Gungrave Anime Review

Gungrave is a show I heard about years ago, it did have a dedicated cult following over the years, but I would I never thought I would enjoy as much as I did, I consider the Gungrave anime to be the greatest adaptation on a game of all time. With so many games getting adaptations now and with me playing the Gungrave games themselves in recent years, I decided to watch the show again for the first time in over a decade and years later, I still think the show is geniunely fantastic. 

Before I start describing what makes it so great, I might as well address the first episode, it's often said that you shouldn't watch the first episode but I argue on it's own, it really isn't that bad, the first episode sets up the flashback sections and the "genre shift" of sorts the story will take later down the line in a similar way Berserk 1997 does, the only difference is, Gungrave has an actual ending and a great one at that. The problem arises is that this episode eventually gets revisisted with not much changes later in the series, so then the question becomes do skip the first episode or the aforementioned later episode? I'd say watch them both and if you have the option to put the later episode on times 2 speed if you are getting annoyed by the deja vu. It wasn't really an issue for me since I found the show so engrossing but I consider doing this. 

Now with that out of the way, after playing the Gungrave game particular the first game from 2002, the more I appreciate the anime more than I already do. The best way of describing Gungrave is that it's the aforementioned Berserk meets the Godfather with designs you might recognize from the Trigun series. 

The thing with the Gungrave game is that it's primarily a third person shooter, where all you do is kill things until you fight a boss and you do this for 2 hour until the credits roll, a game like this might not even sound like it would make for a compelling crime drama but the flashback sections is where the show is elevated above many game adaptations back then and even now. Characters like Bear Walken, Ballad Bird Lee, Big Daddy, Bob Poundmax and Harry MacDowel were mostly just bosses you fight in the game, they had cool designs and you kill them. In the anime however, these characters are much more fleshed out especially Bear, Big Daddy and Harry, where they might seem one note in the game, in the anime, you know their relationships, struggles, values and morals. This is what a good game adaptation should do, expand on characters that didn't have much time to develop in the game and flesh them out in a medium where they are able to. 

The character of Grave/Brandon Heat himself comes off as somewhat dull silent protagonist, in the anime however, Brandom is the kind of guy who speaks with his actions rather than words. 

The flashback sections in the Gungrave anime to me rivals some of the best movies, the episode "Family" in particular is probably one of the greatest standalone episodes I have ever seen in anime if not ever even. The way it makes me sympathize with a respected mobster who chose his son is something I watch and experience media for to begin with, to make me consider and feel things I might not otherwise have felt. 

These sections are widely praised and they are no doubt great but something that I hear from some is that the show goes "downhill" after they are done, I personally have to disagree with this, I personally think the 2nd half isn't all that different from the way Berserk changes post eclipse, a big reason for this is that the characters of Blood War and Dr. Tokioka especially the latter, he is the link that carries the sci fi elements of Gungrave together since he was there since the early episodes and is a reason why the "undead soldiers" even exist at all. These two characters is what prevents the transition from being overly sudden. 

Here's the weird thing, the 2nd half is mostly faithful to the Gungrave game. Sure some scenes are expanded upon but the 2nd half mostly follows the same story beats as the game kind of like the Zack Snyder Watchmen movie, and much like that movie, the thing that the anime changes is the ending. In the game, Brandon climbs up a huge tower fighting enemies and then the final boss is Big Daddy's undead corpse. In the anime, the ending is similar to Cowboy Bebop's except much better executed than that since Harry MacDowel and Brandon Heat's dynamic is much more fleshed out than Spike and Vicious's. The ending of Gungrave to me might be one of the greatest ficitional endings ever in how much it wraps up the story in a nice and tidy bow, a very tragic bow. 

This is however where this leads me to negatives, the character of Mika is pretty useless and a little on the grating side. The thing you could argue with the Gungrave game is that Grave and Mika's bond is the heart of the story and in the game, Grave lives at the end and Mika becomes a capable character in the sequel to the 2002 game, Overdose, since Grave dies in the anime, Mika kind of serves no purpose and doesn't really do much of anything outside of getting Grave in trouble, she ultimately never really drives the plot forward in any way. 

Another issue is Dr. Tokoia who is vital to keeping Gungrave's 2nd half consistent with the 1st just isn't that great of a character in his own right, much of his dialogue consists of saying he doesn't deserve redemption and that he is horrible for what he did and that's about it, his character feels like he was missing a backstory into what lead him to want to experiment on dead people to begin with. 

Also, I don't like complaining about "plot holes" per say, but how was Dr. Tokoia was able to procure Brandon's body even though he got shot from a high tower with so many people looking at his corpse? Not a big issue, but it's just weird. 

Final issue is that the world building is kind of vague, it takes place in a fictional city yet there is refrences to things like the Iraq war or "orcmen" used in the middle east or how Blood War's backstory is connected to that. The city in Gungrave seems to be like a city in a superhero story at first but then it seems like there is more than just a city and there actually is a bigger world but the story is kind of ambigous about it. It's not a big issue but like the Tokoia plothole, but it's something that just gets me thinking for reasons I doubt the writers intended. 

Overall, Gungrave is a great show and to me still the greatest video game adaptation of all time. I don't think anything from here on out will ever really top this series for me. I think the Gungrave game is just "okay" but the anime is one of my favorite anime and TV shows of all time and that is what a story based on any game or medium should do. 

James Bond 007: Nightfire Review

Out of all the James Bond games I have played, this surprisingly has to be the best one, I wouldn't call the game an amazing game in its own right but out of all the 007 games I played, this was one was the most self aware about everything. It has it's own story and has better production values than Goldeneye does, it controls better than Agent Under Fire if you pick the "Nightfire" control options and the game just knows that it's style of combat whether it's just you fighting hitscan enemies with hitscan weapons doesn't make for combat that is super compelling so the game has constant mix ups.

You got missions like the exchange where it's decently open(all though this is early 00s awkward stealth mechanics so you aren't given enough information regarding guard awareness), several car driving sections examples being including one where you are in submarine like underwater level and then having Twisted Metal like car combat sections, a plane section where you are shooting things down from an aircraft, a stealth mission where you need to sneak into a building and install viruses(luckily you got a tranq pistol this time), sniping sections as well as one where you need to kill snipers while moving across a vast power plant of sorts, a level in an undeground complex where you need to avoid rocket burners during one of the sections and a level up in space.

007 Nightfire's campaign, very much feels like the over the top action film franchise that inspired it, no mission goes on for too long and nothing drags on for far too long to the point where the game ever gets dull. Everything about Nightfire just feels like the devs wanted to make an over the top action movie and they've done a solid job. They also know that the combat of, "point hitscan gun at enemy and shoot them" isn't compelling so they knew to spice things up. Out of all the Bond games I played Nightfire is the most self aware of this.

The story is just dumb over the top spy movie fare, all the parts where the women where fawning over Bond just made me laugh more often than not and over the top finale in space just felt like the devs wanted to ramp it up a notch.

The only major compliants I have with the game besides the stealth mechanics is that enemies don't react to getting shot which is something I would consider a game design sin but easy mode rectifies this and have enemies die pretty quickly. Also easy mode gives you more hints regarding gadgets so it feels like the mode first time players should play on. I remember not knowing how stuff like the Q Laser works or the grapple hook when playing on the supposed "normal" difficulty. I didn't like how getting hit never told you where the shot came from but I found this to be a minor issue, might be big for some. Final issue is that the game does suffer from a problem many games from this era had where you would often have 5-6 minute levels bookended by loading screens and have sectioned off levels during the overall mission, for me constant loading screens after a few minutes of play can take me out of it, might not be so much of an issue with others.

Overall, Nightfire was a great time, it's weird how this was the Bond game I played in this "binge" of sorts and I ended up liking this one the best. If you are like me and where you mainly get mild enjoyment from games where you fight human enemies with hitscan weapons, you might have a good time with this one.

Tekken 4 "Review" and Tekken Force Mode Critique

Decided to play some more Tekken games and I always heard this one of the weaker entries in the series. With that said, I both enjoy while also dislike this game.

If I talk about the fighting game side of Tekken 4, the game is decent from a casual player's point of view. The only thing that really stands out the fighting stages having "walls". Admittedly this didn't bother me that much outside of getting some amusement of doing the sqaure and cross grab and pushing opponents into a wall and then chaining punches that would lead to wall bounces and getting free hits in all though this got harder to do furthur into the arcade story mode which I did for Kazuya and Jin since they are the only characters that really matter in the Tekken story, I would do Heihachi but that requires me to beat the game more and I don't have time or patience for that.

Other than than that, I looked up the movelist a few times and tried to understand the movelists for Jin and Kazuya more. The normal mode cpu difficulty is MUCH easier than Tekken 5's and it feels like something less experienced players like myself can handle.

I'm not a hardcore Tekken player but T4's fighting is "okay". Not as good as some of the later games like 5 and 8 due to the walls and some control changes but it's "fine". The music is also solid with authentic sky being one of the most memorable tracks in the series.

However what does really suck about the game is the Tekken Force mode, I always heard from some that this mode was "good" but honestly, from what I played of this and the version of it in T8, I never really got that sentiment.

Everything about this mode is pretty awful, it makes Devil Within from 5 look like masterpiece.

Some of the issues are the controls and camera, the best way of describing this mode is that Namco used the 3D movement in the one on one fighting and turned into a beat em up where you fight hordes of enemies. The problem is, the camera isn't that great, not really giving you a good view of the action and where the characters are supposed to be moving since it feels like a proto 3D over the shoulder camera but the D pad movement can often get in the way of you wanting to pick up healing and powerup items and trying to be precise on where to move.

It doesn't just end there either, enemies are damage sponges and block attacks way too much. I try to grab to break the blocks, a tactic you do in the one on one fights, but it would lead to enemies getting free hits in. That and it's basically just one on one fights with hordes of enemies, there isn't any crowd control attacks and many fights consist of you widdling down the health of one enemy and the worst parts are is that your health can be drained pretty quickly by one enemy alone and there are no checkpoints in the levels making this mode more of a mess. I wouldn't even mind the lack of checkpoints if the stages didn't drag on and on but they do, I'm done one really tough enemy wave and more enemies pop up.

There also isn't a dodge button either outside of using the 3D movement in one on one fights during horde battles.

I just gave up on the 3rd level and just let the game be with me beating Kazuya and Jin's arcade mode routes.

Overall, Tekken 4 is "okay" for the fighting side of it but the Tekken Force mode is just awful. I never thought I would think Devil Within from 5 would be better and somewhat retroactively appreciate it but I do.

Timesplitters(2000) Review

I played TS2 and 3 and the reason why I'm playing this game at all is because it recently came to PS Premium Classics and now that it's on there, I decided to give it a look.

Outside of the camera control being inverted which I fixed in the PS5's emulation menu, I barely had an issues with the controls other than the fact that you can't open doors which is weird since I'm so used to FPS games giving you the ability to do it, I got lost on the first level because I thought you could open doors but you can't.

Other than that, the game is "fine". One thing I find fascinating about it is that the game feels like a "speedrun" shooter of sorts where you have to memorize enemy locations and know exactly where many of them are mitigate damage, the lack of a story and the fact that all of the levels can be beaten under 5 minute drives home this fact. There are also no checkpoints and that is probably there to counteract that you can beat the game in under an hour all though there is save states and rewind on PS5 to tone down potential frustration.

Sound design and damage animations are great especially for a game with a less realistic art style. Weapons have great firing sounds and damage animations feel decently exaggerated. The music is also really good and gets me immersed into the levels.

However there are issues like how enemies can kill you very quickly if you don't know the exact positions on where they are going to hit you and chances are if you were playing this on base PS2 hardware, many of your deaths came from getting attacked from random places not knowing where the enemies hit you. This goes triple for the Mansion level where melee enemies and firearm enemies can rip your health to shreds in seconds if you don't where exactly they are going to spawn and attack you from. That and the zombies can be very tedious to dispatch since you have to rely on the game's clunky manual aiming mechanic to dismember their heads or else they just keep coming back no matter how much ammo you pour into them. There is moments where you have to use precision aim on the sniper but easy mode meant that I could use it less since I can take more damage.

Levels also play out the same way, where you get an item and get to a specific part of the map, then it ends, I thought they were going to do what TS2 did where more objectives get added on higher difficulties but only the Mansion did this. Which was disappointing. The level design like the Planet X and Mansion can be a little confusing at time but if you have played games like this where they aren't linear and don't overly hold your hand, navigating them should be fine.

Edit:

I tried to play some of the game again on Normal again due to the recent trophy support being added and you need to play on Normal difficulty and above to get the Story trophies.

My impression of normal difficulty has changed my opinion on the game. On easy, the game was decent if nothing special but on normal, the game is pretty bad.

On normal, enemies can rip your health bar to shreds within a few a shots and many of them carry hitscan guns so if you walk into an enemy's line of sight, chances are you will lose a decent amount of health if you fight more than 1 enemy, on top of the game barely having health packs or any form of health drops by enemies. You can't carry health packs either.

So in order to be effective at this game at all, you need to memorize every enemy location and take potshots from cover to get anywhere, this would be fine if enemies didn't take some like mummies didn't take a decent amount of damage to die and requires headshots to permenantly kill.

You better hope not to reload in the middle of a fire fight since enemies will knock off chunks off you health even more. I don't complain about reloading in games but it just feels like a major inconvience in TS1 on normal difficulty. The fact that enemies can attack you from behind, and attack while right next to you before you can even center the camera in time to mitigate damage on top of the enemy count on normal being higher just adds insult to injury when it comes to reloading. The monsters keep spawning at random times and can often catch you off guard.

Overall, TS1 is a strange game, if you play on easy, there is a decent and functional shooter here but on anything higher the game is just not very enjoyable unless if you enjoy the way many late 90s and early 00s games designed in that you have to memorize health packs and enemy placements to get anywhere in the level. I'm not into that style of design and anything about easy just exposes the game's issues even more.

Resident Evil: Revelations 2 Review

I played Resident Evil Revelations 2 twice over the years, the first time I recall liking it, the 2nd time I liked it less but now on a 3rd playthrough, Rev 2 might actually be one of my favorite games in the series. I played this for a 3rd time at all because Lambhoot made a video praising Rev 2 and called it the "Resident Evil game they keep remaking". He showered the game with praise and also said it was better than the recent Resident Evil 4 remake which is a game I really like. I also liked that he actually enjoys action RE besides RE4 so I decided to play Rev 2 a 3rd time.

First impressions were admittedly awful especially playing Episode 1 and 2 with Claire. I was constantly low on ammo and at times any at all to out enemies at all, the stealth hardly if ever worked properly, the game just overwhelmed me with numerous enemies waves while being underpowered for almost every encounter. The game would introduce stuff like gunk and bleeding that would cover up the screen adding extra steps to getting hit by enemies, and worst of all the dodge command needed to be upgraded in order to be anywhere close to be useful. I was getting frustrated and annoyed. The episode 2 mini boss fight that bookended Claire's section was enough to drive me into a rage with how you needed to deal with a mini boss, while enemies are attacking very little ammo was given.

What carried Episode 1 and 2 were the Barry Burton sections since stealth actually worked as intended, I actually had enough ammo to take on the enemy waves and I loved how it homaged Resident Evil 2 1998 where you would revisit previous levels you visited as Claire but now played out in a different way when you played as Barry and Natalia. On top of that, Barry's enemies were more interesting since with Revenants you need to worry about damaging them in the body and then have their weak spot pop and then you can kill it.

Gasps are an enemy that is going to be divisive among people since they can kill you with a single hit on full health but I found these sections to be tense I would often have to really be careful on where my shots would land while they are slowly getting close, and to counter act the one hit kill, these enemies go down in a few hits so it felt balanced to me.

Then Episode 3 happened, and the game starts consistently getting good. The Claire section in Episode 3 has an interesting enough balance of traps and enemies to keep you on your toes and my personal favorite design, the zombies you kill have a chance of turning into exploding monsters so I always had to watch out, the ammo distrubution started to get more consistent as Claire too. It makes fighting the Executioners and Vuclanbubblers more tolerable. The only big issue with the Claire section is that the Neil Fisher boss is a damage sponge and once you figure to use Moria's flashlight during the fight, he isn't so much challenging as does take forever to go down.

Then as Barry in Episode 3, I discovered you can just have bandages and disinfects be carried by your partner making this part of the aspect of the game more tolerable.

Slowly more aspects of Rev 2 I started to appreciate. Like it had the most refined movement in action RE. You can move while shooting, no tank controls of RE 2005, knife is a dedicated button, the inventory isn't awful like RE5 and 6, you have an actual dodge command that is useful when upgraded. My only big gripe is that killing enemies while they are down requires your partner instead of something the character with a gun can use.

Barry's section, I also like as down time where you fight zombies that are easy but it's more about finding where to go and solving puzzles to get Natalia across like the bridge and sewer sections.

A massive part of me was losing his mind towards the RE1 mansion homage towards the end of the game. While this mansion isn't as complex as the Spencer Mansion, it was a nice way to change up the game and a decent attempt at fan service since you are playing as Barry. The part where you had to navigate a poisonous gas mine was decent enough since you had to be careful on how long you can explore the level before you slowly reach a game over state, it helps counteract the fact that you lots upon lots of ammo in this part. I know I complained about a lack of ammo but later parts of the game showers you with it.

One major gripe I have with the game is that around Episode 4, the game starts to get a lot easier, the only geniunely challenging part is when there is collapsing building as Claire and you have to deal with gasps without Natalia. There were many cheap deaths since I would run into them since the level is playing out like a scripted set piece.

Alex Wesker's final boss is a pushover since I was rolling in ammo and herbs by that point. The sniping section was decent if one note.

Overall, Rev 2 is a really good game and gets consistently good once Episode 1 and 2 as Claire is over. This was a well made action RE game.

Mayhem Brawler Review

This game was a weird one, I only randomly heard of it through 13AM Games' Twitter promoting with a sale bundle for Dawn of the Monsters on PC and I already played DoM but this game looked peculiar. I saw it on a PSN sale and bought it.

There isn't too much to say on the game that it a solid 2D beat em up. If you played Streets of Rage 4, you'll certainly be familar enough with this game, all though Mayhem Brawler has some improvements I like for example the special move mapped to triangle has to be replenished instead of being a heavy attack connected to the health bar like SoR4. The controls are somewhat similar like double tapping the left and right d pad to sprint all though you can time weapon throws like in SoR4.

Other than that, it's traditional 2D beat em up fare. It's polished and the easy mode is accessible enough for me to want to play through it to the end. I'm also annoyed yet again that this game didn't do what the aforementioned Dawn of the Monsters did and have a dedicated dodge button. This is something that always annoyed me about 2D beat em ups in that avoiding attacks often feels like a game of chance and hoping I moved I pressed the d pad fast enough in time to get out of the enemy's line of sight and plane to get out of the way before the attack hits me. There is block button but I'm more of a dodging kind of guy in beat em ups since blocking requires patience and dodging it something I would rather instictively do. One strategy I did rely on was using weapons and regular combat on enemies and then using special attacks to interrupt an enemy combo before they even landed a blow on me or occasionally break out of grabs since many enemies grab you in this game, have scripted grab moves and you can't break out unless if you seemingly have special lined up.

The action is fast paced, polished and hectic enough to be entertaining. Doing some combos, then using special attacks, using weapons, throwing objects, none of this is anything that hasn't been done before but it's executed and polished well enough to make the game's 1 hour run time breeze by. I also like that you get more lives the more points you rack up making the game more fair. I only died on the last level on easy. There is some replayablity depending on what level order you take but I never cared for this stuff and would just prefer a structured linear campaign where it's just level by level instead of giving me a choice, I never cared for "replayablity" in spite of this game trying to have it.

However one major negative is the writing. The comic book asthetic, theming motifs is pretty cool and it's basically a game where you fight as a police force who are superheroes. There's even an X-Men Days of Future Past homage with one of it's comic book covers but what makes it really bad is how dated everything is. It already refrences social media sites like Twitter and I really don't want to be reminded of social media while playing games and the "hashtags" just feels like the game is trying to hip and modern. There's even Tweet thread next to the comic panel cutscenes which makes it hard to pay attention to cutscenes since there is extra information the game is trying to feed.

A lot of the characters try to sound "hip" especially the telekentic girl in a modern 2010s kind of way and it all it did was just make me groan because it's not funny now and it won't be funny 20 years later. Other than the refrence to "social justice warriors" which really made me zone out, I eventually just started to stop trying to pay attention to the writing and story. Luckily the cutscenes don't last that long which helps.

Overall, solid 2D beat em up, not going to be anything you haven't played before but it mostly plays well and is polished enough to fun for the 1 hour you can beat the game in. I was expecting myself not to like this game at all since I'm not a big 2D beat em up guy but I had a good time.

LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy Review

This was a weird game for me to play. I only tried it out at all because it was one of the games that got added to the Playstation Premium Classics catalogue and I was kind of watching some of the older Star Wars movies and decided to play this.

It's a pretty enjoyable game, this is of course typical Lego game fare where you need to be familar with the source material the lego game is based on to understand anything that is going on in this game but I already knew that going in.

One thing I will commend the game for is that the PS5 version on Premium Classics is based on the PSP version and the PSP version is a decently made game, it has the cutscenes, decent visuals fiedlity and a solid framerate for what is basically a console game on portable. Since Lego games use a follow cam you don't need camera control on the right stick.

Other than that, the game mainly just consist of your usual lego game fare, there's so many of these games but essentially what the game boils down to is that they are escort missions with multiple characters and the name of the game is to escort all of the characters you play as across the level by switching between characters to use each of their abilities to solve puzzles to get past a certain part of the level. There is combat and it's pretty basic, I'm not sure if this is in the other versions of the game, but the hit detection for lightsabers feels off and if I'm not using jump attacks, the enemies don't really react to attacks with any geniune feedback.

Blaster characters felt better to use but the side step dodge rolls are contextual and most of the time, I'm better off just tanking hits and then respawning right after since there isn't much pentality for death in Lego games most if not all the time.

Much of the meat of these games is to smash the environment to pieces and then make new objects out of them in order to progress the level. There is also switch pulling, lever pushing, vehicles to activate switches, use them as a jumping off point to reach higher places or using them to destroy bigger lego objects. Characters have special abilities too, Jedi like Luke Skywalker and Obi Wan can use the Force and can double jump, Leia and Han have grapple hooks to reach higher places and Droids like R2 D2 and C3PO can interact with certain doors while R2 D2 can glide.

The gameplay is pretty simple just smash things, build new things, switch to characters where you can use contexual circle button commands, some light platforming, and combat but what makes this formula so endearing is that it's simple enough to be stimulating and engaging but not overly confusing enough to be obtuse and offputting. It's not going to be the best designed action games with adventuring but they are competently made that I'm not bored when I'm playing.

My only major gripes with the game is how much combat there is for how not so good it is, there is many moments in the game where you have to wipe out a wave of Stormtroopers that seem to be come in endless droves. If combat wasn't so sub par, fighting these hordes of enemies would be enjoyable but instead it's an exercise in tedium where I need to mash the shoot button or with Jedi mash the attack button and jump to kill enemies, die respawn, rinse repeat.

That and another thing that might be exclusive to this game I dislike is Stromtrooper disguise puzzles where you need to put on a helmet in order to fool the scanner to progress the game, this would be fine but considering my above mentioned issue the game having too much combat and enemies on top of not being hit once will remove the helmet makes these sections annoyingly tedious.

Final complaint is that the vehicle sections aren't that great and mainly just consist of mashing and the fire button and pressing circle to throw some purple orbs at a target, it's an okay distraction but so many of these vehicle sections play the same way. It's a good thing there's a few.

Overall, it's a solid Lego game, you played one of these games especially before the Skywalker Saga you played most if not all of them but it is a decent enough formula that is reliable enough to support so many games. I had a good enough time with it even if the game isn't mind blowing. It's the original SW trilogy recreated in a Lego game format and the game never strays away from that.

Naruto Shippuden - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly

Naruto Shippuden as well as Naruto as a franchise is a series I have a complicated relationship with over the years, as a kid I remember liking the story pre timeskip or "Part 1" a lot, even after my brief break with anime from 2008-2012, I did eventually pick up Shippuden and I recall enjoying the story to varying degrees at least the canon stuff up until the War arc. I skipped all the fillers of course, but one major issue with the Shippuden series is that there is A LOT a filler in between major arcs and A LOT of mixed canon filler when the major arcs did get adapted and it only got worse when the series went on especially during the War arc, it eventually got to a point where I started to hate the post time skip parts of the series for almost 10 years since I stopped watching the series back in 2014, now I'm watching the series 10 years later and much of my thoughts are the same just that now, it's much easier to watch since all the episodes are avaliable and I can skip all the mixed canon filler. Going to separate this review to 3 sections, "the good", "the bad" and "the ugly". 

The Good - The pacing of the major arcs is mostly pretty good. There is going to be mixed canon filler stuff like during the Kazekage Rescue and the battle on the Tenchi Bridge but I have watched stuff like the original 90s anime of Dragon Ball Z, so I'm kind of used to the way some of the longer fights can be especially the battle on the Tenchi Bridge. In spite of all this, Naruto Shippuden up until the War arc managed to avoid something that plagues many long running shows, not just shonen which "arc fatigue". Every section pre War arc never lasted overly long and new story arcs were getting introduced at a reasonable pace. At the very least the staus quo does change by the end of the series and all though characters like Sasuke are problematic, at the very least he doesn't take the entire series to kill Itachi. 

The Akatsuki are also pretty good villains, most if not all of them have their own goals and motivations for joining and avoid being the "generic doomday villain" which is stuff you can find with a lot of stories that feature many villains or superhero team up stories where they just write villains for the sake of adding a number so they can challenge more heroes. Pain is also a better villain than I remember him for being too, when I first watched the Pain arc, I found his "pain" monologues to be dull and monotonous but now, it's kind of interesting where he esstentially wants everyone to understand each other by feeling the pain of others and everyone feeling pain. It's more interesting I initally gave him credit for.

Characters like Sakura and Shikimaru are given more to do now especially how Shikimaru is given his own arc now and starts to change and mature as a character, he was already a great character in Part 1 and Part 2 and post timeskips just makes him better. Sakura is also less annoying by comparison to Part 1 and she is even given a major victory and even tries to take matter into her own hands. I wouldn't call her a great character by any means but she does become someone I can sort of respect as opposed to character like Hinata who I already discussed in my Last Naruto movie review. 

One final positive is that while characters do get brought back, I admire Naruto for actually killing off it's major character like Jiraiya and outside of say, Orochimaru all the characters are brought back for a temporary time and then are written out of the story. Orochimaru being alive is somewhat understandable since he sort of has immortality to sorts to begin with. Naruto at the very least avoids an issue that plagued a show like Yu Yu Hakusho where that series was just too scared to kill off any of it's major characters and Togashi would often pull punches much of the time. Final positive is that Naruto, while I'm not going to call him a great character due to reasons later on does slowly start to mature and become more tolerable the more the story goes on, even if his "talk no jutsu" requires heavy amounts of suspension of disbelief, I'd take this over keeping villains alive and then having them still remain evil, neither is great, but talk no jutsu is slightly more tolerable. I do commend Naruto to varying degrees that the series' status quo is completely different by the end of the series compared to the start. 

The Bad - Shippuden does have a lot of good going for it but there is just one issue that plagues the series that prevents it from being consistently enjoyable and that is both the character of Sasuke Uchiha and his relationship with Naruto. Many of often cited the Chunin Exams of Naruto to be the high point of the series but there is just one big major problem with it, that arc splintered Naruto's audience, there's two kinds of Naruto fans, those who watch it for Naruto and Sasuke's "friendship" and rivalry and those who watch it for the side characters, I'm sort of in the latter but a huge problem that plagued Naruto and Sasuke is the fact that Kishimoto wants you to think Naruto and Sasuke has been together for so long when in reality, they were only together for the Land of the Waves arc all the way to Sasuke's fight with Yaroi. When Sasuke says, "you are the one I want to fight the most" to Naruto. That is the last geniune interaction Naruto and Sasuke even have. After this there is lots of episodes where Naruto and Sasuke don't speak or have interactions with each other, this becomes a problem the more series goes on. The series loves to tell you Sasuke and Naruto have been on tons of life threatning adventures together but that isn't really the entire pre timeskip of Naruto. Technically speaking when only counting canon, Naruto only really spent time with Sasuke during the Land of the Waves and Forest of Death, thats it but Kishimoto will love to act like he's done so much legwork and pats himself on the back for it. 

This is pretty much where the problem lies, Naruto in Part 2 spends so much of the series chasing after Sasuke instead of trying to achieve his own goals. The series will bring this up constantly on how Sasuke chose to leave and how Naruto could've gotten "stronger" instead of chasing Sasuke, the self awareness doesn't make Naruto come off less of a creepy yandere. The thing with Naruto is that he CAN be a good character but he shines whenever Sasuke is not around. I kind of get what the series was going for to some degree but Kishimoto loves to think he did the leg work when he didn't. If Naruto and Sasuke didn't have such a lack of screen time gap inbetween Sasuke's fight with Yaroi and when Sasuke left the village and if they had more missions together than MAYBE I would want Naruto to have Sasuke come over to the light side but instead Naruto just comes off as a stalker. 

Then there is Sasuke and I will give the series this in that he eventually kills Itachi but for one he was just a dull and one note character who just acts stoic and not much else especially how lacks compassion for so much of Shippuden. After Sasuke kills Itachi, he spends much of the series being a one note revenge driven psycho who wants to destroy the Leaf Village in spite of the fact that if it weren't for a retcon(Sasuke would be dead if it weren't for Tsunade, so Itachi was never really that sympathetic) yet Sasuke believes that Itachi was ultimately good. The funny thing in all this is, that it weren't for the reanimations of Itachi and Hashirama, Sasuke would've never have temporaily turned face during the War arc so Naruto's ploy to bring Sasuke back to the village is rendered that much more rudundant. Sasuke does admittedly became a more interesting character post War arc since he actually has some compassion to show with the stoicism by saving those kids in the fighting arena. 

The Ugly - Basically everything War arc related, you can put in the entire arc minus Obito's face turn. I'll be positive for a minute that I think Obito while not being a good villain was the most tolerable part of the arc since he's the only villain that remained a player all the way through rather than eventually getting written out like Mardara and Kabuto were. As for the War arc itself, where do I start, it's full of red herrings and retcons. I'll start with the red herrings, there's many but there's mainly just two, the Kages, the Allied Shinobi Force itself and Madara Uchiha. The first few sections of the arc is painfully boring because they are basically focusing on side character and since I knew how this played out, will eventually get taken out of the story like Choji and Darui. The Allied Shinobi Force basically become one big protect mission for Naruto and eventually Team 7 and the resurrected Shinobi who weren't undone by Itachi and the Kages who basically jump started the arc and had a summit arc dedicated too them ultimately get beaten by Madara off screen and get put in the dream world. All of these are big hyped up parts that lead to nothing. 

The retcons are too numerous to count and they aren't even good ones. I can be here all day and this write up has gone on long enough but the biggest ones are the Indra and Ashura and Black Zetsu ones. The former makes Naruto and Sasuke magically connected by destiny and robs them of their agency and the Black Zetsu one writes out the Madara out of the story, a villain they were fighting for episodes on end. They were fighting Madara for so many episodes and they don't even beat him. This makes the War arc look worse in the long run. It makes Kaguya look worse since she was the villain the good guys were able to beat and Madara had to be taken out by someone else. 

The War arc wouldn't be so bad but the filler makes it even worse. The pacing makes an arc that was already horrible and slows the pacing down to a crawl. There's filler episodes every few episodes between the canon ones, you can skip those but then there is mixed canon filler which is sometimes hard to tell which is canon or not, it got so bad, that I got the Naruto manga out side by side with the anime and had to look up what parts can be skipped since the most popular anime filler sites don't tell you which parts are supposed to be skipped. 

One more thing I will say is that the ending up to episode 500 isn't that great. The last 7 episodes focuses on a wedding, ship and character I already don't care about and it ends on promoting Boruto a show I don't even want to watch. It really does suck for the people who watch Shippuden back in 2007 just to be told, "now the adventures continue in Boruto". 

Overall, Naruto especially Shippuden, or Part 2, or post time skip is one of the biggest mixed bags of an anime I have ever watched. There are good parts, there's bad and there's parts that made me wonder what why I was even watching. As it is now, the Naruto Shippuden anime is hard to geniunely reccomend. If you want to watch the Naruto story and not read manga, Naruto Kai might be ideal and the Storm games might also be better than the Shippuden anime especially during the War arc, say what you want about Storm 3's non canon ending but it did make the Kage look more powerful and the anime is full of non canon stuff anyway. It depends on how much you of a gamer you are. As it stands, unless it's been another 10 years or I'm really feeling nostalgic, then I might watch Naruto Shippuden again but hopefully by then, a real Naruto Kai gets made. 

The Last Naruto Movie Anime Review

I remember watching this movie 10 years ago and strongly disliking it. This was back in a time where I really started to dislike Naruto considering how bad the story was getting and much filler hell the Shippuden anime was going through at the time, it wouldn't even end until 3 years later after this movie came out. Now that I'm kind of softer on Naruto, the original series is really good and have finished Shippuden all the way to the end while skipping as much filler and mixed canon as possible, I still definely think this movie is bad. Expecting great writing out of an anime movie based on a TV series is too much, I know but even judging the Last Naruto movie on that standard, it's still awful. I don't like to complain about the anime I watch, I really don't. I would rather talk about anime that I think is really good or at the very least flawed in a stimulating way. The Naruto Shippuden anime is the latter btw. This movie isn't this, I was either bored or zoning out and was just waiting for it to end. 

What makes this movie especially grating to watch is the amount of production value that was put into the movie. The animation is quite nice and has clearly more budget put into it and looks better than the anime is based on is. The fights are okay even if it lacks the clear fist fighting choreography that some fights in the anime did. What makes The Last Naruto movie more sad to watch is that unlike say something like Tekken: The Motion Picture, this movie has a budget and a lot of the animators worked hard to make the movie. 

To sum up The Last Naruto movie in a few words, it's basically, "Naruto x Hinata" ship the movie. Sure the movie may try to fool you into thinking that it isn't with it's doomsday plot of the world coming to an end but this is very much a romance movie at heart. 

Before I get into why the romance doesn't really work for me, if you aren't a Hinata Hyuga fan well guess what? This movie just isn't going to be for you. In many ways, if you aren't a fan of Hinata I struggle to figure out who this movie is even for, if you are a new comer to Naruto and just want to come to this movie for the production values and fights, you won't get that here. If you are a Naruto fan and don't like or care for Hinata, you won't get much out of this all the other characters like Kakashi, Shikimaru, Sai, Rock Lee, Sasuke, and any other character not Naruto and Hinata are basically just side characters with nothing to do. At least stuff like the Dragon Ball Z movies before Battle of Gods took place in their own universe and were all about the fights and Battle of Gods at least had more going on than canonizing the world's most uninteresting ship. 

Hinata Hyuga was a character I never once liked. To me she is everything bad about the whole, "hardwork vs natural talent" narrative and dicussion people love to have about Naruto. I really want to say this movie did an incredible job at having her character win me over but it didn't. Hinata is a character that is as bad if not worse than characters like Kaguya and Black Zetsu. At least with them, they get beaten in a few episodes and leave the story after. Hinata on the other hand has this movie and the last 7 episodes of Shippuden dedicated to her and everything post war arc related is the creators really wanting to shove this "ship" down your throat. 

Everything about the movie is connected to Hinata and hinges on how much you like her, her sister gets captured, the main villain wants to marry her, the movie makes a big deal about the scarf Hinata makes for Naruto, the Hyuga clan are suddenly important again after hundreds of episodes of being irrelevant. What annoys me about all this is that they had hundreds of chapters and anime episodes to make all this seem important and create possible set up for the movie but instead everything comes out of left field. 

With Hinata and the romance itself, everything about it is painfully uninteresting. The character herself becomes a main character out of nowhere without ever earning her keep. This just sums up Hinata in general. When Neji defeated her in the Chunin Exams, the Leaf Jonin came to protect her. What does she do after? Nothing until she confesses her love to Naruto in one of the dumbest ways you can do it, and almost gets killed, then she does absolutely nothing until Neji dies protecting her and Naruto. Does she contribute anything to the War arc? No, she ends up becoming one of the many characters Naruto babysits during that arc and ends up in the dream world Madara created.

Now the movie centered around Hinata should win me over right? Nope, its just her usual character interactions of her being incredibly nervous around Naruto and being incredibly shy and quiet(what riveting character development after hundreds of episodes) and then she surrenders herself to the enemy while Sakura is the one to heal Naruto and Shikimaru is the one talk Naruto out of doubting himself. What did Hinata do? Nothing. The only thing of worth she does in the almost 2 hour movie help Naruto destroy an orb. How impressive. This just sums up her up in general. She becomes an important character without earning any of it. Her character interactions despite confessing her love in the Pain arc, she still can't say how she feels. This might sound ranty, but everything about Hinata I just detest, she's not even clingy character in an interesting way. She was a one note character from the start and she still is with this movie. 

Overall, I did want to like the Last Naruto movie and have some enjoyment out of it like I did with Shippuden. The Naruto story post timeskip had many highs and many lows but this movie is nothing but lows. I can't think of many high points and it might've been a mistake watching this movie again at all knowing what it's really all about. 

Naruto x Boruto: Ninja Ultimate Storm Connections - Ninja History Mode Thoughts and Rant

Ninja Storm Connections was a game I wanted to like, I wanted to have some fun from since the very idea of a Naruto game where it covers the titular character's life as a kid all the way up to the final battle with Sasuke on the Valley of the End with all of the Boruto content being optional since well I think Boruto is a cash grab and you got to pay me to watch it but besides that, I primarily played the Ninja History Mode and everything about this mode is hastily put together and lazy. It might be harsh to judge the game primarily based on this, but this was a big reason why I played Storm Connections, but due to reasons I will state later, the execution is severly lacking.

Before I start heavily criticizing the game, I won't call the game outright "bad" since I got to the end of the game at all and rolled credits on this mode and if I were to rank this game out of the CyberConnect Ninja Storm games I played, I would say it's better than Storm 1 and Generations but not as good as Storm 2-4.

With that out of the way, everything about this game is hastily put together, copy and paste rush job.

First thing I notice right away about the Ninja History mode is that it's very cheaply made, there's no in engine cutscenes like in Storm 2-4 instead it's actually still images from the Naruto anime with voiced narration and occasional voice lines from other characters. What's worse is that not all of the chapters and "episodes" are voiced adding even more to the "cheap" nature of this mode. I wouldn't mind major events being skipped over especially since I wouldn't want a war section to be even longer but the lack of geniune production values in this mode just adds to how poorly put together it is.

If that's not enough, I was going to commend this game for having the setpieces, QTEs and bosses unlike Storm 1 and Generations but there is just one big problem:

Most if not all of these are reused from past Storm games. This might not be a big issue if you didn't play Storm 2-4 originally but since I did when I got to Kakashi boss post timeskip, I was like, "did I play all this before?" Some bosses like the Kakazu fight is even removed and if just a generic one on one fight. This just adds even more to rushed hastily put together nature of Storm Connections.

The biggest kicker to all this is that the game is just way too easy for about 95% of the game, I'm not asking every game to be super hard but due to the easy difficulty especially if you choose to play the tutorial is that fights last less than 5 minutes 95% of the time. So what you will be doing is engaging in fights that last less than 5 minutes than watch 10-15 minutes worth of cutscenes, and this is what this mode will consist of. On top of all this, the game pulls a Wonderful 101 and CC2's Demon Slayer game and you can die as many time as you want but get a worse rank making death trivial which adds even more to the easy nature of the game, all though a part of me thinks this could be a blessing in disguise since I can get the game done faster. As a whole, this mode is basically the Bouncer minus everything that makes the Bouncer hilariously bad but endearing since that game is about 1 hour for the average first time through while my play time for Ninja History was 11 hours for me and 6 hours if you look up longplays. If you skip the cutscenes, it's even shorter.

However what's the final nail in the coffin for me is the fighting mechanics along with the easy difficulty. The fighting system of the Storm games have never really been "deep" but I always felt at least with Storm 2 and 3, they at least broke up the pace with exploration and beat em up sections. With Storm Connections, the specticle is reused from past games and most off the fights consist of is mashing circle, then pressing triangle and circle to a special ninjutsu or ultimate attack, and then occasionally pressing L2 to a substitution move to break out of a combo in case if the meter is full to do 4 times. You can pretty much do all these tactics to win every fight in the game and if you don't care about ranks, you can keep doing this.

The only exception to this is bosses but once again, if you don't care about ranks or 100%, you can keep dying until you get their health down to zero.

Overall, this game is very much the definition of a chore, I wanted to play this since I already played Storm 2-4 already and I wanted to play something "new" but instead this was just a greatest hits collection of games I would rather play instead. I wanted to find some good in this game and this mode in particular but instead, I was just bored throughout most if not all my playtime and was just happy when I rolled credits. The game is mediocre and forgettable as mediocre and forgettable can get. It's shocking licensed games of this quality comes out in today's day and age.

Super Mario RPG(2023) Review

I always heard about how "good" Super Mario RPG was, I was almost considering emulating the original game years back but lost interest in doing it, at the same time over the years I always heard how "good" the combat in Mario RPGs tend to be and how Mario RPG along with Chrono Trigger tend to be some of the best RPGs the SNES has to offer. On top of all this, I stopped playing RPGs a while ago back in 2019 and I only occasionally dabbled in the genre like with Cyberpunk 2077 and Dragon Ball Kakarot. I wanted Mario RPG to be the first one to slowly get me back into the genre especially with this remake and after all this rambling, what do I think? The game is pretty good and I'm surprised I got to the end at all but I wouldn't consider it to be great.

I decided to play on Breezy Mode for this playthrough since I'm not really familar with turn based RPGs or how Mario RPG combat worked, and it's a good enough mode for a newbie, it gets more challenging towards the end but it never felt impossible or that I needed to grind at any point, the weird thing about the game on this mode is that the first boss and the early game were the hardest parts of the game, once I got past the first boss everything slowly got easier.

The battle system in the game is surprisingly engaging for a guy who never really plays RPGs and especially turn based games. You essentially have to time button presses for attacks and defensive and because of this battle give you much more agency than the games of this genre usually would and it made more engaging for me as a result. Not all attacks enemies throw are blockable so I had to watch out.

All though one issue, I did have is that fodder enemies were a bit too easy with the occasional enemies about 25% of the time where they take a considerable amount of damage before dying.

The bosses are more interesting, playing on Breezy probably detracted from the challenge but I did like how bosses did make the player switch between characters and make me use items. I used a lot of maply syrups, Peach was the primary healer and Mallow's Thought Peak ability came in extremely handy for weaknesses, I never thought I would need to use any of this on Breezy but the game slowly taught me into using them and I didn't need to look up a guide and I commend it for that.

Outside of the battles there are occasional mini games, these do an okay job at breaking up the pace but nothing too special, they at least are never mandatory so makes them tolerable by default. The level design for dungeons are mostly "fine" if nothing special, they get the job done with the occasional obtuse moment here and there but there at least wasn't so many that I had to look one up every few seconds.

However one major negative is the jumping sections, I get that Mario is a platforming series but these parts felt forced. One the jump physics never feel precise and it's easy for me to miss jumps and the platforms can be easy to miss on top of easy to fall off since I will be pushing the analog stick to make it to the platform than accidentally fall off. There isn't too many sections like this but the ending section with the 6 doors requires you to do at least one of these platforming sections or do the trivia sections but I find the trivia sections even worse so I stuck with platforming and it makes these sections even more insufferable since it's either do bad platforming to progress or awful trivia puzzles to progress, doing either felt like I had to pick my poison. This was by far the worst part of the game, luckily I only had to do 4 out of 6 doors, if I had to do all 6, I would've quit the game.

A big issue I have with the game is the story, I know expecting a well written story out of a Mario game is basically going to get me mocked, and while the story in Mario RPG isn't "terrible" it felt like it could've been more. What carries the game is the character interactions, they are endearing enough on a surface and Mallow is an okay character decent development but that's kind of the thing, the story is just midly interesting enough on a surface level. What could've elevated the story is probably Smity actually doing things to make me dislike him whether it'd be doing henious acts or the worf effect. He's just typical final boss that barely does anything. The story in general lacks any kind of clear stakes, no one dies and I guess you could say it adds to the saturday morning cartoon nature but outside of the gameplay, the story was just "there". It's not good enough to be remarkable or bad enough to make hate seeing the cutscenes happen. It just felt like it could've been more than being an "okay game story".

The ending is also pretty weak and it's basically just collecting 7 stars and that's it. I felt like the story could've been a bit more interesting.

Overall, Super Mario RPG was a solid game for a genre I don't even actively engage in. I might play and try to finish more RPG because of this but who knows.

Crow Country Review

This was a pretty interesting survival horror game of sorts, as far as indie games are concerned, it's not as good as Tormented Souls and Signalis but still a pretty good game in it's own right. I randomly heard about the game and since it had a console and PC release, I decided to give the game a shot.

The best way of describing Crow Country is that it's the original Resident Evil but on a theme park rather than a creepy mansion. There isn't many horror games that I'm aware of that even take place on theme parks so the setting alone is enough to make the game stand out a good deal all though like many of the these recent horror games, there is some Silent Hill inspirations like the monster designs, the fact you have unlimited inventory space and an emphasis on puzzles. The asethetics are much like a PS1 Final Fantasy game particularly FF7.

Good things about Crow Country is the level design and unlike many horror games of it's type pretty much of all the game takes place on the aforementioned theme park, areas of interest, puzzles, and items to collect that might be relevant early game might be more important more so the furthur you go into it. There is a late game puzzle in the theatre that you actually discover early on in the game but can't solve until the final few sections. You can even do many of the sections in a random order, once you get the silver key, you can unlock many of the games optional resources before you even touch a major section of the game. You can do the power generator area and get some secrets and the game doesn't really slowly start to wrap up until you get the Gold Key and you can many of the secrets before then. There is also a lot of shortcuts and a decent amount of routes to get from place to place on the map. Level design is the most impressive part.

The map is pretty useful and is better than Tormented Souls' map at least. For one, on PS5, you can look at the map by pressing the touch pad as opposed to TS where you need to multiple presses just to activate. One thing I didn't like was that trying to find secrets on the map required a second button press on the map screen and I discovered this late game unforunately, but credit where credit is due. I even got most of the secrets by the end of the game too, but I needed a walkthrough for that.

Story is surprisingly engaging, I'm glad it isn't mostly hidden behind notes and the story is surprisingly direct for a horror game, cutscenes give you enough information on what is going on and while I would've liked voice acting, the characters are okay, I wouldn't call this story anything super amazing, I did pay attention to it a lot more than I was going to.

Issues I have with the game is that combat is a little too easy, on the medium "survival horror" difficulty, enemies go down within less than 10 shots, I don't want this kind of combat to be too challenging but I argue games like Tormented Souls did a better job at feeling underpowered but powerful enough that you are barely scraping by since in TS, the player character moves a lot slower and enemies take more shots with melee being a good way to save ammo but also risk getting attack by enemies getting up from the shots you gave them. Enemies in Crow Country including the final boss barely put up much of a geniune fight, the only hard part is aligning the analog stick fast enough and make sure enemies don't come too close since you can't move while shooting, most enemies will go down with a few shots from the pistol and shotgun, I only used weapons like the magnum for fun. Grenades make the already easy combat even easier even if I accidently throw them from time to time.

The biggest threat in Crow Country are going to be the traps since many of them you will not see coming and will happen to hit you out of nowhere a lot of the time. This where the bulk of your healing items and antidotes will be used on more so than the enemies.

I also found the game a little too puzzle heavy, this might and I dislike to use the term here, "subjective" but I'm not big survival horror puzzles and I'm more in it for the level design and the barely scraping by action, this might not be an issue for others, but the biggest challenge of Crow Country really comes from how much patience you are willing to put up with regarding puzzles and getting hit by traps.

Overall, Crow Country is a solid game in a line of well made indie survival horror games. If you already played Tormented Souls and Signalis and are looking for more, Crow Country is worth looking into.

Tekken 8 Review

This game was quite the surprise, I already heard good things about before buying the game on sale but I'm surprised by how much more time I gave the game than I was expecting to give it at all.

Usually, with fighting games I play, I play the story mode or at the very least the closest thing to a story mode and play one or two character routes in Tekken's case, play through the Mishimas' arcade story mode and call it day but nope, I even played a few of the character episodes and even got a decent number of the character endings. I honestly haven't recalled playing a fighting game for this long outside of Mortal Kombat 9. This is the newbie friendly Tekken game that I heard Tekken 7 was but could never really get into.

I might as well mention the big improvements over T7. There is an actual tutorial mode now, but it's through Arcade Quest, it does a good enough job at teaching me the basics and while I was never really "amazing" at the game, I at least had enough of an idea to say do some zoning, mix ups with some high and low attacks, guard from both high and low positions, do the "heat moves" of sorts, perform some grabs, and with Jin have a decent amount of his combos down, all though I was mashing like mad. I could've learned a lot of this stuff through previously playing T5 but I do like that T8 has a better tutorial.

Some other improvements over 7 is that the story mode production values are a massive improvement, like monumental. Where Tekken 7 had occasional cutscenes with a bored narrator sucking me out of the drama, T8 has cutscenes so well made that I often had to look hard to notice the changes between the cutscenes and in engine gameplay.

The story I can actually follow this time too, the game does have some weird quirks like characters speaking different languages and somehow understanding each other really well, but unlike 7, I did connect to Jin Kazama's face turn more so than Kazuya's plight to kill Heihachi in 7. There were some geniune insane moments in the story and the attempt to involve other Tekken characters outside of the Mishimas was commendable if ultimately still going to be about the latter at the end of the day. Kazuya is a decent enough villain at making me want to see him defeated, he does have a major worf effect moment where he defeats Azazel. The story also has those aforementioned insane moments like Jin becoming an angel and having a super over the top fight between him and Kazuya that lasts 3 whole chapters, this would be a great way to end the series but there is obviously going to be more after this and it makes me wonder how much is Namco going to top how insanely over the top this game is.

The final improvement is that the normal difficulty actually feel approachable for newcomers, where T7's normal I got beat up by Akuma so much that I lowered to easy, T8's normal I was able to beat to the end without ever lowering to easy or use "special style". I like that this was a normal mode that while can be challenging for a newbie like me, didn't feel impossible. Not a big fan of the game switching up characters outside of Jin but they were decent enough one offs.

Speaking of character switching, might as well mention some negatives, while the return to the "Tekken Force" mode for a part of the campaign was cool, the controls for it wasn't that great, I had a hard time avoid attackings since it seems to involve the 3D fighting movement of one on one fights but with multiple enemies which doesn't make for the most smooth of controls.

The character episodes were also a massive wasted opportunity, it could've been a great moment to tell the player what the other characters besides Jin were up to during the story especially during his battle with Kazuya towards the end of the campaign story mode, it instead just seems like a bunch of isolated arcade mode endings which seems to take place in it's own canon. I did get to play around with some characters I did enjoy playing as like Paul Pheonix, Nina Williams, Jun Kazama, and Steve Fox and while I mostly enjoy my time, the game's monotony does start to set in like how most of the non Mishima characters took place in the Iron Fist tournament with the same cage match stage over and over. I was slowly starting to get sick of the scenery and the non canon endings.

I'll give T8 credit for being the most time I spent with a fighting game offline and in single player, I'm not sure if I will ever be anything more than just a casual player who plays these games occasionally and while the competitive scene seems really intense and interesting, I'm not sure if I'm that passionate enough to even bother.

Overall, Tekken 8 is a great surprise for genre that I play casually. I'm not sure if I ever go beyond being a causal fan of the genre but I'm glad there was a game that made me try out more than I normally would and I commend T8 for that.