Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld (2019-20)

Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld is the second part of the Alicization arc of the story, which is based upon the light novel series. It is 23 episodes long and takes place a few months after the end of the last season. Kirito is in a virtual world, which he had grown up in. One of his childhood friends has just gone, while the other has returned. The big bad is down, at the cost of Kirito himself, who is now a vegetable, being looked after by Alice.

The last season of Alicization finished on a cliffhanger and War of Underworld picks up after it. We see that Kirito has now fallen into a comatose state in a wheelchair, unable to look after himself. Alice is with him, and they are at first living peacefully in a secluded village (or as peacefully as you can when the whole village hates you). The peace is soon shattered as the real world and this virtual world clashes. In the real world, mercenaries have arrived to take the “fluctlight” of Alice, and naturally, circumstances dictate that they dive into this world.

As a result, in the virtual world, the world of humans and the world of the dark territory across the mountains clash together in a big battle. The dark territory forces are the usual fantasy monsters such as goblins and orcs, including dark mages and knights. Most of them have a penchant for violence and are just happy to invade, fight and kill. What little hope and respectful characters within the dark territory are soon gone, which is a shame.

The ensuing battle forces Alice to go back to the other Integrity Knights, who are holding out and responsible for pushing back against the invasion. At its core, the plot is very simple, and a lot of the episodes are dragged out with the flashy effects of battles. There are a lot of flashbacks, and Kirito, even in his comatose state, is of course the center of all attention and somehow manages to convince new characters that they like him. The anime tends to rely too heavily on the jargon of its sci-fi aspect, which makes it feel like it is trying too hard to justify that everything makes sense. It also leans towards making antagonists that are unlikable not because being well designed, but because they are creepy.

Sword Art Online has always tried to take itself too seriously, and has extremely cringeworthy dialogue and story developments, as well as being too melodramatic and naïve at the same time. It’s gotten progressively worse with every story arc, and we see it in spades during this season. It handwaves all the technical complexities of some of its developments. It tries very hard to justify why things have happened the way they were but comes off as trying too hard in the process. Gigantic exposition dumps are not the best way to tell a story. Big speeches that convinces selfish random people to help in some farfetched unbelievable conflict is not cringeworthy.

Kirito is out for most of the season, but he still takes a huge chunk of the focus. Every single character has some sort of obsession with him, whether that is his harem, or the villainous characters. Perhaps the worst part is how this season arbitrarily brings back as many characters as it possibly can from previous seasons. It’s just so formulaic and predictable, and cringey, when the power of friendship allows these characters to just break rules or common sense and arrives just in the nick of time to help protect everything.

Perhaps the most annoying thing is even the villains are not immune from this. They just had to have crossed paths with Kirito before and developed an obsession about him. It stretches the belief that these coincidences could be just that, coincidences. Rather it feels forced when someone from the very early days of Sword Art Online and Aincrad, had crossed paths with Kirito, and those encounters were so memorable, that it kept fueling them until this very day. Of course, we are constantly waiting for Kirito’s return but not because you are eagerly anticipating it, but more so just so it can be over and done with, so that it can move on.

Even then it’s not enough because when Kirito comes out, the anime goes all in on having him be the savior and the only hero that this world ever needs. It’s kind of annoying when the anime takes the easy way out, and calls upon the power of friendship, the power of love, and all that kind of thing so that Kirito can get the power he needs to overcome the villain (who has problems of his own with how he managed to attain his immense power). It just feels like the author was making things up as he goes along and magics things to the way it is required to close off the story. Despite all the buildup, the battle ensuring after Kirito’s return is over in an episode. It makes you question whether it was worth waiting all that time beforehand.

The season finale wraps everything up both slowly and quickly at the same time. When Kirito awakes and kicks the villain out, there is still quite a bit of the story left. The anime blurs the line between real life and VR, to the point where VR is still a computer program at the end of the day, and yet it has all these possibilities and the tiniest amount of detail already mapped out, to the point it feels implausible. After the VR world is saved, there are many plot points of the real-life situation still ongoing, but with the big climax and reveal done, it’s like a drag.

It loses the plot right at the end though. Again, the anime is trying to be this serious philosophical thing but ends up becoming hyper exaggerated and melodramatic. It’s one implausible event after another, and the final episode was really icing on the cake. Literally, it is Sword Art Online… in space, which feels so lazy and stupid. Of course, it teases that Kirito will return, but the question is, do we really need more of him?

Overall, Sword Art Online: Alicization - War of Underworld is a mediocre anime. It is a continuation of the Alicization arc, which had potential, but it quickly squandered it with its generic premise and developments, overreliance on nonsensical power ups of the characters, and just plain weird characters who cross the line to being creepy rather than iconic and cool. The series feels like it has run its course, and is just aimless, not knowing where it wants to go.

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Toy Review: Transformers Generations Legacy United Shard (Deluxe)

Review:  #835

Name:  Shard

Brand:  Transformers

Allegiance:  Autobot

Line:  Generations - Legacy: United

Year of Release:  2024

Size Class:  Deluxe (Wave 2)

Mold Status:  new

ALTERNATE MODE:

Shard is one of those new characters in the Legacy United line that transforms into a rocky vehicle mode, in this case, it's a rocky helicopter.

Considering the concept, Shard actually works out really well, she actually looks very decent.

Size-wise, she is fine, she might be a tiny bit smaller than previous Deluxes, but her dense mass makes up for it.

The thing is, if it wasn't for the rocky aesthetic, this helicopter mode would probably be one of the best one we've had in a Transformer.

The color also leaves some to be desired as the teal and bright green can look a bit garish.

TRANSFORMATION:

Shard transforms pretty much how you'd expect her to.  The bottom half of the front splits to form her legs.  While the sides are her arms.  Fold the cockpit down and you're done.  It's simple but very effective.

ROBOT MODE:

Shard's robot mode is like the helicopter mode in that it shouldn't work, but it does, and wonderfully too, as she has a sporty aesthetic to her.

There is quite a bit of kibble, being the top of the helicopter, plus the tail, plus the rotors if you don't use them as weapons.

The head sculpt is fantastic, and she even has lightpiped eyes, which is an extreme rarity these days.

In terms of size, she is slender, but not to the point of looking awkward.

Articulation is great with joints for her head, shoulder, elbows, wrists, waist, hips, knees and ankles, whoa!

The first of her weapons are the pair of guns that you saw in vehicle mode.  They can be pegged onto the outside of her forearms.

Otherwise, those robots on her back?  They're all attached by 5mm slots which means you can take them out to use as blades.

Unfortunately, due to the way the blades are molded, Shard can only hold them sideways and the default is holding both in each hand.  It doesn't look too bad.

Alternative, those blades can also attach to the cannons.

Not gonna lie, but she looks really good with those four blades.  She is an Armorizer which means she can split into parts for other robots, but thankfully for transformation, she does not partsform.

A fantastic robot mode, and it is too bad that because she is an original character, she is most likely to be the least popular and shelfwarm.

ARMORIZER:

Shard can split into various pieces that you attach to other figures as a type of power up.

Predominantly, she forms a giant arrow type weapon, plus two extra arms and a handheld weapon.

The fact that so many pieces are left over can make it feel that the Armorizer gimmick is half-baked.

OVERALL:

Ignore the Armorizer gimmick, it's not great.  However, judging her just by the quality of the figure alone, and Shard is one of the best toys in the line.  She looks good in both modes, and she's one where a solid base can overcome other aspects, to become a good Transformer.

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Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (PS5)

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is the second part of the Final Fantasy VII Remake. Although given how Remake ended with its big reveal, anything goes for this sequel. It starts after the Intermission DLC of Remake, and so the party finds themselves outside Midgar and makes up their mind to chase Sephiroth. That is their only objective, and it leads them from area to area, going with the flow. Unfortunately, it’s not a strong story, and while faithful to the original, the pacing feels agonizingly slow and little feels like it meaningfully adds to the story.

Rebirth reaches the part of the original game where you get access to the world map, and its implementation here is recreating it into six zones. The game soon opens up with the first zone, and it is extremely impressive… at first glance. While the game has big environments, it carries over an annoying element from Remake. That is, there are often sections where you are forced to slow walk, shimmy through ledges and climbing. These are pointless activities, such as climbing where literally the only input is pointing the analogue stick to the direction you want to go in. These add nothing to the game except to painfully slow down the pacing, which is jarring and breaks the immersion (even if it is supposed to make it more “immersive”). It was bad in Remake and it is made worse here, and much more inexcusable given that the PS5’s SSD should now be fast enough to not require these types of loading masking tricks.

Disrespecting the player’s time is a constant theme of the game. In the linear story sections, there are stupid gimmicks such as pulling a slow object to solve the “puzzle”, if it can even be called that. There are huge amounts of gimmicks and minigames, which are inane things such as turning a valve five times just to trigger the next cutscene. The open world is filled with cookie cutter objectives that are the same in each zone. This game feels like a Ubisoft open world game, and that’s not a good thing. After the first or second zone, the activities are too repetitive as your progress is effectively lost in the next zone. Having a checklist of things to do that isn’t meaningful at all to the game is poor design. Even great graphics cannot save that.

Side activities in the open world are little more than just going to a point, playing some stupid short gimmicky minigame, and then moving on. It’s much slower than that as the game constantly wrestles control away from you after completing an objective for pointless debrief by an in-game character. Seriously, the game has the slowest animation, and coupled with these mandatory unskippable debriefs where you literally cannot even move, and it’s frustrating. Then the icing on the cake is to repeat the same things in the next area, and it becomes draining. The open world is also very empty, as the structures in it are little more than decoration, they don’t hide interesting things to find.

Bloat is the constant theme of Rebirth. Side quests are the usual fetch and hunting quests. Go from point A to talk to someone, then go to point B. It’s boring and unimaginative. It tries to use these to buff some the backstories of the characters, but it doesn’t present it in an interesting way. The bloat continues into the story where there are so many filler segments, slow walking during cutscenes and boring cutscenes. The story is slow and meanders through its events and indulges in itself too much. The constant forced minigames in its story segments are tedious and annoying. There is a weird overly campy / chirpy tone to the characters that doesn’t quite work and is at odds with what it supposedly its own serious story to tell. There is a constant fixation on Sephiroth. Yes, he is the big bad and an iconic villain. However, there is such a thing as overexposure when he makes an appearance so frequently throughout the game and shoved down your throat at every moment. For every cutscene mentioning Sephiroth and there will be a derailment of the story.

For combat, it builds upon the system of Remake. Thus, it is a hybrid of real time and turn based combat. You cannot fully play it as either, so it can be tricky to pick up its nuances. There is the standard attack, block and dodge (which doesn’t provide invincibility frames…). Standard attacks will mostly do chip damage, the main goal is to do enough damage and strike the enemy’s weakness to build up the pressure and stagger gauge. Once staggered, this is when you can do heavier damage and defeat the enemy. Attacking will increase your ATB gauge, which you expend to use special abilities on, which are usually the moves that will deal actual damage, strike weaknesses or have other positive effects.

Thus, the whole combat system revolves a lot around the ATB gauge, which means that it prioritizes aggressive plays. Even using items will require the ATB gauge, so you can get into a lot of trouble if you find your party in low health and need to attack to build up enough ATB to use a recovery item. The new addition in Rebirth is the Synergy moves. There are two ones, the first of which doesn’t use ATB, so that you can use it at any time. The second does use the ATB gauge and has very useful effects such as increasing the limit break level or splitting the ATB gauge into more segments.

Each character plays differently and you can control any of the numerous party members you have. This is both good and bad, but over the course of the story, the game will dictate the composition of your party. Sometimes it makes sense, other times it’s just for the game to continually waste your time. It truly feels that the game forces you to play it in a very narrow and specific way, which can suck a lot of fun out of it. The solo battles are the worst. Rebirth has a lot of overlaying systems on top though, there are separate leveling systems for the characters, weapons and party abilities, as well as a crafting system. All these systems together can be very overwhelming and confusing, especially when they were first introduced.

Like the whole game, the final dungeon drags on and on and on. It combines everything wrong with the game, such as splitting up the party and painstakingly following both at every moment even though you won’t care. It has constant slow walking, boring exposition dumps, solo sections, pointless “puzzles” where you are pulling and pushing objects and cutscenes that play 30% too slowly (you know something is wrong when you can use the in-game function of speeding cutscenes up to 1.5x speed and it doesn’t feel too unnatural).

The poor design continues onto the final boss, which just like the rest of the game is bloated and severely outstays its welcome. It is cheap and filled with many attacks that are pretty much instant kill attacks. It continues to wrestle the control away from the player as without any warning at all from before you enter the battle, that you are not allowed to pick your own party, it’s chosen by the game for you. There is even a breaking climbing section built into the battle, where you are climbing up the boss in an agonizingly slow fashion. Nothing better than to break up the pacing even more like that.

This might be all forgiven if at least the story was good enough, but it wasn’t even good. For all the teasing of defying fate etc from Remake, it then ends up being quite faithful to the original game for most of Rebirth, it goes for a lazy direction in its ending. It’s just disappointing. The developers stretched each story piece for too long so that it is disjointed, and you lose interest. It all feels pointless as a result. The developers have no clue what they want the game to be and to have, so they are stuck in this half-step where they cannot commit in one direction or the other. It’s a perfect description of the game as a whole, it tries to be everything and is mediocre at everything. They are too faithful to the original story, but then changes it enough to be a convoluted piece of crap, alienating all the players.

Anyway, after the story, which takes around 50 hours to complete if you beeline for only the story missions and do a few open world stuff, it opens up Chapter Select. You can go back to any chapter to finish off the stuff that you wanted to do, but seriously, why would you want to? Everything is busywork and feels like chores. Getting 100% is one of the most painfully boring things to do. The game’s pretty to look at but that’s it.

Overall, Final Fantasy VII Rebirth is a disappointment. It had so much potential, and it consistently teases what could have been. Instead, we get a generic overstuffed Ubisoft open world filled with pointless trash to do. The open worlds are tacked on just because it had to have an open world, and it isn’t integrated well with the story and the rest of the game. The story itself is stretched, and gameplay filled with rubbish minigames that are forced upon the player. The game constantly disrespects the player’s time, and everything takes longer than it should. The graphics are great, and the combat system can be overwhelming but at least it is solid. However, this is a massively bloated game, and it’s one where someone really needed to have reined in the developers and directions to streamline the game by at least 50%.

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