anyways this game is very dear to me, i love how it tackles themes of having differing ideals. you may believe you are wholly in the right without taking the time to understand those opposing you, and the opposing side feels the exact same albiet with their own different reasons for fighting and i think the way its explored is so interesting. i truly love this game to bits and im glad with the release of nier automata that it's gotten more popular. for real though i remember when nier automata got announced at e3 2015 and i legit started crying bc i never thought nier would get a sequel much less by platinum games, my dream team!! its crazy seeing how much nier merch there is nowadays and it makes me so happy knowing that i can now buy merch to show how much i love the series hehehe

the way this game has some of its characters come to terms with finding their place in the world, living their lives to the fullest, and understanding that their time in this world will end someday is really special to me as someone who thinks regularly about how someday i will no longer be in this world and thats. scary to think about. but this game gave me a form of comfort and really inspired me to live as best as i can with those i love. ahhh im getting so emotional just typing this.. vivi's story really resonated with me the most (as you can tell since i go by vivi now LOL), along with kuja's, but i can't get too much into detail about them without giving things away. if you have any interest in final fantasy and havent played this one yet i highly recommend doing so!!

umineko is another piece of media that is deeply important to me and quite literally changed how i view the world and others all for the better. it helped me become more open minded and more compassionate through taking a moment to think about how things might be seen through another person's view and what they may be going through to explain their thoughts and actions. umineko has so much to say about so many topics, but being more compassionate towards other people and really take a moment to think about where they could be coming from and how your words/actions might have unseen effects on them is so important to the core of umineko, along with finding what the "truth" means to you. finding my own "truth" through reading umineko has helped me greatly over the years.

as you can see i have so much to say about this series, it means so much to me and i want to say more but i won't since i'll be here all day LOL. if you enjoy visual novels or even mystery stories, i highly recommend umineko. i promise you its worth every bit of your time!!

it really hit home with me how these characters are willing to go through hell for one another, especially shown in satoko's arc, and it moved me so deeply. i love how there is so much emphasis on understanding the plights of those around you, being kind to those who may suffer from mental illness and understanding them, and more. it reminded me a lot of umineko wrt understanding other people but the found family aspect of it really means so much to me.. rena's arc in particular means a lot to me and she quickly became one of my favorite characters ever from her arc and how much i could resonate with her. i could talk forever about higurashi, it definitely is a piece of media that has a profound impact on me!

i know i havent written nearly as much about fata morgana as i have for the other games right now but please trust me on this, fata morgana is a beautiful vn with incredible characters that i feel are wonderfilly explored along with their relationships and how they affect one another and the way it completely throws off any expectations you may have made while going through it is so amazing. if you are reading this and are already an umineko fan but havent read fata morgana i STRONGLY recommend doing so as they are soooo similar in their themes and messages, and even if you haven't read umineko then you should also give this a read! trust me!!!! also i NEED to add that the art for this vn is so beautiful please look up any piece of official art for this game you will be blown away!!!!!!

i dont want to say too much here because (at the time of writing this) i plan on making a xenosaga shrine page and i think i would want to get all of my thoughts and feelings about xenosaga out on there rather than on this page but i'll try to specifically talk about 3 on here without going into too much detail. anyways this game is definitely my favorite of the trilogy for multiple reasons! i love the other two games in their own little ways but 3 completely blew me away.

i had always heard from others that 3 was the best of the trilogy and was the perfect way to wrap things up with the story and its characters and prior to playing i was wondering if i was going to be disappointed, like if people were overhyping it for me, but im so happy to say that they werent wrong at all!! xenosaga 3 wraps up the series and its characters arcs so nicely it made going through the whole series so incredibly worth it. honestly the ending half of xenosaga 3 is probably one of my favorites in any game ive played and its emotional climax for some of its characters felt so rewarding.. i cried so many times throughout that whole sequence of the game LOL. not to mention the themes of xenosaga 3 hit me like a truck at the time but i'll go into more detail about that on my shrine page hehe. i highly recommend playing through xenosaga, its truly an underrated series and it truly deserves more.

i fucking LOVE XENOBLADE 2 so much like seriously i feel so stupid for being on the fence about it for so long. i get that since its so different from xenoblade 1 that it definitely turned a lot of people away from it and it's a lot more anime i guess than 1 was but regardless of the gripes that others might have, or gripes that i personally have with it, it doesnt take away from my love for it. i feel that xenoblade 2 has a lot of passion and love put into it and that its just as genuine with its messages as xenoblade 1 is and thats part of what makes it so special. i love the characters so much and how silly they can get lolol i know some people didnt like how much more lighthearted 2 can get compared to 1 but i loved it, i loved being able to see the characters be a bit more silly and lighthearted.. it made me feel more endeared to them to see those sides of them! anyways the messages about moving on from the past and accepting it being in conversation with the themes in 1 about the future is so cool to me.. its messages about living in a pessimistic world while still trying to live with hope despite everything around you and how that attitude can have an effect on others really resonated on me on a personal level. uwahh i really do love this game a lot i truly think its a special game with a lot of love put into it!! ALSO before i forget jin is such an amazing villian and im not just saying this because hes my favorite xenoblade character in general like everything with him is so heart wrenching but also handled so well with how hes written ;__; the dlc expansion, torna, also adds to his character in a really profound way in addition to just being a solid expansion of an already amazing game!

honestly i do have some gripes with this game but like i said they dont detract from my love for it and i feel like people shouldnt base their opinions on this game on what they see people saying about it online (because tbh most of the people who rag on it havent even played it and just want free twitter interaction lol) and should really give it an honest shot before coming to their own opinion. saying this as someone who did this, im glad i ended up playing it for myself because its definitely a game thats very near and dear to me now. i love xenoblade 2 GRAHHHHHHH

all that aside i think xenoblade 3 is a very beautiful and, again, another heartfelt game from the series.. i dont want to say too much about its messages/themes or even the plot because i think its something thats better left to be experienced through the game on your own and i think if youre someone who has played xenoblade 1 and 2, or even the whole xeno series, you will appreciate the game more than those who havent and how its themes/messages tie up/follow up on the xenoblade series in a really nice way. honestly the message of this game threw me on my ass and made me do a hard self analyze on myself and just kind of. made me more motivated to change? but like in a good way i promise.. please play it to see for yourself what i mean. please. please play xenoblade i am no longer asking!!!!!

over the years ive revisited ff7 and each time i did i felt like i came out of it appreciating the game more and more. i love the party (aerith and cloud are two of my favorite characters ever uwah) so much, i especially love everything with cloud and how he comes to accept everything over the course of the game.. his whole arc always makes me so emotional whenever i go through the game lol i just empathize with him so much.. man thinking about ff7 while writing this is making me want to replay it again LOL. ALSO i especially love how campy ff7 is LOL im a huge fan of camp and i love how seamlessly it blends into the world of ff7 despite how bleak the game can get at times. anyways people have sung this game's praises to death over the years so what im saying has definitely been said before and has been said much better but yeah i love ff7 i still love coming back to it after all these years. the first part of the remake was fun and enjoyable in its own right and its interesting to see all the differences between old and new, but the original will always have a huge spot in my heart and nothing can replace it for me!!

okay i need to preface talking about dmc3 with how i first got into the series bc i think its something worth sharing LOL. so my uncle gave my family and i his ps2 and all his games on it bc he jsut got a ps3 (this was around when it just came out so it was the hot new toy at the time) and dmc1 was one of the games that was there!! wow!! i think i was in like 4th grade or so at the time so i was pretty young and i remember seeing dmc1 and looking at it like "WOAH!!!!!!! THIS GAME LOOKS SO COOL!!!!!!" and i remember i wanted to play it soooo bad but little ol me was brought up to be a good upstanding christian child so imagine my horror seeing this cool ass game that had the word DEVIL on the title and was about DEMONS.. i was legit afraid of playing the game bc i thought i would go to hell if i played it LOL so i remember watching my older sister play it one night and internally screaming bc i wanted to play it so bad BC IT LOOKED SO COOL AAAAAA but also i was like wahhh i dont wanna go to hell wahhhh. so finally i couldnt take it anymore and i remember legit CRYING to my mom like WAHHH I WANNA PLAY THIS GAME SO BAD BUT IM AFRAID IF I DO ILL GO TO HELL WAHHHHH and my mom was like "?????? JUST PLAY IT ITS FINE ????" and i was like "oh okay :) thanks mom :)" SO YAY I GOT TO PLAY DMC1 AND IT ENDED UP BECOMING AN INCREDIBLY FORMATIVE SERIES TO ME BC IM STILL OBSESSED WITH IT EVEN AFTER ALL THESE YEARS!!!! I LOVE DEVIL MAY CRY BRAINROT YAAAYY YIPPEEE!!!!

okay. now that that's out of the way. its time to talk about dmc 3!!!!!!!!!!!! dmc3 blew my fucking mind as a kid. this game felt and still feels so fucking good to play. if you werent already aware this game is infamously difficult due to the hard mode on the jp version being set as the normal mode in the western release for some reason so it was HARD by default and you could really feel it LOL but despite the difficulty dmc3 is so fucking fun and still remains as probably my favorite dmc game to this day. the boss fights are almost all so fun and memorable in their own ways and the cutscenes are so fucking insane like literally look up the opening cutscene to dmc3 (you'll know its the right one if dante picks up the phone in it) it's one of my favorite cutscenes in the whole series and is such a good way of setting the tone for the game bc yes it really is just that insane the whole time!! also vergil and dante's rivalry is so fucking iconic, there's a reason why a lot of people refer to rival characters in other games as "the vergil of this game".this game broke my fucking brain growing up bc i remember i would replay this game over and over and over to the point where if you showed me certain cutscenes in this game i could recite them word for word. its just that good trust me. you should play it :)

ANYWAYS wow i love this game. the hype around this game definitely made it more special to me than it would have been without it considering everything prior to its release with thinking the series was just dead. but despite the hype its just a fucking amazing game and it's amazing to see the characters weve all come to love throughout the series come back (rip lucia stuck in dmc2 hell) in this game thats such a huge love letter to the series, hell even characters from the anime get brought up/even make an appeareance!! it legit made me so happy and it made all that waiting entirely worth it. as far as the gameplay went it definitely felt like the pinnacle of the series and seeing everything with the sparda family wrapped up the way it did felt especially rewarding. also devil trigger is the battle theme of all fucking time. I LOVE THIS SERIES GRAAAHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

the way the story is setup and sequenced in kh2 is legit so fucking good like (light spoilers if anyone actually cares nowadays idk) having the huge battle in hollow bastion with everything that goes down there AND THEN having to revisit the worlds felt so cool to me i loved seeing how the worlds changed between the time you first visited and following hollow bastion. and the way it wrapped up that half of the overall story was so cool to me and made me so happy at the time!! seeing sora and riku reuinted after so long felt so gratifying for me back when i first played it hehe. also i think the gameplay in kh2 is probably the best in the series so far at least its just insanely fun and i love how cool it feels to play.. i know people complain about reaction commands but god i loved them their animations were always so fucking cool. also the bosses in kh2 were almost all so fun and some of them felt particularly challenging for me at the time and i loved the challenge >:) one of these days i wanna play kh2fm so i can fight the org 13 members from chain of memories bc those boss fights look soooo fun. if this puts it into perspective for you i remember when i was younger leveling all the way to level 99 in the game so i could get back at sephiroth for beating my ass and after countless attempts i finally beat him but all the while i was STILL having fun. anyways yeah sorry to sound like one of THOSE people but kh2 is definitely the high point of the series for me, its still my favorite of all the games and i love revisiting it every now and then.

i think its criminal how underrated this game is, its truly something special and i wish it would get more attention! theres so much to this game that makes it so special from its amazing music, its super stylish presentation, its fleshed out characters, and its plot and i think everyone should experience it. theres a couple characters in particular that really resonate with me, especially at the time of playing it, so that definitely added to its impact on me. one of the characters was the main character itself so watching his development over the course of the game and what he realizes about letting people in and even about life itself felt so powerful.. it really changed my perspective of living at the time of playing it and is something i still fondly look back at! its an incredibly special game for a multitude of reasons so i highly recommend checking it out and seeing for yourself what makes it so special!

anyways fast forward to cf coming out and it was pretty much when i started learning fighting games more seriously than before following the events of the story and what happened to my favorite character ever (ragna.. i love u so much king.. even to this day.. mwah...), so i picked up said character as my main and became dedicated to learning him and becoming better at playing as him because i am just THAT devoted!!!!! eventually i found out that in my state theres fighting game locals where people meet up and play together and i became super interested!

so when i started living on campus while i was in college it became a lot easier for me to come out to it so i did! and fast forward a bit and i made some of my closest friends through going that im still friends with even to this day and have even gotten the opportunity to go out to out of state fighting game events which was so amazing for me since i hardly ever travel out of state.. basically it was thanks to playing blazblue and giving me an interest in fighting games that i was able to meet these people and have the opportunities that ive had that i definitely would not have had otherwise. i truly think my life would be a lot more dull and bleak if it werent for the people i met through blazblue, both online and offline, and my life has become all the better for it. i dont really play blazblue or fighting games in general anymore just because im a lot busier now but i still come out to my locals when i can and still see the friends ive made through it regualrly too. i truly feel like ive made some life long friendships through playing cf and i wouldnt trade any of it for the world.