ReLIFE ReVIEW

It's not often that I think something manages to be both incredibly world-weary and incredibly optimistic. After all, world-weary fiction often shows this by being jaded and tired, too savvy to be sucked in to joy that it knows can't last and too used to being hurt to fully embrace anything it finds valuable. This is not a condemnation of everything cynical or dark as being mopey - these works are often full of energy and things to say, and can be heartfelt and touching in their own right. I'm merely trying to point out that with world-weariness there always comes a jadedness that prevents one from being fully optimistic.

ReLIFE is one of the few pieces of fiction - be it literature, film, game or, in this case, TV - that I feel manages to be both incredibly savvy and grown-up whilst never loosing optimism or joy. It follows Arata, a 27 year old man who's a bit of a failure. After quitting his job after working there for only three months, he's become unemployable - he's seen as a liability, someone who's too unreliable to be brought aboard as anything but part-time help. One night, after drinking with his friends (To whom he still holds up the pretense that he has a job), he meets Yoake, an employee of the ReLIFE corporation, who offers him a deal. If he becomes a test subject for a year in their ReLIFE program, he'll have all living expenses payed for said year, and a possibility of full employment with ReLIFE after the experiment is ended, depending on his performance. The catch is that the ReLIFE project involves him being made to look like he's 16 and sent back to school for a year, only for his schoolmates memories of him to be erased after he leaves.

In most anime this would simply be an excuse for Arata to get into high school shenanigans, with the jokes being "But he's old!". This is definitely the direction ReLIFE takes this, as well, but it also does much more with this. Rather than just being a simple high school slice-of-life comedy with Arata secretly being an adult, it plays with Arata's position. Even though he quickly becomes a regular member of the school community, he also acts as a puppeteer behind the scenes, subtly pushing his schoolmates into not making the mistakes he feels like he made during school and after it. He helps the shy antisocial girl make friends, he encourages the eternal second-place student to continue pushing herself even if she can never quite overcome her rival, and so on.

The stories that come out of this are good in and of themselves. Comedy isn't too overabundant but it's amusing, and the touching moments are appropriately spaced out and effective. All of the characters are likable enough for me to care about, and just different enough from the high-school archetype they're based on to feel unique. ReLIFE's real strength comes in Arata himself, though. There's a sense of mature fondness he feels for the kids. He very obviously sees himself in them, and he's helping them out as much out of desire to help his friends as out of regret that he didn't have someone to push him in that direction. Arata obviously sees himself as a failure, as much as he comically denies it, and he's happy to be in a time before failure was permanent. He doesn't want these kids to fuck up in the same way he did.

Despite how bitter this sounds, the show is surprisingly gentle about it. Rather than wallowing in pity over the fact that these simple days when all you have to worry about is the occasional exam and whether your crush reciprocates your feeling or not are over, ReLIFE fondly remembers them. The whole point of the ReLIFE experiment is for Arata to remember this feeling and to use it to push himself out of his rut. After all, his life after ReLIFE promises to be better, with the possibility of a permanent job at ReLIFE. Despite this, there's a feeling of dread for when the experiment ends: The students will forget Arata, though not his lessons. The friends he makes during this experiment aren't permanent, none of his progress will keep. His return to innocence is meant to promptly disappear.

This is really what makes ReLIFE worth a watch. For people like myself, who did fantastically at school and are struggling to keep up in adult life, ReLIFE is both a nostalgic trip to a time where your future seemed bright and full of promise, and a reminder not to give up. Even if you seem to be doing badly, even if your life seems to be heading to a disappointing place after the high expectations you'd set up for yourself earlier, it's not over yet, and you have to keep trying and keep pushing yourself. If you do, you're bound to end up in a good place. It's an important reminder, and one that I desperately needed after having fallen from being extremely promising in school to below mediocre at university. ReLIFE might not be all that outstanding as a show, but it's one that I needed to watch where I'm at in my life right now.

Thanks, ReLIFE.

Rating: 9/10

Ace Attorney Retrospective: Trials and Tribulations

There's a strange thing I've noticed whilst writing these: It seems like the more I like the game, the less I have to discuss. Justice For All is still my least favorite game in the series, but it's very interesting to talk about. Apollo Justice is also one of the weaker entries in the series, and I've already thought of a lot to say about it. The same goes for the recent Spirit of Justice: It's on the weaker end of the series, but it certainly has a lot to discuss. Once again, spoiler warning for the entire series from this point on.

Trials & Tribulations, on the other hand, is my favorite game in the Ace Attorney series by a considerable margin, and one of my top 10 favorite games ever. This is absolutely brilliant stuff, managing to evoke every feeling from funny to tense to sad in stunningly short periods of time and containing some of my favorite character beats in gaming. The last two cases (which are really one case split in two parts) are absolutely incredible feats of storytelling.

And yet, it's a fairly simple structure. Turnabout Memories, the first case of the game, strikes a powerful emotional chord by letting us play as Mia Fey. At this point it should become evidently clear that this is a game for people who've played the previous two. Turnabout Memories is a case that banks on our attachment to these characters not only for its own narrative, but for its setup of future narrative. Playing as Mia is powerful: She's become such an awe-inspiring figure in the eyes of anyone who's played the previous two games that not only seeing her as a fledgling attorney but also controlling her is incredibly striking.

The use of Turnabout Memories as tutorial is absolute genius. It subtly tells us several very important things. First, that Mia was once as new and bumbling at being an attorney as Phoenix was in The First Turnabout. This will actually become important not just in this game, but in several future installments of the series, but for now it's significant because, in a manner of speaking, this is Nick's coming of age story. Second, it shows us how traumatized Mia is after the events that happened in her first trial. Someone who's got the potential to be so insanely good at this job has regressed so much from her first trial that she's being given the tutorial, and this is all because of some terrible trauma she suffered.

I mentioned previously that this game is a coming of age story of sorts for Phoenix. This is true: This is a story about him becoming an incredibly powerful defense attorney to rival Mia, whilst learning to not rely on her in the process. However, this is also a coming of age story for Maya, where she must become someone worthy of being the Master of Kurain. For both our characters the objective to reach is symbolized by Mia, be it her spiritual power or her ability as an attorney. This'll be a theme that's hammered home later in the game, so having Turnabout Memories happen early on to let us see that it's achievable, that this is something Mia herself had to do and is an important step in humanizing Mia.

Turnabout Memories also lets us see Nick at a point before he became the Nick we know. This allows us to see how far Nick has already come, but it also sets up Dahlia Hawthorne as the villain brilliantly. Here we have a woman who's managed to turn Nick into a character comparable to Larry Butz, a pathetic weakling. We know Nick, we know he's better and smarter than this, and, even if we're not conscious of it, this ingrains the idea that Dahlia is very adept at manipulating people and incredibly dangerous into our mind.

From there, we have The Stolen Turnabout. The main problem in talking about Trials & Tribulations comes in the two cases after Memories. They're not insignificant to the overall plot, but Turnabout Memories, Turnabout Beginnings and Bridge to the Turnabout really make up one story, with The Stolen Turnabout and Recipe for Turnabout being little more than distractions. Still, they're both vital: We need to see Nick just doing lawyer stuff for a bit, and we need time to see both his and Maya's flaws. The Stolen Turnabout is also nice in that it serves in giving the world a bit more variety (This is the first case in the entire series which has a trial for something other than a murder), and as an opportunity to spend some time reminiscing on the times we've spent around the Fey clan. As a side note, we also get to check in with Adrian Andrews from the final case of Justice For All and see that she's fine and leading a much healthier life after Farewell, My Turnabout, which wraps up one of the very few loose threads from that case and makes its point resonate even stronger.

Recipe for Turnabout is, in my opinion, the weakest case in the game, but it also has some important moments. Maya doesn't hesitate to call on Mia when she's needed, and Nick takes this as perfectly natural, highlighting just how much they both still depend on her. We also get some important Gumshoe character beats, seeing how much he cares for Maggey Byrde. We've seen him this way before, but it's always been because some character we know very well was in trouble: Edgeworth in the original and Maya in Justice For All. We barely know Maggey, and this not only gives us the impression Gumshoe is a human being with other interactions, but it also shows just how large his capacity to care is.

After those two good but inconsequential cases are over, we arrive at Turnabout Beginnings, possibly the most emotionally devastating case in the series. We take control over our idol Mia again, the person that both Nick and Maya have been citing as having the virtues they aspire to one day have, and we get absolutely devastated. This case is probably the most moody case in the series. We have that heart-wrenching, music-box like song as the motif and Terry Fawles, one of the absolute most tragic characters in the series, as the defendant. This is a man who's clearly not all there, seeming to have some kind of mental condition. The one thing he's adamant about is his love for Dahlia, going so far as to commit suicide to fulfill the promise he made to her - that they'd both always be able to trust each other. Meanwhile, Dahlia is there, putting on her pretty girl act and manipulating this terribly vulnerable and innocent man into suicide without any sign of hesitation. From the beginning, we know we can't get her: she's still got to turn up in Turnabout Memories, so she can't be put behind bars now. Everything she does is a lie that only we can see through and we can't expose, and she's incredibly malevolent, heartless, and bound to walk away from this unscathed.

This is an incredibly frustrating and personal case. Everything here is engineered with two purposes in mind. First, make you hate Dahlia Hawthorne with all your heart, and understand just how incredibly dangerous she is. Second, make sure you feel weak and impotent. This is incredibly important for Bridge to the Turnabout, it'll sow confusion, apprehension and curiosity in the player when Dahlia's twin Iris shows up. Add to this the fact that Godot is inexplicably just there in this case, and we don't know why, and you have Turnabout Beginnings acting as an incredibly powerful jumping off point to the next case.

Bridge to the Turnabout is my favorite case in the entire Ace Attorney series. It concentrates an entire trilogy's worth of build-up into the most incredible series of events I could imagine. This is a case that's incredibly tense, incredibly funny, incredibly sad, incredibly heartwarming and incredibly satisfying. The first day, when you're playing as Edgeworth, is a really pleasant surprise, and wraps up the commentary on the legal system the first two games were based on, allowing us to see where Edgeworth is at in terms of headspace and showing the incredible trust him and Nick have managed to build. Iris is a fantastic plot contrivance, serving as someone who provides a whole lot of emotional conflict just from being there. You can't trust her, she looks just like Dahlia and Dahlia is clever and manipulative enough to pull this off, yet she's such a warm, pleasant person and seems so genuine you can't help but trust her. Because of how fresh Beginnings is in your mind, it puts you right into Nick's shoes, and in an incredibly confusing position. When you do finally trust her, Dahlia secretly takes her place and backstabs you in an incredibly painful manner.

The end of the game has you facing off against Maya, who's giving incredibly solid testimony to protect Godot. She's proving her enormous strength, courage and conviction here, and she's doing it without any help: She doesn't need Mia for this anymore, she's grown out of it. You're forced to face off against it, and you overcome that as well, also without Mia's help. Both Nick and Maya have grown, and overcome some of their biggest flaws. Nick's lawyer abilities are now equal to Mia's, which is what Godot comes to realize when he sees Mia's spirit standing by Nick. Nick is finally a worthy successor to Mia.

Godot, however, serves as an example of how not to achieve this state. Throughout the game, he holds a grudge against Nick for daring to try and usurp Mia's place. Godot blames Nick for what's happened to him, and refuses to move on. He starts prosecuting cases just to fight against Nick, with no regard for the truth or the legal system. Godot is acting as selfishly as Edgeworth and Franziska when they were the main prosecutor, despite demonstrating he knew better in Turnabout Beginnings. This looses us the lessons of the first game. He also acts outside the law to achieve his goals, refusing to tell the police about the events he knows will transpire, loosing us the lessons of the second game. Finally, he refuses to chase Mia, our paragon of virtue, meaning he doesn't move forward as we have been doing in Trials & Tribulations. For all his swagger, confidence and charm, Godot represents the ultimate failure to take the lessons of the past to heart, and his realization of this is his first step forward.

So Trials & Tribulations really is just a coming of age story. Maya has finally grown up, and Nick has finally become the Ace Attorney the titles have always claimed he was. It's a simple step to take at the conclusion to the trilogy, but an incredibly satisfying one, and one that's told supremely well.

I apologize if this piece is scattershot and badly organized: Trials & Tribulations proved a tough nut to crack. Still, this game is fantastic, and it sets up Nick's legend nicely for Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. I'll take a bit of a break here, since I didn't actually re-play Apollo Justice in preparation for Spirit of Justice (though it turns out I really should have, those two games are pretty closely connected), and I need to re-play it before writing my thing on it. I've only played it once, and I remember it being a weaker entry in the series, but far from as bad as many people make it out to be (as I've said, better than Justice For All!), so it'll be interesting to see what I think about it this time.

Ace Attorney Retrospective: Justice For All

Let's get cracking on with the second game in the Ace Attorney series - the dark middle chapter of the trilogy that is Justice For All. Spoilers for every aspect of the game, and possibly other games in the series, will be given freely from this point on. Proceed at your own risk.

I'll be honest here. I don't much like Justice For All as far as Ace Attorney goes. It's got by far the worst individual cases of the game - the first three cases are all pretty weak, and the third case Turnabout Big Top in particular is infamous in the fandom and often considered the weakest case in the entire series. It also features some of my least favorite puzzles in the entire series, and a collection of characters that vary between irritating and forgettable. Its final case Farewell, My Turnabout is often considered one of the best cases in the trilogy - if not the best - but I tend to disagree. Whilst it's very strong, it's my least favorite last case in the trilogy (Not counting Rise from the Ashes as a last case): I simply don't think it's as compelling as the look you get into Edgeworth's mind in Turnabout Goodbyes or the magnificent character piece that is Bridge to the Turnabout.

All that said, Justice For All is still an amazing game. Being the weakest Ace Attorney game is akin to being the least hot star or the least gratuitously violent Tarantino film - it's really not saying much. Justice For All is also one of the most important games in the series. I keep coming back to this idea of it being the dark middle chapter of the trilogy, but in a way it also serves as the end of a two-part story with the original. Justice For All is the last time that the games really feel like they're actually about the Japanese legal system to me - even considering all the talk of disbarment and "the dark age of the law" that future games will indulge in. However, it also begins a transition that we'll see completed in Trials & Tribulations where the series actually becomes about the characters rather than about the justice system.

Justice For All begins with The Lost Turnabout. I'm not a massive fan of this case - it held the dubious honor of being my least favorite first case in the series until Dual Destinies came along with its absolutely terrible first case - due to its contrived excuse for amnesia which is in turn a contrived excuse for a tutorial, as well as some of the absolutely ridiculous gaff that goes on in the cases' mystery (Hurr durr yellow baseball glove is like bananas). That said, it does provide important set-up for next set of cases. You see, what's important here is that the culprit, Wellington, is obviously evil. He kills the victim completely for his own selfish gain and is completely unsympathetic to the audience.

This is the first step in a downward descent through the game, where the people we're getting caught are less and less obviously evil. In the second case we have Mimi Miney, who simply wants to take revenge on the man who ruined her life and indirectly killed her sister and Morgan Fey, whose motive simply seems to be that she is a scorned and betrayed sister to Maya's mother Misty and a doting mother to Pearl. The third case, Turnabout Big Top gets a lot of criticism that goes along the lines of "everyone is an annoying jerk except for the murderer!", which definitely makes playing through the case a pain but serves to give us Acro, a killer who is obviously a good man who's done what he's done only because of the incredible pain that his brother's situation has put him in, and is full of regret and shame for his actions.

All of this serves to leaves us pretty cold to the legal system we're being presented with. It's working as intended, with the true culprit coming to light and being punished and the innocent defendant being set free, but none of this feels good. Once you get over the rush of being able to prove that the guilty party is guilty you find out their motives. They're human too, and their stories are just as tragic as that of the victim, and you're sympathetic to them and feel bad that they have to be punished for their crimes. The law is being served, but it doesn't feel like justice is being done. This makes the title Justice For All my favorite in the series: There's a very cruel irony to it.

This of course leaves us at Farewell, My Turnabout, which takes this to eleven: Not only do we defend someone who is guilty, we spend a long time trying to pin the blame on a woman who's done nothing wrong and is incredibly vulnerable. What's worse is after the halfway point we know this is exactly what we're doing, and yet we're not in a position to stop because Maya is being held hostage. After the first trial day, the trial becomes surprisingly and frustratingly easy: You keep getting ahead, yet you know you should be behind and want to be behind. Nick is obviously torn and hates himself for every point in favor of Engarde he makes. Engarde is as purely evil as Wellington is, yet the court system is about to declare him not guilty and put poor Adrian Andrews behind bars instead.

However, the day is ultimately won, and we get a happy ending. This is because the games have a pure, heartfelt belief that when everyone is working together, justice will be reached. I'd argue that the only trial in the original Phoenix Wright trilogy that's run under what the game considers optimal conditions is the trial in Farewell, My Turnabout. You have Nick and Edgeworth working together, an attorney and prosecutor that trust each other and aren't in this for selfish ends, but simply because they want justice done. Nick trusts that if his client is guilty Edgeworth's attack will be powerful enough to break his strongest defense, and Edgeworth trusts that if the defendant is not guilty Nick's defense will be resilient enough to deflect his most damning claims. We also have Detective Gumshoe working not against the prosecution or defense, but trying equally as hard to help them both out: He's not only fervent in his search for Maya but he allows both Edgeworth and Nick equal access to crime scenes. We also, as always, have the Judge, who throughout the entire series has been one of the most admirable characters, desiring no doubt to be left before he gives his final verdict (unless you loose and he suddenly finds the defendant guilty out of nowhere even if you're at a spot where you've basically 99% proved that the defendant is innocent but that's not cannon blah blah blah).

Ultimately, despite how unfortunate the circumstances of Cases 2 and 3 were, the culprits in those cases did do unforgivable things: Morgan and Mimi murdered a man and planned to blame it on an innocent girl, and Acro tried to kill a 16 year old girl whose biggest fault was being spoiled by her father, accidentally killing the incredibly kind man that the Ringmaster is said to be instead. Whilst one can sympathize with them (and I do, I really do, especially with Acro), they deserve to be punished. Similarly, despite how far ahead Matt Engarde was during most of Farewell, My Turnabout Nick and Edgeworth did manage to stall the trial long enough to where Gumshoe's courage, dedication and undying goodness of heart managed to provide what they needed to get Maya out of danger. Both Nick and the audience are forced to evaluate whether what he's doing is good and just, and we're led to the conclusion that it is; He's saving innocent lives and making sure punishment only falls on those who deserve it. Whilst the original had us find out how the system is supposed to work and what makes it fail, Justice For All allows us to see why the system needs to work.

There's one element that's glaringly missing from my discussion above, and that's the games' prosecutor, Franziska von Karma. This is for two closely connected reasons: Franziska is amazingly unimportant and I actually kind of actively dislike Franziska. Literally all of her character development comes in a minute long section after the credits, and her two gimmicks during trials (The whip and "foolish fool") are incredibly annoying. She's serviceable as someone to butt heads against until Edgeworth comes back for the last trial and that's about it.

Edgeworth, however, is amazing. Whilst I hate the cheap "Edgeworth is dead" tease that the first three cases indulge in, I love his appearance in the fourth case. Just like in Turnabout Sisters, he seems like he's head and shoulders above Nick in terms of confidence and ability, but there's no longer the arrogance and selfishness that he used to carry with him. Instead, there's a quiet confidence and a humble sort of pride. We soon learn that the only reason Edgeworth is currently above Nick is because he's figured out and internalized the next step of the lesson Nick taught him in Turnabout Goodbyes. Nick understood that lawyers and prosecutors need to fight for justice and not for their own selfish wants. Edgeworth now understands that this means they need to trust each other and fight that much harder for it. This is clearly the same Edgeworth from before, but he's grown, and he's patiently waiting for Nick to catch up.

This is one of the steps that this game takes towards the series becoming more character-focused. Not only do Nick and Edgeworth grow and have to deal with their relationship, we also have Maya needing to grow: the concept of the Master of Kurain is introduced, and that Maya will have to step up her game in order to get there. Gumshoe's relationship with Nick also evolves: It becomes obvious the two have started to become friends and that Gumshoe cares deeply for Maya as well. He's a lot more helpful through the entire game, but this reaches a peak at Farewell, My Turnabout that will be maintained throughout Trials & Tribulations. Franziska also gestures in the same direction as Edgeworth does: It's obvious she was meant to start in as dark a place as Edgeworth, but for different reasons, and then grow out of it, but her development is so botched she just kind of stays there until the credits end. This type of character development was absent outside Edgeworth in the first game, and is a prelude to Trials & Tribulations' much more character-driven story.

As I have already said, Justice For All is my least favorite Ace Attorney game. However, it's also one of the most crunchy when looked at on this level, and a really interesting turning point for the series. We explore Nick's relationship with his profession, and, in that sense at least, end up in the same place we started in, but much more confident and assured in our purpose. We start paying more attention to characters rather than concepts, and we put a close to the darkest game in the Ace Attorney series. It turns out, even the worst Ace Attorney game is really damn good! For a while, we'll bid farewell to this "era of the law" of Ace Attorney and say hello to the character focused era that Trials & Tribulations ushers in. That'll be a good one. See you then!

Ace Attorney Retrospective - Prelude and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney

The Ace Attorney series is one that I'm extremely fond off. I'd probably go as far as calling it my favorite series of video games. It's truly excellent, and it hits a number of notes that I'm particularly fond off without sacrificing much for people who don't have the exact niche of tastes that I do. It not only feels like a series made specifically for me - it's a series that has the strengths of something made specifically for me, plus a massive amount of other strengths that I appreciate.

I've recently played through the entire series again - with the exception of Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright - in preparation for the sixth and newest entry, released a couple days ago, named Spirit of Justice. Me playing through the Ace Attorney series is nothing new. I've been playing and re-playing all these games for years, and have essentially memorized the original and most of the second game by now. However, this particular play-through of the series really made me appreciate the long-term arcs that the series presents, and as such has made me enjoy the games a considerable amount more.

I have thoughts about Spirit of Justice, but I can't even begin to approximate how I'd actually write a review of that game. I tried writing a review when I first played Dual Destinies something like 6 months ago, and it resulted in a spectacular and incoherent failure. As such, I'll simply go through the series so far in a series of posts, highlighting previous failures and successes, and simply put Spirit of Justice in context when compared to the previous games in the final post. This should tell fans of the series exactly what they need to know, and those that haven't played all of the previous games have no business playing Spirit of Justice. the games often tend to build on previous entries, and Spirit of Justice relies heavily on themes from Dual Destinies.

Spirit of Justice is the most beginner-unfriendly game in the series since Trials & Tribulations came out in 2004. For those looking to get into the series, I heartily recommend the original Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, which can be purchased on the 3DS e-shop along with the next two games in the series as the Ace Attorney Trilogy for 15 pounds - a fantastic deal considering how long (and good) all of these games are. Whilst the original can't be beat as a jumping-in point, other good starting points include Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney, which is one of the weaker games in the series but is very beginner-friendly (Though you'll unfortunately need to hunt down a physical copy) and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Dual Destinies, which is fantastic but not quite as the beginner-friendly as the previous two. I should also warn beginners that I'm giving myself free reign for spoilers from this point in this piece on. Got it? Good. I'm also going to ignore a lot of the stuff that makes the series good on a short term-basis: The individual puzzles you go through on trials, and the wacky, endearing, and extremely entertaining characters. I'm just assuming you know that those are brilliant. If not, take my word for it: they're brilliant.

Let's begin at the beginning then, with the original 2001 release Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Considering how big and convoluted the franchise grew to become, it's amazing how simple and humble this game really is. The First Turnabout, the first case in the series, makes a striking first impression and tells you exactly what you need to know: You're a defense attorney, and you'll bluff your way through trials, all whilst making deductions more similar to a detective than a lawyer, to prove your clients innocent. Straight off, The First Turnabout has something that'll be a staple of the series: Eventually, a witness will show up who obviously did it. At this point, you and the prosecution essentially switch places: You're trying to prove that it was the witness who did it and the prosecution tries to prove they couldn't have so that they can hopefully bounce back into attacking your client.

This seems to be an odd decision: Why not just make you a prosecutor? You do spend a lot of your time on the defensive, but the most satisfying and iconic moments of the series often come from that "I got you now!" feeling, when you finally manage to prove that a particularly slippery individual did it. I'd argue that this is actually kind of the point of the first three games (what is often called "the trilogy"), and it's a residual flaw in the rest. Phoenix Wright was first thought up as a parody of Japan's legal system, where prosecutors reign supreme and even the best and most experienced defense lawyers only have a couple wins under their belt. This shows very obviously in the first game with Miles Edgeworth.

Let's be honest here: Despite its title, Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is very much not Phoenix's (I'll call him Nick from now on for obvious reasons) story. It's Miles Edgeworth's story. We first meet him as a terrifying and ruthless prosecutor in Turnabout Sisters. After just one case, you've had your tutor taken from you, and suddenly you're up against this guy who's never lost a case. He messes with your evidence (which you assume to be him falsifying evidence, even though it later becomes obvious this is not what he was doing), is incredibly tough after the pushover that was Winston Payne in the first case, and doesn't hesitate to give Redd White, the man who obviously did it, a way out in order to make his case. He continues this way through much of the third case, Turnabout Samurai, until in the end he unexpectedly helps you find the true killer, at which point your perception of him is severely thrown off-balance. Finally, Turnabout Goodbyes is his redemption: You learn Edgeworth and Nick's shared backstory, learn of the traumatic events in Edgeworth's past that led him to becoming a prosecutor and get to clash swords with his mentor Manfred von Karma, who is still the most terrifying prosecutor to date. Manfred von Karma has an advantage in this regard that no other prosecutor has: He is a straight-up villain. His constant blocking of you during trials doesn't need to come across as fair because it simply isn't.

Edgeworth and von Karma are very similar, with a vital difference: They're both ruthless prosecutors and they both despise criminals. Until you met Edgeworth, they both had perfect win records, and they both conduct themselves similarly in trials, with Edgeworth's body language even mimicking von Karma's to some extent (his animations in Trials and Tribulations' fourth case being almost exact copies of von Karma's is one of my favorite details in these games). The vital difference is their motivation: Edgeworth hates criminals, whilst von Karma loves perfection. Edgeworth's ideals are... well, idealistic, and so he can be redeemed, whilst von Karma is selfish and is portrayed as a villain. When it becomes clear to Edgeworth that his ways are so similar to someone as utterly evil as von Karma, he looses all faith in his role as a prosecutor and leaves for most of a game...

Or he would if Rise from the Ashes didn't exist. Rise from the Ashes is a tough one for me. It's a decent case, and I fairly enjoy playing it. That said, it's placed wrong. It belongs at the end of Justice for All. Whilst I don't know how well it would work there - I think the culprit is entirely too black-and-white to fit in that game, and there's obvious timeline inconsistencies - this case being at the end of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a detriment to the first game. It simply has Edgeworth being there, somewhat conflicted but mostly fine, and still acting as prosecutory as ever. Edgeworth and Nick trust each other in court - which is nice coming in from Turnabout Goodbyes, but completely ruins the impact of the end of Justice for All and Trials & Tribulations later in the series. Of course, Rise from the Ashes is a case added later on for the re-release on the DS, and as such it's comprehensible to not introduce a new prosecutor, but I really hate what it does for Edgeworth's arc and as such I choose to think of it as only half-cannon (It'd be a shame to let the Skye sisters' story line go to the non-cannon wasteland).

I don't know how much of the series was planned in advance - I don't believe anything was planned ahead when Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney was being made, despite having no conclusive evidence - but it's amazing how well this game works as both its own story and as set-up for Justice for All and Trials & Tribulations. Edgeworth shows us how the court system is definitively not meant to work, and shows us whose fault it is that it's working this way: People like Manfred von Karma and Robert Hammond, who aren't in this for the purpose of justice, but for their own personal gain, whether it be monetary or simply stroking their own ego. Justice for All will expand on this by considering how whether the justice system is a force for good even when working properly, and Trials & Tribulations will build on what Justice for All leaves us with.

There's a few character arcs that I have to check in on at this point, largely because they'll be immensely important later on. First and perhaps most importantly is our titular not-quite-really-protagonist. Unbeknownst even to the player, Nick's mission, from the very start, is to drag Edgeworth back to his senses. As such, Nick doesn't get much development this game: Mia dies early on, which one would think would catalyze significant change in Nick, but it only really serves to make the stakes in Turnabout Sisters higher. All the other cases have him be too busy being a lawyer to get much development. That is something that will very much be left for the other two games, particularly Justice for All.

Another big character is Maya. It never actually fails to surprise me how little she's in this game. She's not in The First Turnabout, she's not in Turnabout Sisters that much and she doesn't appear at all in Rise from the Ashes. She's only really fully around for Turnabout Samurai and Turnabout Goodbyes, which admittedly make up more than half the run time of the original four cases, but it's amazing that she's less than prominent in over half the game. Whilst she's an absolute delight, there's very little character development here. She's your bosses' sister who you have to defend for a case, and then she's your energetic sidekick. I love Maya in this game (and in every other game in the series), but she's not really particularly important to the long-term arcs until late in Trials and Tribulations. This is not to say she's not important to the series: She's obviously one of the most vital characters, second only to Nick (In the trilogy anyway): she's the emotional one in your duo, provides entertainment during investigation sequences, and her building friendship with Nick is really touching. I absolutely love Maya Fey, to the point where I genuinely tear up at some Maya moments, and she certainly makes my top 3 Ace Attorney characters, but she's not a major player in the level of storytelling that I'm planning to talk about in this series.

Finally, Gumshoe. He's been distrustful of you and intentionally unhelpful (despite being a good-natured and friendly guy) until Turnabout Goodbyes when he starts to help you because you're helping Edgeworth, whom he trusts. Then in Rise to the Ashes he's ridiculously helpful, but again, that case really should be at the end of Justice for All.

That's all I have to say about this game, so a bit of housekeeping to end off. I really enjoyed writing this, but it's possible I lose interest after posting it and don't go on with the series. Hopefully that won't happen: Justice for All has some juicy meat to tear into, despite being my least favorite game in the series to date. I also look forwards to Trials & Tribulations and beyond, where the overarching plot becomes less about criticizing law and more about the actual characters. In case I don't get to it, here's my quick opinion on Spirit of Justice, even though I haven't quite finished it yet: I just finished case 4 so the cornerstone that traditionally joins it all together in the form of the last case is still missing for me. I do mean quick: This is disorganized, not very coherent, and I'm not trying particularly hard to make it well written since I don't consider it part of the piece I'm writing. Unless you're really interested what this random stranger on the Internet thinks of SoJ, stop reading now.

So far, it's an extremely ambitious attempt at making the series larger in scope in a way that isn't quite successful, but that I admire. The new prosecutor might be my least favorite in the series (Yes, including Franziska). I think splitting it into two nations is brave but misguided, since it leaves both story-lines feeling underdeveloped. Rayfa and Divination Seances are great, though Rayfa needs case 5 to satisfyingly close up her arc. I really like how hostile the Khura'in court is, and how much harder the puzzles are in the trials there: It feels a lot more like an uphill climb in an unfamiliar court system that way.

Case 1 is the best case 1 in the series because of this, making a striking impression and thrusting you into an incredibly tense and unfamiliar situation right off the bat. Case 2 is good, though "Apollo and Nahyuta have a connection in their past" is lazy and feels like a re-tread of the original's "Edgeworth and Nick have a connection in their past", plus I instantly knew who the murderer was just from looking at them. Case 2 also feels a bit like old Case 3's in that it's weirdly disconnected from the main plot, but that's a fault of the two-country set up, and it's way better than any old Case 3 anyway. Case 3 is great, really tense the entire way through and with fantastic set up for what I assume will be Case 5, as well as a really clever mystery and twist, though the new characters for the case were meh. Case 4 is really strange: It's a one day trial without investigation but it can't possibly be as important as T&T's Case 4 unless Case 5 goes in a very weird direction. I love your assistant in this case, I think it's almost the best that character's been, though it's a bit infuriating that Athena seems to have completely forgotten how to lawyer and is painted as more of a noob than when she was working Case 3 in DD. It feels like it's there just to have 5 cases including a case where you play as Athena, and I'm almost tempted to believe this was meant to be Case 1 at some point, or maybe a short, cheap DLC case. Still, I actually really enjoyed it, with it being a solid mystery with colorful characters and a satisfying solution. The soundtrack in this game is great, though I don't like the objection theme remixes, they just sound worse than in DD, plus I'd love to return to the trilogy convention of new themes every game.

Spirit of Justice is a great game, though so far it's probably my second or third least favorite (I can't decide whether it's better than Apollo Justice or not). That's mostly due to how flip-floppy it feels with the two settings, though it's very possible that the last case brings it all together. After all, I felt only slightly more enthusiastic about Dual Destinies four cases in, but case 5 skyrocketed that one to my second or third favorite (I can't decide whether I like the original more or not). That said, even being Justice for All, my least favorite Ace Attorney game, is being a better game than most games, so Spirit of Justice really is fantastic.

ACE Academy First Impressions: A Pleasant Surprise

Summer. The precious time of year where I have time to actually pick up a video game I haven't heard about on Steam and try it out. This time, a recently-released little visual novel called ACE Academy by PixelFade Studios, who seem to be a new developer, struck my fancy. It was modestly priced, and on sale to boot. The art looked really good, though I almost didn't pick it up because it rapidly became evident that it's a game about mecha, Japanese style, which is an aesthetic that I've never been a fan of. Plus, it was a visual novel I'd never heard of on Steam, which has recently become the home of an interminable torrent of terrible visual novels.

Still, I wanted something to play, and I hadn't actually played a visual novel in a while, so why not? I'm fond of the genre, and I'd like to find something really good that isn't Katawa Shoujo or Phoenix Wright. So it was that I found myself in the shoes of an American university student moving with his little sister to Japan to live with his uncle. The catch? I'm, incredibly, studying to become a mecha (Or as they're called in this universe, "GEAR") pilot. Gasp, shock, horror, never saw that one coming.

The thing that drew me in to begin with, the art, holds up. Backgrounds look nice, and most of the characters look really good. The one weird exception is that the male characters look pretty bad, their faces are mostly just kind of odd. Luckily, there's only three major male characters that you see on a regular basis, one of them barely shows up, and one of them is actually the one OK looking male character in the game, so it's not much of a problem.

So, I'm introduced to the characters little by little. First it's just Nikki, your sister, who I found annoying for about three minutes before realizing that she's incredibly charming and has fantastic chemistry with your main character. There's a fantastic familial connection between the two, an ease of behavior around the other, and plenty of incredibly endearing teasing. Soon after your uncle Kaito is introduced, who's a pleasant goofball. But soon, you're drip-fed the characters that will end up forming your GEAR team: Best Bro Shou, your incredibly kind manager Yuuna, fiery redhead Kaori, shy but smart Naori, and flirty engineer Best Girl Valerie (Yeah I went there fight me).

As you can probably tell, it's not exactly a set of incredibly novel character archetypes. There's a great scene where the characters actually comment in-universe on how Shou is basically just Yosuke from Persona 4, before going on to purposefully re-create one of the scenes from that game. The fact that they're archetypal isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. They're characters I've seen a thousand times, but done really well. Really impressively well, to be honest. Shou's not just a similar character to Yosuke, he actually rivals Yosuke in how much I like him, and Yosuke is one of my favorite characters in gaming full stop. All the other characters are on a similar level of good, except Naori, who I did find a bit dull. Part of why I like them so much is the writers aren't afraid to have the characters banter a lot. They're constantly teasing and making fun of each other (or even themselves), and it really does feel like a good approximation to my interactions with my friends at university. The massive amount of sex jokes Shou and the main character share is definitely realistic. These sex jokes feel in-universe, like banter between friends, and not a weird insert by the author, which is something I see very rarely with sex humor.

Most of the game is spent simply hanging out with these characters, whether these be segments where you get to choose which character you spend time with (and presumably increase some kind of affection value behind the scenes) or pre-determined plot segments. This is by far where ACE Academy is at its strongest. I like these characters a lot on a variety of different levels. There's comedy scenes that genuinely had me laughing out loud, a few sad scenes that are pretty touching, and a large amount of fantastic scenes where you're simply enjoying hanging out with your friends or spending time with your family. They're almost invariably great, and they're constantly providing you with choices. These choices often don't have any real effect outside of the immediate reaction of the people around you as far as I could tell, but they add a nice little bit of interactivity and variety to these scenes.

I guess this isn't completely true: there are definitely some choices that do affect the flow of the game. ACE Academy is tagged as a dating simulator on Steam, and whilst this isn't completely accurate there's definitely elements of this. As I mentioned before, every now and again you'll have the choice to hang out with one of a few other characters. At a point about three quarters through the game, you're presented with a choice between the characters you've chosen to hang out with the most. If you pick one of the girls, you'll usually start a relationship with them. As far as I understand it, even if you don't, or if you pick Shou, you still end up on a special "that character" route, with scenes with that character exclusive to the route.

I've only completed one route so far (Valerie's, of course, because Valerie is Best Girl), and it seemed that whilst this choice does have a decently large impact on the late game, most of the big scenes will still fold out the same way, and you're still able to have optional hang out scenes with the other characters just like before the choice. The scenes that seemed to result from me being locked into Valerie's route seemed to make up a small proportion of the game, even after the choice had been made. However, I'm not one hundred percent sure about this: it's possible that the changes to how the game unfolds are bigger than they appear to me right now. This is why I'm calling this a First Impressions and not a review: I'm not confident in giving a final verdict before I'm sure I've seen most of what the game has to offer.

Unfortunately, when it comes time to put aside hanging out with characters to develop the main plot, I loose interest. It's kind of bland, if I'm honest, and it doesn't often feel like there's a whole lot of momentum, pressure, or conflict of any kind. The main brunt of the plot concerns itself with a mysterious special ability your mech has, and the circumstances surrounding the death of your parents. This plot is incredibly predictable the whole way through, and the way it's dropped for long periods of time so we can concentrate on shenanigans with the main cast, whilst not unwelcome, doesn't do it a whole lot of favors.

This is mostly baseless speculation on my part, but I think Akira, the incredibly skilled pilot you build a friendly rivalry with, was in some early draft of the script meant to act as a villain for the main plot, but this got scrapped at some point in development. The position he has in the story (the clever handsome and popular guy you aspire to one day beat) makes it feel like he'd act as at least a harmless antagonist, but instead the narration often goes out of its way to point out how helpful and nice he is, and there's no hard feelings between you at any point. This isn't bad per say, I do like Akira as a character, but I can't help but wonder if the game would've been better served if he'd been an opposing force to add at least a bit more conflict and have at least some sort of personal stakes to feel strongly about in the plot. Considering how good the characterization is throughout the game, I'm sure the writers could've managed to make Akira hateable, or at least someone you wanted to take down a peg.

Before I wrap up, there's a couple things to mention I couldn't really find a place for in the bulk of the review: Every character other than your own is voice-acted. This is of varying quality: Shou  and Nikki feel really professionally done, whilst Kaori and Kaito (and a large part of the one-scene characters) tend to sound a bit flat or "I AM ACTING"-ish. I also feel there may have been a problem with direction: there's a weird rhythm to how a lot of the dialogue is read that feels very unnatural, and is as much of a problem with the best voice actors on the main cast as it is with the actors playing extremely minor side characters. It's easy to get used to after playing the game for ten or fifteen minutes, especially if you often just read the dialogue boxes and skip the audio like I do, but it is slightly off putting at first. Also, very occasionally, there'll be the odd dialogue box that either has only half the text voiced, or isn't voiced at all. Still, even with the flaws, I can't help but be impressed that a game like this is fully voice-acted, and at a relatively competent level.

The other thing to mention is the combat system, which I thought was ingeniously done: It must've been really simple to put together, but it's surprisingly good at conveying what it needs to, and as such impressively cost-effective. Combat in the game is rare, but when it does occur what happens is you're simply presented with a normal choice, with a bunch of options... and a short time limit. Most of the options will read things like "slow..." "miss..." or "juked!", but one or two will be things like "slash!" or "evade!", depending on the situation. The result is you've got to find a word describing success fast, and then manage to click it on time. Because the time limits aren't all that tight it tends to be relatively easy, but in the moment it feels surprisingly exciting. In a very abstract way, it does mimic the "quickly figure out what to do and do it" that you'd imagine would go on in a mecha fight like this. I am honestly surprised at how effective such a simple mechanic is, and I can't help but be impressed by how clever it is.

One final thing, and by far my biggest complaint with the game (Unless this changes in other routes): It's too damn short. It honestly felt like it only just got going before completely unexpectedly and awkwardly grinding to a halt. This is frustrating for two reasons.

First, I really wanted to hang out more with these characters that I really like. It just didn't feel like I spent enough time around them considering just how good these are. I honestly feel like part of my problem here is the Persona 4 comparison that the game itself drew: Persona 4 is at least 60 hours long, and when ACE Academy brought it up I at least expected I'd be spending a long time around these characters. After all, part of Persona 4's strength is simply the sheer amount of time you get to spend interacting with those people. Obviously the 60+ hours of a Persona 4 is ridiculous for a 15 Euro visual novel, and there's no way I expected that sort of length, but I at least expected I'd get the satisfyingly lengthy 6-7 hours of something like a Katawa Shoujo. Instead, I got 4 hours according to Steam, and I left the game on whilst doing other stuff for at least 20 minutes, so it's likely that it's closer to 3 and a half. This was with plenty of scrolling back to see all the results on particularly entertaining choices. I'm not annoyed at this because I feel like I didn't get enough bang for my buck (though I can see someone having this complaint), I'm annoyed because these characters are so good that allowing me to grow so fond of them only to have so little time to spend around them seems like a giant waste of solid writing, and a bit of a raised middle finger to me.

Second, and more importantly, it really hurts the plot. I remember thinking to myself, about two minutes before the game unceremoniously cut to credits "Finally, this story is getting started". Then it just ended. What we have in the game isn't a story, it's a very long first act to a story. It really does just stop. There's resolution to one of the mysteries surrounding the character's father. We completely cut short at least three major plot strands, and a large amount of subplots. I know I'm repeating myself, but I can't say it enough: It just feels like it's cut short. I strongly suspect budgetary issues, because the game is ridiculously polished, and feels extremely high-quality in terms of presentation, especially for what (as far as I can tell from their website) is the first project of a small indie team. I can't even say the ending sucks because there's simply no ending, and that's a shame: this game is really good otherwise.

ACE Academy was an incredibly pleasant surprise for me. I expected next to nothing from it coming in, and instead I got some of the best characters I've had the pleasure to interact with in this genre. I played this game in two just-under-two-hour chunks, and by the end of the first chunk I was starting to consider this a contender for my top 20 games of all time. The writing is top-tier, and the visuals are excellent. There were some dampers when it came to the voice acting and the main story, but the former was easily forgiven and the latter was overshadowed by just how great the cast of characters was, and the fact that a good proportion of scenes weren't part of said weak plot.

Through most of my second session I was just as happy with the game (if not even more) as before. The characters kept getting better and better, and the story, whilst still far from great, gained some tiny bit of momentum. Unfortunately, the game suddenly ended in an incredibly unsatisfying manner. I couldn't spend more time with these characters I liked, and the plot just stopped literally within a couple of minutes of me finally starting to get interested. It really felt like I ran into a concrete wall. It really didn't sit well with me, and retroactively soured the whole experience a fair bit.

Still, I really love ACE Academy. It's got several massive flaws, but for most of its run time it really was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, the ending really does put a massive damper on it by being just ludicrously abrupt and unsatisfying. However, it's overall still a phenomenal experience. I heartily recommend it to people who are fond of that very specific flavor of "anime game" that a lot of the social interactions in things like Persona 4 come under, and not-quite-as-heartily but still enthusiastically to those who just like good, fun, characters. I'll definitely be coming back to this one and trying out different routes, though I strongly suspect they won't be different enough to significantly change my mind, especially on the massive issue that is the ending (or lack thereof).

If there turn out to be big changes worth commenting on, I might come back and review each route individually, similarly to how I (almost) did with Katawa Shoujo (Lilly's route review will come... eventually...). If the other routes end up significantly changing how much I like the game for better or worse, but not being all that different to this one in terms of plot (especially the ending), I'll write a short piece to make that clear. If not, this'll be my only piece on the game.

I'm not going to give this a real official score, not unless I come back to it on the blog, but I will tell you that as it is right now I'd probably give it a low 9. ACE Academy is really, really good, and for its significant flaws I'm really glad for the time I spent on it. I'll look forward to PixelFade's next game, Crystalline, and any of their projects after that. These guys are already a really good studio, and I can't wait to see how their work improves as they gain experience.

Praising Anohana

Three.

I like my long and wordy reviews, where I try to go into detail with what limited knowledge I have of whatever medium I'm reviewing. Occasionally, there's something I want to write about that I really don't have much to say about. Usually, I've just avoided writing about it in those situations, but, for once, I'll actually write about it, because Anohana is just so damn good that I can't not praise it. As a

Anohana follows Jintam, a Japanese high schooler who one day wakes up to find his dead childhood friend Menma in his room. After finding out that she's back because she has a wish that she needs fulfilled, despite not remembering what it is, and that Jintam seems to be the only one able to see Menma, they proceed to almost inadvertently reunite the old gang, who have fallen out in the years following Menma's death.

It's a relatively simple premise executed near perfectly. Jintam, Menma and the gang are all extremely well rounded and interesting characters, and they felt *real* to me in a way I've very rarely experienced in anime outside of the phenomenal Grave of the Fireflies. These aren't larger than life superheroes or magical creatures like you'd find in the likes of A Certain Scientific Railgun. They're also not the superficially real-world characters of something like Free! who, despite clearly living in the real world, constantly act like they're characters in a show motivated by drama. Nor, finally, are they alike to the comically relatable but over-the-top characters of something like Kiniro Mosaic. They're much more similar to characters out of something like Breaking Bad, albeit without all the drugs, violence and obnoxious foreshadowing: They're people that we can identify as people we could realistically meet in a familiar environment.

Since Anohana is mainly focused on getting us to know and relate with these characters, this is a massive victory for it. It smashes the one thing it needed to get right out of the park, and just how incredibly right it gets this would warrant watching the show by itself. It being gorgeous, fantastically paced, and featuring one of the best soundtracks I've ever heard in anime is just topping on the already outrageously delicious cake.

Anohana's final episode made me cry. This happens incredibly rarely to me. It's not that I don't tear up. I tear up a lot. Amongst many other things, I've teared up at five different episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, four of Angel, half of Isao Takahata's films, Undertale, Dragonheart, Mass Effect 3, Non Non Biyori (embarrassingly) and Smosh the Movie, thought that last one was for different reasons. Counting Anohana, only three things have made adult me actually cry, as in "made uncomfortable amounts of tears go down my face for what felt like too many minutes".

This is because Anohana isn't just a brilliant character study. Anohana is an ode to an all too recent childhood. Instead of just providing sadness in its closing moments, Anohana transports you for a second to days gone by, when the world seemed smaller, simpler, and a hell of a lot easier. It gives these memories a final nod, and moves on, keeping and cherishing them, but looking firmly forward.

Anohana is absolutely brilliant. There's a few nitpicks and bearbugs I have here and there, but I honestly can't bring myself to discuss them. On a surface level it's an immensely moving story about some immensely likable and immensely interesting characters, and on a somewhat deeper level it's an immensely moving story about some immensely important things in every person's life.

This isn't a review, but Anohana definitely rates a 10/10. Perhaps not my favorite anime, but it's definitely competing for the spot.

Go watch Anohana.

On a lighter note, and in case people are interested: I also cried at the wheat field scene in Lilly's route of Katawa Shoujo and at the end of TellTale Games' first episodic The Walking Dead game. Also, Anjou is clearly best girl. Menma's great, but she just can't compete.

An Ode To Overwatch

I love video games. That is an undeniable fact. They can be meaningful in a variety of ways that no other medium can achieve. They have a very unique capability to tell stories and really touch lives. Serious games like Spec Ops: The Line, Gone Home, or Cibele are truly powerful experiences that leave their mark on you after you play them.

But let's face it, those games aren't the reason we're gamers, are they? Some of the older gamers out there would've been initiated into the medium with their Super Mario Bros. and their Sonic the Hedgehog. People my age were brought in by stuff like Advanced Mario Bros. 4, or the third generation of Pokémon. The newcomers would've got here via their Call of Duty and Minecraft. None of these games are particularly deep or challenging, but what they most definitely are is a whole bunch of fun.

At a very basic, very baseline level, gaming is about fun. No, this doesn't mean games that aren't fun are not good examples of the medium. I don't think there was a moment during The Banner Saga where I was genuinely having fun. It's a game that's heavy, dark and keeps just weighing down on you like a son of a bitch. It's unparalleled at creating a feeling of dread, of despair at this tired, dying world that you're scrambling to keep alive for a few more moments. It's an absolutely magnificent experience, masterfully crafted and one that I would recommend without a second of hesitation. Its very nature, however, means it's not fun.

I have to admit, in these past couple years, I fell prey to one of the things that I hate the most about some game critics: I became snobbish about fun. Sure, games that are fun were to be commended for it, but that wasn't enough. I needed the clever commentary about how narrative affects gameplay of a Call of Juarez: Gunslinger, the smart messing about with the player/character boundary of a 9 Hours 9 Persons 9 Doors. If not that, I at least needed the relatively substanceless narrative focus of a BioShock: Infinite. I needed something there to justify playing games other than that stupid, childish "fun" thing. I'm an adult now, I can't play games just for fun like some kind of 14 year old.

Then there was this Overwatch thing Blizzard was putting out. I'd never really liked Blizzard, but I started playing the stupidly addictive card battler Hearthstone a couple years ago and its grip is still holding me. It's got tonnes of strategy: Figuring out what the meta-game is like, and what deck counters it best. You have to figure out what your opponent is playing as soon as possible, figure out how to scramble your strategy into place with the disparate parts of your game plan you've drawn so you can defeat them, and adapt to unexpected situations borne from odd card combinations, unconventional deck-building, or random factors baked into the cards themselves. I guess it also has that "fun" thing. I'd heard nothing but good about this Overwatch thing, and it was coming out in a couple days, so why not, fuck it, I'll pre-order it on a whim at 4 AM, exams just finished and I deserve a reward of some kind for studying so hard.

I, of course, knew that Overwatch was just an online shooter, but my tired self at 4 AM never really parsed what that meant. It looked colorful, was made by a company that has made one of my top 10 games of all time, and it had a talking gorilla named Winston in it.

So, a couple days pass, and when my Internet connection is finally good enough to let me play online shooters, I fire up Overwatch. A quick tutorial and a few bot matches later, I'm jumping into the quick-play mode proper. I pick up the hero who seemed the coolest from the little experimenting I did in the practice range, and I start pointing and clicking at things until their health is gone.

This... this is fun.

And that's it. That's all that Overwatch is at the level I'm playing it at. It's just a lot of fun. Let me rephrase that: It's a lot of fun. There's no place for a "just" there.

I feel like a child again.

I just... I just want to play this game, man.

It feels good. I like shooting people. I like flying around as Pharah. Zipping around as Tracer. Throwing bombs around as Junkrat. Failing at doing anything useful as Genji. Pulling big Resurrections as Mercy. Just creating two fucking dragons out of nowhere as Hanzo. Engaging in GLORIOUS COMBAT as Reinhardt.

Overwatch reminded me why I'm a gamer in the first place. All the games I mentioned before? They're all great. They're fantastic, beautiful pieces of art, all unique and worthwhile in their own ways. I've got nothing but respect for them and the mad geniuses who created them.

Overwatch is just relentlessly, unflappably fun. It controls so well!  The heroes are all so enjoyable to play! It's a truly beautiful, really masterfully designed piece of art. It works like absolute clockwork. It's just so tightly constructed in every way. And for what purpose? To say something about video games? To convey a message about the human condition? Tell a personal story?

No. Fuck that. You're going to have fun. That's all you need, and that's exactly what you're going to get, in an absolutely masterful and ridiculously polished way.

Ultimately, I play games to have fun. Yes, there's games like The Banner Saga that aren't fun at all, but are fantastic experiences in their own right. I won't knock them for not being fun, and I'll keep looking for those kinds of experiences. I love those experiences. But when I first fired up Advanced Super Mario Bros. 4 I wasn't looking for that. I wasn't looking for a significant challenge, brilliant atmosphere, or something significant to think about. I just wanted to have fun making the funny little man jump. I did, and it brought about a passion that hasn't just informed what I do in my free time, it's fundamentally changed me as a person through the experiences I've had through gaming.

Overwatch is an absolutely brilliant game. It's most definitely among the 5 best games I've ever played, and it's revived my love for gaming. I'll keep looking forward to games like Analogue: A Hate Story and Always Sometimes Monsters, that are there to provide a deep and meaningful experience, filled with rich themes, but I'll make sure to not forget that something like Overwatch that exists solely to provide joy is just as valuable, important, and impressive.

Thanks, Overwatch.

Always Sometimes Monsters - Now This Is Videogaming!

I've got this notion about video games as a medium. You see, every single artistic medium has something exclusive to it that makes it worthwhile and valuable. Writing allows you to create literally anything, film allows you an insane measure of fine control over the story you're putting out, music allows you to transmit emotion without the need of words or visuals, and so on. Obviously, what gaming has that no other medium has is interactivity. It allows for all types of interactions, be it simply expecting the player to guide their character through obstacles, or actually expecting them to choose who their character is and how they act. As such, the most accomplished and unique games are those that play to those precise strengths. The best games are those that either base themselves on strong, satisfying gameplay experiences or on storytelling that is very choice-based. As such, it is no surprise that my top 5 games of all time are all this way.

Always Sometimes Monsters is a game that is all about choices. Both at a mechanical and a story level, what defines Always Sometimes Monsters is its choice. In a way, Always Sometimes Monsters is truly unprecedented. It's the first game that I'd say is truly equivalent to a modern-day realistic drama. Whilst I love games like Persona 4 and  The Walking Dead to bits, they both rely on fantasy in their story and some very gamey elements in the gameplay. Persona 4 is still a JRPG with combat, and The Walking Dead still has big action setpieces and puzzle elements that are very traditionally gamey. Always Sometimes Monsters has none of this. It's firmly based in reality at all times in its aesthetic, and it revolves exclusively around walking around and talking to people, with very rare breaks for short minigames representing an action one would believably take in the real world.

In Always Sometimes Monsters you take the role of a once promising writer who's completely failed to deliver. Your landlord is cracking down on you and demanding rent money that you simply do not have. To make things worse, you receive an invitation to the love of your life's wedding at the other side of the country. It's happening in 30 days, and it's up to you to scrounge up enough money to keep hopping from town to town in hopes of making it in time.

Beyond that, almost literally anything is your choice. Are you male or female? Straight, gay, bi? Are you a good person? Do you think you're a good person? Are you going to the wedding to be there for someone you hold dear, or in hopes of gaining them back? Will you do honest odd jobs to get there, or try to profiteer off of those vulnerable enough? How good is your work ethic? Do you do drugs? What are your political leanings? What are your religious leanings? What do you like to eat?

This is just the very surface level of all the choices you get to make. The game is truly replete with choices, many of which are genuinely tough. You are strapped for cash, and you could make a lot of money by screwing people over. On the other hand, you can really screw people over. But then some of them deserve to be screwed over, don't they?

The amount of choices is truly staggering, and a good amount of them are tough. Some are very obviously telegraphed, others are not. It really does make the game feel alive and like a real place, even through a lot of the very weird (if, for me, effective) humor put in there.

The thing that the game does best, however, is that it never judges you for your choices. It simply presents you the consequences of said choices, and allows you to feel guilty or not, to try to justify your choice or not. Everything in this game is a choice, even things that aren't in the game itself.

All of this would fall over if the story the game told wasn't good. Luckily, the rather simple story is immensely effective. The structure the game ends up taking is as follows: You're in a town. You meet a few characters, with one of them allowing you to stay with them. You get given a goal you need to reach to get to the next town, and a lead as to how to accomplish said goal. You can choose to follow the lead, or find your own way. It's very effective, with each town feeling distinct, real, and interesting. There's also occasional flashbacks to your past, your relationship with the person to whose wedding you're heading. They're done genuinely well. The romance is believable, even if you only see select moments of it, and you can also see how it falls apart through some pretty heart-breaking scenes.

Always Sometimes Monsters is, to a very real degree, the simplest distillation of what a story-based game should be. This could not work as a movie, a book, a painting, or a piece of music. Always Sometimes Monsters is an experience and a story that works only in game form. It's about the decisions we have to make on a day-to-day basis, about how we make them, what they mean, and how they reflect on who we are. It's truly brilliant, and strongly recommended to all. It's pretty cheap on Steam, go get it.

Presentation: 9/10
The only thing that lets it down is some shaky art from time to time. Otherwise, it sounds brilliant, and its story is brilliantly told.

Gameplay: 9/10
Its gameplay is mainly its choices. There's no real flaw with its choices, but a lot of the minigames on the periphery are rather shaky.

Overall: 9.5/10
Brilliant. Go get it. I may not like it more than Persona 4 or The Walking Dead, but there's something here that I respect to the very deepest level. It's ballsy, clever, genuine, and full of charm.

A Zero Escape retrospective.

Before we begin with the spoiler-filled bit, here's a quick primer on the Zero Escape series for all of you who have not had the pleasure of playing them thus far. It's a series of visual novels with escape-the-room adventure elements, in which you and 8 other people are put in an almost, but not quite, SAW-style death game by a mysterious masked entity calling themselves Zero. So far, there's been two games in the series: 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (Later re-released and rebranded as Zero Escape: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors) and Zero Escape: Virtue's Last Reward (Released in Japan under what I think is the much better name Zero Escape: Good People Die) They're shrouded in mystery and reveals, all stemming from one central question: why are you in this sadistic game? All the time there's new pieces added to the puzzle, and you keep uncovering answers that open up even more questions.

The games delight in two major things: long, very drawn out discussions on pseudo-science and messing with the barrier between player and game. Basically anything else would be a spoiler, but let it be said that I very much recommend both games, the first one in particular. They manage to strike a great balance between being unrelentingly silly and self-serious, taking these prolonged discussions about Ice 9, conspiracy theories about the Titanic and other such nonsense deadly serious. The result is a genuinely endearing product where it's surprisingly easy to get immersed in all these immensely silly topics. Yes, a lot of the conversations that go on are stupid, but the characters take them so completely serious, without a hint of irony, that you can't help but go with it and love every second of it. The writing is also completely solid: these writers know how to build a story.

The games are also genuinely great at messing with your expectations regarding the characters. A lot of the obvious archetypes you're presented with are subverted, inverted, or played with in a variety of fascinating ways. This is not to say characters act like real people. They're all surprisingly chill at being in death games, and seem to enjoy standing about and discussing the Ship of Theseus problem even when under a strict time limit with the threat of death. But this is taken so unblinkingly by the game that it's very easy to go along with, and doesn't as much bring you out of the action as create a weird dissonant tone that works pretty well with the fairly surreal events going on around you.

The final element is the choice-making. Both games have a variety of different routes that are very different in the events that take place, based entirely on your decisions. These are most often just based on what rooms you choose to go through throughout the game, though Virtue's Last Reward throws in an extra twist on top of this. I'll just say that the way the choices work is incredibly well done, in order to avoid spoilers by the way of specifics.

In short, they're both great (if immensely silly at times) visual novels. 999 is a bit more horror-ish in a way that I very much enjoy and, I personally thought, more clever with its twists, whilst Virtue's Last Reward is a deeper story with more strands to discover, and considerably better puzzle sections, as well as a massive quality of life improvement in the form of the flowchart that lets you instantly go to any decision point. They're both highly recommended, but start with 999. Not only do I like it more, but Virtue's Last Reward will make more sense (and have more intriguing mysteries) if you've played 999 first.

This is where I'm giving myself free reign to spoil things. I'm going to very directly compare both games, including major plot-points. These are games that you absolutely do not want spoiled: they rely very heavily on the mystery of the whole situation. Half the joy comes from those "Eureka!" moments when you figure out how a few weird plot strands connect. I doubt they'd stand up on a second play-through when you know everything. Seriously, leave now if you have the slightest intention to play these things, I'm going to very thoroughly spoil both games.

OK, are the unspoiled people gone now? I think they're gone. Good. Didn't like them anyway.

As I've mentioned previously in this little piece, I like 999 more than Virtue's Last Reward. There's a few reasons for this: I thought the version of the Nonary Game in 999 simply works a lot better than it does in Virtue's Last Reward. The bombs are a much better way to end people, I thought, since it really does make for some truly gruesome parts. Walking through the remnants of the Ninth Man in Room 5, or finding Not-Snake blown up in Room 3 were both really disgusting experiences, and the descriptions of both situations were on-point. It really helped the atmosphere become oppressive in a way that Virtue's Last Reward really never became.

Another such reason is Ace. I fucking love Ace. In 999, you're really led to believe Ace is the trustworthy one. He makes a selfless sacrifice (by taking a very risky move) for the group early on, he acts as the voice of reason in a lot of situations, trying to keep the team together, is kind and understanding, and a pleasure to talk to. Of course, Ace ends up being the one who's been killing off other members of the group to try and protect himself, with every good action he takes being a cover up for a crime, and is revealed to have been a completely evil motherfucker even before the events of the Nonary Game. If anything, he's more the true villain of 999 than even June (AKA Zero) is, since she's only really having to act this way because of what Ace did to her. It's an event that really hurts, and one that I really didn't see coming. He's a really brilliant villain.

Of course, I didn't expect Virtue's Last Reward to pull an Ace again. Playing the same trick twice would've been lame and predictable. I did keep an especially close eye on Luna, since she seemed to be nice enough - and a different enough flavor of nice at that - to be a serious candidate for "the Ace", but she turned out alright on the end. Instead we got Dio being the secretly evil one. Except... well, Dio acts like Santa from the first game. He's loud, brash, and makes it very clear that he's out to save his own skin first and foremost. It's not exactly a surprise when the one character who's openly unlikable and hostile turns out to be the villain. As for the other characters... Well, Luna's a robot, and that was a plot point that was kinda cool, I guess? Alice is a secret agent person... Clover's still Clover... Quark's just there to get ill a lot... K's your clone/son, but that's not actually plot relevant... Tenmyouji's actually Junpei from the first game, which is a really cool twist, but it's also more of a side thing than a proper plot twist... and Phi's really important to the plot, but there's no real twist to her story other than being an esper like you.

What I'm saying is that, whilst most of these characters are either very likable (Tenmyouji and Luna are the absolute best) or - usually - appropriately unlikable (fuck Dio, though I feel like I really shouldn't dislike Alice as much as I do), they're simply not played with the way the characters in the first game were. You're told information about who these people are. You discover the Tenmyouji's Junpei, or that Luna's a robot, but their personalities don't change. The first thing I remember about Clover in the first game isn't who she was (A girl from the first Nonary Game), but how she would change under pressure (Going chillingly ax-crazy when Snake disappeared). It's cool and all that Luna's a robot, and the Luna ending absolutely broke my little heart, but knowing that Luna's a robot doesn't really change my perception of the character all that much. It's not like discovering that Ace was actually completely terrible all along, or that Santa is actually like best, most devoted, brother ever to an actually pretty fucked up extent. It's an added character trait, not a complete surprise rewriting of the whole character.

And, the final thing to bring up before I starting heaping praise on Virtue's Last Reward (because that game deserves praise damnit) is the Twist. Not one of the twists, I'm talking capital-T Twist here. You've actually been playing as Akane on the bottom screen, not as Junpei on the top screen. Junpei's communicating his perceptions back in time to a person in the same game he is, 9 years ago, in order to save them, and all the timelines and choices you made happened and were simply different universes and versions of the Nonary Game Akane was exploring trying to survive. It's brilliant on a bunch of different levels. All your games that you re-loaded from? All canon and plot relevant. The character you thought you were playing? Not actually the character you were playing. Heck, you weren't playing the game you thought you were playing. It's genuinely clever, even if the in-universe explanation is silly in a very Zero Escape-y way.

In Virtue's Last Reward the equivalent Twist is that all the timelines you play are canon... and they're all plot relevant. That's it. It's not just a watered down version of the Twist from 999, it's actually just the twist from 999, with a bit of it removed. That's honestly just lame, and whilst this does make for a good mechanic both in terms of storytelling and gameplay I'm just kind of upset at it. I was hoping for another clever exploration of the divide between player and game, and we just get the exact same thing again. It's well done, but it's already been done by the only other game in the series, which just makes it be very limp.

And finally, I get to heap praise on Virtue's Last Reward. I'm not going to compare it as directly to 999 in praising it, but that's just because the only ways it disappointed me directly relate to it being a sequel to 999, and not doing as well as its predecessor in certain aspects. Taken as a standalone game it's very good, and the fields on which it expands on what 999 did are all very well done.

One thing I particularly enjoyed was the Ambidex Game. On a player level, it's a great and tense series of choices. Playing Prisonner's Dilemma with the other players of the Nonary Game is full of doubts and indecisions. I trust this person... but if they pick Betray I'll be in a bad spot, or they'll be in too good a spot. I should pick Betray to defend myself, but if they pick Ally I'll screw them over in a way I don't want to, and jeopardize the chances of people picking Ally against me in future rounds. Of course, you know you'll eventually go back and re-do the choice, but the first time through it's hard not to hesitate a lot before picking. Betraying someone who trusted you feels awful, and being betrayed by someone you trusted really makes you feel hurt, stupid, and worried about how behind you are in the Nonary Game.

It's also clever from a game design and writing perspective. It allows for clear and easy branch points without you having to design a whole new puzzle room around them, as well as helping subtly speak about how relationships are progressing within the group, by providing an easy representation of who trusts who. It gives you easy catalysts for conflict and/or trust, and it gives a nice and easy physical representation of the weird way you've decided to implement the Schrodinger's Cat Paradox into your story.

I also love love love the whole A-plot. Whilst I think the characters aren't as interesting as the previous games, having a lot less hidden dimensions, they're still a very different bunch of very distinct and well-defined personalities. They're great to interact with, and watch interact. Perhaps the biggest surprise was Sigma himself, who I found a surprising amount more likable than Junpei from the previous game (and he was a pretty good character in his own right!).

I really like the mystery. There's a phenomenon I've observed where everyone seems to think that the way they played through all the routes ended up being the best way to play through all the routes, with the information revealed in the best order. This really speaks to the quality of the writing. I'm no different: I started with the Magenta door plotlines, then went through Yellow and then through Cyan, and I thought the order the information was presented to me was brilliant. Magenta presents a mysterious series of murders that makes you paranoid about a killer, and it really gets you to suspect absolutely everyone, but in Yellow you discover that this is all because of the suicide-inducing effects of Radical-6. Then Cyan introduces an actual killer, but Yellow's managed to get your guard down. Dio's revealed early, which is good, since it would've been insulting to my intelligence to pretend he wasn't obviously evil any longer.

At any rate, it's a real pleasure going through all the paths, slowly collecting pieces of information and piecing the whole puzzle together. It's spread out just enough you really feel like you're doing detective work, but it's given to you at a regular enough basis that there's always something there for you to work on fitting into the puzzle, yet the puzzle's large enough that you won't be able to build it completely by yourself.

I liked the Twist - not the lame Twist about dimension hopping that we already did in 999 - but the whole "we're in the future, working on reverting the apocalypse and also Sigma's old" twist. It really fit all the pieces of the puzzle nicely into place, and was appropriately insane and silly. All the time we spent worrying about Radical-6, lunar eclipses, antimatter, cold sleep the Chinese room and the Turing test felt justified and tied together in a way so simple and elegant that I can't help but respect it.

Also I guess I liked the puzzle rooms more in Virtue's Last Reward, but I honestly don't care about those that much. I'm here for the story.

I'll bring this long, rambling, piece of writing to a quick and sudden end. I'm writing this early in the morning of June 25th, 2016. It's the day after the world found out the UK is going to leave the EU, two days after the Brexit referendum, an event that's probably going to be important for decades to come. I'm not going to bring my political views on this into this piece, - they have no place on a videogame blog, and I'm not good enough at talking politics - but I thought it was important that I don't allow myself to be wrapped up in looking at and thinking about just the big stuff. I've got to keep the small stuff, like these obscure visual novels from Japan, in view. After all, it's this type of small, oddly specific, stuff that I enjoy most in life. Zero Escape III: Zero Time Dilemma, the final game in the series, is coming out in three days. I only finished Virtue's Last Reward a couple days ago, and I'm incredibly excited for Zero Time Dilemma. The Zero Escape series is one I really do love, from the bottom of my heart. I wanted to praise it, criticize it, and leave this article confident that, whilst I recognize these games have flaws, I have a good reason for loving them as much as I do.

I'm now pretty sure that I do. Now to kill time for three days until I can get my hands on a copy of the next in the rambling about pseudo-science whilst in a death game simulators that I love so much. I really can't wait.

As Zero III would say, have a nice traitor!

The Best of Things

What follows is a list of the best ones of the medias. This list is definitely true.

The Best Film:
2001: An Oddysey of Space

It's real pretty, and it says things about humans. Humans are interesting, and prettiness is nice, so this film is really good. It also has classical music and is deep.

The Best Book:
Star Apprentice, by the Strugatskii Brothers

It's by good writers, Russian, and obscure, which makes it better than something by bad writers, not Russian, and well known. That is most books. Also this book has a sad bit in it, which makes it deep. Deep things are better than things which are not deep. So this book is by good writers, Russian, obscure, and deep, which no other book is, and those are the best things for books to by.

The Best Show:
Buffy, Slayer of Vampires (Largely by Josh Wheaton)

It's a long-running show about characters who grow. No one likes short people, so growing is interesting. There's a dude named Xander in it, but he's actually called Alexander, and Xander is a cooler shortening of it than Alex. The fact that Alex is more common grates my cheese, which is a funny thing Xander says once. It also has a cool vampire called Spike, and he's a cool vampire. It also has a girl called Willow who likes to kiss other girls and this is when girls kissing girls was invented, so it's important for equality for girls, because men used to get to kiss girls but not girls and now girls can do it too.

So the characters aren't short, it has characters, it invented girls, and all of it is written by famous meninist Josh Wheatley, who also did the Revengers which is a good film, but not better than Oddysey of Space, and Log House in the Forest, which is also not better than Oddysey of Space.

The Best Blog:
Rariowscorner

Because it has the best list of the best things, so it's better than the other blogs.

Anime Reviews: The Seven Deadly Sins - Colorful

It's been a while since I did one of these. I finally got around to watching a new animu. This time it's The Seven Deadly Sins, a Netflix original.

The Seven Deadly Sins is set in the nation of Britannia, and takes a certain amount of inspiration from Arthurian legends. The kingdom is watched over by the Holy Knights, a powerful and exclusive order of magical knights that have a very much "Paladin" aesthetic. They tend to have over-the-top classic anime style magical powers: one of them controls lightning, another can create explosions at will, and so on.

We're told that the most powerful group of Holy Knights are the titular Seven Deadly Sins, all loosely (and I do mean very loosely) themed after one deadly sin or another. Ten years ago, they betrayed the Holy Knights and slaughtered a whole bunch of them, along with their current grand master.

As our story begins, Elizabeth, the third princess of Britannia wanders into an inn in search of the Seven Deadly Sins, as it turns out the Holy Knights have secretly overthrown the King, and are running the Kingdom. She soon stumbles into their captain Meliodas, who swears to help her with her quest to free the Kingdom again.

What follows is a fairly disjointed but charming collection of events that I hesitate to call a story. The group typically shows up somewhere, meets a few new characters, fights for a few episodes, and leaves, sometimes having gained a new member. These little stories are entertaining, and don't tend to drag on too long. I can't say the action or the characters are particularly special. Fights are pretty standard anime fare: big explosions that throw people into cliffs creating massive dust clouds, a lot of speaking about "His power" and "At this rate, we'll...", a lot of people miraculously recovering from massive wounds because the power of friendship and so on.

The character roster is similarly good but not great. The main cast are all endearing, with the exception of Elizabeth who I found ridiculously boring, each having their own little fun quirks that come up enough to be distinctive but not enough to be annoying. A surprise favorite of mine is Hawk, the over-excitable comic relief talking pig who I thought would be insufferable.

Side characters are usually more like vignettes than proper characters. There's a small amount of characterization, a few motivation, an emotional moment at some point, and then we move on. This worked surprisingly well for me, especially considering that I'm definitely a character-based guy when it comes to my entertainment. The exception comes in the main characters (for obvious reasons) and the main antagonists, who do get a bit more depth. I found the antagonist pretty cookie-cutter. They did their job, but they didn't really stand out, and I can't say I particularly cared.

The result of this is a show with a tonne of variety. The things that the characters are physically doing are constantly different. They'll be breaking into a prison, and soon having a fighting tournament, or reminiscing about old times. On the way, there's a bunch of colorful characters who will entertain you well enough. The show feels constantly fresh and exciting, and thanks to the sheer amount of fighting styles and locales to fight in, the action never gets stale, even if it never is that fantastic. There's also just enough humor there to get the occasional chuckle without being overbearing with constant forced laughs.

Character and World Building: 7/10
This very much focuses on variety rather than depth. This means that there's no particularly fascinating characters, but you're constantly in the process of meeting a new one, which keeps the show really fresh throughout.

Story: 5/10
I can't say the story is good or bad. It's very much just present. We go around, fight a dude, fight another dude for some other reason, and blah blah blah. I don't really care. Can I see the talking pig again?

Presentation: 4.5/5
I really like the music, and I actually adore both Hawk's voice and sound effects. The sound effects for battles are fine too. The visuals are pretty top-notch with plenty of cool looking magic things in fights. Character faces do tend to look somewhat weird though.

Enjoyment: 13/15
This is a show feels like it's constantly on the move, yet is never quite overwhelming. Instead of feeling like it's fast paced, The Seven Deadly Sins manages to constantly harvest that honeymoon period where you're meeting what seems to be a cool new character for the first time. Whilst they never evolve past that, they manage to stay at least somewhat entertaining in the finale, and the result is a show that constantly feels shiny new. and is entertaining throughout.

Overall:                29.5/40
A Bit Under         7.5/10

While by no means a masterpiece, The Seven Deadly Sins is a bunch of fun, and I deeply enjoyed my time with it. It's not that it has a lot of flaws, it's simply that its strengths are rather superficial. I'm not going to go round recommending it, but I think most people would not regret giving this one a watch.