reason he just didn’t motivate me to hang out with him.
Hifumi (Star):
Maxed her out. I honestly just really like board games and puzzles so she shares my interests. She’s likable, but doesn’t really have any personality traits that no one else has. Regardless, I like the peer mentorship relationship you have with her and would love to find a shogi teacher.
Mishima:
Maxed him out. I don’t like Mishima, and so that’s why it’s interesting that I finished his SL. I spent time with him at first because I thought it would help the phantom thieves help others. I continued to spend time with him because I was concerned that he was going to create trouble for us. I think that motivation to spend time with Mishima was well design. He’s a creep and a sycophant and I don’t like him. It feels like you’re supposed to like him for his unwavering loyalty, but that trait is shared by your entire party shared with few exception, so it doesn’t feel special. Regardless, I think his SL is well done.
Sae:
Maxed out of course. I admire her dedication to her work and her personal justice. She’s more like a party member than any other confidant.
Kawakami (Temperance):
I did not start her SL. I didn’t want to check out a creepy maid service with Mishima and Ryuji. As a teacher Kawakami treated me as an inconvenience, not a student, and I have almost zero respect for her.
Yoshida (Sun):
I didn’t start Yoshida’s SL either. I didn’t see the point of working a job I hate to impress some random guy I know nothing about.

Conclusion (TLDR):
I really enjoyed Persona 5, but it left me wanting both less and more. I honestly want less game; 130 hours is too long for what I really didn’t think was that thorough a playthrough. I would love to try out different strategies and do a second run for the platinum, but I just can’t commit that sort of time again. I want more games with as much attention to detail in the UI as Persona 5. I want less unpredictability and snowballing in the combat. I want more games to encourage you to switch up your strategies and move-set in the way that the persona-fusion system encourages you to. I want less monologues and more conversations. I want less laughs at the expense of your party and more joking around. I’m very happy that I played Persona 5. I’ve loved thinking about it, and I would love to talk about it more if anyone is interested!

@logic__error Yes! Yes! Yes!

I took 16 hours on my first play through of NitW, and managed to pick up 55% of the achievements, so I'm going to take some time for other games, but I think I'll come back next year after getting some space. I also only played Oxenfree and Life is Strange one time and definitely want to give Oxenfree another play or two.

I think one of the things that makes the relationships in NitW so meaningful is that you have to choose who you're going to spend time with. And that also means that you're choosing not to spend time with other friends. This situation (and Persona V is another recent example which does this as well) forces you to evaluate your relationships with these characters, and who you think is going to be the most interesting to hang out with on a given day, so you're actually doing a lot of the work for the writers in growing attached to the characters.

I'm actually surprised you say there's less player choice in NitW than in Life is Strange and Oxenfree, because I always felt like I had a role in what happened. I don't remember a game ever letting me participate in the narrative exposition like NitW does (other than perhaps the beginning of Firewatch). I guess ultimately your choices lead you to (essentially) the same end regardless of what they are, but I prefer choices that result in "I will remember this" over choices that result in "Chloe will remember that", and NitW certainly delivered those to me. So upon reflection you're definitely correct, but Night in the Woods is an interesting case study on how little, inconsequential choices are extremely significant.

Demontower definitely gets a little brutal towards the end. I found it's design how you can't just stand in place and slash repeatedly is an extremely smart and interesting way to encourage dashing and prevent the exploitation of the fairly simple AI. That sort of game is a home to me since falling in love with Hyper Light Drifter last year, so discovering that game was a wild surprise and an absolute treat.

I'm very happy knowing that I had my own little adventure through this game and that others took very different paths. I think that's a huge part of this games magic - it's not afraid of you missing things. I'm going to be very very happy returning to Possum Springs next year!

This post contains unflagged light spoilers for Life is Strange, and Oxenfree, and pretty heavy spoilers for Night in the Woods

I finally got around to finishing Night in the Woods a couple days ago and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings stirring around in my head. I don't think I'm capable of putting most of them into words, but I'll do my best because this game deserves to be talked about.

I am in love with Night in the Woods.

I have never had another piece of media make me feel the things that NitW made me feel. It's the coming-of-age story for my generation that I never knew I was missing. I don't want to speak too highly because I understand that my infatuation is highly personal, and this game is absolutely not for everyone, but man do I love it.

When I think of other would-be coming-of-age stories - or really young-adult stories in general - in games from the past few years I think of games like Life is Strange and Oxenfree and I wonder what sets Night in the Woods apart from those stories. All three have a supernatural element. In Life is Strange the time manipulation is the major gameplay element and the impending cataclysmic event is the main driving story element. In Oxenfree your group gets separated by a supernatural force and the general goal of the game is to reunite and find a way off of the island, perhaps figuring out what is causing these occurrences along the way. Night in the Woods' supernatural element comes in pretty late and really only motivates a small amount of the actions you take. For the most part Mae is just living her life, looking for something to do and somewhere to belong with only hints of something more substantial going on. Night in the Woods' themes serve as the form and function for the story; they don't just serve as accessories to add drama to some independent supernatural mystery.

Each of these three games share the almost universal coming-of-age them of not feeling like you belong anywhere, but in Life is Strange and Oxenfree the main characters are needed within the terms of the story if not entirely central in the case of Max. At the beginning of Night in the Woods, Mae really doesn't have a place in any story larger than herself and it's unclear whether she truly belongs with her friends who have grown so much without her. I don't really remember the details of Oxenfree's story so I won't discuss any more of it's themes, but I do want to compare and contrast NitW's with Life is Strange's. Life is Strange in general feels phony. Just like the writers forced in slang to make the characters seem young, it feels like the writers forced in themes they thought would be provocative and relatable without really trying to relate, themselves. Slut shaming, teen suicide, rape culture, corrupt and malicious authority figures, and other big themes I'm forgetting are grand, important topics, ripe for discussion, but it feels like many of these were added to the story later instead of being an intrinsic part from the start, and in the end the game ends up dealing with a bunch of ideas adequately instead of a couple well. The whole scale of Night in the Woods is smaller, and the topics tackled in it feel smaller too, if no less important. The themes feel intimate to the writers, as though they have personal experience with these struggles and emotions, and maybe even used this game to work through them. Instead of writing what they thought would be interesting, I believe they chose to write what they know. Other than searching for belonging, the first theme that pops in my mind when I reflect on NitW is seeing the world grow and change around you while you've stayed stagnant. It starts out small - the Food Donkey has been replaced with a Ham Panther and Snack Falcon - but soon grows much larger when you learn that Bea's mother has passed and she's essentially running the Ol' Pickaxe and that Gregg and Angus have been saving up to move away. This progression from trivial, superficial change to significant changes in your friends that you don't notice at first glance makes very impactful revelation. The next topic I want to mention is smaller, but I've never seen it in a game before, and that's body image. Mae looking in the mirror before the woods party is so simple and relatable, and I just can't believe it's something that isn't talked about more. There's also a whole thing about dissociation, where Mae describes seeing people as shapes, but the more I try to talk about themes the more I'm feeling like I'm completely missing what I love about this game, and I don't really know how to discuss that last topic any way so we'll just leave that there. I guess in general, NitW tackles smaller, more focused topics, and due to this manages to reach greater depth in these discussions than some contemporaries.

I've already written far too much but there are still a few things that absolutely must be said. I love that there are queer characters, but that queer is not treated like a personality trait. I love that the characters can be grumpy and fight sometimes. I love that your friends clearly have other things going on in their lives and those things effect the mood they're in on any given day. I love that Mae has been to some seedy websites and the game doesn't try to shame her for it. I love I can't tell whether the writer is religious because both atheism and theism are treated so fairly.

Night in the Woods doesn't have any brand new mechanics or anything shiny like that, but it does some unique things that I really like. I love how they let you fill-in some blanks in the story. You get to feel like you're creating the world and the game just runs along with it. It feels like you're doing improv and the game will always "yes, and" whatever you say. It's such a small thing, but it's just another way to make the player feel an ownership for the world. I love the way there will be awkward pauses between dialogue boxes where only glances are being exchanged. Silence is such an important part of conversation and this is such a simple, effective what to add meaningful space to text-based conversations. And I love how NitW makes you interact with the world. Grabbing a can of Fisacola from the machine or a slice of pizza off the tray may not seem like exciting video game actions, but those things really do add variety and give you a sort of presence in the world that a lot of story-driven games don't. Jumping around the world, band practice, and [don't even get me started on] knife fighting are all little touches that add levity to this otherwise quite heavy game.

Just a few closing notes. The writing is so real and natural and funny and sad. NitW has mastery over it's tone. It's not often something can make me genuinely laugh and cry at the same time. I legitimately love every single character and feel attached to Possum Springs. The art style is whimsical and expressive, but can still pull of grungy abandoned buildings and accommodate serious existential conversations. The music has an incredible range and somehow always feels familiar. Definitely a soundtrack I'll be thinking about for a while. Oh yeah, and Demontower is a seriously good game that reminds me a lot of Hyper Light Drifter. Like, wow I spent a lot of time playing that and had a blast. What I wild game to have such a good whole other game in it.

I feel like I said a whole lot of junk and really got no close to communicating what this game means to me and why. I love this weirdo game. I want few things more than to talk about Night in the Woods, so seriously, hit me up. L&R

This is generally a reply to @tokeeffe9, but acts as my personal critique of The Last Guardian, as I haven't taken the time to do that yet.
I've been looking forward to your playthrough for a while. As you know, I'm fairly critical of The Last Guardian, so I'll try to keep myself in check in this response.
My thoughts are messy and mixed, but I'll try to go from positive to negative:

• Trico - Trico's design is such a brilliant combination of creatures we know and love, while sill managing to feel unique. Trico's behaviour, freaky expressive eyes, create empathy while also maintaining an element of fear and respect for how helpless you are to Trico's might. Trico's animations may be the best animations I've ever seen anywhere. Every time Trico gets hurt I felt so uncomfortable in the best way. I learnt to care for Trico almost immediately. Still, Trico's not perfect. I got their AI stuck in a couple of loops where the only way to proceed was restarting from the last checkpoint, and I've heard more than enough stories of Trico getting caught in geometry. Oh, and as you mentioned, that intro going from mundane beasts through to legendary creatures all the way to Trico really set the tone of awe.
• The Relationship - Entirely agree with you and added what I wanted to to the Trico section. Your story in the spoiler flag is an excellent example and I felt similar things.
• Sense of Scale - This is a wholly positive point for me, and I basically agree with you but wanted to add a couple of things. Throughout the game you can see where you've come from and see where you're going. It's brilliant.

Reaching the white tower, seeing the unique architecture, and realising that's where you started the game is such a good moment too!

• Story - Beyond the relationship formed between the boy and Trico, I didn't really find the story compelling. It just wasn't groundbreaking to me, but I'm willing to accept this as a personal thing. There were, however, some tools used for storytelling that I found excellent, which I will discuss in the section below.
• Mystery - The way The Last Guardian keeps you questioning what is going on is thrilling. There is so much unknown and just as you start to feel like things are becoming normal the story throws you in a loop. Further, there are several mechanics I didn't even know about until reading the trophy list after my first play through. I love that there were solutions I hadn't even considered, and this makes me want to play the game again.

Trico heals slow enough that you question whether you're just imagining it or not. Same goes for the markings on the boy after Trico eats him. Speaking of that, the lack of any response to Trico eating the boy the second time made me question what was real and what wasn't. The reveal that the mirror is the menu image was also very powerful for me.

• Visuals - I agree that the art is beautiful. However I think you're lying to yourself to call it crisp. The textures are not great, but the art direction transcends that to create a truly beautiful game. It's framey in open areas on Pro, and is allegedly framey in other areas on standard PS4s. It's not awful, but I think it needs to be said. Also, the menus look like they received almost zero effort. This may be a somewhat petty critique, but menus that complement the world and style of the game do a lot for me.
• Controls - Some good, some bad here. As you said, the camera is tough to handle. I've had it clip into walls and unrender the entire world which is not exactly pleasant. I love that the controls are kind of clunky and physics based, but it definitely caused some problems for me. Combined with the poor camera, I definitely ended up jumping way off-target several times. Also, please give me more movement speeds than sneaking and sprinting. It's such a pretty world, yet I can't move through it comfortably; it's awful. As you also mentioned, there are so many button prompts for the simplest actions, yet they never explain some of thee more complex moves which make certain puzzles so much easier.
• "Puzzles" - I agree with you that the puzzles effectively display through gameplay the mutual reliance that Trico and the boy have for each other. However, that's basically where I stop agreeing with you, because I found the puzzles to be extremely disappointing. The vast majority of them boil down to simply finding where you can proceed. Not exactly thrilling, and those are the okay ones. Quite a few of the puzzles are a case of knowing what the solution is, but struggling to complete it because of the poor controls. I think back to throwing a barrel across a series of gaps onto sloped surfaces and having to rush each time to grab it before it fell into the crevice. This is not fun game design, nor is it clever. The water puzzle and the seesaw were the only two puzzles that gave me ah-ha moments. I can't believe that there were only two puzzles like that in a game where the primary gameplay mechanism is traversal through these "puzzles". The rest is just a boring slog.

I'll admit that the sequence near the end of climbing those two towers was fun, even though there wasn't much puzzle solving, but I attribute that to the feeling of climax - Trico and the boy finally feeling strong enough to take on the world - that was going on in the story at the time. A puzzle there would have ground all of that momentum they'd been building to a halt.
Also, how to fight the master was clever. That was the third good puzzle.

I like this game. I'm glad that you finally got to play it and I hope it was everything you wanted it to be, but I also want you to understand why it disappointed me - especially after seeing it receive such a glowing review and win EZA's GOTY (we can talk about the implications of praise inciting more impassioned criticism later). I would love to continue this conversation with any of you; I think this is an interesting, divisive game. Love & Respect

You do have friends, silly! And if you ever don't feel that way, I'm always up for a chat!

Day Twenty-Two

Traditional Ale
Big Rock Brewery | Calgary, Alberta
English Brown Ale | 5% ABV

This is an old standby. Here in the prairies we simply call it Trad. After a couple of really nice treats these last couple days I'm quite happy to have a simple night in with an old favourite!

Pours a clear reddish brown with just a sliver of head. Small amounts of lacing. Perfectly standard.
A pretty light smelling beer. There are some bready malt aromas followed by toffee. Slight earthiness. Quite pleasant, if underwhelming.
Trad is pretty sweet, and of a moderate intensity. Toffee and nuttiness make up the majority of the flavour. This is backed by some nice spicy hop flavour and hints of citrus. It's very tasty, but I feel there could be a little more spice to balance things out.
It has a medium-light body, enough carbonation to excite, but not distract my tongue, and feels quite slick going down. A little bit of warming in the back of my mouth. Very nice.

Trad is pretty great. It's my standard for a reason. It's nutty, relatively low carbonation, and light enough that I can drink quite a few at a time. I don't think it's a spectacular beer, but it suites my tastes beautiful. I'll admit it is a little boring, but I think everyone needs a nice boring beer to keep them grounded (and to keep a little bit of money in my wallet). New Castle may get a little more love from me from now on, but Trad will be a part of my life for the foreseeable future!

3.5/5