El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron

With talk of theme park ride games as of late, it's a great timing that of all the games I am the most excited to play, that I finally get working for me to play, it's this one. Quite literally a christian apocrypha story made manifest into powerful rainbow atmospheric audiovisual pleasure, never really missing a cohesive beat from vista to vista.

And also difficult to gush over in the same light, as pretty much every screenshot is a painting in its own justice, and is pretty much the entire appeal. The story and combat, while supportive and have honestly great bedrock foundation, are treated in a rather ancillary fashion in comparison. Really the game could've done with less of the combat, or at least refine the systems to better match the experience as a whole (more like Chapter 6, which literally does this, or modify the weapons for different modes in general!) because otherwise there's far too many of the same encounter that brings a good amount of it down. The ending itself is also rather anticlimactic, albeit sensible for the structure of where things were going. Hell, you could argue that it ending on a rather softer note makes sense for it, and tbh I'm also willing to take it simply because it implies that the queer relationship between these two lovebirds is far more important than one fallen angel :3. Even still, I felt a rather strong wanting for it to go full Bayonetta/TW101 finale with it. But honestly a lot of this was probably a budgetary issue, which makes the end experience all the more dumbfounding.

I also chose this after re-evaluating my principles and understandings of why I love the things I do, and what I pursue. And El Shaddai definitely offered me a strong, wide-eyed grin the whole way through, to affirm that yeah, video games are p cool actually.

I am shaken that games like this and Project Sylpheed [プロジェクト シルフィード] have never been in my radar for over 8 years. Personified religious angels in an action game against the darkness with an artsy visual style? It was made in the tepid seventh console generation and not made by Americans? Sign me the FUCK up!