Is Demon’s Souls hard? The game that basically started its own subgenre (the Soulslikes) is forever trapped in a discourse about difficulty, even though it excels not at challenging us with hard-as-nails boss fights, but at building an oppressive and somber atmosphere that immerses us in a dark and dangerous world where everything seems complicated. The story takes place after …
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The first time we see Elliot, he’s out in the woods looking for a simple comb an old man dropped when he was gathering herbs. He doesn’t care that it’s not a glorious job or even that the old man won’t be able to pay him much; it’s just the right thing to do. Elliot is that kind of guy. …
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Vampyr excels in making its mechanics, systems, and presentation mirror its protagonist’s inner struggles. It associates vampirism with disease and corruption, immersing us in a claustrophobic, hostile city whose inhabitants are at the mercy of predators of every kind – including the main character, Dr. Jonathan Reid. The game starts with a discussion on mortality, framing dying as a blessing: …
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Birth by Sleep, originally released for the PSP, is a great prequel that excels when it comes to expanding the Kingdom Hearts’ universe and lore, even though it never quite succeeds at justifying its burdensome narrative structure: there’s this great expression in Portuguese, which can be translated literally to “forcing a friendship,” that is basically how anyone feels about the …
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Kingdom Hearts is an ambitious crossover between Disney and Final Fantasy that, much ironically, is at its best when it’s not covering either brand, but being its own weird thing. The protagonist is a boy named Sora, who lives on an island and dreams of traveling with his friends, Kairi and Riku, to discover new places. One day, they start …
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