(@willisfrayburn) Bsky

What a great way to celebrate 4/20!

Huge props to everyone who made this happen. Get fucked Alex Jones

2 days ago 2 0 0 0

Here’s my hexer from Etrian Odyssey 2! I tried using the face paint and I’m happy with how it turned out

6 days ago 17 1 1 0

A ★★ review of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (2026) I can't say I was a huge fan of the first Mario movie, but it was fun enough. It definitely felt too fast for its own good and the humor was hit-or-miss. I was hoping that this movie would rectify som...

I’m celebrating April 13th by reviewing the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which is a movie that certainly has Mario in it.

Check it out to hear me complain about pacing in a movie made for children

1 week ago 1 1 0 0

Guardian562's review of Etrian Odyssey HD | Backloggd This game was quite an experience compared to Etrian Odyssey 3. I wasn't sure if I would like it since the third game had two games worth of hindsight to build itself upon, whereas this was Atlus' first time making a game like this. I fell off of it when I first played it but resolved to see it through this time. I'm glad I did, since this game was a very interesting experience, though one I find harder to recommend then EO3 HD. The plot revolves around Etria, a town built upon the economy that comes from explorers trying to conquer the massive Yggdrasil Labyrinth. You are one such adventurer who shows up, starts a guild, recruit a few others and start dungeon crawling to get to the bottom. The plot doesn't really develop from there, though some notable things do happen towards the end of the game. Unfortunately, one of those is something I'm pretty mixed on. Upon making a bit of progress in the fourth stratum you are suddenly given the quest to "Eradicate the Forest Folk". These are a race of people living in the Startum and are fully sentient, so the game is essentially telling you to commit genocide. And if you want to reach the final boss you have to do this. The game even pretends like you have an option, only for the chief to tell you "it's them or us" without any real justification. It's a very jarring moment that leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Part of me wonders if there was a story branch that had to be cut due to time concerns. Another part wonders if this was meant to be intentional commentary. Etria wants access to land that people are already living on and won't take no for an answer, so they decide to kill them all for the sake of money. The parallels to real world genocides are clear, but due to the game's complete disinterest in story it feels like a swerve that isn't properly explored by the narrative. And despite the fact that the game treats this like you completely wiping out the forest folk, they still appear as random ecounters and FOEs so I'm left wondering what the point was of offering this faux moral dilemma. Maybe the Untold remake does better with this plot point, but as it stands here it's a poorly though out sequence. It's a shame since the reveal of the fifth Stratum and the final boss' motivations are pretty cool, especially since it was one of the first times Atlus used this plot point (won't spoil it but people who've played lots of Atlus games know what I mean). The gameplay is meant to be the main draw of Etrian Odyssey, and the game certainly fairs better here. It does feel much more limiting than later installments since you only can pick from seven classes at the start (with two more unlocked later). Build variety is limited as a result, and due to how Immunize is busted and the superbosses require elemental blocks, you're going to want a Medic and Protector on your team regardless. There is fun in discovering how broken certain skills and classes are but it makes the late game rather repetitive once you've figured out the ideal strategy. One thing to note is that I played this game on Expert difficulty. Despite what the name may imply this is actually the difficulty closest to the original DS game. Basic is slightly tilted in your favor and Picnic is almost effortless. I don't mind easy difficulties in games, I just wish the balancing was better so that regardless of skill level there's at least a little tension in a playthrough. I can't fault anyone who picks an easier difficulty since Expert doesn't mess around. Enemies as early as the first floor can kill party members in a few hits, so preparation is more important than ever before setting out into the stratum. The stratum themselves were a bit of a letdown for me, since the first four are all variations on a forest. The floor gimmicks also aren't interesting - the first stratum has none, the second's is just hurt tiles, the third has a sort of teleporter maze and the fourth is built around hidden walls. This game loves having long hallways with no forks or chests, forcing you to just hold forward on the control stick until you hit the end. The complexity of floor layouts does improve towards the end game but I groaned every time I realized I had to travel more than ten tiles in a row with no variation or gimmick. FOEs are in this game as well - the powerful enemies that you need to avoid when you first enter a stratum, lest your entire party become compost. However, it's clear they didn't quite have an idea for how they wanted them to work. Sometimes multiple of the same FOE type will have different behavior, sometimes they're just a normal enemy with a different name and higher stats, and some will spawn behind you as traps. A few are also mandatory to defeat to progress since they block critical paths. It made me appreciate how 3 handled them. I think that really hits on what I enjoyed about this game. I always find playing the first installment in a series like this fascinating since you can tell the developers have a vision of what they want their game to be, but don't quite have the experience to pull it off. Seeing absolutely horrendous level design like 60 hurt tiles in a row or one way walls leading to nothing became very funny to me after a while. Seeing how barebones some of the quests are and how unbelievably tedious others are was interesting due to the contrast. Having to beat every single FOE on the fourth startum's boss floor before the fighting the boss is objectively terrible, but to me, hilariously so. I realize that isn't a great sales pitch, but this game takes a certain mind to enjoy it. If you have played and enjoyed later installments in the series it's worth playing the original just to see how far Atlus has come since. If you're just getting into the series though, I wouldn't start here. Also as a bonus I have to briefly talk about how horrendous Claret Hollows is. It's the first bonus stratum I attempted in an EO game and it's incredible how each floor is awful in its own way. Floor 26 makes you guess which teleporter will take you forward while every wrong one will take you back to the start. Floor 27 is a maze with over 300 pitfalls to fall into, requiring you to leave FOEs alive so you can watch their movement and figure out where it's save to stand. Floor 28 is a giant dumping ground for each pitfall you encounter in the previous floor. There's hurt tiles everywhere and FOES that will pursue you if you enter their (frankly absurd) sight line. Floor 29 is the worst teleporter maze I've ever experienced and if I didn't have HD's memos to keep track of where each teleporter goes I would have gone mad. Floor 30 is the least awful but is also the laziest - it's a long winding path to the boss consisting of multiple extremely long straight lines with occasional U-turns. Strangely I don't regret doing this stratum but I would NOT recommend doing it yourself. Also, I didn't beat the final superboss. I did beat one of the dragons but my attempt to beat the electric dragon ended after a 15 minute fight and I didn't feel like trying it again after. Still, I may go back and do it in New Game plus.

Finished up Etrian Odyssey 1! A pretty rough game that I still enjoyed.

My review is more a series of stray observations than any sort of structured critique, but check it out anyway if you want

1 week ago 0 0 0 0

Floor 29 of Etrian Odyssey is absolute garbage. A teleported maze designed by unrelenting sadists who were laughing the whole time they were making it.

I don’t know how people did this in the DS version. I have to use HD’s notes to keep my sanity

2 weeks ago 2 0 0 0

I like it in a “I can’t believe they actually did this” kind of way but it’s miserable to play. I’m going to try to get to floor 30 even though floor 27 has been awful to explore and map out so far.

Pitfalls with no visual indicators is a combination devised in hell

2 weeks ago 1 1 0 0

Probably going to do a review for Etrian Odyssey 1 HD at some point, but after finishing it I can say I had a pretty good time with it despite (and in some causes because of) how rough it can be.

And nowhere is that more apparent than the 6th stratum. It’s endless pain

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Guardian562's review of Knuckles' Chaotix | Backloggd Knuckles' Chaotix is a game about how we need to accept that which we can't control, and that beauty can be found in chaos. It's a game that frequently reminds you that some things surpass mortal und...

It’s April Fools Day, so I reviewed the greatest 2D Platformer from the Sonic series.

I mean, Knuckles is the main character. How could it not be great?

3 weeks ago 1 1 0 0

You ever do something in a video game that is tedious and completely pointless, yet you feel compelled to finish the task regardless and don’t hate it?

That’s how I felt having to spend five in-game days on floor 8 in Etrian Odyssey. Objectively bad quest but I still liked it for some reason

3 weeks ago 1 0 0 0

IDW Sonic: On Lanolin the Sheep, and the problem with Sonic Twitter A deep dive into the story of one of the most controversial IDW Sonic characters, and how algorithmic social media and fandom expectations made her so controversial in the first place. This is it, at ...

New on the Ponett Gazette: Here it is! My deep dive into the arc of IDW Sonic's controversial Lanolin the Sheep, the fandom's response to her, and my concern that the algorithm-driven fandom pressure cooker on Twitter has begun to influence the comics.

ponett.dog/blog/lanolin...

4 weeks ago 1340 612 145 0

Guardian562's review of Etrian Odyssey III HD | Backloggd I got this collection near when it launched after importing the Chinese version (since that was the only place it was released physically). I did enjoy Etrian Odyssey 1 but fell off it after reaching...

I have finally beaten an Etrian Odyssey game! And since I had a great time, I hope it’ll be the first of many.

Check out my thoughts in semi-coherent form over here:

3 weeks ago 1 1 0 0

or some more one shots after this. Either way I’m really looking forward to what he does next since, while I wish some characters got more focus, I loved Part 2 and how different it was from Part 1.

I feel like there won’t be a Part 3, but I’m here for it if there is (2/2)

4 weeks ago 1 0 0 0

Well, it’s actually over now.

Not sure how I feel about the ending yet, but I had a great time with Chainsaw Man as a whole. It frequently went places I didn’t expect - sometimes to its detriment - but I think it was a ride worth experiencing.

I wonder if Fujimoto’s going to do a new series (1/2)

4 weeks ago 1 0 1 0

people are making Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny bits right now because of Chuck Norris's death and I think its important to note that today is also literally Mr. Rogers' birthday

1 month ago 2915 1286 16 24

Been visiting family in Boston this week, and it’s honestly insane how many pride flags and No Kings banners have been around most of Massachusetts.

It’s nice to be reminded that Florida isn’t representative of the whole country

1 month ago 2 0 0 0

ICE agents reveal daily arrest quotas and surveillance app in rare court testimony Under oath, officers said they were told to make eight arrests a day and given special tech to help choose ‘targets’

When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.

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Text messages that read “Dune surfing epic videos” If you don’t laugh you don’t know funny”

Thank you father very cool

1 month ago 1 0 0 0

That new Chainsaw Man chapter huh?

I’ve seen people get upset and I understand why, but I’ll wait until the final chapter comes out before evaluating it.

Fujimoto continues to pull the rug out from under me like I’m Charlie Brown trying to kick the football again

1 month ago 2 0 0 1

Guardian562's review of Super Mario Sunshine | Backloggd I remember playing Super Mario 64 as kid when my parents took me to some store where the owners had an N64 out in the open for anyone to try. It was the first video game I ever played and I still lik...

In honor of Mario Day, I decided to talk about one of my favorite Mario games of all time.

Super Mario Sunshine is far from perfect, but that’s perfectly fine with me

1 month ago 1 1 0 0

A ★★★★ review of Digimon: The Movie (2000) You ever see a movie you know you would have loved as a kid and thought about how your childhood feels wasted now as a result? Because while I don't feel that way after watching this movie, the though...

Didn’t think I would ever make a letterboxd, but then I saw true cinema that I needed to let the world know about.

Give it a read if you want to learn what a real movie looks like

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

I think a game can be replayable without forcing me to replay it until the difficulty is reasonable.

Mastery of set challenges designed by humans will always be more satisfying to me then getting a rare drop in a roguelite that gives +10% damage (3/3)

1 month ago 0 0 0 0

There’s probably a good roguelite out there somewhere, but all the ones I’ve tried (Shovel Knight Dig, Dead Cells, Hades, etc) failed to grab me.

It just feels like there’s a good game buried underneath the meta-progression and randomness that never gets to shine (2/3)

1 month ago 0 0 1 0

There’s no feeling quite like seeing an indie game with a cool art style or fun looking gameplay, wanting to check it out,

And then finding out it’s a roguelite.

This has happened to me more times than I can count and it always kills my interest (1/3)

1 month ago 1 0 1 0

I don’t usually follow British politics since it’s exhausting enough trying to keep up with the USA’s.

However, it’s good to hear that an actually progressive party is polling well and Starmer is panicking as a result.

Hope the Greens win and make him embarrass himself further

1 month ago 1 0 0 0

Guardian562's review of Yooka-Replaylee | Backloggd I remember playing the original Yooka-Laylee about eight or nine years ago at this point. I got it after hearing the mixed reaction it had received but figured I would get something out of it since I...

I finally got around to beating Yooka-Laylee through the remaster they released last year! Wrote my thoughts on it in the link below.

(Also why is that the screenshot for Replaylee. This scene doesn’t exist in the remaster)

1 month ago 1 1 0 0

With near instant load times, you can enjoy the PS6’s groundbreaking launch titles:

Call of Duty Black Ops 10
GTA VI (possibly)
Skyrim (Definitive definitive edition)
FIFA 30
Knack 3 (VR exclusive)

2 months ago 1 0 1 0

How exactly is a game studio supposed to operate nowadays if it can be shuttered at any time for no reason at all?

Both of Bluepoint’s remakes sold and reviewed well only for Sony to send them to live service hell and then fire all of them.

AAA games really feel like they’re on the way out

2 months ago 3 2 1 0

I’m telling you, there’s something really satisfying about the movement and launching opponents the wrong direction

2 months ago 1 0 0 0

i still have all the brentalfloss "[video game song] with lyrics" songs stuck in my head all these years later. this is the curse i bear as a millennial retro game nerd who used to go on screwattack

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