Mento's Month: February '26
by mento
The shortest month gets a not-particularly-short rundown full of discussion on games old and new, lukewarm anime recs, and the most convenient gathering of links outside of a Four Swords Adventures. (Incidentally I will not be talking about Four Swords Adventures this month.)
Game of the Month: Like a Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name (Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio, 2023)
I'm not sure if I've made it clear in the past how much I'm into the Yakuza/Like a Dragon series of games and several of its spin-offs (primarily Judgment and Ishin!; I'm not really champing at the bit to revisit Dead Souls) but I've written about it a few times over the years, like this study of what is required to 100% one of the earlier games or this examination of everyone's favorite edgelord superboss, Jo Amon, and the other trenchcoat-bedecked members of his super cool elite assassin clan. I'll admit to being somewhat cooler on the seventh game, the one with the retroactively-confusing title of Yakuza: Like a Dragon, since the RPG mechanics dragged what was already a slow-paced game to molasses standards but I did like Ichiban and the new cast of equally loveable dimwits in his orbit—even so, the games of this genre that excite me most remain the ones with the brawler-style combat, if only because it means I can continue to Tiger Drop the everloving heck out of some rough customers.
The Man Who Erased His Name is both emblematic of at least some (but certainly not the full extent given the fallout around Y3 Kiwami) of the issues facing this long-in-the-tooth series now, namely that a certain fear of moving past the old days of Kiryu Kazuma painting the streets red (with blood! But also in the usual sense of drinking and darts) has caused the series to stagnate in a way that it seems outwardly reluctant to keep doing. I'm obviously torn, being one who appreciates the older style of this series over the newer (yet paradoxically older-feeling) and eternally a fan of Kiryu deadpanning his way through every encounter no matter how eccentric or annoying, but you definitely start to feel the "going through the motions" energy of this adventure in particular, which sought to narratively bridge the gap between the dramatic finale of Yakuza 6 and Kiryu's shock return as a suited spook in Yakuza 7, even if the gameplay remains as sharp as ever.
The Like a Dragon series has always struggled to do female leads that could bounce off Kiryu in a way that was endearing and not just "token damsel in distress", so Akame here was a very welcome addition to the greater LaD cast.
Almost everything in this adventure, probably by design, is cribbed from another RGG game: From Yakuza 0 we get the return of the kinda underwhelming Circuit Racer mini-game, more about tactics and loadouts than actual racing (which puts it closer to something like Japan's drag-racing game series, Zero4), and the way yen is used as both currency in the traditional sense of buying shit at conbinis but also for upgrading Kiryu's stats and skillset. From Lost Judgment we see the return of the Master System carts as a collectible set you can opt to torture yourself with—as I did last year with my Mastering the Master System series, plug plug. Yakuza 6 even set the stage for Kiryu's new gadget-laden "Agent" style of combat here, which the player can use in tandem with his traditional "Yakuza" style of fighting (now adopting more of Saejima's charge attacks as a means of setting it apart as the "slow but powerful" alternative to Agent's "quick and crafty" dynamic), by having this new style depend largely on irksome drones and explosive gadgets in much the same way the Y6 Jo Amon fight used that same tech against you. It's also just a whole lot of fun for fights with weak mobs since you can fly around on your rocket shoes dropping explosive cigs in their midst: definitely this game's equivalent of Majima's Breaker style in terms of stylishly clowning on all these wandering goons.
Naturally, all the mini-games and the locations have been reused from elsewhere too, but that's par for the course (especially the golf) for this series writ large. Yakuza fans are used to some familiar sights from one game to the next and have always appreciated that this is a series that never feels the need to throw everything out when recycling is far more cost-efficient for getting these games out at a brisk pace, but its more enthusiastic application here helps punctuate what exactly is meant by the "gaiden" in the title: it's not looking to push the series forward in a monumental way like a numbered entry might, and could probably be safely skipped if you're already five games behind. Like Ishin! and Judgment, though, it's still very good and worth your time if you're less concerned about keeping up with the series and just wanted to pop into it occasionally (unlike Ishin! and Judgment, however, it's hardly a self-contained thing given it directly connects the stories of 6 and 7). And hey, you can date Kson, so that's something.
Still got it.
All that said, I'm still happy to be playing this. It's like stepping into an old pair of shoes, taking a walk downtown in them, and potentially feeding them to an obnoxious street thug wingtip-first (my metaphors always get violent with this series). It almost feels like a goodbye, not just to Kiryu—who doesn't go anywhere since he's all over Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth too—but to this format of old-school Yakuza games where you're pounding dudes in hoodies over the head with business signs and pot plants while getting too distracted by mahjong to continue the story (not that the latter's going anywhere either). I'd say I'm about halfway through the content—as with every one of these, I like to be thorough, and that also means engaging with the substory system brought to you by a streetsmart comely redhead who assigns you tasks for a different type of currency that you also need for leveling up, because nothing can ever be too simple—and while I fully intend to have a different "Game of the Month" for the March edition of this feature it's going to be hard to resist putting this here again and ginning up four more paragraphs of material on playing Fantasy Zone II and jobbing around on a big casino boat for hours on end when so much else of a more critical nature (games and real life) is jockeying for my attention.
Other Gaming Tomfoolery
RetroPiece Theater saw either two or three new editions given the timing on the last one, since community articles typically roll out over the weekend, with the JP-only DS exploraction game Ore ga Omae wo Mamoru, eccentric GameCube paragon Chibi-Robo!, and the fourth SFC game in Konami's Ganbare Goemon series with the wordy full title of Ganbare Goemon Kirakira Douchuu: Boku ga Dancer ni Natta Wake.
Ore ga Omae wo Mamoru is an unusual application of the bite-sized game design that became typical of the portable gaming market, which over the years has been fine-tuned by Japanese developers to deliver an RPG experience that is more mission-based for the sake of the smaller but more frequent sessions befitting a platform primarily patronized during commutes, lunch breaks, or laundromat visits. Devised by a team that largely creates otome games—hence the dopey love triangle romance plot and androgynously beautiful male cast—Ore ga Omae doesn't actually have any RPG features per se, at least not in the sense of leveling up through XP acquisition, but rather builds its character progression around finding skillbooks in the dungeon and buying and crafting better gear in the hub town which the game's many sidequests can facilitate with their payouts. Exploration will only get you so far with insufficient gear, since you take swings like a paper bag, thus necessitating a more hit-and-run approach of incremental progress between glow ups. Fascinating construction but unless you like your exploraction games grindy and methodical (and that goes double if you intend to sweep its RA set) it probably doesn't stack up too well against the three exceptional IGAvanias available on the system (and now everywhere as a compilation).
"Psst, hey, did Dave mention why he has a knife?" "That's for cutting the congratulatory 'We Just Screwed Our Whole Civilization Over for the Sake of Power' cake." "Is this really a cake occasion?"
Chibi-Robo! is as delightful as you probably remember it, with many recent converts discovering it through NSO's GameCube line exclusive to the Switch 2 (which maybe doesn't have a whole bunch of other offerings right now, beyond what you can already get on Switch 1). That also means they're discovering the valid criticisms about the lengthy waits involved with its text delivery and how the frequent interference of its rigid day/night cycle timers can sometimes grind progress to a halt in a manner that's not always welcome. It almost certainly incorporated the latter feature to give players at least something of a challenge to overcome, though, and dashing around completing all your tasks before your time is up can make for some excitingly tense moments as it did in fellow GameCube newcomer Pikmin. The combination of 3D platforming and adventure game puzzles remains a distinctive one, even to this day with adventure gaming exploding in various new directions courtesy of the Indie scene, and its developers Skip would go on to make a few more like it such as Chibi-Robo's better-rated second DS sequel (and something I intend to visit soon enough) Okaeri! Chibi-Robo! Happy Richie Ousouji! and the bizarre Wii crossover Captain Rainbow.
Burgers, Chef Chibi style! Hope you like the taste of molten plug plastic in your quarter-pounders!
Finally, Ganbare Goemon Kirakira Douchuu: Boku ga Dancer ni Natta Wake (or "Go for it Goemon The Glittering Journey: The Reason I Became a Dancer"—a very Ebisumaru sort of title) sees the Oedo period rogue and his fellow scrappy underdogs spread across the cosmos, each stranded on a different planet looking for a way to get home. It's far more mini-game heavy than its precedents, with each major boss having their own different one including a riff on Konami's series of Puyo Puyo style block-stackers. I'll have more to yap about it on the next Mento's Month since I think I missed the cutoff here, but suffice it to say it's possibly the weakest SFC entry in Konami's most elusive (for westerners, at least) series despite exhibiting some cask-strength Japanese whimsy.
Getting real used to seeing this screen, though still only slightly acclimated to the hula-hoop himbo demon.
Outside of the RetroPieces, I have a Dark Cloud 2 check-in for you all: I'm some ways through the fourth chapter of the game, in which you're assisting in the creation of a seaside laboratory in the far future by building dome-shaped houses across the beach (and on piers) in the present day, all while exploring a network of sea caves to help a family of Loch Ness Monster creatures. It's been slow going because I'm simultaneously chasing the core set along with a spheda-specific subset that requires getting both the secondary and tertiary prizes for each floor's randomized courses (spheda being the in-universe version of golf where you're trying to pot a star cluster into a black hole, more or less). The Ocean's Roar Cave, as this dungeon is called, has had this odd structure where most of its floors don't have spheda but do offer fishing, and a handful in the middle that has the inverse, so I'll probably be done sooner here than I was in the previous—Starlight Canyon, which is like playing golf next to (and over) the Grand Canyon, which still isn't the hardest of these impromptu 18-holers—but I'll definitely be hacking away at this game for a while longer yet. Man, though, if I'm not on (dark) cloud nine the whole time: this is my favorite game for a reason and this everything-including-the-kitchen-sink achievement-hunting playthrough has done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for booting it up on the regular to practice my short game across a few more monster lairs.
For her sake, I hope that's an ancient repository of architectural data and not just a solid chunk of smouldering magma.
Last, I decided to truly embrace the masochist within by checking out the Super Mario 64 "Lazy Lakitu" mod that, unsurprisingly, is also supported by RetroAchievements. The concept is simple enough: the Lakitu that controls the camera is taking a siesta so whenever you enter a stage the camera is permanently affixed to that stage's entry point. This can create problems for stars that might, for example, require you to make your way down a perilous slide or climb a tall structure one careful leap at a time. There's some workarounds here and there; for example, you can read a sign or talk to an NPC (if the stage has them) to force the camera to zoom in, where it then stays for debatably better coverage of your actions, and many stages have this bird's eye view of Mario whenever you pause the game that you can use to maneuver the little guy around when he's otherwise out of sight. It's been a real struggle to earn any of the stars though, including the previously easy ones, and it's a playthrough where I'm pretty sure I'm never going to have the patience to collect the full 120 amount: it seems better suited for practicing blind Super Mario 64 speedruns, and for as familiar as I am with the game that's definitely a bridge too far for me. Especially when I can't even see those bridges to cross them. (I'll probably miss it, so I'll also say Happy Anniversary to Super Mario 64 here too: it turns 30 in June, same as the N64.)
The "Indie Game of the Week" of the Month: Blasphemous II (The Game Kitchen, 2023)
Another bumper crop for the shortest month of the year. Given my predilections it's probably a foregone conclusion that I opted for a Soulslike exploraction game for this month's highlight, especially when it's a superior sequel to a game I already liked quite a bit, so that's why Blasphemous II (#455) is up here. Adding new weapon types that let you switch around instantly for greater coverage of enemy types and environmental barriers to break down alike gives the game a versatility the original lacked even if we're still not quite in SOTN-style RPG territory; it also made the platforming feel less clunky and softened the bosses (which may or may not be a bad thing—though in fairness the original game's bosses were made that much harder by an achievement that prohibited healing during those fights that I of course pursued) for a more well-rounded exploraction experience over the more combat-focused affair that was its predecessor.
I found the Dopefish, your argument is invalidated.
In the runners-up lounge we find the genial and clever if all too brief Viewfinder (#454), which used photos to create new elements in the environment by effectively superimposing their contents over reality (or, well, virtual reality) for some very inventive traversal puzzles. The story's a little dry but intriguing enough as you dig into the backstory of this thinktank of brilliant minds who slowly lost their verve after one too many failures and an affable Cheshire Cat AI host named Cait who politely showed you the way forward even knowing his world, and he himself, were probably not going to last much longer given how badly age had affected the simulation. It felt like there were depths the game stopped just short of fully exploring but what's there is nothing to sneeze at. Likewise, Arzette: The Jewel of Faramore (#456) had a brilliant idea to rehabilitate the CD-i Zelda games, managing to finagle together a workable version of the concept those games were based on despite the common wisdom that such a feat would be impossible. I love the idea of Indie devs challenging themselves by taking on a notoriously panned game and creating a spiritual sequel that somehow works where the original failed; it has to be a boost to one's confidence to succeed with those odds. That said, many of the problems with that format (the amount of backtracking, the ambiguity of what can be stepped on, enemy invulnerability lasting too long) are still extant here so it's only really a partial fix. Finally, we have the FPS-exploraction game Exophobia (#457) which is a daring combination of an old-school boomer shooter with rooms of enemies to clear and plenty of secrets to find—that aspect makes it a good fit for a subgenre that also typically has you exploring previous areas for items you may have missed—but a few of the more incidental design decisions felt counter to providing a superlative user experience, owing either to a misplaced sense of challenge or simple oversight. I definitely didn't need a map that ran out of batteries or automatically-applied palette swap collectibles that were exclusively terrible to stare at for more than a few moments.
The Weeb Weeview
February is the season for lurve (and/or groundhogs) so I did promise last time I'd dive a little deeper into three very good romcoms that launched in the anime world this season. I typically sprinkle in a few of these to the seasonal watchlist like so much fairy dust because they always make for a lighter alternative to the high-energy action fantasy shounen schlock that tends to dominate the conversation around this medium.
If there's something I know the teens of today are passionate about, it's isometric perspectives in video games. (Taken from the end credits of You and I Are Polar Opposites.)
There Was a Cute Girl in the Hero's Party, So I Tried Confessing to Her: Let's get the requisite low-budget isekai out of the way with first. The title really leaves nothing out, save that the male lead in this case is a reincarnator who was reborn as one of the demon's lords lieutenants. An extraordinarily strong one, even, who always opposed the hero's party as a midboss in the final dungeon, kicked all their asses, and politely deposited their unconscious forms in the nearest town to ensure he didn't go full Momonga with the whole "working for the bad guys" angle: it's only after contriving of a reason to separate the party from their healer (whom is the aforementioned cute girl) that he takes the opportunity to ask her out. Not quite getting the positive response he hoped for, since she was essentially his hostage, he retroactively decides that accidentally letting the rest of the party through to defeat the demon king effortlessly (all that practice against the OP protag helped, I suppose) has a silver lining as it now gives him the chance to start over as a disguised human adventurer and redo his courtship properly. It's mostly a bunch of fluffy nonsense that's a bit more green-flaggy than I'm making it sound with all this hostage talk and while the animation and action scenes aren't exactly riveting (nor are they the focus, to be fair) there's been enough cute moments and the always welcome "side couple" developments. Hardly essential viewing but better than any show with an overly long and literal title maybe has any right to be.
Tamon's B-Side: Japanese idol culture has always had something of a slightly unwholesome aspect to it—the third season of revenge drama Oshi no Ko, also currently airing, makes that case better than most anything else outside of a Perfect Blue—but when you gender flip it to a handsome boy band and their obsessive female fans it does sorta get back into less worrisome territory, if only slightly. Tamon is the pink-haired flirtatious "wild child" member of the hit boy band F/ACE, assembled from a reality TV talent show, and high-schooler Utage Kinoshita is one of his more enthusiastic fangirls. So it's a big surprise to her (but not to us) that her part-time gig as a house cleaner (to earn F/ACE merch funds, naturally) puts her directly in Tamon's orbit... or at least the version of Tamon he is at home, who is gloomy and self-effacing and quick to threaten suicide whenever he makes a social faux pas (man, same). Unexpectedly dragooned into becoming the type of cheerleading moral support he needs to crawl out of bed each morning, Kinoshita's relationship to her superstar crush becomes a bit more layered and down-to-earth, even as she fights to maintain "the fan code" of not getting too close and personal with her oshi. It's a cute show, and the way the other members of F/ACE each get their second introductions—the smooth, princely guy turns out to be foul-tempered and possessive, the broody muscled guy is a huge otaku, etc.—are fun revelations that the show's being very cagey and methodical about revealing over the length of this first season, and we're starting to get a slight harem aspect forming as Kinoshita's benevolent efforts to galvanize Tamon are having a knock-on effect with the other members. Tamon is starting to get a bit more yandere as his dependency deepens on Kinoshita, though, so I'm wondering just where the show might head next, tonally speaking—it could just be that watching it at the same time as Oshi no Ko is scrambling my circuits somewhat.
You and I Are Polar Opposites: The highlight of the romance anime this season would be this show, where the energetic and outgoing gyaru Miyu Suzuki sits next to the taciturn and studious Yusuke Tani in class. She's head over heels for him, despite the gulf between their personalities, and unbeknownst to her he feels the same way. By the end of the first episode they're pretty much already dating, signalling that this isn't the type of show playing around with miscommunication and missed chances but rather about two people who have at least some degree of emotional intelligence (rare for this genre) and are now navigating this unusual but incredibly wholesome relationship with the support of their respective social circles. Themes like jealously, mutual support, and taking the first steps towards adulthood are all handled with tact and wisdom while mistakes and worries are often addressed through solid communication and resolved fairly quickly, all of which is as equally refreshing as skipping that whole long process of eventually addressing their feelings for one another. That said, for all its maturity it's also a really funny and goofy show: it does a lot of amazing work with animating its characters as weird little gremlins sometimes (especially Suzuki, who has the most gremlin energy of any romantic anime protag in recent memory), having the myriad personalities of the social circles bounce off each other in amusing ways (I'm ride or die with Shuji Taira, the overthinking cynic mystified by most of the coupling happening between his peers), and plenty of amusing situations like Tani's grandmother suddenly coming home after he invites Suzuki to his place for the first time. A good way to frame this show is that it's one where the leads' emotional intelligence is high but their regular intelligence sometimes not so much: if you like Dress-Up Darling at all and loved that second season from last summer, this is a good chaser to that.
(We also have another "gyaru are nice to otaku" banger coming up next season as well—I'll get into that and many other previews in the March edition of this feature. See you then!)
