We fail fast and we learn from it.

Final Fantasy IVabandoned

This game is annoying. Screw the bombs, and this needle attack that just destroys people? It's really vexing how they don't tell you anything (standard for the time I assume) like what is Yang good at? Is there a point to kick? What does pray do? Why is it so much better than Edward's heal?

Additionally, what is the point of the antlion fight? It's just so easy. Why are we wasting my time with this interactive cutscene.

The game does a really bad job of expectation setting too. Cecil hits hard, everyone else sucks.

Also some annoying qol stuff, I'm used to Phoenix down just auto targeting or at least being unusable on your up characters. Nope. Wasted one and a turn that way. Also tents don't get people back up. That's how I would describe this half hour. Annoying.

Yeah, I'm just out on this. I think I've learned a lot here about what makes me tick. This game is just too thin mechanically and the story isn't enough to pull me through.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesiacompleted

Levels are really horizontal here at the start and I don't care for that. The glyph system is interesting, soul adjacent for Soma.

Game looks really good though, I love the flair in Shanoa's animations.

Also fuck these weird floating tentacle monsters.

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bridecompleted

This game is so cute and cozy with this art style, this might be the correct way for these games to be.

I also thought the first person perspective for fights was weird, but now I kind of dig it. It's very cute.

I don't know why I like this more than FFIV but I do. It seems basically similar to it, with a similar shallow depth of combat.

It's probably because it's actually challenging?

Final Fantasy Resonancebacklog

I've put about an hour and a half into this demo and it's pretty fun so far. I cannot stop gushing over the art style. I've always liked this in Octopath and Triangle Strategy and I think this is the best-looking version of it. In addition the vision system seems like a fun way to build characters. I would say the in-combat mechanics are so far just okay. The stagger system is pretty standard but I think it's good enough.