#sfmt2026

FFXIII-2 comes at a really interesting time for Square Enix. It's the era of the PS3, when JRPGs are having their reputation lambasted by any gamer that prefers to point and shoot, and they aren't totally wrong. It's also an era where JRPGs are losing their footing, with ballooning dev costs and customer appetite for high fidelity graphics at an all time high as HD TVs and formats are going mainstream. And FFXIII already came out, Square's big swing for the era, and reception was mixed At Best. I could go on about FFXIII without even having replayed it in recent memory, because I don't hate it nor love it, and think it's got a lot going for it and not going for it. But I'm here to talk about FFXIII-2...and man, haha.... FFXIII-2 is part of Square's ill advised attempts to make a franchise out of every mainline entry into its big franchise. While I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that every sequel to a mainline game is trash, cuz it's not, it does smack of trying to force virality and fandom. While FFX-2's efforts remained relatively focused on the girl power aesthetic while genuinely contending with a world at an uneasy peace, unsure of what order society would take from now on, FFXIII-2 takes on the approach of, uh.....throwing everything at the wall and hoping something sticks. It mostly does not work and kinda feels embarrassing when it does try to be more than it is. Story beats are constantly undercut by inner monologues droning on about they've gotta find Lightning and hope for the better, the English voice acting work/direction sound like they're just here to collect a paycheck 90% of the time,

the side tangent adventures in different time periods often lack a feeling of relevance to the characters, themes, or plot, the plot itself is just a series of disconnected events until the main duo get to their stated destination, and the doomed damsel is a wallflower of no character whatsoever. Your little moogle companion somehow has so little dialogue in most of the sidequests and main story, and somehow becomes a chatterbox in just one series of sidequests? And god, I hate Chocolina. None of its disparate parts informs or improves the other. About the only synergy here is the time traveling premise and the nature of the doomed damsel's doom, which is an echo of the fight against fate of FFXIII. Now, FFXIII-2 does have its good parts. The monster collecting is neat, and thankfully not too in-depth, especially if you just want to see credits, but monster infusing gives just enough of an excuse to go all out making a cool strong monster if you want. There are interesting settings and alternate versions of said settings, building a (simplistic, and perhaps naively hopeful) world history spanning centuries that you get neat glimpses of. Most impressive of all to me is that the battle system is a definite improvement of FFXIII's battle system, and is perhaps the main reason to play FFXIII-2, to see the strategic possibilities of a real time system where you guide the overall strategy and momentum of a battle more so than the minutiae. Secondly most impressive is the soundtrack as well, making beautiful music akin to FFXIII sometimes, but also it gets frighteningly experimental, and most of it is a hit to varying degrees. And hey, the antagonist, Caius, is pretty good...for what's here, anyway. Helps that he's perhaps the best voice performance here in the english dub.

For all of that, it's easy to see that FFXIII-2 was beautiful on paper. A game about an adventure hopping up and down the timeline to defy fate at the end of time, to make a tragic fate right again, at the cost of someone dear to the protagonist. But when it's all out in front of you as this finished product, it's a mess, and it's easy to see why it's a miss to most people, and a hit to some. I initially thought I liked this more than FFXIII cuz I initially hated FFXIII on launch and FFXIII-2 gave me a really good jazz song, Caius' theme nipped at the heels of One Winged Angel, and time travel!! time travel is cool!! But time wasn't kind to FFXIII-2, yet kinder to FFXIII. By the time Lightning Returns came out, I just never got around to giving it a try. Thinkin....I might change that soon....

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50. FFXIII-2, replay
Experimental and ambitious, perhaps for all the wrong reasons, but hard not to applaud at least a little bit. But not for the story, or the time traveling, or the characters, god no. I'd still listen to the music unironically tho

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49. Smiling Friends
man I can't even pretend to analyze this one or anything it's just straight up hilarity. Somewhere between a shitpost, a youtube poop, and an actual syndicated cartoon. Very understandable that this couldn't go on for much longer, this is lightning in a bottle type shit

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48. Demon Slayer mugen train movie
It was decent :) I like the flame Hashira and I like the train setting, and the main trio didn't endeavor to annoy me as much as before. Didn't leave too much of an impression overall, but it got me to sympathize with the main trio a bit by the end

absolutely little to no yearning for a world beyond the cycle of creation and destruction in the text). At the same time, there is assumedly no place for humans in this ending, or maybe even life itself. Demons are established as spirits in stasis, incapable of change, in the extra content for this route, meaning to be human in SMT Nocturne is to be capable of change. That's a really interesting wrinkle in light of my previous analysis - the capacity to change is what makes humans both so good and also so evil. The cool thing about Nocturne is that it's also a great JRPG. It's the first game to have the press turn system, which is a staple of the series now, and it's easy to see why. By letting both your party and the enemy manipulate turn economy, and by tuning the numbers so tightly, it gives battles a savage texture to them. Being at a disadvantage is a shortcut to a game over, while you get to feel powerful and replete with power if you get to hammer an enemy's weakness or proc a lot of crits. Perfect for a game full of demons on both sides.

Something Nocturne does that the more modern games don't is to make the dungeons feel like Dungeons. There's actual anxiety as you make progress and try to reach the end or to the next save point, because there's always a small chance a random battle will make you eat shit. You can always stack the odds in your favor, and it gets easier to do so the farther you get, to the point of trivializing dungeon resource management, even, but until then the atmosphere meshing with the anxiety you're feeling about your numbers mesh together to give you a headspace only a video game could. Dungeon design like this only comes out in JRPGs for freaks these days, which doesn't include more modern SMTs somehow, so it's kind of a lost art in Atlus' toolbox. For all its edgy stylings and stellar dark punk-ish rock (REALLY stellar, I wish Meguro got to make rock music for video games again) and borderline nihilistic story, Nocturne is surprisingly philosophical when you get down to it, determined to make you question what it really means to be a human. It's more clear to me on this playthrough how groundbreaking this is, especially on the PS2. Nocturne rocks.

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I like my turn based RPGs cruel and unusual

When I first played Nocturne, I honestly didn't get it. I'm not sure I do still, but this time, I have Ideas. Nocturne, for how sparse the cutscenes are, plays with A Lot due to its heady subject matter And heady scenario, and honestly can come off as tripe edgy shit despite all the airs it puts on if you happen to just watch a story cutscene out of context, but I really respect what they're going for because I still have the dissatisfied edgy teenager in my head that hates a lot about the state of the world. It comes with growing up in the 90s. I feel like the narrative partly comes from the hopelessness of the Lost Decade in Japan. While it came out in 2003, that's still early enough into the 00's that a whole decade of economic crash and retraction, compared to the heights of the 80's, would still be fresh in the country's spirit (and who know how long this game was in production). There's clearly other inspirations that are beyond me (I'm betting Buddism is a big one but I've never delved into actually formally learning what the heck Buddism means), but I feel that taking this perspective as a baseline makes character motivations, the tone of the story, etc. make more sense. It's a perspective that takes the society as broken, and in need of fixing. This makes the various Reasons make sense to me. The reason of strength and beauty is the reason of bullies, the reason that cannot tolerate things outside of its own conception of usefulness and beauty. It's not a perspective that is interested in strength for rule, or chaos as a method by which to be a tyrant like how other SMT games tend to portray the "rule of the strong preying on the weak" ideologies

- it's looking at the world, seeing it full of unnecessary conflict, people's petty troubles and grievances, and feeling like you've gotta puke. The reason of Musubi is quite a bit more straightfoward. It's the "fuck you I don't owe you anything and no one owes me anything" mentality. Every man is an island, so let's make that the reality. You can't fuck up my life with your rules, and I can't fuck up yours. The reason of Shijima is a bit more interesting. It's defined by "stillness", an absence of feeling or desire, or even individuality, and replacing it all with harmony. While it's got big Buddist overtones, I think it's no accident that it's the rich guy who harbors this reason. It would just be like someone who's already at the top of the world to want to bring everyone under one umbrella, and to destroy the world to make it happen. While the teacher fails to conceive of a reason, agreeing with her gets you an ending where you return everything back to the way it was, perpetuating the status quo. While it can be easy to take this as a "best" or "good" ending, especially since the ending is named the Freedom ending, characterizing the world of the 90's and 00's as a world in which you're free (and in a way, lots of people are indeed more free in modern society than in the world of any of the Reasons of this game), it's still a world in which suffering and despair is rampant. This all calls into question the kind of people that exist in a world of "freedom" and decide that what follows must be categorically different. The central idea of Nocturne isn't the ending you choose nor the merits and demerits of a world order that's different than what we've got today. Nocturne seeks to challenge the idea of

what it means to be a human...and what it means to be a demon. Only a human can have the conviction to create a new world, but the reasons to do so seem demonic, like you have to abandon empathy to come up with some monstrous reason the leaves behind so many people. You even need to pair up with a patron demon and gather up lots of Kagutsuchi (sp?) (i.e. commit lots of violence) to make this new world. Every person who conceives of a reason gains a demonic appearance. Meanwhile, the teacher, who fails to gain the conviction to conceive a reason, never sounds like she's gone off her rocker cuz she just wants a freer society, and the mud man Manikin who has the conviction to conceive of a world of true equality is barred from the creation process because he's not human. And meanwhile meanwhile, you, the protagonist, become an outright demon just to continue persisting in this world, and are similarly barred from creation, and yet has the strength to make a choice between the ones front of him. It's such an interesting dissonance that makes you confront the enormity of what it means to destroy what's come before and impose a new idea in its place. No solution is perfect, and yet, one must be put it in place. And there's one ending I haven't mentioned yet, the true demon ending. Truth be told, it does feel a little evil-laughter-I'm-so-edgy, in that you eschew all other reasons to fully side with demons and seek absolute true freedom by going after the Great Will, who established the cycle of creation and destruction in the first place. In a way it's also the most human ending, because it's also rejecting the premise of creation and destruction altogether to try to seek what's beyond that (at least that's how one might think of this ending in a positive light, there is

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47. SMT Nocturne on Hard, replay
I went from true demon ending this time, Lucifer was easier than I thought he'd be, but I'm judging against SMTV superbosses on Hard, so maybe I just overprepared lmao
Anyway, yapping Incoming.

I know most fans like the boar guy and hate the lightning guy but I honestly think both are annoying. As well as Mr. Nice Big Bro protagonist. The "overprotective big brother" trope is 9 times outta 10 annoying and just played for laughs in japanese media, while lightning guy is Mineta-My-Hero-Aca levels of annoying, and boar guy gets the benefit of being the least annoying and the chance to beat up lightning guy giving him points, but if lightning guy wasn't around to raise the boar guy's stocks? The "FIGHT ME" trope is another trope I usually find annoying. At least he shows amusing humility after barely surviving the waning moon family complex arc, and there's always room for these annoying tropes to grow, but god, getting through this series would not have been possible if I didn't have everyone telling me season two and onward is better, and if this series didn't have the huge popularity that it does, giving me the "well, being familiar with it would be good in anime circles" reason to watch it. The central idea of the anime magic (which is...sorta not magic? debatable?) being Very Good At Breathing really really does not work for me neither. And also Tanjiro's "I can smell REALLY good" quirk. He can smell that someone is sad? What?? His smell helps him avoid attacks coming at him faster than a sword swing?? Give me a break. Why can't the humans just tap into the same magic or whatever? I'll even accept "he's just naturally physically gifted", it works for Gon HunterxHunter and Yuji Jujutsu Kaisen. At least with the thinest pretense to suspend disbelief, I'd be happy to suspend the disbelief, I just need that thinnest pretense, man.

But even with all that, there's things I like. I like swords, and surreal combat arenas and abilities, and while the thing with Tanjiro extending empathy to demons is overplayed and doesn't even hit emotionally most of the time, I can see the potential in it. I liked the reveal of the Main Bad Guy and the overall vibe of the urban environments in this time period and how this anime portrays it too, it's cool to see this time period of Japan just starting to western-ize. And maybe among the Hashira or yet to be introduced side characters I'll see characters that I like and do not find annoying. Also, the messenger crows are cute. now I'm only one season into this, but...I suspect part of why this anime is so goddamn popular (especially in its home country) is that it makes Being Japanese look cool and worthwhile. The show takes in the natural beauty of more remote landscapes and the cool and unique vibe of cities at the time that is both filled with unmistakenly Japanese architecture and more modern comforts. And, of course, the striking elemental effects of the sword combat make for really good gifs, to sell the appeal of Ufotable's animation is easily sharable gifs. I just hope the characters and narrative find their stride sooner than later. Either way, I'm committed to reach the end. Anyway, I'll be watching the train movie soon and continuing with the series.

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46. Demon Slayer season 1
Looks pretty, had one hype fight moment, but otherwise a pretty annoying shounen for a lot of reasons. I didn't see the merit in it until like 17 episodes in when Tanjiro utilizes fire breathing. Holding out hope that everyone is right and the series gets better

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45. Project Hail Mary
REALLY enjoyable film, a real dudes rock vision of scientific progress and space exploration, got me emotional sometimes too. It won't change lives as it's still a Popcorn Flick type but there's artistry in getting this kind of film right, and this film Has It

While I tried this game's obvious spiritual predecesor, Jet Set Radio, and found it to have fiddly controls and not actually be that fun for me, there's no denying that the soundtrack and visual style of JSR are generationally inspiring, lightning in a bottle. It's a great care to detail (and previous work in a similar visual art style in Lethal League) that Team Reptile has to pull off a game that looks like JSR would have if it used the Sega Saturn to its utmost (at least that's the feeling I get looking at it) and yeah It's Incredible. Fun to look at, fun to inhabit, effortlessly stylish, and the style sensibilities of everything rendered in the game makes a stunning love letter to graffiti art and hip hop, it's more than plenty to get a complete neophyte to these style sensibilities to change their entire personality. Even the character design pops off severely, the main character is cool as fuck and the rest of the cast would be The Coolest Designs Ever if transplanted into basically 95% of other video games. It's so easy to glaze this game up because it deserves it. AND most critically, it plays like how I imagined JSR to play. Easy controls, level designs that are canvases for big ass trick combos, blasting graffiti (which are all credited in game in menus and not just the credits scroll, which is a super cool move, same with the music tracks). In a game that's all about self expression to the point of defying authority, it's beautiful to have the gameplay reflect its attitudes even in the hands of someone like me, who's only played maybe 20 hours of Tony Hawk 3 or whatever it was on the PS2 when I was a baby child.

And of course, I'm a narrative boy. I like my narratives. And this game has one! And actually? It's pretty damn good. It's also efficient and doesn't overstay its welcome (and as a gamer who is getting increasingly allergic to character yapping, that's a big plus). I knew this game was special when cops yelled at the protag to "drop his weapon", who at the time was not carrying an implement of violence, and yet...after a few seconds of confused silence, drops the paint can in his hand. Speaks volumes. The rest of the narrative isn't as subtle by the time the credits roll, but thankfully doesn't spend a ton of time spelling out its themes; it only does so after the game has had a chance to Let The Events speak, which is fine. And what's there is a story of discovering and paying respect to your roots, to where you came from, to the voices and styles that got you to where you are today, and finding your own style and voice through the noise, to take what you got and make it your own. And I like that the game spends a lot time in the confusion of the main character's amnesia, not even aware of his strange metatextual state being in a stolen body, taken advantage of by a power hungry dickwad and the state sponsored violence he's appropriating (surely this doesn't reflect real world situations with some hip hop artists that have gone mainstream hahaha), cuz that process in real life is kinda like the whole thing. This is a narrative, so eventually we get out of that part of the character arc and move on, but in real life, that's the whole thing for a creative person. Muddling your way through, being inspired by others, learning more about the world and trying to reflect that in your art. It's pretty beautiful and maybe one of the whole points of this being alive thing. This game fucks. I love it. Buy it and play it, it's so worth it.

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44. Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
this time I played it instead of watching it! Pure fun, bomb ass soundtrack (some of the Best in the business, sincerely), with a surprisingly good narrative that's in conversation with the history it's building on and will hopefully inspire

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43. Who Framed Roger Rabbit
this movie looks INSAANE and would have blown my socks clean fucking off as a kid, but as a first time adult watcher it was a really fun and neat murder mystery while finding your whimsy again, this well deserves to be remembered and revisited

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42. Jojo Stone Ocean
First cour was alright, second was zzz, third was actually pretty good, brought it back. Jojo's always best when the situation is so bizarre you have no idea how they'll get outta this one, & this part wasn't consistent in setting this up, but it was great when it did

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41. Super Mario Galaxy "Movie"
Supremely interested in shoving as many cameos in as possible, to the exclusion of paying respect to the source material, following up on plot threads it sets up, any kind of character arc...it's a series of short form content videos. Yoshi was cute I guess

I say that this movie balances a genuinely dreadful subject with humor but also honestly I can see this hitting too close to home for a decent amount of people. Getting laid off and facing a deadline of when your lifestyle just Ends and you're no longer able to support your loved ones is just an every day tragedy and watching a man pathetically try to get outta his situation is kinda hard even for me to watch. I can see it come across as "good problems to have" to someone who's been homeless or worse off, too. But still, there's a lot to chew on from how things play out and what happens between the characters.

This isn't a movie that's interested in exploring "solutions" or building the vision of a hopeful alternative to being dependent on an employment contract from the asset holding class in this day and age, but it is interested in the attitudes and behaviors of, I guess, the modern man? in this system, exposing the desperation and lengths one might go to keep their perceived place in society. Like, for one, the back of the box blurb is "laid off man tries to murder other job candidates to secure job offer", so that part isn't subtext. What is subtext is the mental wrappings these men adopt; that this work is the only work for them, the lies they're willing to tell to their loved ones to keep up the image of a man who's got it all together, the way none of them demonstrate an ounce of real human connection to each other, all of it keeping them trapped in this rat race to secure dwindling employment prospects that would still not be guaranteed for their lifespan, while refusing alternate paths, even if offered to them. And, this being a Korean film, I'm sure there is a lot of nuance I'd need film criticism essays to get clued in on, too. Grim stuff, makes for great cinema, well worth a watch.

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40. No Other Choice
This movie can be STRESSFUL, but it manages to avoid being dreadful and overbearing by masterfully balancing The Despair Of Impending Financial Ruin and the humor of the Situations the main character gets into to try to avoid it. By the end, there's a ton to chew on

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39. My Hero Academia Vigilantes s2
I still enjoy :) A lot of what worked about s1 works here, except for the main trio becoming now a main duo, which makes the remaining duo a bit less fun to follow, and the pacing starts to feel villain of the weekish
But, Aizawa flashback arc was great!!

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38. Reborn as a Dragon Hatchling s1
Main character's annoying, the plot has nothing special or surprising to reveal, I don't give a shit about any of the characters...but the main character's annoying overblown reactions turn into cute body language oooourrrogough

But I don't want to stick too hard to giving Jujutsu Kaisen props for "the brutal ways characters and their arcs and themes can just end, regardless of how narratively unsatisfying it can be, adds weight to the brutal nature of the world and its exploration of the ugly nature of humanity/civilization" because it still feels like it might end up feeling like "yeah the mangaka was just doing whatever the hell he felt like that week" by the end of it because this is still Culling Game part fucking one out of who knows how many so while we got banger character and thematic episodes That Conservative Clan getting their wiki status pages all forcefully updated overnight and the Yuji vs. The Justice System episode, the rest of the cour really was kinda just more plot setup and really banger animation (and don't get me wrong it's Extremely Banger Animation, it's not something you have to turn your brain off to enjoy). That's kinda all I got cuz this is still an arc that is a work in progress. Hoping for more! Not gonna read the manga, I'd prefer to let the anime play out.

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37. Jujutsu Kaisen Culling game part 1 (anime)
Top Ten shounen arcs to feel insane to
For real though this adaptation is on another level, and the chaos of how things go in Jujutsu Kaisen, which felt like a weakness in earlier arcs, is starting to feel like a strength

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36. Trigun Stargaze
In which the writers Insist "no you guys, Knives really is the best villain watch us do this again" and while they do lighten up the mood it somehow feels like wasted effort as I cannot bring myself to care about this interpretation of these characters
Looks great tho

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35. Frieren season two
More Frieren! Most of what you could say about season one's first half you can say about this one, which is a really really good thing. Unfortunately really short though, just ten or so episodes? I'm very down for more whenever this gets picked up again

This straddles the line between parody of popular culture and storytelling tropes while actually exploring the same subjects (and not on any deep level or anything mind you, let's not get too crazy here), letting it be enjoyed on both levels. While the parody is stronger than the actual storytelling, the fact it isn't 100% parody makes the parody even funnier somehow. The fact I wasn't turned off of this and actually stuck with it (and the parkour series a few years back) despite not having a history of watching minecraft lets plays or machinima is, I think, evidence that I haven't turned into a cynical old bastard yet, so I think I consider this a win, personally. And I'm not gonna lie, I did somehow get a little emotional at the finale. I'm okay admitting this online. Also, I get the feeling this series is legitimately made for the love of it, with care to entertain with laughs and to tell a story with characters people can get invested in. It isn't aiming for high art or anything at all, but for something as "lowbrow" as this, I can think of much worse to put on in Youtube. Also, "he spoke in PVP" is EXTREMELY funny,

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34. PVP Civilzation
Yes this is the same guy that did that minecraft parkour meme and Yes I was decently entertained by the slapdash narration and the simultaneous fictional reality the characters are caught up in and the sometimes frequent tongue in cheek humor

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33. Cookie's Bustle (watched playthru)
never coulda gotten thru this on my own but WOW what an absurd adventure with a ton of heart
No matter what you expect you won't be ready for the full package
Cookie can save the world, she's the hero this world needs

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32. Pokopia (watched boyf get to credits)
this game is GREAT I never expected it to go this hard
Does just enough to get narrative motivated people like me in and balances guided and freeform play really really well
Super crazy to get a non mobile sidegame that's good these days

THERE'S SO MUCH TO TALK ABOUT WITH THIS MANGA. The characters are all, at minimum, entertaining to follow, and you'll get to know all the major ones and a lot of the side ones surprisingly well. Some of them are easy to root for, some of them have complex/interesting moral quandaries/arcs, some of them are a vehicle to explore the human condition, some of them are funny as heck, and some of them are like, multiple/all of the above. The plot is a confluence of dreams and schemes, allegiances changing as the tides do, especially after the halfway mark. Also, this manga is basically really funny?? And my god the final arc is How It Should Be Done, everything unraveling, destinies fulfilled and tragedies dealt in equal measure, I could barely get my eyes off the pages. The only things I would asterisk this manga with is that if animal hunting and detailed explanations and depictions of how Ainu people cooked animals, that could be disturbing (there's regular ol gore very occasionally in combat/war flashbacks too) along with some early minor characters that can be easily construed as negative LGBT stereotypes (I'm willing to give the mangaka the benefit of the doubt).

Now, talking details, there's so much to love. From (I assume, given there's a consultant credited!) the well researched Ainu culture and representation, the FMA-level balance of comedy and serious moods, the warmth shared by the main characters, the slow burn intrigue of Tsurumi, the ambition and ruthlessness of Hijikata's group, the hard realities and contradictions of dreaming and working for revolution and indigenous liberty and independence, the value of innocence in a world nearly devoid of it, revenge and forgiveness, nude men, it's all balanced and well explored in a really entertaining format, this manga well and truly makes great use of long term storytelling to make something greater than its parts. And the art, while not exceptionally unique, makes great use of distinct character features to make it easy to follow this many characters, jumping POV multiple times a chapter, along with strong expression work for comic and serious moments, while the grounded art style really brings the time period to life. It's a shame the anime adaptation doesn't quite nail the art style from the clips I've seen, because otherwise I would already be watching the anime to see how it's adapted. I would basically recommend this to anyone who wouldn't be scared off by gore. The more I think about this manga, the greater I feel for it in my mind. So, so good.

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31. Golden Kamuy
This is a rare manga that has such density, a wide variety of tones and subject matter, handling it all well while keeping you guessing for the plot as multiple groups vie for the same thing, it's such a treat from start to finish that I loved a lot!!

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30. Heroaca You're Next
This one feels like an entire filler arc (positive) in one movie, it expands on the world a bit and as always for these movies, Bones brings out the plus ultra sakuga at the end. worthwhile for heroaca fans....

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29. Heroaca Heroes Rising
Better than the first movie, but like, marginally? Still a lot of Class A being Class A, but the action sequences have them actually using their quirks in creative ways, even if the final fights are just the high powered ones going ham again

For as grim as Armored Core 4 gets, with the world getting devastated all because of corpo wars and the use of a new energy that literally pollutes the surrounding areas, For Answer takes that as the baseline, with most of humanity now living up in the clouds in corporate owned giant colony ships while the planet is more or less turned into a battlefield where the rest of humanity lives out meager existences and giant city sized arms platforms and mechs battle it out for resources and supremacy. This leads to cooler and more spectacle driven missions than in 4, like taking down said city sized arms platforms, and is overall a better game in almost all areas, except for separating the shop and assembly menus so you can't test out builds without buying parts anymore (to compensate, parts are much cheaper at least). What ultimately happens, with a rebel force uniting against the united corpos, leads to three quite different endings this time, and man each one does get a man to put his contemplating hat on. Well, mostly the Orca endings. The default one you're forced onto for the first playthrough is the side-with-corpos ending where the unsustainable status quo is preserved for now (what a Miyazaki thing to do As Always lmao). Of interest are the Orca endings... Either way, you team up with the rebel force that opposes the alliance of corpos. Now, I'll admit I watched the Vaati video of the armored core series and retained knowledge of the Grimmest Ending, so experiencing it didn't phase me as much as it should have, but now knowing the fuller context (sorta anyway) of the story, it made more sense to me. Between the Orca endings, I see each as two different attitudes, two different underlying motivations towards fighting the status quo and power. While the better Orca ending sees humanity gain time by allowing space

travel to be possible (because, oh yeah, previous corporate wars saw corporations setting up war machines in the sky that block off routes to outer space to deny other corporations outer space privileges, so we take care of that), it still results in grounding everyone living in the sky and exposing them to the polluted air of the earth, resulting in many deaths. But uh...The other Orca ending is kinda...well...we go ahead and shoot down everyone living in the sky. Not for any noble reason or out of revenge necessarily, but just because? I believe the character that puts you on this path says "because it would be interesting". There's a few ways to interpret this, but I choose to believe that for the main character to choose this path, it makes sense for it to be a way of payback against the world, against power, against the very way of life modern human have - that we would, even against our wishes and ethics, have to choose a life of comfort and convenience at the expense of, let's see...The environment, animal's lives, our own dignity and agency a lot of the time (ESPECIALLY of certain groups of people), and being at the mercy of whatever the people on top want. While the people you shoot down are innocent...in a twisted way, sure, we can think of them - of us (pretty much anyone with a computer reading this) - as complicit. In that way, the cradles have to go down, long as we're devoid of enough reason to pull the trigger on 100 million lives. Compared to that...yeah, the other Orca ending is outright hopeful. And gaaah the mission after that where four NEXTs come after you...completely warranted but also. I can't tryhard enough for this. Ended up doing a glitch where you can shoot through walls to finish it. And I quite like the narrative that creates for me, that monstrous human beings can and will get their just desserts and they can only cheat their way through the consequences.

I don't think Fromsoft has gotten as bleak as this since, even in Dark Souls 3's DLC, or in the Dung Eater ending in Elden Ring. While it's novel for a video game of this amount of fidelity to be this bleak, it's also a bit sophomoric, considering it's literally also a mecha game. That's not to say that diminishes the value of it, that it's not worth valuing, or that it's not reflective of real life - it's just, it's the stuff that a teenager stews on after being bullied at school or when something really does not go their way. Ideally, we won't have to live in a world where even most adults don't have to curse their powerlessness for much longer.

#sfmt2026
28. Armored Core 4 Answer
A better AC4, for actually having a bit more of a story, more huge scale fights with hulking combat machines, and taking the next narrative leap after AC4 polluted the entire planet. Also the grimmest I've seen Fromsoft get

#sfmt2026
27. Hoppers
I liked this one more than I thought it would! Trailers made this seem like a comedy only joint but it's got a bit more than that going on. I especially liked what the main character had going on, and I'll always love community focused narratives. worth a watch!

Once you find weapons that are Strong Enough and the parts that support them, thankfully you can more or less get through any mission with just a few tries, that is, if you can get a grip on the controls, which I probably only did about 60%, otherwise this game kinda feels like and controls a bit ass-ish? I'm sure it's cuz I didn't bother to change my boosters but man, midair control feels more like a suggestion. Despite that it's kinda worth it to see some of the wild situations and giant structures/mechs you get to take down, that alone is kinda What The Game's About more or less, the game doesn't belabor detailed minutiae of the different factions and their war or anything because that's not the point, this isn't a war sim for history nerds, this is the POV of a merc being thrown into situations with the least amount of context possible (in other words, the most profitable amount of context possible), and the player is meant to sort out what being in this cold, disaffected headspace means and does to them. At least, that's what I feel the scenario writer imagined. Totally possible to come away from this game with "oooo cool mech game", skipping all the cutscenes, which there isn't many of. And man there's something really neat about how Fromsoft specifically does with graphics in this PS3 age. It's like, somewhere between the photorealism fetishism that AAA studios had at the time and PS2 graphics. Fromsoft wasn't the AAA studio it is today, and while I am far from a graphics nerd, there's still something in the air (lighting) in these Fromsoft PS3 games that feels like harsh light drowning

out detail and putting the polygons and textures they can fit onto the screen in a stark relief that PS4 Fromsoft games and onward don't really do (and wouldn't really work, for, say, bloodborne, that drags you down into the murk and all but I'm getting too far from the subject here). Also, "The world exists in a continuous state of terror convenient to its leaders' purposes" is such a raw fucking line to drop after detailing the latest goings-ons of corpo war that I was barely following in the first place LOL

#sfmt2026
26. Armored Core 4
This game has even less story (well, story you could follow) than the average for Fromsoft but man. the stark yet blurred PS3-ness of the visuals, the tone somewhere between metal as fuck and bleak as fuck, corpos going to war and polluting the planet, it's a vibe

#sfmt2026
25. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (dropped)
Dual protags you can switch between is fun for a while, but after that wore off I realized the game was really linear and the bosses were more annoying than fun to me so I dropped it shortly after getting past the bad ending checkpoint

#sfmt2026
24. Space Buddies
Critically, this might be the worst movie I've ever seen. At least The Room and Food Fight are spectacles in and of themselves. On the other hand, this is an INSANE chaser directly after Air Bud

#sfmt2026
23. Air Bud
that dog really Can play ball dude

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22. Goat movie
LOVE the visuals, the urban styling of the setting, the emphasis of community alongside the character's own competitive dreams. And I liked it when the panther character goes kitty mode...
Not a life changing movie by any metric, but I enjoyed it !!