Recent reviews by Gorast

I can definitely see how Wavelengths polarizes players. The core gameplay loop, to me, is relaxing to engage in - it moves the plot along at a slow, steady pace, but it nudges you along just enough to keep you from lingering too long on any individual segment. Repeating this core loop four times over the course of the DLC does stretch the player's patience a little bit, though, and the sparseness of the story surrounding the gameplay is exacerbated by the fact that you don't get to see Steph interact with anyone else face-to-face for the entirety of the DLC. On the one hand, it does a good job of showing how relatively isolated Steph is, despite the ways in which she's integrated herself into the town since first arriving; on the other, it can give the DLC a bit of an empty feeling, reducing it to a tedious repetition of the same tasks four times, clicking your way through inessential side elements and trying to find meaning in them. As a study of Steph's character, it's well-done; as DLC that you have to pay for to access, it feels somewhat light. If you liked Steph in the main game, you'll probably enjoy the DLC regardless of the gameplay concerns - pick it up based on your answer to that question.

Considering the weird state this franchise is in as of 2025, True Colors feels to me like it works much better as a Life is Strange game in comparison to Double Exposure. It reinforces to me that, sales numbers be damned, Deck Nine is much better off taking this franchise in fresh directions with entirely new characters and scenarios, rather than attempting to build on and advance what Dontnod left behind after LiS 2. True Colors is a game that has a ton of heart and a very interesting, surprisingly intricate decision system that results in a wide tree of story branches. It doesn't always land - no Life is Strange game will ever bat 1.000 - but when it does land, it really, really hits, and when it misses, well, it's not so bad.

It's an impossible task to follow up on a gameplay mechanic as uniquely suited to choice mechanics as Max's short-throw time travel powers were, but I think that Alex's empathy is given a vivid, affecting portrayal, both in its gameplay applications (reading emotions either for story progression or for simple flavor text) and in how it drives Alex's story forward. Key plot beats revolve around Alex's powers, and the consequences of decisions you make based in part on how you use her powers were really satisfying to see. Whether a game like this sinks or swims is almost entirely dependent on the strength of its choice system, and I think that True Colors does this really, really well on the whole, even if sometimes I felt that individual, specific choice options were poorly considered or too restrictive.

Haven Springs is a great little environment for this game, too - sure, it's kind of laid out like a strip mall, but all of the shop interiors convey character and really push that small-town feeling. It's a cohesive environment, internally consistent, and the game does a lot throughout the narrative to dress the town up in different ways to make it feel fresh, even when the bedrock of it is the same. Related to that, the game's narrative pace felt spot-on, never seeming rushed, never quite dragging. Even in the late game, when things take a pretty hard turn and throw you into a very different corner of the game's story, it still felt like the same game, underpinned by the same core themes, and it made the climax of True Colors hit that much harder for it.

I think, on the whole, True Colors feels like an underrated game in the series. Realistically, that title actually goes to LiS 2, which it seems like no one ever talks about, but I think True Colors has also suffered under the oppressive weight of the first game's outsized popularity. Alex is not Max, and True Colors is not the first game, but it's a game very much worthy of the title, and it demonstrates a care for its subject matter and for the overall franchise that Deck Nine should do well to remember for future installments. If you have any tolerance for walking sim-adjacent gameplay, give True Colors some of your time - it's worth it.

Final Fantasy XII feels to me like a game that splits pretty harshly between its story and its gameplay. Though it's got a learning curve and plenty of quirks that need to be learned over the course of the game, combat in FFXII is exquisite - the feeling of setting up the perfect set of Gambits to just absolutely delete any enemy in your path is extremely satisfying, and it feels very much like a forebear to the one-level-removed strategy-type gameplay of FFXIII after it. The story, on the other hand, frustrates immensely in its threadbare nature, with a lot of big ideas and concepts, as well as a strong cast on paper, that never coalesces into a narrative that ever feels truly worth following. How FFXII feels to you will be entirely dependent on whether you value gameplay or story more, because it will either be one of the best games in the mainline series, or one of the most forgettable, with very little middle ground.

Gameplay-wise, the Gambit system really is a thing of beauty - it takes a while for the full scope of it to reveal itself to the player, and I did find the process of purchasing Gambits and navigating menus to set them up a little tedious, but once you're really cooking with the system, it can be really satisfying to target an enemy and just sit back and let your guys work. It's kind of like a really feature-lite RTS, where you're setting your parameters and sending off your units to execute them, and you're basically just seeing if you set them up well or not. It's especially good for grinding, which is basically a requirement for much of FFXII's late-game side content, because you can just move into an area and set the controller down, letting your characters level themselves and take the tedium out of it.

The other half of the primary gameplay loop is the job system, brought forward from the International version of FFXII for modern PC releases. I really liked this - picking jobs out of the twelve available, and being able to assign two to each party member, made me feel like I had a lot of control over the direction of my gameplay experience, and unlocking squares on the license board gradually over time was more fun and engaging than I originally thought it would be. I think the party is generally flexible enough in their base stats that any character can play any role, though everyone does clearly have a pre-conceived base class that you can fall in line with or completely ignore. Really, this feels like the big innovation of the Zodiac Age edition of the game, combined with quality of life upgrades like being able to double the gameplay speed for tedious traversal sections.

The story, well...I really tried with it. The basic elements are there - warring kingdoms, an oppressive empire that resorts to cloak and dagger tactics to assert its will over its neighbors, the struggle of a threadbare resistance to enact real change and overthrow the forces oppressing the people. The world of Ivalice is beloved for good reason from its appearances in other extended universe FF games, and the aesthetics of it are very pleasing to the eye. The cast, too, almost universally endears - I know that most people wouldn't agree with that idea when it comes to Vaan in particular, but I feel like that's a failure of the narrative structure more than a failure of his character. The supporting cast is broad and diverse, and the interplay between the party and the people they encounter shows so much potential throughout. Potential that goes wasted, because the story is told so damn sparsely.

It's a structural problem, like I said - I feel like FFXII doesn't do enough to tell its own story. The cutscenes feel few and far between, almost like the development team was afraid of the story encroaching on the gameplay too much. In a Final Fantasy game! Come on. Not to mention that the viewpoint of the story is ostensibly that of Vaan, in a clear effort to tell a grand narrative through the eyes of an everyman, as a true audience surrogate. The problem with that is that Vaan is barely a factor in any aspect of the story - it feels like he isn't even in half of the game's cutscenes. The true protagonist of this story is Ashe, and though I can understand why the game isn't simply from her perspective once she shows up, it does a real disservice to itself by dancing around Ashe as the protagonist and stubbornly attempting to cling to Vaan's ephemeral viewpoint. It feels like the story is handcuffed, unable to dive into the depths it wants to explore, and as a result it never really feels like anything happens, or that the reasons for something happening are impossible to discern. As a result, major story beats barely had any impact for me, and by the end of the game I couldn't help but feel dissatisfied, like I'd only experienced the outline of a story.

I mean it when I say that I really wanted to enjoy what FFXII put in front of me. I always had a reverence for it from afar, nervous to dive in and experience what the game was truly about, rather than the bits and pieces I saw over time. It's a game that I think is underrated when you consider its gameplay, but is held back by its narrative failing to stick any kind of landing, content to let the party putter around semi-aimlessly, unable to center any one perspective in its desire to make the audience feel the same way Vaan did - little more than along for the ride. It's a game that's less than the sum of its parts in a lot of ways, but ultimately, I have respect for it, and the extremely strong gameplay system and loops were enough to give me a positive experience with it. If you're a gameplay sicko, go for it. If you're a story guy, mull it over.

Another great entry in this series, following on from the Season One compilation. I appreciated that this episode was meaty enough to justify being a standalone release, and the genre marriage this time with the magical girl elements was one I think worked maybe the best of any chapter thus far. I think the minigame for this episode was better than either of the previous ones, too - the simplicity of button-mashing through a Streets of Rage-style stage is a good fit for the scale the minigames are made at for these games.

The story of this chapter really shows the developers' progression as scenario writers - I was engaged and excited to see how each new twist unfolded throughout, and the resolution of both the case and the overall story were really, really satisfying. This was the first time where the nature of the true culprit wasn't immediately obvious to me at their introduction, and so the ultimate reveal of all of the mechanics of the crime was awesome. All in all, the Nina Aquila games continue to be well-made Ace Attorney-likes with a cleanly carved out identity, and this entry is well worth the low cost of entry.

also: nina in bikini armor, BUY BUY BUY

MiSide is a really fun, quick-hit thriller type of game. I appreciate that it doesn't take very long to dump you into the core conceit of the game, and that it doesn't really try to hide or bait-and-switch what the game is actually about. It leaves a lot of room for the rest of the game to play around in its world and present a lot of different ideas and variations on the game's building blocks and plot elements. Some of it can feel a little shallow - the worlds you see are certainly not created equal, and more work was put into some than others, but I don't think that's a big detractor. I appreciate that for all the variation in gameplay, there's very little jank to be found - everything implemented in the game works pretty well, and none of it is really unintuitive or frustrating. On the whole, this feels like a pretty good entry in the "psychological horror with the veneer of something else" genre, and it's definitely worth the time.

L.A. Noire really feels like a singular type of game, unique in its presentation and focus, even if it doesn't always land quite cleanly on what it's aiming for. It has the structure and feel of a proper Rockstar game on the surface, but when you look past that and see all of the quirks of its storytelling and gameplay, it becomes quite evident how much it stands apart from the rest of Rockstar's catalogue. That it retains its charm and remains an essential play after all this time is a testament to the incredible work Team Bondi put in from start to finish.

I really appreciate that this is a no-frills type game - the side content is minimal and unobtrusive, to the point where you could focus solely on the core narrative and come out the other end with a complete experience. I love the episodic structure of the main game - each case is its own little story, and while there are underpinnings that contribute to a larger narrative for each arc of the game, the cases encourage you to immerse yourself in each one individually as you go along. The minimal focus on anything else - of Cole's personal life, details about your partners, the world around you - feels like it speaks to the mindset Cole has in pursuing his work above all else, and greatly helps with the overall immersion of the game's story. I appreciate that it scales up into conspiracy territory towards the end of the game while still retaining that tunnel-vision feel, even if the game's ending ultimately feels pretty abrupt.

Gameplay-wise, good GOD I'm bad at it lol, but I greatly appreciate the work that's gone into the interrogation system. Watching suspects' faces slowly shift and emote, having to read whether that means they're lying about or withholding something, having to retain all that information in your head because your notes are so limited...it was infuriating to get things wrong because it immediately was clear where I misstepped every time. That dissonant little four-note piano riff whenever you pick the wrong answer is PTSD-inducing, practically. But it's a fantastic core gameplay mechanic, and the rest surrounding it - the driving, the shooting, the clue investigation - feels tight and well-built. Sometimes the minimal presentation could be frustrating, but the game is upfront about how it wants to be played and how it communicates and retains information, which I respect.

It really just comes down to this: L.A. Noire is a great game, and it's a huge shame that Team Bondi never made anything else, that it feels like the technology produced for this game ended up being a dead end of sorts. Of course, it's also a shame that the head of the studio was a scumbag and all that. At least we have this. Give it a go.

This game, to me, feels like an indicator that RGG Studio has become fully emboldened by the renewed success of the Yakuza franchise, like they're saying to the player base "will you follow us anywhere? Will you follow us to the Majima pirate amnesia spin-off?" And, honestly, yeah, I would follow RGG Studio anywhere, even to this weird as hell spin-off that, despite its absurd premise, mostly manages to hit the mark. If it's indicative of any future adjustments to the tone of the franchise as a whole, I would be concerned. But as its own game, as a standalone product separated out from the wider context of where the franchise stands right now, it's good! It's fun! That's what matters.

I'll always play a beat-em-up Yakuza game, no matter what ridiculous premise it's wrapped in, because the combat is the heart of these games, and that heart is beating strong and fast in this game. Majima, in both fighting styles, is an absolute monster, and it takes just a few upgrades early in the game for him to feel completely unstoppable. After feeling weirdly gimped in Kiwami 2, he feels completely unburdened in this game, able to fly around the arena like a rocket at the drop of a hat. Mobs simply melt away in the face of Majima, and it's especially satisfying considering the Gaiden games have significantly upped the average number of enemies in a given mob encounter. He's just awesome!

The side content, well...it's Yakuza side content, man. Karaoke is unrivaled, the new baseball minigame is great, all the usual suspects besides those are as they usually are, it's what you'd expect. The ship combat and traversal is surprisingly solid considering how random it feels, though I do wish the base speed of ships in open waters was a lot higher, because without the booster rings to quicken travel, it would be a real slog to get anywhere. Combat, meanwhile, is fun enough, though I felt like it took a lot of investment for me to feel fully comfortable engaging in ship battles on a regular basis. Building the coliseum mode around the ship battles makes complete sense, too, but I have to admit that they don't really have the staying power that curated fistfights do. I played through about half of the challenges before getting sick of them and moving on, which I think is a pretty good enjoyment ratio.

The story is best characterized as "heartfelt and frivolous," to me. No, I don't necessarily think every single Yakuza game needs to feel like Yakuza 0 - I think it's alright to have games like this with a little bit more absurdism, some more levity to the proceedings. Several moments throughout the game still have plenty of impact, usually anchored by the shockingly bearable child character who feels a lot like Majima's very own Haruka. But you can't escape the basic silliness of Majima becoming a pirate because he washed up on an island with amnesia. You can't escape that it emphasizes the slapstick tendencies of every major character around him, sparing only Saejima in the process. It all just feels a little...weightless, I suppose. And that makes sense for a Majima game, ultimately - he's a serious character when he wants to be, but the status quo for Majima outside of 0 is the wildcard persona, so of course that's going to get turned way up here. I had my fun with the story, I enjoyed it, but I definitely don't think I'm going to remember much of it in a few months, and I suspect very little of it will have any impact on Like a Dragon 9, whenever that happens.

Pirate Yakuza is exactly what it looks like on the cover - a fun, frivolous romp through Hawaii and the open ocean that provides a wide spread of food to eat, but ultimately doesn't provide especially substantial portions in said meals. It's a game to be enjoyed without taking it too seriously, and it's the game that I think hews closest to what people think these games are all about. I think that's fine. I just hope it doesn't drag the status quo closer to where it stands for the future.

What can I say about Rebirth, besides that it brought joy to me every single play session? The scope and scale of the FFVII remake trilogy has always seemed absolutely unfathomable to me, particularly after playing Remake and seeing just how comparatively little of the original game it covered by the end. Successful as it was, it set high expectations for Rebirth, and set up questions to be answered by its sequels that could easily derail the games entirely. Rebirth has two burdens to bear - be a great retelling of the middle section of FFVII, and be a great modern game, with all that the label implies, and while it doesn't hit every note of that perfectly, I think it acquits itself extremely well.

I really, really enjoy how Remake and Rebirth are written and directed. The English voice cast does an incredible job with the script, the in-game cinematography is frequently stunning, and the look and feel of the game surpasses the high bar set by Remake. It's been a long time since I played FFVII proper, so I didn't have the sharpest sense of what was original material and what was newly added, but I think it's to the team's credit that the additions were only obvious and incongruent a couple of times throughout. Every character is a delight to see and hear, feeling at once familiar and fresh, even the absolute scumbags like the Shinra execs. I'm glad, too, that new-era side characters like Kyrie have room to return and develop some more. There are story elements that didn't land for me - the way the final scenes of the game are handled are pretty messy, and I once again found the Whispers to be intrusive irritants - but on the whole, I adore how this game is written, just like with Remake.

Scaling up FFVII's world to the standards of a modern open-world game isn't a task I'd wish on anyone, but I think that the Rebirth team did an admirable job of it. The cities all felt vibrant and distinct, with a ton to see and do, and even the open world connective tissue made for a visual treat, even though I sometimes found the geography to be unnecessarily difficult to navigate (Gongaga in particular, good God). I can see why people would be frustrated with the game's open world elements, the buffet-style minigame spread where there's a hundred little things to do without being especially compelling, but I did feel that those elements weren't especially intrusive, and could safely be ignored to focus on the main story. I did what I could of the side content and I got my fill a couple of chapters before the end of the game, leaving the last few side quests untouched, and I don't feel like I missed out on anything. The combat, too, is just as sharp as in Remake, and the refinements to the system extend its lead as the best combat system in Final Fantasy.

Now, here's the thing - I played this on Steam Deck, and having put 70 hours into it, I have to tell you, don't do that lol. It is, truly, a severely compromised visual experience. You have to ratchet the graphics down to an obscene amount, you have to compromise bigtime on the frame rate, and you have to take your medicine on dynamic resolution scaling if you want the game to be anything more than a blocky slideshow. If you cannot play this on PS5 or a real gaming rig, as I couldn't, then sure, you can do the whole thing on Deck, but I was acutely aware throughout that this is NOT a game to fully appreciate on a Steam Deck. It just isn't. It's too big, too demanding, too next-gen. I enjoyed it, but I know I'd have enjoyed it more on proper hardware.

That aside, there are of course drawbacks to the game - the open world framework does get tiring probably a lot sooner than Square Enix would like. A lot of the minigames do feel like vapid filler, like Yakuza minigames but less charming, and the fact that the late-game sidequests demand you to engage with the boring, horrible exploration mechanics immediately made me throw in the towel on them. No, I'm not going to run around the map and light up icons, thanks. No, I'm not gonna spend hours and hours hunting mobs to get a special mob to spawn so I can advance Kyrie's story, sorry! As I said above, very little of the open world/minigame experience is compulsory, and you can laser in on the main story without missing anything of note. Ah, but then, you might not build enough friendship with Aerith to unlock her five-star date...much to consider.

Rebirth is an incredible game. It's an accomplishment, honestly, and I'm still amazed that the team handling this trilogy is able to so deftly balance the original game's expanded story with whatever weird timeline nonsense is going on in these. I say "nonsense" affectionately, because I AM interested in it all, and I admire the drive to do something different as opposed to a straight retelling of the original game. The script is good, the casting is great, the gameplay is divine. It's Final Fantasy VII, man. It speaks for itself.

Fantastic mystery puzzle game. Paranormasight feels almost like an offshoot Zero Escape game, in the way you hop across the game's route tree throughout, but it also feels distinct from any other game I've played in this genre. It's a puzzle box that forms a complete loop and uses all of the elements it puts into play, and the way it comes together in the late game is so, so satisfying. The cast and setting are both very engaging, and the different story threads and perspectives provided by that cast really hold your attention. I found myself endeared to pretty much every major character in the game by the end, an impressive feat when the characters all come from such disparate backgrounds. The art style and art direction also feels like it really aims to make the most of a tight budget, really immersing you in the dread that the characters feel as you work through the game's core mystery, feeling dreary and claustrophobic even in daytime settings.

That presumed budgetary restriction is also the game's biggest drawback for me - it's very, VERY static, even for a visual novel-style game, and the art direction can drift a little too far into plain at times, especially in the more urban settings. You don't visit all that many locations, and while the graphical assets are well-drawn, it all still feels too sparse a lot of the time. The complete lack of voice acting is a real killer for me, too - this game is BEGGING for great, evocative voice lines, and instead it has none at all, forcing you to fill in the gaps yourself. That can be nice, sometimes, but it really does feel like there's something missing without voice lines, and though I know it'll never happen, it would be pretty cool if some late-breaking major update came along to add them.

All in all, though, the drawbacks are not nearly enough to put me off of recommending this game. If you like mystery games, if you like horror elements that aren't too heavy-handed and aren't intended to scare you to death, if you like the general aesthetic fuzz of the 1980s as you remember it, play Paranormasight. It's worth it.

Really fantastic game thus far. I played Episode 0 when the demo was available last year, and I was so, so excited for Episode 1, and my God it delivered. As an Ace Attorney-like, I think it introduces a lot of great mechanics on top of the base system, the writing is phenomenal, and the characters are just...man, it's a really great game. The risk systems in trial are a huge triumph - of course you can save-scum your way around the *real* risk, but the game also includes a specific challenge mode to prevent you from doing that, forcing you to truly engage with the risk system and consider your choices carefully. I love that - it shows a huge amount of confidence in the engaging nature of these systems.

It's such a great thing to know that four more episodes of this game are planned. of the Devil is a fantastic game, Morgan and Serra are incredible characters, and I'll be at the edge of my seat waiting for each new episode. Play it, play it, play it.