Top Spin 2K25 Review – Painting The Lines
Tennis, at its core, is a game about legacy. Names like Billie Jean King, Pete Sampras, and the Williams sisters are immortalized through legendary matches, on-court triumphs, and tournament dominance that have shaped the history of the sport. It seems appropriate, then, that the Top Spin series has lived on in similar reverence since Top Spin 4, which was released over a decade ago to critical acclaim. Now, with developer Hanger 13 at the helm, Top Spin makes its long-awaited return. It serves up an ace in the all-important gameplay aspects, but double faults on content and troubling microstransaction focus mean it’s still far from a grand slam.
Gameplay takes center court in the newest entry and it’s excellent. Moving around the court feels great thanks to a strong sense of momentum and weight. That’s especially true on different surfaces, as the firm footing of a hard court gives way to sliding around on clay. It looks authentic, and factoring in the different starts and stops on the numerous types of surfaces is an important consideration when playing a match.
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Different shots are mapped to various buttons and do an excellent job conveying just how sophisticated volleys are. Whether you are hitting a hard straight shot, curving slices, or smashing a ball right up the line with hard-to-handle top spin, the various options are meaningfully different. A simple timing system lets you tap for controlled returns, or hold to generate power, with both options depending on releasing at the right moment to determine accuracy. It’s straightforward, and rewarding to execute . There’s a place and application for each, like intentionally hitting a slow rolling shot to give yourself an opportunity to reposition yourself on the court, or sending a lob high over the head of an opponent who has creeped too close to the net.
That strategic element of tennis is Top Spin’s biggest triumph. Trading power-shots as you send your opponent all over the court expending energy is exhilarating thanks to the sense of speed and impact. Breaking yourself out of the same situation by returning a ball in an awkward spot with unwiedly spin, creating a fault from the other player, is a diabolical joy. There’s a “chess, but with rackets” quality to the game of tennis that translates well to Top Spin 2K25, and dominating on the court is as dependent on decision-making as it is on pure stick skills.
The most substantial mode is MyCareer. Here you create your own tennis pro and build them up from newcomer to champion. Your time is divided by month, and each is broken into segments for Training, Special Events, and Tournaments. Training is a mostly good setup, as you are thrust into minigames that challenge you to execute particular shots, and does a decent job refining basic skills. Special Events are one-off matches, often with a specific goal in mind, like hitting 10 target areas during the game. These can be a solid choice for XP farming, and can also unlock sponsor packages, which in turn increase the selection of the purely cosmetic items in the Pro Shop that are used to dress up your character.
The main feature is the tournaments, where you take on other top players to battle for victory and a chance to climb the tennis ranks. There are different levels of tournaments, and gaining access to more prestigious events involves increasing your status, making your way from Unknown up to a Legend. Improving your status requires accomplishing a checklist of goals, and can contain things like winning a certain number of tournaments, successfully completing training, or working your way up the tennis ranks. The system is well-tuned and does a good job of ensuring that, by the time you are ready to take on higher-level tournaments, they are challenging but not insurmountable.
Building XP and leveling up your character gives you points to spend for increasing your player’s attributes, including speed, stamina, and reaction speed. Your maximum level is capped at 30, so you won’t be able to max out every category, which is a limitation that encourages building with specific goals in mind. Boost your player’s serve, forehand, and power, for example, and you’ll be capable of dominating the court with overwhelming smashes, while a speed/volley combo can wreak havoc with angles and positioning. But no one player can dominate in all facets of the game.
As you progress and win Special Events you will earn Fittings for your racket like strings or a new frame. These confer attribute bonuses on your player and come in three quality tiers, with higher tiers offering greater boosts. Hirable coaches have a similar effect, conferring boosts after completing a few on-court objectives. Together, these systems reinforce one of gaming’s great unwritten rules: sports games are secretly RPGs. And in the case of Top Spin, it’s a pretty good one.
One of the key considerations comes in the form of a fatigue system that adds an interesting layer of long-term planning. Every match takes away from your player’s fatigue. When it drops below a certain level, they gain the potential for a minor injury, which reduces certain attributes until it heals. If you keep playing without resting, it can lead to a major injury, sidelining you for multiple months. There’s an engaging risk/reward to deciding when you can push through another event, and when you need to take a break to recuperate. After all, burning th candle at both ends for too long could mean you’re forced to miss a career-defining tournament down the line.
There’s no prefabricated story mode, and I think that is for the best in this case as not all sports games need to be scripted to provide engaging drama. Top Spin does a great job creating an environment for on-court stories told through the game of tennis to shine. At one point, my player was run down after back-to-back tournaments and had just picked up a minor injury. I was all set to rest him for a month or two to recover, but then I realized Wimbledon was the next event. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, leading to the most challenging five rounds of matches I had played. Taking on the best players in tennis with my power game diminished by the injury meant I had to rely on subterfuge, finesse, and good old-fashioned moxie to make it to the end. Fighting through the challenges to grasp victory in a hard-fought final far exceeded any contrived storyline.
The problem with Top Spin 2K25 is there is little to do in MyCareer other than continuing to rotate through the three monthly activities, and the threadbare presentation wears thin quickly. It doesn’t take very long to develop your player far enough that you can easily win any match, at which point it really feels like you are just going through the motions over and over again, checking off objectives to increase your status and sitting at the top rank. Every tournament–from the small cup contests to the most prestigious Major–has an identical victory cutscene, with the same person giving you the exact same trophy. There’s no announcing crew, and ball-tracking graphics packages like Shot Spot are used exceedingly sparingly, which is a shame. There are eventually some interesting surprise matches we won’t spoil, but those are limited, and don’t appear until very deep into the game.
The options outside of MyCareer are extremely barebones. It’s somewhat understandable for what effectively amounts to a fresh launch for the Top Spin series, but it stands out when other sports games, including NBA 2K, have so many more modes. Outside of MyCareer, local play is limited to list single and doubles exhibition games, and the Top Spin Academy tutorials. The latter is narrated by tennis legend John McEnroe, and while it’s a good overview of how to play, it doesn’t offer much value after an initial run through,
The online assortment isn’t much better. The exhibition mode is restricted to one-on-one matchmade games. No option to play against friends or team-up with them for doubles play is a huge miss. The 2K Tour lets you play ranked games to climb a seasonal leaderboard, but the small roster of 11 men and 14 women is missing many notable athletes, including the #1 player from the men’s rankings, Novak Djokovik. There also aren’t any apparent rewards for placing well in the tour, leaving no clear incentive to play other than bragging rights.
World Tour is the online competitive arena for created players. It is fun to go online and see how someone you built compares to another player’s athlete, and the cat-and-mouse game on the court versus a human offers unique opportunities to use feints and other misdirections that AI-controlled players tend not to respond to. Unfortunately, this is where Top Spin’s biggest sin comes most into focus as well: microtransations. The Centre Court Pass is the de facto battle pass. Thirteen of the 50 tiers are free, but the rest require you to buy the paid premium pass. That would be okay if the items were purely cosmetic, but it also contains boosters for XP, which leads to increased levels and higher attributes, as well as offering VC, the in-game currency. VC can be earned through normal gameplay, but accumulates at a slow rate. That’s a problem when you are required to spend almost 3,000 VC to respec your character if you decide you want to redistribute their attribute points. You could spend hours grinding matches to make that much VC, or you could drop about $20 to get just enough points to pay for it. It’s simply egregious.
Top Spin 2K25 gets the most important piece right: It plays great. It wonderfully combines smooth and responsive gameplay with the engaging tactical aspects of tennis to create something that is a joy on the court. It’s too bad the presentation is barebones and the suite of gameplay modes is limited. Ultimately though, it’s the onerous microtransactions– once again front and center in a 2K sports game–that truly hold it back and keep Top Spin 2K25 from approaching the series’ former glory.
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Lorelei and the Laser Eyes Review – A Mastery of Illusions
I’ve never really given much thought to the differences between a labyrinth and a maze. That is, until I played Simogo’s Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. A labyrinth, as I know now, is a singular path, twisting and turning, constantly changing in direction. It invokes the illusion of feeling lost, despite the fact that its path always leads to a center. A maze, on the other hand, has multiple paths, filled with dead ends, wrong turns, and requires trial and error to reach its end. The former can be a meditative and reflective journey for some, while the latter is a trying experience that requires patience and perseverance to see it through. Despite these differences, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes brings them together through mechanics, themes, and narrative. The result is a gaming experience that masterfully interlocks storytelling with design, making it one of Simogo’s finest achievements, and one of the most impressive narrative puzzle games in recent memory.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a psychological horror puzzle game that sent me on a winding journey through a black and white, neon-red-accented hotel, to untangle a mystery that blurred the line between fact and fiction. It is dense with puzzles, heavy on story, but both are interwoven, and that is key to the way it unravels. I was consistently thrown off the path to the truth, led astray in what I perceived as a maze, when in actuality, I was being armed with knowledge that led me through a labyrinth to the game’s heart-wrenching conclusion.
With no setup or direction, the game simply begins. You take control of a suave, sunglasses-wearing, 1960s mod-style dressed woman, standing alone in the woods at night, just outside the historic-looking Hotel Letztes Jahr. Like its main character, you are thrown into this world with no knowledge of who or where you are, or why you’re there. The goal of the game is to find the truth, as said verbatim in the game’s manual, which is found within the world itself as opposed to being accessible by default. This obtuse direction set the tone for the game–foreshadowing that I was going to have to work to understand anything and everything on the journey before me. It pulled me right in, feeding into my natural curiosity and love for mysteries. The discovery of its hidden truths is tracked via a Truth Recovery percentage in the game’s menu. It isn’t long, though, until you find a letter with a vague and mysterious message signed by Renzo Nero explaining that you were invited to be at this hotel, on this date, in the year 1963.
You are left to your own devices to investigate, unlock, and unravel every aspect of the game, with your progress starting at 0% and tracked throughout the game. No piece of information is simply handed to you, but rather uncovered. The manual, for example, is locked away and requires a key to obtain it. However, the game can be completed without ever actually finding its manual at all. This is a small example of the game’s nonlinearity and the trust it instilled in me to find things on my own. Recovering every piece of the story is not necessary to complete the game, but doing so deeply rewards those who take the time to investigate every nook and cranny of its cryptic world.
As it turns out, Renzo Nero is a rather eccentric artist with a taste for theatrics and has invited you to partake in an artistic project. When entering the solemn hotel, you begin to slowly uncover the story of your larger-than-life host, who has seemingly prepared everything for you in a hotel that is as much a maze as it is an intricate puzzle box. But like all good puzzles, nothing is what it seems and you’re thrust into a sprawling and complex maze of mysteries. You must explore its labyrinthine halls and peel back the story of your involvement in this artist’s project one piece of evidence at a time. As this incredibly cool looking woman, you can freely walk through a series of scenes viewed through fixed camera angles, which depict a black and white world made up of vector-style 3D graphics through a cinematic lens.
Each piece of information is not only necessary to piecing together the story, but acts as knowledge to solve the game’s dozens upon dozens of puzzles. Whether it’s news articles, books on Roman numerals, strobogrammatic numerology, or the Greek alphabet (just to name a few), all serve as tools used to venture further into the hotel. Unlike most puzzle games that establish their own language and style of puzzle, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes instead uses real-world concepts and logic, like math and brain teasers, contextualized by story information that invites you to push forward. Where a puzzle game like The Witness uses its puzzle mechanics to teach the player about its world, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes leans on the player’s existing knowledge and understanding of basic problem-solving. In that regard, this game could be a barrier to entry for some players, but it also builds on the knowledge players have to expand their understanding, which greatly rewards veteran puzzle lovers like myself.
It’s a lot to remember, and certainly an education in a lot of areas like Latin terms or the meaning behind Greek symbols, for example. Thankfully, the main character has a photographic memory that saves everything you pick up, and can be viewed at any point in the game. But her photographic memory will only get you so far in finding the solutions to its puzzles, and your very own pen and paper (or a notebook, in my case) feels necessary in order to find and remember the solution for all its obstacles. In my actual day-to-day life, I’m already an avid notebook user. At all times, I have one on me to jot down notes and ideas, or plan ahead–sometimes I use my notebook to work through problems in my life. This need to use pen and paper to solve the game’s problems fed directly into how I manage my everyday life. It’s incredibly satisfying and cool to have real-life habits overlap with playing the game in a way that is tangible and sincerely helpful in progressing through Lorelei and the Laser Eyes.
As you move through the ghostly monochrome hotel, every door, drawer, gate, passageway, diary, and just about everything else, requires a solution to be opened or unlocked. Some doors are locked from the other side, while others require a specific key found elsewhere (often after solving another puzzle), or are padlocked with a code yet to be discovered. Sometimes the solution comes by way of the environment around you, so examining posters, or looking for riddles or brain teasers nearby is necessary. Other times it requires cross-examining information you’ve already gathered, like a specific year mentioned in a telegram, or scanning over astronomical objects. If it sounds dense, that’s because it is. But the game paces out information, and gives the players all the right tools to allow puzzles to be solved without overwhelming you. In most cases, if you can’t find the solution around you, or in any of the documents you have in your photographic memory, it’s safe to say you haven’t discovered the clues necessary for the solution yet, but this deduction is also left for you to make.
There were a few instances where I felt I had hit a wall, having found several puzzles that I simply couldn’t understand. It added several hours of experimentation to my journey, as I tried to find logic in anything, only to realize that I had forgotten about a note I grabbed at the beginning of the game that alluded to a small detail elsewhere in the hotel that I had completely overlooked. It was frustrating, but also a valuable lesson in realizing that if something didn’t make sense to me, I likely didn’t have what I needed yet. After I had that realization, navigating the maze became more of a meditative journey–it was a moment of self-discipline and a reminder to myself that I didn’t have to solve everything the moment I had discovered it. There was peace in that realization; in stepping back, being patient, and taking my time.
The puzzles are difficult, and while many of them left me scratching my head for hours sometimes, they never felt impossible. Thankfully, the game’s nonlinear nature makes it a practice in simply knowing when it’s time to take a break and move on to another puzzle. That also means keeping track of every bit of information you come across, which is one of many reasons why having a notebook is vital. During my 34-hour playthrough, I had filled 31 pages of my notebook with hectic scribbles, noting down any information of importance, such as dates noted in documents or names, which could be used to either decode one answer, or used to combine with another. My notebook became a companion in my playthrough, filled with numbers and equations and cryptic symbols, often involving Roman numerals, lunar phases, or astrology, and I loved every single second of it.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes bombards you with so much information, so many puzzles, and so many enigmatic problems, that having my notebook by my side only managed to pull me into the experience of the game further. Oh, and also, with a cup of coffee there too.
I consumed a lot of coffee while playing this game. This meant having to use the bathroom a lot. While this may seem irrelevant to the game itself, it’s actually an important thing to note. This game will require patience, and oftentimes, getting up and physically walking away from it to process its many puzzles, as many of the solutions will not appear magically. Sometimes all it takes is a break, clearing your mind (or bladder), and coming back with a fresh pair of laser eyes to have that satisfying eureka moment.
This reliance on writing in a notebook and cross-examining my own notes was alleviated by the fact that the game, if you’re playing on Switch, can be played with one Joy-Con. The control scheme is incredibly simple, as everything can be interacted with using a single button press, making holding a pencil in the other hand (or a cup of coffee), an engaging way to play the game. As a result, it makes playing on the Switch my preferred way to experience it.
As the game and story progress, you unlock more halls and areas of the hotel, and with it, a discovery that what you’ve been perceiving as reality is being bent and molded to drag you deeper into its chill-inducing horror. These moments and the revelations that come from them are better experienced than explained, so I won’t go into detail. But there are several scenarios in the latter half of the game that subverted my expectations so effectively that they had me pulling at my hair in shock.
The game’s horror is also emphasized by using the medium of games itself exceptionally well. Much of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes’ biggest themes center around the relationship between art and technology, and its direct correlation with the artistic medium of games. Through this lens, Simogo uses game development as a narrative throughline that guides you through different eras of games, like the low-poly horror of the first PlayStation or the lo-fi charm of 1-bit point-and-click adventure games. There’s a meta narrative under the hood of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes that will deeply reward those intimate with gaming as a medium, as well as Simogo’s previous works. Crucially, these aren’t necessary to understand and enjoy the game as whole, they just enrich it further.
Similar to The Ring’s use of VHS tapes, PlayStation 1-style graphics are used at times to evoke the rudimentary, degraded presentation of yesteryear to establish an unnerving tone–a jarring contrast to the game’s usual clean and modern graphics. Witnessing this whiplash of bygone style of games and seeing it recycled in a rather menacing way was awesome. It felt as though it was cleverly using my existing knowledge of PS1-era games to its advantage. Not just in a way that captures nostalgia, but to elevate the game’s more horror-like tones. Similarly, even the role of playtesting games becomes its own topic, extending its meta themes, and even acting as satire in certain parts.
Lorelei and the Laser Eyes is a massive achievement in using the games as a medium and an art form to tell a story that can only be experienced in a video game. Over the course of my time with it, I was surprised and astounded at Simogo’s ability to subvert my expectations to convey a story that touches on art and technology, and the magical illusion of storytelling, all while using the foundation of puzzle design to not just arm me with knowledge, but use it to find the truth. It can often feel like a harrowing maze built on riddles and deception, but through perseverance, you can find your way to the center of this labyrinth and a truth worth knowing.
Crow Country Review – Old School Horror
Crow Country is coated in a murky green veneer that gives the impression you’re playing it on a grainy CRT TV in one of your friend’s bedrooms back in 1996. The polygonal figure of its protagonist, Special Agent Mara Forest, with her visible joints and single block of purple hair, harks back to any number of PlayStation-era character designs. Similarly, Crow Country’s environments look wonderfully pre-rendered, lavished in extra detail that sits in stark contrast to its simple, blocky characters. These aren’t the static backgrounds of yesteryear, however, but fully interactive playgrounds that add a modern tinge to Crow Country’s distinctly retro sensibilities.
This affectionate nostalgia is in service of a game that pays loving homage to landmark titles of the survival horror genre while also boldly standing on its own two feet. Resident Evil is Crow Country’s most obvious influence, but traces of Silent Hill and Alone in the Dark also stalk the darkest corners of its ’90s-inspired horror. It can be a tad too authentic at times, featuring unwieldy combat that’s tempting to ignore completely, but this is still a true advert for the joys of retro-modern survival horror when executed well.
Set in 1990, your first taste of the titular Crow Country occurs when Mara pulls into its parking lot in a white facsimile of a Volkswagen Polo. Crow Country is a decrepit, abandoned theme park that’s both dense and labyrinthine despite its small scale–as if designed by the same architect who worked on The Spencer Mansion and Racoon City Police Station. Mara is here following up on a missing person’s report for the park’s owner, Edward Crow, but it doesn’t take long before she’s unraveling the park’s deepest secrets and most intriguing mysteries.
The story unravels out of chronological order as you discover notes left behind by employees, read old newspaper clippings, and interact with a small cast of relatable NPCs. It’s expertly paced, with sharp writing that’s self-aware and includes plenty of nods to both gaming and horror tropes without feeling corny. Discovering what happened in the two years since the park closed down propels the story forward, and it sticks the landing with a memorable ending. Crucially, Crow Country also doesn’t follow a familiar pattern despite being a pastiche of genre classics in almost every other facet of its design. There’s no zombie outbreak or missing wife, and the theme park setting is a refreshingly unfamiliar location, capturing the same kind of uncertainty that the first Resident Evil achieved in 1996.
There are monsters in the form of aberrant Cronenberg-esque designs that range from bipedal shamblers to amorphous blobs. Their origins are tragic, tracing back to human hubris and greed, but you can also play the entire game without them. Crow Country offers two modes of play: Survival and exploration. The latter removes any trace of the park’s enemies so you can focus on exploration and puzzle solving, which gives you a good idea of where the game’s priorities lie.
During survival mode, the park gradually fills with grotesque creatures as you delve further into the game’s story. In true survival horror fashion, you can avoid most enemy encounters by simply running past them, conserving your limited supply of ammo in the process. This has the knock-on effect of populating the park with extra creatures, but the presence of more enemies never feels problematic, and I only bothered engaging in combat if they were directly impeding a puzzle.
This is partly because the survival aspect of Crow Country is relatively easy. Unless you’re fighting absolutely every enemy or aren’t thoroughly exploring, ammo is plentiful enough, and the same is true of med kits and antidotes. There also aren’t a lot of genuine threats to your life. The small, skittish Pinochio-esque creatures are surprising at first because they’re fast, and the rattle of bones that accompanies the strangely elongated skeletons might tempt you to nope the hell out, but both are rare and simple enough to breeze past that they never pose much danger. You won’t find a pack of zombie dogs bursting through a window or encounter deadly frog-like creatures in tight corridors, so the sense of challenge is severely lacking. Inventory management–normally a staple of the genre–is also notable for its absence. Instead of having to carefully pick which items and weapons to take with you, you can go into the final boss fight with all four firearms fully stocked, further diminishing any sense of reward when it comes to the game’s combat.
Another reason you might avoid combat entirely is that it isn’t particularly engaging. Crow Country is played from an intimate isometric viewpoint with free camera movement, immediately making it more palatable than the games it’s inspired by. That said, aiming and shooting with an isometric camera feels deliberately awkward and clunky, especially because you’re aiming both horizontally and vertically. You’re locked in place when doing so, which at least makes you vulnerable and adds an element of tension as you fiddle with your laser pointer, but taking down enemies is still straightforward even when the controls are fighting against you. There’s a natural progression of weapon unlocks as you start with Mara’s service pistol before acquiring a shotgun, magnum, and flamethrower. Apart from some weapons dealing more damage than others, however, there isn’t a palpable difference in feel between each one, so their impact is largely dulled.
Despite these shortcomings, Crow Country still manages to establish a creepy atmosphere as you navigate the park’s various nooks and crannies. It might be an ominous low hum or the comforting–yet somehow still offputting–music playing in every save room, but the game’s score does an excellent job of building tension with music reminiscent of the era. The dilapidated theme park setting is also a significant part of the game’s overall charm, whether you’re exploring the aquatic zone with its imported sand and fake starfish, rushing past the fairy forest’s abundance of giant mushrooms, or skulking through the haunted town to reach a spooky mansion and underground crypt. The janky animatronics and pervasive crow-theming would be eerie even before introducing monsters, broken glass, and ominous blood spatter to the equation.
Each zone is distinct and memorable enough that navigating the park is a breeze. It also helps that the entire map’s layout is incredibly intuitive. After walking up a miniature version of Disneyland’s Main Street, you come to an open square that acts as the park’s centerpiece, with doorways splitting off into all three zones. The map is open-ended, encouraging you to slowly expand your access to different areas by venturing back and forth to find all sorts of clues and items. Interconnected shortcuts through staff rooms and back offices remove the tedium of backtracking, and the park gradually begins to fold back in on itself, revealing a hidden depth that belies its relatively small scale. It’s inherently satisfying to unearth a new doorway leading to a previous area where you now have the items needed to solve a puzzle and make even more progress, and Crow Country is teeming with rewarding moments like this.
The puzzles themselves are fun to solve, too, expertly toeing the line between befuddling and condescendingly easy. Employee notes and company memos sometimes provide hints, but most solutions derive from logic and common sense–even if the former is a distinct flavor of survival horror logic. The map’s smaller scale works in its favor here as well, with many of the puzzles being quite self-contained. The items you need to solve a particular conundrum are often nearby, and even if you have to venture further afield, it never takes too long to get back. The puzzle designs are also delightfully varied, tasking you with playing specific notes on a piano to open hidden compartments, uncover a key by melting an animatronic’s head with acid, and solve a riddle using the names on various gravestones while a skeletal arm waves a shotgun in your face.
Crow Country pays homage to a golden era of survivor horror without relying on simple mimicry. It’s simultaneously familiar and yet unfamiliar, touching on tropes and genre trappings while utilizing modern techniques to enhance the experience and make it more approachable for newcomers. It’s not a particularly challenging game, and combat is dull and unwieldy, but this aspect of the game is easy enough to ignore, especially when there’s an enticing theme park full of secrets and rewarding puzzles to delve into. The story is also surprisingly rich, telling a captivating tale with smart writing and a memorable ending. Crow Country is clearly lovingly crafted, resulting in a nostalgic throwback that manages to avoid feeling derivative. It does justice to the games that inspired it, but it’s also a fantastic game in its own right.
Animal Well Review – Going Deeper
It’s usually pretty easy to predict how a 2D Metroidvania is going to play out. At some point, you’ll probably unlock a double or even triple jump to reach previously inaccessible areas, obtain an air dash that helps you traverse large gaps and pass through specific blockades, and acquire a weapon upgrade that functions as both a killing tool and a way to progress past certain obstacles. Animal Well contains most of these things, but never in ways that are expected. Created by solo developer Billy Basso and published by Bigmode, Animal Well is a surrealist puzzle platformer that’s delightfully surprising. Even if its pixelated art style and genre trappings make it seem familiar on the surface, it is a game that often eschews conventional wisdom and stands out because of it.
You play as a nondescript blob who emerges from a blossoming flower into a strange vibrant world filled with creatures big and small. You can move and jump, but that’s about the extent of your physical prowess. Upon awakening, you’re free to explore in any direction you choose. Animal Well doesn’t hold your hand and is exceedingly non-linear, letting you unlock items and abilities in whichever order you find them. There is an end goal that’s revealed once you discover a map and get a lay of the land, as each corner of the map contains a flame you need to fetch in order to light the four beacons at its center. Why, you might ask? There isn’t an explicit explanation for anything you do, but that sense of mystery is part of what drives the adventure forward.
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The other part is the world of Animal Well itself. At first glance, its pixelated art style looks simple, yet each screen holds a deceptive layer of detail beyond its neon-drenched exterior. Whether it’s the cascading background elements, reflections on the water’s surface, the sway of bushes and vines as you move past them, or the realistic smoke that billows into the air after igniting a firecracker, there’s more to the visuals that it may seem on first blush. There are also physics, lighting, and particle systems at play that modernize the game’s Commodore 64-inspired visuals, creating a world that feels very much alive, and that’s without mentioning the abundance of wildlife.
From giant technicolor swans to iguanas with elongated tongues capable of snatching up other animals, Animal Well’s creature designs possess an enticing, dreamlike quality. Music is used sparingly, with the sounds of nature–of chirping birds and the pitter-patter of falling water–dominating the soundscape. When music does enter the fray, it’s usually done to ratchet up the tension, introducing ominous synth tones that wouldn’t feel out of place in an ’80s thriller.
Unlike many other Metroidvanias, Animal Well doesn’t feature combat; the focus is purely on puzzle-solving and platforming. That doesn’t mean there aren’t any threats to your life, however. The tense music is there to complement a plethora of anxiety-inducing moments as you encounter aggressive animals and other nasties. Being chased by the ghostly apparition of a demonic cat is thrilling, just as being forced to cower underground as the long neck of an ostrich undulates towards you–its beak chomping at the bit–is incredibly suspenseful. Consumable firecrackers can scare away some creatures, while others require you to simply run away. Yet it’s the gradual arsenal of tools at your disposal that makes a real difference.
Like any good Metroidvania, Animal Well features various items that act as keys to progression while also introducing new gameplay mechanics. As I mentioned earlier, the options here are pleasantly surprising due to how they break from the norm. Instead of unlocking a traditional double jump, for example, you acquire a magic wand that creates bubbles, allowing you to hop on top of a floating sphere to reach higher platforms. This might not sound groundbreaking, but when you factor in the way certain enemies and objects in the environment can interact with these bubbles, their impact is much more varied than a simple double jump could ever be.
The frisbee, meanwhile, can be used like a makeshift dash; provided there are two surfaces for it to bounce between. You can also launch it to flip faraway levers or distract certain animals, like dogs, giving you the opportunity to slip past unharmed. This emphasis on avoiding combat makes enemy encounters feel like puzzles to be solved, which seamlessly meshes with the rest of the game’s engaging puzzle design.
I was never stumped for long by any of Animal Well’s conundrums, yet the solutions were nearly always creative enough that I constantly felt satisfied whenever I solved one. Most of the puzzles revolve around opening the path forward by activating a number of switches. This might be done by dropping a slinky and moving blocks to guide it down the right path or manipulating animals to walk on switches you can’t reach yourself. Sometimes, you might use a yo-yo to flip a switch underneath you, ricochet the frisbee off two different levers to cause platforms to activate and de-activate–creating a timing-based platforming section–or use a crank to rotate platforms and redirect the spray from a water fountain into a bowl. I’m deliberately describing some of the earlier puzzles because discovering Animal Well’s various conundrums yourself is a significant part of the experience. But these examples are a decent glimpse at the sheer variety on show.
There are also secrets to be found in the nooks and crannies of Animal Well’s densely packed map. These take the shape of various eggs that are then stored in a hub area containing a few locked doors. After finding a specific number of eggs, some of these doors begin to open, leading to new areas and new items. These items aren’t necessary to progress towards the game’s ending but instead seem to revolve around unlocking more hidden secrets. Once the final credits roll, you’re free to continue playing in search of these mysteries, yet it doesn’t seem like something one person will be able to figure out on their own. Maybe I’m wrong, but it has a similar feeling to Fez, whereby the internet is going to have to work together to uncover everything. That’s an enticing prospect.
For the most part, Animal Well’s platforming isn’t particularly challenging, but it feels precise to the point where you can stop on a dime in mid-air if you need to. The map is also small and interconnected enough that backtracking rarely feels laborious, although I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t have liked a way to move between areas instantly in those moments when I wasn’t entirely sure where to go next. There are a couple of sections where dying multiple times is a distinct possibility, and it’s here where backtracking can encroach on frustration due to the way respawning works. The last save point you used is where you’ll reappear after dying, which can sometimes be a fair distance away. Normally, this is a non-issue, but when you encounter a section–like one involving moving platforms that can crush you in an instant–the long trek back quickly becomes demoralizing.
It’s impressive that this is the lone blemish on an otherwise excellent addition to the pantheon of great Metroidvanias. This is a game that’s chock full of pleasant surprises, from the way its items forgo tradition in interesting ways to the visual design and sense of atmosphere generated by its bizarre, neon-soaked world. Animal Well might look antiquated and familiar at first glance, but this well is cavernous and unpredictable.
Indika Review – The Devil Makes Three
Indika is a hard game to define. It looks like a horror game, but it’s not scary–at least not in the conventional sense. It plays like a third-person puzzle game, but most of the puzzles don’t require much thought. What Indika definitely is, however, is a fascinating psychological examination of faith and doubt that’s supported by remarkable visuals and mature writing. Occasionally, its ambitions get a little unwieldy, but developer Odd Meter’s decision to take on these heady themes and confidently explore nearly all of them is an impressive feat.
You play as Indika, a nun tormented by a demonic voice in her head, as she travels across a nightmarish interpretation of 19th-century Russia to deliver a letter. Most of the game consists of traveling from point A to B, solving a few puzzles, and watching cutscenes, but within these tasks are moments of introspection and self-discovery. Along the way, she meets an escaped convict named Ilya who claims God speaks to him. What ensues is a nuanced exploration of faith and doubt, love and hate, and pleasure and suffering. Both characters believe in the same God; rather than pitting a believer against a nonbeliever, Indika explores the space that exists between two interpretations of the same faith. This specificity allows Odd Meter to delve into different shades of Christianity and examine how the same texts, rituals, and prayers can be bent to ascertain different meanings.
These frequent philosophical exchanges could have easily come off as overwrought or self-indulgent, but all these musings are in service of the characters and their development over the course of the story. For example, Indika tells Ilya she joined the convent of her own volition, but because her decision was fueled by emotions and experiences that were out of her control, can she really say she became a nun through her own free will? Ilya challenges this notion, and declares that free will is how we rise above our biological dispositions. Reflective conversations like these are key to Indika’s character as she grapples with her faith and attempts to make sense of her life.
It helps that Indika is portrayed by the fantastic Isabella Inchbald, and Louis Boyer embodies Ilya with equal confidence. There’s a raw authenticity and conviction to their performances that bring both characters to life. You can hear the fear and doubt in Indika’s voice and the desperation and hope in Ilya’s. Meanwhile, Silas Carson’s portrayal of the devil is humorous, sadistic, and cordial in his demeanor as he deftly narrates the action. While the writing and acting are great, they are occasionally undermined by awkward animations. Sometimes the action will look a bit too robotic, or dialogue won’t quite sync up with a character’s mouth. These are minor issues overall, but sometimes it was just enough to take me out of a scene.
Nevertheless, Indika is one of the most visually arresting games I’ve ever played. Developer Odd Meter uses framing, color, and lighting to achieve a look and feel that is rarely seen in games. Wide-angle shots often distort Indika’s facial features and warp the background to give the experience a voyeuristic feel. The framing, meanwhile, consistently impresses as it accentuates the action and world. In one section, after being chased by a wolf the size of a truck, the beast takes a tumble and wedges itself in a water wheel. What follows is a subdued conversation between Indika, Ilya, and the devil in her head about whether or not a beast can be sinful, as the camera tracks the dead wolf being dragged underwater by the water wheel. It’s a macabre scene given the context alone, but the stylistic choices allow the tone to meet the moment more effectively than a standard shot/reverse shot conversation would.
Rather than pitting a believer against a nonbeliever, Indika explores the space that exists between two interpretations of the same faith.
These choices aren’t just for show, either. They are bold and sometimes jarring creative decisions that reflect Indika’s inner turmoil as she travels across Russia. There are sections where the world–at least from Indika’s perspective–is split in two. When this happens, an oppressive and discordant synth kicks in as hellish red light soaks the scene. Through prayer, Indika can reforge the world around her and suppress the chaos. To progress, you–and by extension, Indika–must rip apart and merge her world by alternating between Indika’s cacophonous hell and her quiet reality. Although rare, these moments give weight and meaning to Indika’s gameplay as they leverage Indika’s themes of faith and doubt.
The same can’t always be said for the game’s puzzles, though. Most are simple and mundane: Move some boxes around, manipulate a crane, and strategically align lifts and elevators. Puzzles like these make sense in the early hours, as the game familiarizes you with Indika and her menial life. But as her world expands, these bland puzzles start to feel tonally and narratively incongruous as Indika struggles with her faith, especially when some puzzles literally let you tear the world apart, while others have you shove a box around.
With these criticisms in mind, it may seem like this story would be better told as a film or book. What’s fascinating, though, is that Indika clearly understands the medium it inhabits. It brazenly leverages video game tropes to elevate its themes. You’ll earn points for acts of faith, such as performing the sign of the cross at crucial moments, lighting altars, and collecting religious texts. You can then use these points to unlock skills that increase the amount of points Indika can earn. The thing is, these points do nothing. The loading screens even tell you they are useless. They have no discernible value and are simply a shallow way to measure Indika’s faith.
Yet, I didn’t want to miss any of it. I lit every altar, collected every text, and mashed the sign-of-the-cross button (yes, there’s a button) at every opportunity. It’s almost silly to gamify this stuff, but putting Indika through the motions as she builds up an arbitrary “faith” score while she’s actively questioning her faith is brilliant. I grew up religious. I went to church every Sunday and attended Catholic school. There was a distinct period in my life when I was questioning my beliefs, yet I still held on to some of those ingrained rituals. There was a quiet guilt that I couldn’t expunge: a feeling that could only be alleviated by going through the motions. In a way, it feels like Indika is using the language of video games and my understanding of them to reinforce her feelings of faith and doubt. Indika is about the internal struggle of a nun who isn’t entirely sure what she believes anymore, but seeing her cling to tradition–through my actions–is powerful.
Although Indika does an excellent job exploring its themes of faith and doubt, there’s one subject the game doesn’t handle with the care it requires. In one particular scene near the end of the game, it touches on some uncomfortable territory that–depending on your interpretation of the story and its themes–might feel unnecessary. Up until that point, the evil that exists in the world feels intangible and theoretical. Indika and Ilya talk of hell and demons, but it always feels distant, almost as if God is protecting Indika on her journey. That is, until the final moments of the game, which allude to a sexual assault. The reasoning behind this scene is to test Indika’s faith, but as it stands, the scene in question feels like a means to an end rather than something Odd Meter wanted to properly explore.
Given the Catholic Church’s long and pockmarked history of sexual abuse, it makes sense that it plays such a critical role in Indika, but it’s not examined with the care that is necessary. The scene and what follows are clearly intended to elicit a lot of different emotions and speculation, but when those knee-jerk reactions stem from something so traumatic, it feels unearned. It’s almost as if the game wants you to move on as quickly as it does, which stands out as unusual in a game that is otherwise very thorough in its interrogation of sensitive subject matter. To be clear, Odd Meter doesn’t botch this scene entirely. Atrocity is often the most difficult test of faith, and they had the good sense not to show the assault itself. However, once the scene ends, it feels like Indika is barrelling towards its conclusion, while I was still trying to make sense of what just happened.
I’m often frustrated when developers lean on religious iconography but fail to explore faith in a meaningful way. Some of the greatest works of art exist because of religion, either as an exploration of it, a testament to it, or a denouncement of it. Human history is inextricably tied to religious faith. Yet, outside of a few exceptions, games tend to avoid commenting on religion without obfuscating it behind fake dogmas and fantastical gods. Indika’s direct examination of Christianity allows it to better explore the gray areas of religion and faith that are often lost when the recognizable specifics are swapped with allegorical fiction. And while the execution occasionally falters, its willingness to grapple with these difficult themes, and the conclusions it draws, make Indika a fascinating journey.
Endless Ocean: Luminous Review – Hope You Really Like Fish
Between the advent of cozy games, farm sims, rhythm games, narrative adventures, and more, we’re in something of a golden age of non-violent games. If you want to take a break from shooting and punching and instead just relax with some chill vibes, you have myriad options available to you. Endless Ocean: Luminous is an aquatic take, letting you freely explore the ocean with no danger or violence to speak of whatsoever. It sometimes straddles the line between game and edutainment in ways that could be engaging, but achingly slow progression and a lack of realism leave it feeling washed up.
Scientists say only 5% of the ocean has been explored. The name Endless Ocean, and the unexplored nature of the ocean itself, suggests an incredible degree of possibility and adventure. In practice, though, there actually isn’t all that much to do in Endless Ocean: Luminous. You can take part in a Solo Dive, in which you explore a seemingly randomized map; a Shared Dive, which is just a Solo Dive with friends exploring the same map together online using Nintendo’s Switch Online service (complete with its usual shortcomings); and Story Mode, which gives you short missions consisting of objectives accompanied by a little dialogue.
With this dearth of options, its approach to progression gating further compounds the lack of variety. After the first handful of story missions, the others are locked behind scanning ocean creatures in Shared or Solo dives. To scan you just hold the L button in the direction of sea life until the meter fills, which then gives a detailed look at the creatures in your scan. But the progress gates are set so absurdly high that the novelty wears off quickly. One of the earliest gates is set at 500 scans, which felt high but reasonable. The next was at 1,000, so I had to get another 500. That rubbed me the wrong way. By the time I reached the next gate, set at 2,000–meaning I needed another 1,000 scans–the chill vibes were gone. I was just annoyed. It’s hard to overstate how frustrating it is to spend almost an hour roaming around a randomized map scanning fish, only to exit the map and find I’ve only gained another 200 pips toward my next story goal. Plus, judging by the creature log, there are just under 600 species of sea life total in the game. Why would you need to scan 2,000 times to see a mid-game story mission?
Not that there’s much story to tell. You’re a new diver accompanied by an AI companion, exploring phenomena of glowing fish, and sometimes you’re accompanied by a brash (but actually cowardly) fellow diver named Daniel. The story missions are short and largely uneventful. Sometimes they end so quickly that I was genuinely surprised. Other times, they feel like a glorified tutorial, which makes it that much stranger to gate it behind so much free-roaming playtime. At least one of them is just a cutscene with no actual diving gameplay whatsoever. Occasionally, the story mode will deliver something unexpected and fun, like a massive or fantastical species of fish, but those moments are few and far between. There is a meta-story involving an ancient relic with 99 slots, which you fill in by discovering certain artifacts scattered randomly throughout dives or by fulfilling achievement objectives, but it feels more like a busywork checklist than a real story-driver.
And because the scanning requirements are so excessive, small inconveniences feel more impactful than they should. It’s easy to pick up a fish you’ve already scanned while trying to register a new one. Every time you scan any fish, it zooms in on them for a moment, forcing you to hit B to back out of the detailed view. If you scan multiple species at once, they’re grouped in a listing together, which is meant to be a convenience feature–but new species aren’t prioritized in the list, so you need to scroll down to find any with a “???” designation to mark them as discovered. If you don’t, the unidentified fish remains unidentified. If you scan a large school of the same fish, they’ll all be listed separately. In Solo Dives, the map is slowly charted in segments as you explore, but keeping an eye on the map to make sure I was filling in the little squares meant I could fail to notice a fish swimming by, or I could miss a depth change that may reward me for diving deeper.
Your dives get you experience points to level up, which increases your dive capacity, which you can use to tag sea creatures to swim alongside you. At first, these only include the smallest of sea creatures, but as you build capacity, you can swim with larger ones that are used to solve riddles. A stone tablet might challenge you to come back with a particular type of turtle or a fish that “sails as it swims.” Even then, though, the solutions are too rigid. When I returned to the tablet with a “Sailfish,” nothing happened, presumably because it was not the specific solution the riddle had in mind.
In addition to story progress and dive capacity, leveling up also opens new but severely limited tiers of customization options. Those include palette swaps for your diver or individual SCUBA suit parts, different stickers to apply to your profile, and emotes. There isn’t even a different helmet or mouthpiece, just the default in different colors.
It feels as if the goal was to create a virtual, interactive aquatic museum, and the variety of sea life does support this nicely. It actually is exciting the first time you see a new species of sea turtle or an extinct megalodon shark, even if you know that it can’t hurt you. But the mechanical underpinnings get in the way of its potential as a museum too. For example, every species of fish has a blurb with some interesting marine facts, complete with a reading of it from your AI companion. This could be a cool and educational feature, but when you’re pressed to perform thousands of scans, it’s hard to bother listening to every blurb. There also isn’t an indicator for when you’ve already heard a blurb, and since you’ll see species repeated a lot, it’s nearly impossible to remember which ones you have or haven’t heard–even if you can tell dozens of roughly similar-looking fish apart, which I can’t.
In part due to its non-violent nature, Endless Ocean does not present the depths very realistically, even to my layman’s eyes. Your oxygen is unlimited, and you don’t need to worry about temperature or depth. You’ll never freeze or get decompression sickness or drown. More aggressive species will never attack you. Species of fish seem to be scattered more or less randomly around the map, which leads to oddities like finding large-scale creatures in shallow waters, or discovering deep-sea dwellers in middle-depths instead of the deepest, almost pitch-black parts of the ocean where they actually reside. And while this is likely a limitation of the Switch hardware, the fish, coral, and ocean floor themselves aren’t rendered photorealistically enough to instill a sense of awe and majesty.
It seems Endless Ocean wants you to spend most of your time diving with friends to pass the time. The Shared Dives option is the first one on the menu, after all, and it is easier to fulfill the simple procedural objectives when you’re paired with other divers. But like most Switch games, you join friendly games using a digital code, and there isn’t built-in voice chat, so you can’t really treat it like an underwater virtual lobby. Even if you could, though, scanning fish with your friends would not sustain the group fun for anyone but the most devoted of sea-life enthusiasts.
Endless Ocean: Luminous could have been a realistic SCUBA sim with all the treacherous hazards that real underwater divers need to consider, a relaxing chill-vibes game that’s mostly about finding fish with your friends, or a story-driven game centered around discovering awesome and even extinct underwater beasts. It has pieces of all of those, but it doesn’t commit to any of them. Instead, it takes the enormity and glory of earth’s largest and most mysterious region and turns exploring it into a dull, repetitive chore.
Final Fantasy 16: The Rising Tide Review – Riding The Wave
It’s always a bit weird to go back to a game you finished for story-centric DLC, especially when the base game had a pretty definitive ending. However, those that have just a little bit more left in the tank can take the opportunity to give a game you really loved one more high note to end on. I often think of the Mass Effect 3 Citadel DLC as the best example–an oddly placed, yet near-perfect send-off. Final Fantasy XVI: The Rising Tide evokes similar feelings in that I was just happy to have an excuse to revisit that world and spend a bit more time with characters I cherished. While it does largely play out like more Final Fantasy XVI content, The Rising Tide fills in a few blanks left behind and lets you wield two new Eikons in a questline that reaches similar heights of the original game.
The Rising Tide questline is slotted into FFXVI right before the main game’s point of no return, making it feel like an impromptu diversion at a critical point in the story. That said, it is necessary, as many of the events leading up to the DLC provide the context around its story. As Clive, you and the crew are invited to visit a region called Mysidia–a quiet area tucked away in the north and cloaked under the veil of powerful magic to both conceal itself from the rest of the world and maintain a facade of bright blue skies. It’s a new area for the game that has its own interesting, isolated society and lets you explore a relatively small but vibrant region, and its stunning views remind you of how FFXVI uses its technical strengths to paint a vibrant and enticing world.
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Much of FFXVI was visually dour given its grim nature, so Mysidia’s tropical tinge is a refreshing contrast. But this isn’t a vacation for Clive–The Rising Tide revolves around the history of Leviathan as an Eikon that, like every other Eikon, was wielded in bad faith. Through the main scenario quests and sidequests, you learn about the people of Mysidia, their way of life, and their particular relationship with Leviathan. The people are self-sustaining and treat magic quite differently from the rest of Valisthea, and their leader, Shula, embodies their ethos as she accompanies you throughout the DLC. She’s not exactly a standout character in the grand scheme of things, but she is a solid anchor for The Rising Tide and provides a good enough excuse for dragging Clive off the beaten path. It’s a twist to the typical FFXVI plot beat and comes around to be a rather sweet story about breaking generational curses in a way that lends itself more to FFXVI’s softer side.
That’s not to say The Rising Tide doesn’t go hard, because like the base game, its blend of intense boss fights woven into impressive cinematic cuts remains the foundation here. Along with the new region are an additional dungeon and another larger-than-life Eikon battles. While the dungeon itself is quite short, the boss fight that awaits at the end of it features some clever and inventive mechanics that even impressed the Final Fantasy XIV Savage raider in me. FFXVI’s base game shares a lot of similarities with the MMORPG in terms of battle mechanics, and this remains true here, but a few twists caught me off guard and left me grinning when I was able to overcome them. And even if I could see it coming from a mile away, the build-up to another climactic Eikon battle and the arduous fight itself brought back that specific feeling of hype FFXVI was so damn good at evoking. The telegraphing of certain mechanics in the EIkon battle aren’t always great, so there is some trial-and-error as you bang your head against the wall to get through it. Still, figuring out how to resolve the mechanics along with pulling off nasty, weighty attacks as Ifrit was as gratifying as ever, matching the best of what the original game had to offer.
As a chapter all about Leviathan, being able to use the power of the iconic serpent is a definite highlight. Creative Business Unit III really said, “What if we gave Clive a gun?” and that’s essentially what they did. Leviathan is a projectile-focused Eikon power that has its own unique mode that turns Clive’s arm into a shotgun capable of blasting lethal chunks of water, and boy, does it melt away enemies’ stagger meter. For cooldowns, you also get a rapid-fire bubble blast and wave-like ability that starts from the sides and crunches small enemies together, making them easy targets for shotgun blasts or any other AoE spell you have lined up. There’s a satisfying feedback to landing shots and weaving between Leviathan’s moveset, and it’s great to see that FFXVI brand of action combat still had room for creative ideas.
On top of that, you also get to wield Ultima as an Eikon power, which allows Clive to hover with wings that can also violently swipe at mobs of enemies. Many of the cooldown abilities with Ultima are heavy and dramatic displays of power that aren’t exactly conducive to swiftly weaving into an attack rotation–if you just want to disrespectfully pummel enemies, Ultima is the Eikon for you. Ultima is unlocked by starting up the new content called Kairos Gates, which is part of the DLC’s package. It’s a run-based combat challenge where you gradually build Clive with boons and enhancements to help make it through a genuinely tough gauntlet of enemy hordes and remixed bosses. The menus and sound effects between rounds are encased in an old-school Final Fantasy presentation which is a cute touch, but these fights are anything but cute. If you’ve been wanting FFXVI to up the difficulty, it’s a decent, albeit straightforward, way to get more out of its combat.
The Rising Tide contains a handful of sidequests to fill out Mysidia, which offer rewards or unlock features for the region. These range from talking to NPCs, fetching items in the world, taking out certain targets, or some combination of those things–mostly continuing the typical FFXVI quest design, which wasn’t exactly its strong suit. Not that it’s surprising, but many of the conversations in the DLC still have that odd, stiff style of conversation via a cutscene that stood out like sore thumbs in the original game. It’s another one of those FFXIV-isms that don’t quite hold up when used in a highly produced, prestige-style game.
However, the DLC does use sidequests effectively in a few key ways. For one, they tend to be more combat-focused so they’re opportunities to sharpen those new Eikon-wielding skills. But after the DLC’s main scenario is done, a new batch of sidequests pop up to let the overall story breathe, and they’re vital for giving Shula and the people of Mysidia closure. I’m a bit shocked these are marked as sidequests considering how impactful they are in contextualizing The Rising Tide. And while the reward for completing all of it isn’t necessarily a tangible one, it’s an emotional payoff that provides instead brings some much needed warmth to FFXVI’s dark world.
The wonders of Mysidia are also represented in the new music for The Rising Tide. To the surprise of absolutely no one, composer Masayoshi Soken and his team were cooking once again. The main village of Haven has a catchy yet sorrowful acoustic tune that wonderfully captures the setting, and the beautiful overworld theme struck me as an extension of the bittersweet feelings I had playing through parts of FFXIV: Endwalker. The dungeon theme incorporates light electronic elements to communicate something inexplicably magical about the environment while also calling back to the main leitmotif used throughout FFXVI, as if to wrap the whole journey together through sound. While the Eikon boss battle theme is among the explosive and impressive tracks to hype you up in the moment, it’s the more calming music, where the emotional nuances of the adventure are delivered through the notes that make up the songs.
Playing through The Rising Tide was bittersweet. For all its flaws, I have a deep fondness for Final Fantasy XVI, so I was happy to have a strong hook to bring me back to Valisthea, even if it was a rather short-lived journey that wrapped up just as I was starting to vibe with the new setting, abilities, and characters. In several ways, The Rising Tide offers something I wish the original game had a bit more of in its story: vibrance and warmth. FFXVI was outwardly grim and dark–fitting what it was going for. But having this contrast that complements the core themes of the original game was a real treat, especially with some great gameplay twists along the way. The Rising Tide is an easy recommendation for those who enjoyed the base game, and a damn fine way to send off FFXVI.