Recent reviews by Nemo Nobody

1000xRESIST is a narrative sci-fi adventure game about Watcher, a clone of ALLMOTHER, the figure they worship, goes uncover the memories of their dear ALLMOTHER to find out the truth of Iris, the person before becoming the religious figure of those clones, the truth of humanity, and the truth of the world those clones are live in. In a pure mechanical standpoint, this game has gameplay loop of move around, talking to people, go back and forth between ALLMOTHER memories, and that’s it. It’s dead simple gameplay loop and yet, sunset visitor 斜陽過客 was effective using those mechanics to make player feels everything the player character are feeling through its story about resist a lie, resist the conventional standard, resist the social normalcy and resist a loop of mistake.

A lot of game designers obsessed with mechanical emergent storytelling, tried to use every emergent gameplay part to turn into emergent storytelling that was really personal to player and make everyone has their own story, their own adventure, but these kind of emergent gameplay and storytelling have their own limitation in both mechanically and emotionally. The real reason we love stories isn’t exactly emotional personal to players, but emotionally thoughtful and diversity that touch deeply to players, despite the players and the playable character are totally different. That’s why narrative adventure games like 1000xRESIST are important and interesting, because it resists the conventional idea revolution in video game storytelling. Despite its simple core gameplay loop, you are allowed to experience the story through playing with it as Watcher, see everything as Watcher and feel everything as Watcher. Turn this into a book or movie are fine, but you wouldn’t get the press talk and accept to listen to the person you’re talking to, run around the very surreal environment, and feel every emotion through the controller. Even with the cutscenes, which were extremely static because of the low budget, sunset visitor 斜陽過客 framed these scenes effectively to evoke the emotion from players, resisted to limited themselves because of the budget limited. This alone could make a lot of AAA games jealous for how boring their cutscenes were framing, despite these are the most use tool in video game storytelling. And despite the low poly 3D and the lack of detail in environment, the dev resists to allow those limitation stop them expressing their unique artistic expression. There are no AAA sci-fi games have the same level of artistic expression like 1000xRESIST, the surreal feeling in environment, and yet still feel very dear to a lot of players.

1000xRESIST is a game about resistance of the conventional in any sense. Resist a lie, resist the social normalcy, resist a loop of mistake and resist to let the past define ourselves. And that resistance might be stubborn to some people, but the exact resistance like this makes 1000xRESIST an unique, one of its kind, memorable video game experience.

Why do we seek fantasy world in fiction? Why do we keep finding Utopia in fantasy? And how could we achieve the Utopia we have seen in fiction?

Metaphor: ReFantazio keep asking us hard questions, and all I could answer is our real world isn’t perfect, that’s why we keep dreaming about fantasy world, dreaming about a better place to live, a Utopia to be exact. The game starts with the assassination of The King of Euchronia, Hythlodaeus V, who had abbandoned his country for a long time and let the people suffer from prejudge and discrimination. The King died with no heir for the throne, left the kingdom in a situation that have no king to lead the country. This leaded to chain of event that forced the kingdom adopt a democratic form of government, superseding the king’s family lineage. And here is everyone first chance to become the king. Will (or whatever you’re going to name the protagonist) now become a candidate for the throne, only to face Louis Guiabern, a powerful, charismatic millitary leader who has his own loyalists. Louis, for a long time, was opposed the late King, for his own idea of Utopia.

Meanwhile, Will also has his own idea of Utopia, and all of that lie in the fantasy book he always carries. The fantasy book describes a Utopia looks like our own world, where everyone was born equal, people allow to choose political leaders based on votes, and “taking power or wealth by force is seen as the most shameful of transgressions”. And Will holds on to this idea Utopia harder than anything else. On Will’s journey to the throne, he found friends, comrades, people with the same interest, dream, and together, he found trust and hope with those people. Despite the hardship he and his rebel friends go through, they learn to hold on the idea world they want to bring to Euchronia.

Metaphor: ReFantazio is a game about finding hope in fantasy, a game about finding Utopia in fiction, and a game about finding fiction is more than mere escapist fantasy every time we have anxiety. It encourages us to be better, to learn that it’s okay to have a moment of scared, feeling wrong in the gut, but what we need to be done is face the problem head on, and do not let those moment of anxious consume our hope and dream. Because our potential of building a better world always lie in ourselves.

I can't freaking believe Atlus tricked me into play Shin Megami Tensei V again. SMT VI when?

If you like grid based tycoon like RollerCoaster Tycoon 1&2, you might really love Parkitect. I normally has a hard time to play simulation/management, but Parkitect makes everything very easy to understand, even the rollercoaster is very easy to build.

The biggest highlight of Parkitect over any Coaster build sims is multiplayer mode, somethings doesn't exist in Planet Coaster and doesn't exist in old RollerCoaster Tycoon without some sort of mod. With multiplayer mode, everything get done faster in campaign, everything is a bit more chaotic, but double the fun. Seeing a friend build a extreme crazy rollercoaster while I'm decorating is just a really fun experience.

The Greatest Ace Attorney games

Persona 4 Golden is a great game about use your Personas collection (or Demons if you play Shin Megami Tensei) fighting Shadows in Collective Unconscious. The game isn't shying away from heavy theme by looking at Japanese people conscious and unconscious mind through their Television Culture. By using Television as a symbol, the game is all about how people look and think about themselves and other people, but like many other JRPGs story, this is also a game about friendship, family and love.
-------------------------------------------
+ A loveable JRPG casts to explore deeply those main theme of the game.
+ Not shy away from heavy theme, critique Japan Culture itself.
+ A decent PC port, 1080p render, 60 fps, customize difficulty, etc.
+ Good mod supported!
+ A really good turn-based combat. I'm not a really big fan of JRPGs turn-based combat and have some bad experiment with some JRPG games like Pokemon series or Final Fantasy XIII. But Persona series alone and Megaten in general know to make a turn-based combat works. By using Press turn system (hit enemy weakness or critical them and you get another turn), the game encourages players keep recruit and fusion new Persona to get better in the game. All good Personas is locked behind other characters Social Links, and you must work for it.
+ An unique game stucture: Having time slots and deadlines, you must manage your time to spend. You might spend time for working to get better social stats, you might spend it for characters Social Links or you might spend it for dungeon to get better at combat level and find new Personas to fight Shadows. USE YOUR TIME SLOTS WISELY BECAUSE LIFE IS SHORT!!
-------------------------------------------

However, it is my least favorite game in Persona series because how the game handles its theme is really clunky, and the "Golden" content made it worse.
-------------------------------------------
- Not having the Anime cutscenes improved (can be improve with mods)
- The UI is a bit unfriendly with Persona 5 players (again, can be improve with mods)
- REAL PERSONA USERS USE A CONTROLLER. Quite unfriendly with keyboard player, even they have customization in the settings.
- Social Links system feels like these characters live in their own bubbles. Their story, even though is thematically, but it isn’t connect to the game’s grand narrative. And the harem dating sim made this worse, undermine the game’s themes.
- Yu Narukami isn’t a Chad!!
- The Dungeons is better than Tartarus in Persona 3, however is still boring as hell if you are a bit overlevled. I can’t expect much from a PS2/PS Vita game.
- The game can delete Marie and I don’t even care one bit about her. I think Marie‘s story is respesenting dark past of Japan, specially Japan in WWII , but the way the game told her story is terrible and distant with the main theme of the game. She is just another waifu you can romance to satisfied your sad real life romance. Please Atlus, stop making an OG Persona game, and then remastered it to add boring ass content and waifu into your games.
- Lame ass 5$ bonus artwork and OSTs (they don't even have good bitrate for those tracks)
-------------------------------------------
Even though, this is my least favorite game in the series, has a few miss step, Persona 4 Golden is still a great JRPG game to play and has affordable price. Sale or no sale, buy it! You will have a great time with it.
NOW ATLUS, GIVE ME ALL SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI AND PERSONA GAMES ON PC!!

This isn't my favorite Yakuza games, but it is a very good one.

Every AAA games wish they can be like this game, the writing is beautiful, the RPG system is unique. This game mocked and challenged all Ideology in the game. ZA/UM're not scare of anything, they're make a game in the most unique way they know.

One of Best Horror game I've ever play, have chill and horror at the same time

I love your game because it makes me remember the time I play Gone Home and Life is Strange. I hope you're making another game like this!