“The game writing is improving all the time” oh man, I’m sorry to say, now it’s evolving backwards

I couldn't get past the cringe of FFX-2, and stopped playing it about half-way through all the way back when it was new. I'm tempted to give it another try with another outlook from the start :)

The girls really have the same character dynamic as Sailor Moon, Sailor Mercury and Sailor Mars had in the first half of sailor moon when it was just the three of them

I'm just angry we were deprived of the timeline where there was an early 90s rash of child perpetrating nunchuck-related crime

I love games like Atlas Fallen, Stellar Blade, etc... Games that feel like modern iterations of PS2 games you'd randomly pull off a store shelf, buy, and enjoy the ride it put you on.

Nice video, great recommendations!

Man your view numbers are so erratic. 35k to 200..wild. great channel 👏

FFX2 is one of my favorites. The humor and feel remind me of the older games. The class system is great. Brings me back to ff 3 and 5.

Hiiii this is lit

With regards to Stellar Blade's localisation I think it was done on anything but the cheap. Stellar Blade has a whopping 9 voice language options, 3 of which use lip synchronisation (Korean, Japanese & English) and there are 22 different subtitle options. That absolutely blew me away when I saw it and I decided to play the game listening to the French dub and thought it was incredible. For me it has set a new bar for what games should be doing when it comes to localisation because the amount of options was great especially for a brand new IP. Nice list though, I only came across your channel recently and the quality of your videos is top.

I wish they made a good FFX movie. Or better yet a short series.

2:58-3:15 This game was great in my opinion. I love when games go over-the-top. Sad when people only care their narratives. Culture wars do nothing in the long run. So I ignore them and have the time of my life. Oh, and speaking of tuning out certain people, I had to do that to a certain person I used to know in 2024 because he was too obsessed with wanting quality, regarding a blue hedgehog versus an Italian plumber. I enjoy both of them regardless of quality, whether they're good, bad or somewhere in-between. Some people have forgotten how to really enjoy games. To the person I used to know: I won't mention your name, but if you're reading this, I hope you get this memo. Not everything is going to be high quality. Just because a certain franchise you once loved may not ever compete with another franchise doesn't mean you have to be all over casual fans because they "invite mediocrity" in your view. That's annoying, and I don't need that in my life, especially as a casual fan. I hope you get the therapy you really need, not some other game you claimed helped you get over your huge disappointment on a certain 2018 game back in 2020. Or at least take a few years' time off from what you're currently doing on the internet. For your mental health, for my own sake, and for everyone else's sake, please get help. I don't hate you; I just hate the person you've become.

my favorite game is metaphor- get to playing it cause its another ballpark homerrun for Atlus. right under it i put FF7 Rebirth as i nearly completed both games just cause i found myself wanting to play them alot. Ima big tekken nerd and playstation kid so im sure if these are the kinda games in your best of year video metaphor will feel right fitting in that group.

<3

Will you cover the slapstick inspired Smash Bros inspired indie game Royalty-Free-For-All?

When the ESRB was established they didn't even use the E rating at first. It used to be K-A (kids through adults.) Even though I was a kid when it started I thought it was stupid to have those big dumb rating stamps on the box covers. Like thank god they're there to tell me that Bomberman was appropriate for 6 year olds even though it featured mild violence. No shit dude it's fucking Bomberman.

Great lineup and can't wait for that Astro Who's Who Video!

This is a super solid lineup. And I know you would NEVER play a roguelike. EVER! For SHAME! /s

I liked the story on X-2, but they left all the best parts on the periphery. They should have delved more directly into everything Maechen hinted at, and gave Paine a bit more spotlight, tying the Crimson Squad in a bit more tightly. The way it is, all the cheesy watered down aspects got pushed to the forefront. Chapter 4 was garbage.

"What's so funny?"

This was an awesome video!

Right, this is the hottest fucking hot take here. Give me 40 minutes to see if you have a point or I think you are an idiot.

This is my favourite game of all time too!

Amazing video really shone some light on this great series

This video is spot on! I couldn't agree more. It's the best TR game and definitely my favorite

I dont hate X-2. It just didn't live up to the depth of X. The story suffered from too much fan service and stereotypically girly behavior meant to bring in more female gamers. Also, the Charlies Angels remake and sequel were huge successes, so it just seemed like Square got lazy by copying the vibes of those movies, thinking the success would automatically transfer to X-2. I love the original and new (at the time) Charlies Angels because it was campy and written well. X-2 was not. I was actually offended that Square thought girls would flock to this and disappointed that they didn't spend more time developing the story. The changes in Spira made sense, but the story was weak. Anyway, I finished the game for the perfect ending and haven't picked it up since. Told my dad that he wasted $50 on it and even now, I can't finish playthroughs of it.

Unpopular opinion: there needs to be a X-3. Pretending that will doesn’t exist; there could be an antagonist trying to bring back sin… I just really liked spira and would like to go back under current FF mechanics

The battle system is so unbelievably satisfying.

I was trying to tell my friends some things about X-2, and then I found this video. You said everything I wanted to say. Thank you for this.

:( This video makes me sad, not because it isn’t good but because upon reflection in college I knew a girl just like Yuna and was briefly friends with her (even though I didn’t really consider us friends) and I was chosen by her to basically be her tidus but i rejected her Then ran into her a couple years later where she basically just fell apart and cried about how her life went to poo after we parted ways and she should’ve tried harder to stay with me even if just as friends because I wasn’t willing to date her The stuff that happened to was really bad, like really really bad and I feel like I contributed to that stuff happening to her because as she said one of the things I did when we hung out was reel her back when she was looking for trouble the girl was seriously rebelling hard core from her extremely strict religious upbringing and honestly she didn’t have much in terms of positive influences in her life especially when she thought I the holier than though full of himself atheist gamer was one of her favorite people She said she liked me because I was proof that everything her parents told her was wrong and that an atheist/gamer could be just as upstanding or more so than her parents She also liked that I was the first guy she met who wasn’t trying to get into her pants… which ironically made her constantly trying to get into mine which is a big part of why I rejected and stopped hanging out with her But she was a sweet and smart girl just trying to find herself and I basically snubbed her and the things that happened to her after that were just horrible and even then I couldn’t take it and just left again I’m a coward :(

Also forgot to say great video and excellent points to be made in favor of the quality of X-2's story! I will 100% say that i think some people missed the intended contrast of the 2 games and you identitfied them marvelously! Excelsior!!

My dislike of X-2 was nothing at all to do with the character or plot progression of Yuna or spira! I disliked it for the dismal attempt at the active battle system! After waiting for the active bar to fill you then have to wait for the same amount of time for the skill to actually occur! All the while watching enemies spamming abilities and attacks. It didn't make the game hard just clunky and not enjoyable for me! The other thing i didnt really like was the lack of narrative progression direction! Now im not saying i want a guife marker telling me where i HAVE to go! But if i want to play a game for the story i want there to be an option to focus on that aspect and X-2 kinda pooped the pillow case on that front! The game felt more like a cash grab hollowed out knock off of X than an original progression of Character and metaverse story arcs! And in reference to you not really liking X. Idk if you were just not in the right mindset to appreciate it with a particular fondness but its definitely the better of the 2 games! Both mechanically (within the limits of the emotion engine the ps2 used) and plot profression. That being said i was frsutrated by the fact that we didnt get a prequell to X detailing the war between Bevelle and Zanrkand. Or a mini prequell detailing Jeckt Auron and Braska as a filler for the gap between the 3 major events of the story. Being the Bevelle Zanrkand war and the birth of Sin. Final fantasy X and Final Fantasy X-2. I do agree X-2 is a mandatory part of the story though! I also think you misunderstood the story of X and the events that lead up to it! Just to give a VERY brief chronological pointer system Before X Bevelle=badguy - attacks Zanrkand with Machina Zanrkand= desperate victim - yu -Yevon performs the First Final summoning without the propper bond with his faith looses control of the Aeon (IE Sin) simultaneously the remaining survivors confer with yu yevon to become faith to maintain the dream of Zanarkand. After the war But before X The faith pull people from the summoned dream (Jeckt and then Titus by Jeckts last bit of control over the Aeon before Yu-Yevon consumes him) through sin (because sin is the conduit by which the fath are drawn on for the summining) to attempt to end the spiral and free them from their dream Then x happens then X-2 Anyways im done writing a book just wanted to share my 2 cents 😆

the atmosphere was so dark can't wait for the remastered version

And we all agree that X-2.5 doesn't exist. that novel is... Something

An ancient 'tesla type device' isn't supernatural - it's just the function of the universe. it was the function of a pyramid (meaning fire in the MIDDLE) it appears our actual world is more 'supernatural' than we've been led to believe. The more you learn, the less fictional it all seems.

The thrust of the whole argument here seems to be that X-2 is fun, and dumb, and whimsical and that this is actually a good thing so as to counterbalance the "all true art is miserable" persepctive and I'm hardly going to suggest that any of that is untrue, but in many ways that is actually the very thing about this game that is so badly short changed: It _isn't_ dumb. It's really far more brilliant than games trying things far more mature than it is, and I mean this on multiple fronts. What I' m about to make may not seem like a fair comparison but it is an important one. FFX-2 artstyle and assets has all the baroque visual richness and distinctiveness of something like FF13 with the depth behind it of something more in line with the Square's magnum opus FF7. The former is this enormous complex of cool ideas and associations that are just sort of there while Spira is fully realized world. It's so realized it actually kind of hurts what with how absurd the outfits everyone eithr casually or very earnestly wears. X-2 didn't innovate most of these ideas and assets as compared with FFX but it does not only maintain but build on them in subtle ways. Like, here's a good example of something no FF I've played since X-2 (I.E 12, 13 and it's sequels) has had: Nooj is the leader of the Youth League and, just as he's about to lead them on a raid of Killika Temple against New Yevon, quips that his brothers and sisters in arms should go easy on them because they're, "not so young." He does this and then immediatly limps forwad into the forest on a crutch like an old man because both his limbs on the left side of his body have been completely or partially replaced by prosthetics (very likely as a result of his youthful folly.) The game doesn't even play this for a joke, evne though this would be very in-keeping with it's supposedly goofey light-hearted tone. It's just there and you're supposed to notice the lakc of self-awareness and excess of self-righteous that, nevetheless, doesn't detract from the seriousness of Nooj's cause or deny his resolve (dude goes on to rig his own body with explosives and sacrifice his own life if that's what it takes to stop vegnagun.) I disagree with the idea that FFX-2 is about whimsy or joy -- and I would consider even these to be highly exalted things not many games ever attain to in their own right -- but of impermenance. It's all too easy for a gameworld to exist soley for the plot that occurs in it. FFX feels exactly like this. Once you get the airship, you can go where you want, but all this really serves to bring home just how linear everything really is. Besaid Island doesn't become a new place with challenges that evolve as you do just because you've gone back there. You're ow way further along the shpere grind and none of the enemies stand a chance. Rathr than feeling free from the hallway of linear progression, you simply feel displaced. Besaid is exposed not as part of a living world but a diorama frozen in time. So what FF-X2 does tha tis so remarkable is that it _doesn't_ send you back to the beginning. It does not try to treat Spira like a new and unfamiliar place you haven't explored by fiddling around with where enemies live and thier stats too much. It does not, in that sense, turn the clock back. It truly rolls with the idea that the world now exists independent of Tidus' journey and turns that dynamic the player once had with Spira on it's head. There's tutorials at the start and new mechanics, sure, but once that's over you're free to wonder into an area you're underleveled for and get slaughtered and you have no one but yourself to blame for not assuming going back to Zanarkard and wrestling with behemoths wouldn't be jumping in at the deep end. What is essentially here is a sandbox FF. This is not an overwhleming revelation; it was probably done before this, but it accomplishes it so seamlessly alongside a more conventional FF RPG structure I.E a main questline. The game is 99% sidequest -- It is Sidequest The Game -- but you're never even told that half of them exist. You're just expected to make a concerted choice to ignore the giant glowing yellow bars of the main questline and fly off to Luca to have a flashback about handing out balloons in a moogle costume _for no reason_ other than you remember going there in the last game and just want to wander around and reflect. You actually need to be quite conscientious about your reminiscing because the state of the world progresses with each chapter. On an extrinsic levle this can esily lock you out of many cool rewards, but intrinsically, chapter 3&4 Luca are qualatativly very different places from chapter one Luca. The NPCs have all moved around or vanished. They talk about different things. The tone of the conversation can shift as events in the wider world unfold. It teaches you that every nook and cranny of a game is merticulously crafted and there could be any little thing around any corner if you just bother to look. In FF-X, these are just small detours off the straight and narrow of the plot, but in FFX-2 the plot's hold is so loose that itcan be a rabbit hole. Lightnign Returns was trying so hard to embody this effect of the hidden marvelof the impermenant by imposing time constraints on everything and still falls short. You can even end the germline of entire monster races by hunting them to extinction. The point is that FFX-2 is a living world. You can get around it in a couple pushes of a button, so it's still a small world, but that makes it fall all the more intimate and ephemeral. It's like holding the archetypal ebb and flow of existance in a snowglobe. That bittersweet longing as everything passes by and is reborn. That's what really captures the tone and significance of this game. It's somethign relfected in the choice of music and direction in the opening credits. It isn't quite a somberness to contrast the whimsy and silliness but in fact all of a peice with it. It's a very nostalgia-driven experience despite explicitly being about the futility of nostalgia right from _Real Emotion_ sung by Le Blanc at the start, which is the image everyone has in their minds of this game.

"Minus four respect points" sound slike a direct reference to the mechanics of the Golden Saucer date scene in FF7.

For me, tr3 choose a path path that i simply cant enjoy: make you fell always lost and afraid of exploring because of the instant deathtraps everywhere. Tr4 otherwise, focus on puzzles, making the exploration way easier and natural. It's not a easy game, but it's hard for the right reasons.

Never played X-2... FFX I played but never understood the story... maybe coz I was young back then or naive.. all I know is Yuna is so cute.. but vids like this made me appreciate the whole series more.. and understand the story more.. I was never wrong when I chose Yuna to be my fav FF girl... Thanks to vids like this I realized that this series connects to me more compared to other series...

It's exciting that the remastered version is coming out! It's the perfect chance to fix all the issues and bugs and polish it perfectly. I don't think they will add deleted levels in it. since it wont be truthful to the original nostalgic game although, I think they will include separated additional levels just like what they did with 1-2-3 remastered (Unfinished Business, Golden Mask, The Lost Artifact). If the concepts are kept, it can be done and it should be just as much as it needs to be. That way it won't interfere heavily with the storyline within the game but rather fill the plot holes. 4th game has an extra level (The Times), they could do one for the 5th as well and for the 6th 🤩

Can't wait for the remaster in Feb 😁👍

I absolutely loved this. Was in high school when it came out

I have funny memories about this specific Tomb Raider entry, at my friend's parents beach house, we played it for some time and we found so funny those guys with scimitars blocking our shots so calmly with their blades, it's hilarious, comical. I think I was 11 when I finished the original Tomb Raider on the Saturn back in 1997, it was a game changer for me, the very first 3D action game I played where you could freely explore ruins, swim gigantic flooded areas, find secrets and feel secluded in eerie places. Tomb Raider II and III, much like DOOM II and Final DOOM, never felt like true sequels, but rather expansion packs, nothing groundbreaking actually happened from TR2 though Chronicles (like the aforementioned series sequels) and getting back to magazines from the time, when in Last Revelation reviews, they will show the series was dragging on and on and Core/Eidos were milking it since it was their biggest hit series. I like all classic Tomb Raider titles, even the Gold expansions, but something needs to be said about the open ended approach with IV. It's the same with Hexen, whereas the previous game was Heretic, which was a straightforward DOOM in the dark ages, Hexen opted for a hub world and you know what? Today it sucks big time. Super Mario 64 style where developers can't find better ways to make a good long game, so it's an artificial way to make these games "last" longer. In contrast, previous TR games are better games, in my opinion, as wondering around huge and empty areas, where they are interconnected with loadings, it's really not a good choice, feels like a step back. Don't get me wrong, I really like TR4, but in many aspects, all three previous entries are more fun and more engaging, level by level structure is the way to go for the PS1 TR classics, open ended requires a lot of tuning and probably better hardware to work right, but If I consider all subsequent TR classics as extensions to the original, I can digest IV and V much more easily. As for the best third person action game in Egypt we can play today, it's hands down AC Origins, TR4 can't touch it in any regard. If you haven't played it, please, do yourself a favor and try it.

Pain isn't Lulu 😂😂😂😂😂

Yeah I really hated this FF because Yuna was Supposed to Still have her Mythical creatures by her side Still but I understand by her giving up her Summoning she was view as human

I have seen young women change more than Yuna ever does. The only real thing to mention about it is the time frame of two years... Matter of fact, there was a daughter of a roommate of mine years ago who went from a quiet young church going girl and in less than about three years became a drug abusing underage whore I had to process at the juvenile hall before she was ever even 17 or 18...divorce messes kids up...

The biggest shame about X-2 is that the writers stepped back from it and returned Yuna to her submissive Summoner persona in pretty much everything afterwards. The Final Fantasy X audio dramas, Dissidia, etc. Yuna was supposed to have moved on and started living for herself, but her Summoner persona was too marketable, so she just regresses in character. It's lame.

for the boaz fight, you CAN switch targets by pressing the roll button this doesnt really improve it tho, since kurtis actively ignores you or switches back 70% of the time

And for that you gained a subscriber 👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼👌🏼 very concise statements btw i did play this game when it came out the first time and liked it because in your own words its a total complement to what happened after a long drought out sad story