Castlevania: Order of Eccelsia Review

Much like Portrait of Ruin, I started Order of Eccelsia around 10 years ago on an emulator but could never get very far in it and after the Dominus Collection releasing so recently, I was finally able to beat it, however I do have a more clear understanding as to why I never got very far into when I played it the first time.

The first thing noticeable about Order of Eccelsia right away is the upped difficulty by comparison to many of the other of the Igarashi produced Castlevanias, this is easily the hardest one I'm not really sure if it's for the right reasons either.

The early game hell in Order of Eccelsia makes the game so offputting to newcomers that I wouldn't be surprised if many people who started the game up for the first time gave up around the first few levels. So many things are either not explained to the player, how weak many of starting attacks and glyphs are or just how damage spongey enemies and bosses can be. I almost wanted to quit at around the crab elevator fight and if it weren't for the built in rewind that comes with the Dominus Collection, I would've just stopped around there.

Later in the game, you do get more powerful glyphs like throwing fire balls that covers your entire flank from where it is casted and a light ball and even an energy beam late game. What really helps is that the player will rescue villagers and doing side quests for them will unlock better gear and healing items. You don't even get the ability to buy potions and hi potions until getting at least a good ways into the game. You need to get to finish a few of the levels and bosses to unlock regular potions and a good ways into the game to unlock hi potions, you can forget about super potions since they are insanely expensive. However once you rescue the village cook and do his side quests, you can buy ramen and BBQ fish which aren't as expensive as potions and can revive more health.

With all this said, I'm sure looking up lots of posts online could've made the game easier or unlocking more high level gear but at the same time, enemies take up an insane amount of damage and take far too long to die. If it weren't for the stages being short, the tickets that warps you back to the village and the rewind, the game would've been impossible to beat for me. The bosses take so long to die and they do so much damage to you that it's hard not to abuse the rewind feature since if I don't that just means more grinding.

Dracula's Castle is a level I very much dislike too. I don't mind have a lengthy level inside of his castle, but at this point, this is the ending section of the game and it takes so long to finish. There's at least 3-4 bosses you have to fight before Death and there is also a fetch quest involving the heads of Cerberus in order to unlock the Dracula boss itself.

The double jump in OoE can also be very misleading too, 95% of the higher platforms you can reach by casually double jumping but there are those platforms on occasion where you need to specific timing with the double jump to reach it, to rescue Irinia you need to do a specific jump from below the waterfall to reach the platform to get her, I almost quit the game due to how confusing the timing was when it was straightforward before this. Dracula's Castle has at least 4-5 platforms like this. It just makes me wonder, why are 95% of the jumps simple than on occasion I need to be precise with my timing? The lack of carefully easing the player is what annoys me.

One big issue I have with SOTN styled metroidvanias is that you can look around and find secrets in so many of the levels and all they reward you with is gear that has less stats than the one you are using, weapons weaker than the one currently equipped or just something completely useless like some materials for side quests I'm not sure if it gets me one step closer to finishing. I thought OoE going back to the older style of CV game would mean stuff like this wouldn't happen as much but not really.

Some good things I'll say about the game is that the requirements to get the "true" ending is generally simple stuff, just rescue all the villagers and they are mostly easy to find and you will need to rescue them in order to get certain things like healing items and armour. Sometimes, you will need to backtrack but it's nothing too time consuming.

The grapple hook like ability with Magnes gets a decent amount of use, I was expecting it to be used in the early levels but it still gets acknowledged throughout the game, there will always be a level that requires some use of the ability even by Dracula's Castle you still need to use the power which is some decent game design in a game with so many abilities given to the player.

Overall, I don't dislike OoE but I can see why I never got far into the game when I first played and it can be jarring with it's difficulty compared to what came before especially considering those who played CV for challenge probably stopped playing a while ago.

Ghost Recon: Wildlands Review

This is going to be a weird review, my experience with Ghost Recon Wildlands was basically, "this is kind of fun for the first few hours but the more I play it, the more I felt how painfully average it is". That's GR Wildlands in nutshell, it's not a game I consider good or bad just on the average on the side. Compared to the Ghost Recon games I have played liked Advanced Warfighter 2 and Future Solider, Wildlands is primarily carried by it's highly polished and amazing feeling controls and combat more so than the campaign experience being anything standout.

The story is basically nothing more than an excuse plot but some aspects of it I liked. For example, every time the player does a major blow to El Sueno's drug operation, there is a short optional video to watch where you see the villain reacting to what you did and considering I'm a fan of when games or any story have the villains react to the actions the hero does, this was something I enjoyed, it didn't have to be there, but it was nice that it was there at all.

The story itself is derivative stuff if you watch a lot of crime and political thrillers. I can't help but find characters like Karen Bowman and El Sueno to remind of characters in other stories and games. The former is voiced by Diana Burnwood's VA in the Hitman World of Assassination games and it was hard not to be reminded of her and Black Lagoon's Balalika. El Sueno's VA really feels like he was doing his best Vincent D'Onofrio Wilson Fisk impression.

Anyways enough of that, the gameplay of GR Wildlands at least when it comes gunplay is great. Damage animations when hitting enemy with gunfire just nails how powerful a comtemporary video game firearm should feel. The exaggerated blood splatter and the sound indicators upon hitting them just has a high level of polish that I like to see in any game.

The easy difficulty is also very accomadating for people who don't want to engage with the coop, exploring the open world or needing to unlock more skills in the skill tree to be efficient at the game since if it wasn't, I would've dropped the game a few hours in.

The controls on console feel just as if not more refined than Future Solider's, it's pretty much the same except no Splinter Cell Conviction and Blacklist snap cover system. Your character does feel at the very least nimble enough to climb up some walls and chest high walls and it's nice to be able to scale down cliffsides without the fear of the game killing me I'm not allowed to take the slightest bit of fall damage. The easy difficulty also makes enemy awareness accomadating to make stealth possible all though I would never call the stealth as good in an open world setting like Metal Gear Solid 5's since despite having power generators and being able to toggle night vision, darkness does not not seem to effect visiblity. 

A big positive for the game is that you can still extract targets at safe houses even when helicoptors and enemies are shooting you, it might be unimmersive but I'm thankful this is here at all since it would add extra frustration.

Few other points to the game's favor is that missions are short and generally have checkpoints in them when they go on for slightly longer, there's lots of fast travel points to cut down on some tedious travel time and finally, you do not need to take out all 4 Cartel Bosses to beat the game, temmate AI is also fine and rarely got in the way and always helped when I was down which is nice, you just need to takedown 2 which is great since if the game went on any longer I would just get more and more annoyed by it. You do need to takedown all 4 for the "true ending" but why even go for that when the story is an excuse plot to begin with. On top of this, the story, final mission and default ending changes very little no matter which order you kill the cartel bosses.

I might sound positive but all these things I listed is basically me saying, "I'm just happy that the game I spent 20 hours playing and got to the end of wasn't terrible and was able to beat at all."

One big issue is the big the open world is, there are fast travel points but you will still need to do lots of driving. I did beat Jak 2 so I never found Wildlands' driving as awful as some pointed out but the amount of driving and empty space there can make the stretches of downtime is very boring.

The load times on PS5 are also really long which makes me want to play on easy that much more so I can lower the amount of times seeing the load screen upon death and lower the repeat runbacks to the outposts. 

The biggest issue is that missions are one note. Most of them last about less than 10 minutes and it revolves around "destroy x, kindnap y, kill z, locate f, interrogate c, find documents, hack into this, defend this, attack this vehicle, talk to this guy, sneak into here". If you played the first 5 hours of Wildlands, you already played much of the game. If the game was 10 hours, I'd be much forgiving as a whole but it takes a while just to takedown the first Cartel boss and you've seen everything. 

Overall, GR Wildlands is a game I can't say I outright dislike but at the same time, I can't say it rises above being average.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

Fallen Order was a game I played at around the time of release, however I dropped it after a few hours since I was just annoyed by the lightsaber combat and it to be inferior to Jedi Outcast and Academy and was disappointed that it was going to be the future of lightsaber combat games going forward, I was also turned away by how derivative it felt on top of the story especially it's premise really getting on my nerves and how many were praising it at the time. 5 years later after the initial release and me being more acceptive to playing games on easy mode, I decided to revisit the game and now I do enjoy the game, I've got my issues with it, but as a whole Fallen Order was a game that kept me hooked for hours whenever I started a play session of it and that's the best thing any game can do.

I'll begin with the story and it's...okay. I wouldn't call it "terrible" just underdeveloped and could've been better. There are some good moments here and there but as a whole it's just inconsistent. It's already hard to accept the very premise of the game especially if you are familar with the Star Wars canon before or after the Disney buy out. Every time the characters said, "we are going to rebuild the Jedi Order" I can't help but roll my eyes consider everything that happens in the movies.

Getting past that, it's not a terrible story on it's own, the later parts of it are better than the earlier stuff. The latter sections while having a good opening that contextualizes Kal well just hits a stumbling point where he goes on a series of unrelated adventures that doesn't have much to do with his personal growth. For example, levels on Zeffo and Kashyyyk doesn't add much to the game since the former is looking for a tomb and the latter is helping the Rebels on Kashyyyk which has nothing to do with Kal himself outside of him being heroic.

Trilla could've been a better villain since she never does much to make the player dislike her, she gets one fight with Kal on Zeffo and then no shows for most of the game. Darth Vader comes too out of nowhere for his appreance to be impactful and if you don't know the movies, him showing up would be like "huh" moment.

However when the flashback to Order 66 was awesome and well done, the Episode 3 fan in me was enjoying the music that played during those scenes and it does a good job at establishing why Kal is the way he is and accepts that, from here on out the story gets better with him accepting his mistake and being more confident. Marron's on the underdeveloped side however due to her joining the party late game.

The gameplay is also really solid...depending on how much you can tolerate the combat. I'm not a big fan of combat revolving heavily around parrying and even with story difficulty, where the timing is supposedly non existent, I still couldn't consistenly pull them off, I just mash L1 like crazy, enemies would still land hits on me. The moderate SW fan in me also finds it weird with the idea of Jedi struggling to take on hordes of Stormtroopers, this is something I argue the Jedi Knight games did better since the lightsaber was a super deadly weapon that killed enemies in a 1 or 2 hits instead of just being a wacking stick.

The rest of the gameplay outside of that? I really enjoyed. The best way of describing Fallen Order's moment to moment gameplay outside of combat is like what if the Prince of Persia Sands of Time games and Metroid Prime ever had a baby? You get this.

Platforming might be a little too reminscent of PoP with the automation and wall running and the map is similar to Metroid Prime, at the same time, PoP never had expansive level design and constantly giving the player new ways to traverse the world throughout the game. Samus Aran in Metroid never had the over the top abilties that a Jedi does.

Force Push and Pull get more use in this than any SW game I played force pushing walls, force pulling ropes during a platforming run while wall running, and pulling to unlock platforms.

It might be a little on the derivative side but compared to Uncharted's climbing of "holding the left stick and occasionally press x", Fallen Order's platforming of wall runs, climbing, sliding, jumping, rope climbing, swimming and swinging and later a double jump is far more involving.

The light metroidvania elements also makes the game fresh and hard to put down, every planet visit is structure like a metroidvania where there is a number of blocked off areas and it gets hard to traverse at first but you get a new power and now traversal can feel liberating.

Around the 2nd visit of Kashyyk was a little annoying, the later I would get a double jump and then it starts to becomes a joy to traverse after that initial struggle. The player just keeps getting new combat and traversal moves that prevents it from getting stale.

Overall, Fallen Order despite it's inconsistencies with combat and story has such a well made and structured campaign that I can look past all that.

Silent Hill 2(2001) Review

This was a game I played back in 2012 when I got a PS2 copy for it, I did eventually finish it in 2014 and still didn't think that much of it but now having finished the game for the first time in 10 years while also replaying SH1 a few weeks prior, I'm still struggling to figure out this notion that SH2 being considered an "amazing game" and "better" than SH1 even comes from. I consider SH2 to be a medicore game in every respect except music and visuals.

I'll start off with what I like before I start getting to the negative and lukewarm parts, in terms of visuals, I do prefer SH2 over SH1, I also like the visuals of the latter game but I prefer like the grimy and dirty PS2 look of SH2. The character models are detailed and the designs of them have them look a bit on the normal side without them looking sterotypically attractive like in a Hollywood movie. The fog is also much more dense and detailed than SH1 and as a result the early game of SH2 can be pretty creepy because it's that much harder to see what's in front of you since the fog itself is so much thicker now.

However one negative with the visuals is with the cutscenes while better directed from a cinematography standpoint has an odd habbit of showing some parts of the cutscene in FMV form and other parts of it in engine, it just makes for a weird inconsistency. Games like Soul Reaver 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 managed to consistently put their cutscenes in engine and not randomly shove in FMV parts then in engine.

The music as usual for Akria Yamaoka's SH music is fantastic and the background music fits the cutscenes well while also being chill and relaxing to listen in their own right.

The story however I am lukewarm on, it's not "bad" but I feel it's overhyped. Most of the characters have little screen time to get attached to any of them and the only one I came close to being so with was Eddie since he just enjoys being a gultonous, violent psychopath. The rest of the characters are just kind of "there". Maria is a sexified personification of James' wife and never really goes past wanting to have his way with James, Angela is just an abused child and Laura I guess is supposed to the child James and Mary could've had together? They aren't terrible characters but they aren't great either. I also prefer SH1's approach of having an actual villain since I'm not sure how much of SH2's story is actually happening or if it really is all in James' head.

Speaking of James Sunderland, much of his personality is dependant on how you act towards Maria and in the game, meaning that cutscene James is hard character to even root for since he's a blank slate for the player. He's not really all that different from a silent protagonist with dialogue. I wouldn't want him to be silent but at the same time compared to Harry's drive to protect his daughter, James I found dull. I also never found a character as interesting as Lisa Garland or a scene that rivals her death from SH1.

The gameplay however is where many of my issues with SH2 comes from. SH1 was by no means an amazingingly designed game but it got the job done. SH2's combat is considered "bad" but intentionally designed but I argue it's just brainless and boring on normal difficulty. SH1's normal wasn't the most balanced but SH2's normal is somehow worse.

SH2's gameplay feels borderline brainless. At first, I was using melee to attack enemies to save ammo and I got less ammo and healing items by comparison to SH1, but by the time I got to Brookhaven Hospital, I disocovered most if not every enemy can beaten with 3 pistol bullets and one round of a pistol has 10 shots, so with one round, I can kill 3 enemies and the enemy count never gets higher than 3 in SH2 on top being showering with lots of ammo. At least SH1 enemies ran towards, grabbed and ganged up on you. In SH2, it's esstentially a game in of itself if an enemy can even land a blow on you.

The Lying Figure isn't even a great enemy but it will be used over and over again throughout the game as if the devs are super proud for making him and he always can be taken out in 3 pistol bullet shots maybe 4 or if it decides to lay down around crawl fast on occasion.

The enemies in the SH overworld are Lying Figures and Nurses and since you have to try hard to get hit by them, it's easy to stockpile massive amounts of ammo and healing items making the game even easier. Compare that to SH1 where enemies in the overworld moved fast, flew and can even grab you making the player be that much on the move.

Due to all of this, nothing in SH2 was even a threat for me anymore, enemies and bosses were pushovers and the only "hard" fight was dual Pyramid Head but that was because the shotgun had a long windup time before it can be fired and the Hunting Rifle had for shots before reload so I had to use the pistol and that did less damage making the fight longer.

The level design in SH2 is shockingingly poor too, SH1's wasn't amazing by any means but SH2 has so many doors that can't be open that it was almost starting to become a running joke. Why do you even have door textures at all if you can't even open the doors? You might as well have them be generic wall textures. That and I had a harder time finding key items or noticing lock doors, this could be me being so bored that I played sloppily but I felt the first game did a better job at tell me what is or isn't interactable. 

Overall, I wouldn't consider SH2 to be a terrible game, but time hasn't made me any less lukewarm on it.

Dragon Ball Z: Legacy of Goku 2 Review

DBZ Legacy of Goku 2 was a game I always heard about and especially for being one of the best Dragon Ball games, I owned the poster for the game despite never owning a copy of it or the actual GBA system. I still have it on the wall to one of my rooms to this day, it's a really good poster and it's been there since the early 00s which is crazy in of itself. I was looking for a DB game I never played and all ones on modern consoles I already played or don't interest me so I decided to give Legacy Goku 2 a shot.

As a whole, Legacy of Goku 2 never rises above just being "okay". It's a serviceable game but at the same time even it weren't for a certain grinding spot in the Northern Mountains, I wouldn't be able to beat the game at all. I haven't played Buu's Fury yet but I'd say Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure is the better game if I have to compare the GBA DB games I have finished. I prefer Advanced Adventure being a pure beat em platformer instead of Legacy of Goku's action RPG approach, and this is coming from someone who prefers the post timeskip part of the DB story when Goku is an adult.

Right away, when I start up LoG2 for the first time there is just something I need to accept regarding the game, this is the wackiest and most insane Dragon Ball game ever made, everything about LoG2 is just introducing weird and wacky scenarios that weren't even in the anime and all though the original run of DBZ had it's filler, LoG2 just amps it up to 11 regarding this.

To name some examples, you have an entire section where you play as Gohan adventuring around Goku's house and you have an entire pointless dream sequence fight with Frieza and when the latter shows up in the story for real, he gets beaten in a cutscene. You also have the Garlic Jr. Saga's Black Water mist of all things being used as a narrative reason as to there are hostile enemies in the various environments of the game.

It doesn't just end there either, the game covers the Cell Saga of the Dragon Ball story and it takes at least 3 hours of the game for Androids 19 and 20 to show up in the story, before then you will be fighting dinosaurs, resuing children, getting a key to the city back from an old man who somehow knows magic, and to top all of this, none of this adds anything to the overarching plot, and nothing is new is revealed about the characters. All of this is padding for the sake of padding.

All though this gets toned down the more the game goes there is still other wacky stuff like destroying a force field to Dr. Gero's lab and needing to destroy 3 generators to get to that said lab where in the anime, they just fly there.

This padding is as charming as it is obnoxious since well, I've played so many DB games over the years and they tell the same story over and over so having new content that isn't well executed is pretty interesting but at the same time, it's still basically padding that doesn't add to much of anything.

One great thing about LoG2 is the fact that it uses the Faulconer Productions score of DBZ, I love that score of the series and the music in LoG2 is fantastic stuff, I'd say it's worth checking out for those who don't even like the music that it's based on since some songs are improved like the Super Namek and Cell's theme and other songs are as great as ever like Android 16 and Shenron's themes.

Outside of all this, the game is nothing remarkable, combat is "okay" but it's mainly at it's best when fighting hordes of enemies since it can be fun taking them down with fists and then switch to key blasts to fight them at a distance. Special attacks are mostly usesless outside of Piccolo's Special Beam Canon, since it has a large blast radius and it damage adds up to enemies while they are getting hit by it. Enemies also give plenty of health and energy drops upon death making the combat at the very least feel fair to some degree.

Transformations are also handled pretty well and are true to the source material too since you need ki energy to maintain the transformation and it's draining to use as well but it also doubles your strength and speed upon activation which needs to a few seconds to be activated and can be interrupted. It's nice to have a source material accurate take on this in a game.

However problems start to show during boss fights because it reveals that LoG2's playable characters are basically tanks. You can't dodge, block or no defensive options and bosses don't give health so bosses are tank battles. Hitboxes are pretty large for you and the enemy and there are no attack telegraphs. At this point, you need to grind in the story to beat many of them. You get stronger in the story but not during gameplay. Without grinding and some Senzu Beans late game where you can grind for fish, LoG2 would be hard to beat for me.

The final battle at the Cell Games is really easy because of all this and I breezed through it by that point.

Overall, it's an okay DB game but hard to reccomend to non fans whether it would be the immense grinding to get past the various bosses before the Cell games or how the plot itself which mainly covers the Cell Saga can be have it's fair share of padding. 

Bleach Anime Review

Bleach is a show that is complicated to talk about for me. Back when I first watched the series, I was watching it around the time where they were airing the Soul Society arc on TV and that was like starting the Lord of the Rings Trilogy and you start with the Two Towers and as a result, the previously established world building and context was lost on me and I was kind of just "eh" if not borderline apathetic towards the show among other reasons. I would catch Bleach again on TV later on, and the funny thing about it is that I watched the series at least 3 depressing points in my life. After me saying all this, it sounds like Bleach should be an anime I very much enjoy and that I should be singing nothing but praises for it but I can't. I recently watched it again because of all the hype surronding the 1000 Year Blood War arc adaptation and it made me curious if me dropping the series around the Arancar arc 10 years ago was a wise decision or if I was just impatient, turns out me disliking Bleach post Soul Society arc was very much me not being impatient. Bleach is a show with a good framwork but the execution is strongly lacking. 

Before I start criticizing Bleach, I will be positive about it for a few paragraphs. When it comes to the openings, style, and especially the music of the series, the show is great, the OST is fantastic stuff, it's up there with anime like Ghost in the Shell Standalone Complex, Death Note, .hack//sign, and Full Metal Alchemist 2003 in how the music is both atmospheric, immersing you into the scenes, and being great songs in their own right, some Bleach songs I still listen to this day. The Tensa Zangetsu Bankai theme or "soft strums" is one of my favorite anime songs of all time and "nothing can be explained" is pretty much my brooding music. 

Bleach's characters can be very well written and charismatic, not all of them since it has far too many for the show to handle, but I do very much enjoy the members of the the Soul Society with characters like Byakuya Kuchiki, Kenpachi Zaraki, Mayuri Kurotsuchi, among many others. These 3 characters I mentioned can often be borderline like villains than heroes. Kenpachi is a bloodthirsty battle driven psycho, Mayuri in some ways is basically if the X-Men villain, Mr. Sinister was on the side of good, and even Byakuya can be a little too much on the smug side even Genryu Yamamato's powers seemingly fits the powers of a villain more so than a hero. Rukia and Renji's backstories are pretty interesting and the Gungrave fan in me really did enjoy drawing the parallels between with them and Brandon Heat and Harry MacDowell. However, Bleach does have characters who aren't very good good at all and at times get more focus than the characters I mentioned like Orihime Inonue and Yatsura Sado. Uryu Ishida can be a decent character but that's the problem with Bleach, most of it's interesting and good characters are almost never given anything interesting to do or fight villains who are one note, and barely has any personal connections with. 

Ichigo on paper is a pretty interesting character, sure it can sound a little corny with how he how much he loves to emphasize that he protects friends and family but I do find him interesting in how he kind of thinks like a mobster where if you mess with anyone in social circle, you directly mess with him. He talks like he is selfless when you can argue it's more out selfishness. There is a lot you can take a character like this but Bleach doesn't really do this more on that later. 

The first 60 something or so episodes of Bleach, I'd say are solid stuff, Ichigo's backstory on how he blames himself for his mother's death I find to be compelling since it gives a good enough reason for his hero complex to be a thing and why he has such an obessesion with protecting those he loves. It also explains why he is so serious all the time. Sure it may sound a little too similar to Yu Yu Hakusho but I'd argue Bleach does a good job at being different like how Ichigo chose to be a Soul Reaper out of reluctance where Yusuke had to find out after dying that people cared for him. The Soul Society arc is basically Saint Seiya meets the Green Lantern mythos. 

Speaking of the Soul Society arc, it's generally good stuff, Rukia is pretty compelling in how she is conflicted on whether or not she deserves to live or die and her backstory of being a street urchin who blames herself for the death of the only person who cared for outside of Renji is compelling stuff. The part where the aforementioned "soft strums" song when Ichigo saved her from the execution admittedly got me teary eyed. Byakuya is built up very well as an antagonist, where it might be Bleach's best and only good use of the Worf Effect, where the power gaps between him and Ichigo is slowly closing but it at the same time, kind of far, and the latter needing to learn Bankai fast really adds urgency to the story. 

This will also be the only time I praise Sosuke Aizen as a villain here since in the Soul Society arc, he is kind of compelling in that Momo geniunely wants to believe he is a good person and the story in turns does a good job making you buy that Aizen could be that but ultimately, he was nothing more than a two faced liar, it's all foreshadowed very well since Toshiro is the guy doubting Aizen's "true" intentions. His plans get a little silly but compared to what happens later, this is just least of the how dumb it gets. 

There are some issues with the arc, like how it begins with Ichigo's and his friends, the latter pretty much disppears for a lot of the arc but I'm willing to overlook this. 

The later two filler arcs of Bleach like Zanpakuto Rebellion and Gotei 13 Invasion are solid and are far better than the later canon arcs post Soul Society like the Arancar and Fullbring. The characters introduced in the Soul Society are given more interesting villains to fight with the former being their own swords and the latter being clones of themselves. And the Gotei 13 Invasion arc in general was the one time where I was like, "you know Bleach can be cool" back when I watched it on TV. These two arcs prevent me from giving Bleach a 4 and instead raises my score to a 5. I won't go too much into detail here since these are filler arcs and I doubt many will even watch them since they have no bearing on the overall canon, but if you are like me, and you want to see some of the better characters in Bleach given interesting stuff to do then it is worth watching, if you like Byakuya Kuchki like I do then I say Zanpakuto Rebellion is a must watch since he has a very epic fight with Koga and it adds a lot of depth to his character, only problem is, this isn't apart of Bleach's canon so it's up to you. 

This already tells you a lot, if Bleach's most well written stories post Soul Society are later filler arcs and not the canon then that tells you everything, the supposed me being "positive" for a few paragraphs might've went on longer than it did but I still stanby that everything related to Bleach's canon post Soul Society is a huge mess. 

The Arancar arc might be something I will use as proof that characters can't carry a dull and boring plot. It starts off okay with me even respecting Ikkau for beating his enemy without a random powerup but once the Heuco Mundo portions of the show begin, everything and I mean everything starts falling apart. Orhime was already nothing more than a quirky airhead and now there is an entire arc focused on rescuing her, at least Rukia was interesting. What's worse is that Orihime's "kidnapping" doesn't amount to anything, she never comes close to destroying Hogyoko, Aizen never needed her to invade Karakura Town and she gets kidnapped again for no reason after Ichigo spent multiple episodes fight Aizen's minions and Grimmjow, and Kenpachi also fighting one of Aizen's henchmen that he has no personal connection with. 

It doesn't end there either, this arc barely has much of a plot, character development, or learning anything new about the characters, it's esstentially just one and I mean LONG fight scene. Sure this is shonen this what you watch these stories for but to describe the Arancar arc of Bleach is this:

What if the Dragon Ball Z's Namek Saga had Vegeta fight characters like Cui, Zarban, Dadoria, and the Ginyus for 20-30 episodes and every fight was as long as the final battle with Freiza? You get this. 

I stopped watching Bleach in 2015 because nothing happened for multiple episodes on end, and it turned out me and seemingly many other people were smart in dropping it around this arc. 

The only good villains in the Arancar arc I had any attechment towards with were Grimmjow and Yammy since they actually did some villainous stuff like antagonizing Ichigo's friends and showing how powerful they are, seeing Grimmjow finally get beaten was nice especially considering this is the only rivalry in the Arancar arc that got buildup and payoff. None of the other Espadas are even on this level since they show up, have a long fight and then have a lengthy flashback revealing their backstories right before they are about to die. 

However all the good I can say comes back with more negatives, remember how I said, I liked Byakuya, Kenpachi and Mayuri? They pretty much become benchwarmers in Heuco Mundo when the real fighting starts happening in Fake Karakura Town and that is after them fighting boring and one note villains they have no personal connection with. 

Ichigo as a character I stopped taking seriously too since his win against Uliquorra was completely unearned and he pretty much got a powerup out of nowhere to beat him. It was already questionable that Ichigo was able to use his Hollow Powers without completing his Vizard training but I can argue that was just him learning as he is going but this is just nonsense since it's pretty obvious that Ichigo needs to win but he hasn't learned anything besides Hollowfying and Getsuga Tensho and on a side note, you know how in shonen where the protagonist trains and learns new moves? Ichigo just has his Bankai, Getsuga Tensho and Hollowfying(this eventually gets taken away too), so have fun watching the same repetitive fights with him. 

Then there is Aizen, I don't even know where to get started with Aizen post Soul Society, he's like the kind of guy who claims he is really good at video games but can't play without cheat codes or assist options. There is his motivation that he wants to kill the Soul King but the thing is multiple episodes will go by and not much is revealed about the Soul King or even getting much insight into Aizen's motivations...until the very end of the arc where Kisuke does his whole sealing thing on him but by that point Aizen is almost beaten you had hundreds of episodes to explain this, too little too late. 

There is extremely overpowered abilties in which if you see his shikai, you are under his hyponsis, you can't break out of it, and there is no way to fight back, this makes every fight with him boring as all hell since it's hard to tell if the heroes even know they are under his hyponosis and every fight with Aizen up until his final battle with Ichigo is him effortlessly winning. Frieza and Cell at the very least had their moment of vunerability while also being dominant where Aizen doesn't show his vunerablity until the end which by that point, I stopped caring. 

Another issue is what even was the point of the Espadas? Aizen during the Fake Karakura Town fight effortlessly beats the Vizards and Soul Society with only Yamamato being the only one who could lay a dent on him. All Aizen had to do was make Wonder Weiss and that was it. He was apparently afraid of Kenpachi, Mayuri and Byakuya but why? Were they immune to his hyponosis, but you need to touch his shikai in order to hurt him so could Kenpachi hurt him? Never made clear. 

Of course then there is the whole him planning Ichigo's entire life and the entire series up until he fought Aizen again, many have criticized this reveal but what I find silly about all this all is nothing more than Kubo giving Ichigo a personal stake to defeat Aizen since the former is given no real stake in having the latter get beaten. Aizen was basically a Soul Society matter and outside of Ichigo and him having that one fight in the Soul Society arc, Aizen has done nothing to Ichigo. This retcon just feels like a laughable attempt at giving them a personal connection considering how silly and ridiculous for Sosuke to somehow have every win and loss Ichigo had go according to plan, this is what I mean when he feels like someone who says he's good at video games but needs to cheat to win. 

After all of this, the Arancar arc is already a poorly written mess I've written multiple paragraphs about it but the Fullbring arc? It's also bad and poorly written, XCUTION is even more dull and one note than the Espadas since once the Soul Society shows up towards the end, they get beaten extremely easily despite them apparently being important characters to the story. At least the Espadas put up an actual fight. 

Ginjo is a poor man's Sensui even if that has been said many times. There is so little shown about Ginjo's past as a former Substitute Soul Reaper and there is yet another retcon regarding Ukitake giving them combat passes for survalliance but why or for what reason? Who knows. The arc ends before Ichigo can question Ukitake and he shockingly forgives him very easily too. On top of giving Ginjo a proper burial after all the stuff he put Ichigo through. 

Then there is other awful things about the arc like how Ichigo's Fullbring training was ultimately pointless since his actual Soul Reaper powers come back not too long after the former was taken and why did Rukia and the Soul Society keep it a secret from him? To throw off Ginjo and XCUTION? What's even the point in that? They pretty much stood no chance to begin with. 

Other issues include how Orihime, Chad and Uryu might become important again to the story after not providing much of anything to the story as a whole but that is ultimately a red herring since the first two get hypotonized and Uryu outside of revealing Ginjo being a villain doesn't provide much. 

One good thing about the arc was how Ichigo's friends and family were used against him since it's nice to see the thing Ichigo fights for being put on it's head. 

However no one of geniune importance even dies. 

This leads to my final issue with Bleach, is there any long term progression for anything? Sure the characters are slightly older by the Fullbring arc but that's about it. No one major even dies, there's barely any long term character development and the show by the end of the Fullbring arc is barely that different to when it started. Is there any more information revealed on the Soul King? No. Does Ichigo or anyone's character fundamentally changes? No. You can criticize Dragon Ball for not having death be permanent but at least there is SOME plot progression. Kami and Piccolo fuse, Gohan grows older and gets married, Vegeta and Bulma hook up, Dende becomes the new guardian of earth and Vegeta learns humlity and Mr. Satan even starts to become a geniune ally. 

Naruto even had the Shinobi world end in some form of peace by the end of Shippuden. 

Yu Yu Hakusho even attempted to give Yusuke a character of arc of slowly becoming more like a demon which could've been great if the 3 Kings arc was better. 

Bleach has none of this and this makes me question why I got to end of the anime's original run at all. I might watch the 1000 Year Blood War arc when it ends next year but I'm find it hard to care now, Tite Kubo just isn't a good writer. Bleach had a solid framework but the execution is just severly lacking on all fronts to even reccomend to anyone at all if they don't have a previously established nostalgic connection to it like I did. 

Jackie Chan Stuntmaster Review

This was a game I never even heard of for the longest time, I just randomly heard of it because it was one of Radical Entertainment's first games and it was a 3D melee brawler on the PS1 or at least that's what I thought of going in. In reality, Stuntmaster isn't really a 3D beat em up, it's more a 3D platformer in the vein of Crash Bandicot with beat em up sections.

The story and presentation is pretty charming, there isn't much of one and there isn't many cutscenes but what cutscenes there are pretty charming with how exaggerated everything looks and how it seems like they to combine real life with a cartoony art style. I kind of wished there was more of a story and cutscene here since I like how goofy the presentation the game has in the occasional cutscenes that popped up.

The melee combat is kind of okay, I wouldn't really call it outright bad since much of the game I was able to play without using cheats. First things I noticed right away was the geniune lack of invicibility frames and how there are no crowd control attacks, so if you try to take on 3 enemies attacking you at once, it might as well be a game over. However, Stuntmaster much to my surprise has a dedicated dodge button, and while you can't cancel out of a combo, I did spend much of my time, doing the various punching and kicking combos and then dodging after completing them, it was often a game of taking enemies out one at a time rather than fighting groups head on. Weapons also came in handy but they can be a little imprecise to hit enemies with since the combos for them can be a 50-50 guessing game of me landing a hit or Jackie getting hit and then dropping the weapon.

The bosses are surprisingly some of the better on the PS1, they aren't the most amazing, but they have far more going on than survival horror, Tomb Raider or various shooter bosses on the same system, since each one has their own gimmick and you have to wait for the right time to hit and them while you dodge their attacks. It's kind of on par with Crash, Spyro and MGS1 bosses. There's only a few of them though.

However combat doesn't really change all that much, you don't get any new abilties, combos and combat remains the same for pretty much all of the game, I was starting to bored of it so I pretty much used an infinite health cheat towards the end of the game. There is stuff like environmental hazards and how you and even your enemies can fall off various stages but it serves to be more annoying than fun, it can be amusing to see enemies fall to their death but it happening to you just makes it more frustrating than anything, and the game has lengthy load times on top of a lives system so I just abused the save states on emulator.

This is where I get into my next major negative, the platforming is very much like Crash Bandicot, the problem with this is that everything Stuntmaster does with it's platforming, Crash does better. For one you get to see Crash's shadow when platforming and there isn't anything like this in the latter on top of this, if I want to play Crash Bandicot, I'd go play Crash. There is one impressive subway setpiece and it's pretty cool the first time but it gets reused so much that the whole thing gets tiresome and turns into diminishing returns due to how often it pops up in the sewer level.

If you like the 3D beat em up sections, the platforming is just going to annoy you, if you like the platforming, the beat em up sections will annoy you, I wonder who this game is even for at times because of this.

The final big issue is that levels just go on for too long. Usually in a platformer, levels tend to go by very quickly depending on how good you are but combined this with the beat em up sections and this pretty much make the levels feel longer even though all of them are less than 15 minutes since beat em up gameplay in most if not every game tend to be lengthy and like I said before neither platforming or beat em up gameplay is enchanced by each other.

Overall, I wanted Jackie Chan Stuntmaster to be a hidden game and even possibly being a 3D beat em up that predates the first Devil May Cry and Onimusha games that is actually pretty good and it wasn't. I wouldn't call the game terrible but it all in all it just feels incredibly confused in terms of game design.