The Fed Up Office Lady Wants to Serve the Villainess Volume 1 Quick Review
In the world of yuri Isekai The Fed Up Office Lady Wants to Serve the Villainess stands out as being pretty different from the rest of the pack. This manga skips reincarnation as a plot element all together. Instead when pulling on her gacha she is pulled into the world by The VIllainess summoned to the world instead at the start of the story of the gacha game.
The office lady has the main heroine and villainess fall for her, fairly clearly inside of the first volume. While they are clearly in love with her and she clearly has some sort of feeling back she seems to be trapped in a heteroparadigm. When she has feelings about the villainess she thinks it is purely the feeling of being appreciated for her work and for the heroine she thinks she is just admiring her favorite character. The manga provides a lot of amazing art and panels of the art.
Politically this manga so far fails to try anything particularly exciting. It has a story of commoners rising against the nobility in the plot but it's not even the part of the plot our hero cares about, the event she is trying to stop is her getting killed for trying to wipe out the anti-noble movement with stolen magic. So far it's totally avoided talking about queer ID, our hero, Natalie just wants to be appreciated for her work, she is very basic in her desires. Natalie likely considers herself a totally average woman. In this volume at least there isn't really commenting on anything.
The romance dynamics are fairly cute but they run into one big issue. Our main character is 25 years old, it's stated multiple times explicitly and the main girls who are in love with her are 15. I don't care about age gaps normally, as long as everyone is an adult it's fine but here that is not the case. Like they are gacha game characters, intended to be appealing to adults, intended to functionally function as adult in the plot but regardless it is a little weird. To be fair that weirdness is in many gacha games so I guess as a love letter to gacha and classic VNs it is weird in exactly the way those games are.
I found the manga charming and a fun read with great art but I am hoping there is something more in further volumes. I'm In Love With the Villainess had a weaker first volume for it's manga although I doubt this series will reach the heights of that series. I am also not sure how things with the romance will go comfort wise. Regardless, I would say it's an enjoyable read and if you like really subby women in your sapphic romance, this might be the one for you.
[If you enjoy this review consider sending me support on Patreon so I can make more gay art and read/review more gay art.]
Baldur's Gate 3 - Amazing and Sometimes Awful [Quick Review]
Baldur's Gate 3 is a herculean feat of game development with amazing voice acting work spread across it's many many hours, fantastic character designs, interesting gameplay and more. It also suffers from D&Ds character progression systems, the way the games worlds are set up, and the system of true RNG that it is emulating. Beyond that the game despite it's own beauty is extremally buggy and faces significant late game performance issues. However, the game does some stand out things for queerness that a lot of other RPGs fail at. This game is a mixed bag that might also be game of the year.
With over 122 hours logged into the game I feel fairly confident in my ability to access what I experienced but given how big of an undertaking it is I genuinely think someone else's experience may be different. I chose to not side with either the grove or the goblins and moved onto act 2 without doing that and that may have added to the count of bugs but the fact that was an option means that it isn't "My fault" that I experienced so many bugs on my playthrough. I had party members despawning, quests saying I could do something that I couldn't do because the NPCs were not in the area they were supposed to be, getting ques for things that should have went into act 3 that were missing, in the end of act 3 characters missing from the end bits and at the very end textures just all vanishing for my last few hours.
I didn't really get to experience the romance the game had to offer. I started a fling with Lae'zel which apparently locked me out of most other romances but randomly gave me a Wyll Romance scene, a man I never deployed not once the whole game. I realized playing the game I didn't long rest enough and missed out on my chance to romance Shadow Heart whom I really wanted to romance and even though I broke things off with Lae'zel I could never progress a romance with Shadowheart, Karlache or Minthara. I want to feel this romances and see everything they have to offer but sadly the game denied me this.
The game lacks body diversity and the limited pallet of faces feels too limited in character customization. There is sadly no time in which despite being able to have a trans body I am able to talk to someone about being trans that I found not am I ever able to reject a romantic advance by stating my sexuality or disinterest in a gender. Instead it is taken as read that I am bisexual and that I am rejecting them for them and not because like from the onset they weren't on the table for my desires. I am however, not a bisexual but a lesbian and I would love to be able to say that.
That said this game does make strives to doing something I've not really seen other games do with playsexual characters which is to make them have queer history. I didn't get every characters backstories but I did get backstories for Astrian and for Shadowheart which both imply that previous to our adventures they had mostly been with their own gender. Astrian has a litany of male lovers which he courted and gave to his master, he seems to prefer men and he describes his attraction to them. Meanwhile, Shadowheart seems to have had a girlfriend before her memories were removed, perhaps an ex that was a Transgender Woman who turned to Sharr although this is more subtextual than Astrian's due to her memory loss.
These little bits of queer history make them feel much more lived and their sexualities not feel like it was because I am super special but because they are earnestly queer and I happened to have the kind of personality and body their attracted to. There is also some amount of queer NPCs not tied to our PCs although they are in the minority in a majority heteronormative cast.
The game does make some strives to fix some of the things that are terrible about D&D removing the alignment system allowing for characters to simply exist in a much more complex moral web than a box of 9 check marks for morality lets you do and a toning down of racial abilities which helps lessen D&Ds inherent eugenics. However, it does not escape D&D's racism problem with the game mostly having a lot of the characters be racist good and bad and not having counter examples of races like Goblins being good or like an important good drow or something. The companions "Racial" make up are very classic fantasy squad. 2 Elves, 2 half elves, 3 humans, 1 Drow, 1 Gith. In terms of race as we see it in the real world we got one black character and everyone else is pretty white or are a fantasy skin color and white coded maybe baring Lae'zel but idk what Lae'zel's culture is supposed to represent if there is a real world equivalent. Of course also everyone in the world able bodied and skinny or maybe if they are the right race buff. I haven't seen everyone fuck but it appears to me that everyone is cisgender. The game can't do everything but I certainty wish the game did more. The probably most offensive to me being the promoted and marketed Polyamory simply not existing and came from their own misunderstanding of the word, you can fuck around you at least in my experience can't be in multiple committed romantic relationships. That should be fixed given they marketed the game and I don't even need them to address each other just allow it to happen since it was sold to me on the idea I could kiss multiple girls romantically.
There is a total sense of wonder in doing the game thing in new ways and seeing all the ways you can handle situations and all the different outcomes. From multiple files to save scum stuff to hearing people talk about their runs I've seen tons of different ways even my highly buggy end game which did not run well I could see where if it wasn't having all the running issues I had I would have been blown away by all the options they gave me for the last 3 battles of the game. I still thought it was really cool even when it was bugging out. The game constantly threw fun new things at you, little challenges, great moments of roleplaying where it feels like your choices mattered and you could do something cool to get out of a situation. This game might be the game that has most successfully captured the magic of roleplaying in a video game.
The characters being a stand out factor in this in that I found several of the characters to be highly compelling even one man which if you know me is a massive accomplishment. I found Astrian's plot to be really captivating, I really loved Shadowheart's story, I thought some of the NPC stories were really well done too, as a character focused story teller I loved the character work that went into even characters I wasn't particularly in love with. Everyone feels like they can grow and grow in different ways too for bad or for good and often even pretending a pretty objectively bad choice can be flavored with enough deniability to understand why someone might make that choice as a character and not just like because video game let me choice bad choice. I think the characters stories make up a coherent theme I really wanna dive more into but will be restrained on here. They all deal with control. Everyone is dealing with different levels of someone's strings on them and a different relationship to those strings. How those relationships change and evolve over time is really compelling and how they compare to each other is really great.
Overall, I love BG3, I think it might be my favorite game I played so far this year [but I do have a backlog, Stray Gods, En Garde!, Super Lesbian Animal RPG] and one of my favorite games in general. IF not for it's massive file size I think it's a game I'd keep installed all year round and just randomly jump into all the time. For now I am still playing, still enjoying but more than anything I am hoping by the time I beat the game a second time it is a lot smoother. If you enjoyed this kind of One Take review let me know, I wanted to try my Yuri manga format for a video game review because nobody reads my game reviews but I felt like I wanted to talk about the game. So instead of putting the huge amounts of work into the review like I normally do I wanted to just try this. If you did enjoy it one way to let me know is by supporting me on Patreon or Ko-fi or you can just reblog or comment. I might revisit the game with a more in depth review or looks more in depth at how it handles queerness or about the story and other stuff like that.
Fire Emblem Engage is the 17th or 13th or 14th or 18th or 20th game in the Fire Emblem series. The franchise has been a favorite of mine since the very first English release. Since then I have played every Fire Emblem Game and loved a good chunk of them. I played on Hard/Classic and cleared the first two waves of DLC before writing this review. The first beat will be a quick review TDLR style with everything under the read more being a bigger break down of what I liked, didn't like, and where I think it holds up with the series.
Fire Emblem Engage is a really fun game, it's got a fun cast of goofy characters with a few touching moments mostly touching on fairly common human experiences that most people would get sad about. The map design has improved from the last several entries in the series with much more fun maps even if objectives remain basically kill the boss on every single map. The game's lessened focus on deeper characters and on romance both feel like serious step backs from the direction they were moving and the localization is at times terrible making extremally odd choices to try and remove romantic context. The voice cast is preformed very well and the game is a visual treat to look at being the best looking game in the series with animations that rival the GBAs amazing work.
The games story is lacking in depth and in politics, it doesn't have an ambition to really get into the weeds of the things going on, even things that exist in the plot are more a driving excuse rather then something explored in deep conversations. Some characters are really one gimmick with one character talking about tea in basically every support. While gimmicky Fire Emblem characters are nothing new this game has such a weird mix of characters who have their supports mostly be one thing and characters who have a bit more going on. This game has some of the most meh characters in the series and some of my favorite.
Overall the game is a really good experience but doesn't reach the heights of the series best games in terms of narrative or character. It does however have some of the best gameplay in the series. While a lot of the gameplay innovations come from a gimmick I don't want to see repeated, I do want these mechanics to carry on into future titles. There is flaws in the mechanics but for the most part the engage mechanic is fucking amazing and so is basically everything they did. Like two colored hair this game can often contradict itself with things that are great and things that are mid. Overall it's a great title and probably one of my favorite video games.
The stories not very good at all, it's consistent in it's badness, in that it's lack of depth or engagement of it's world remains at the same level so it isn't super noticeable. The personal journey for Alear and Vayle is compelling but it's not a game about 2 people breaking away from their abusive dad, it's a war game that gives you soooo much of the plot on the back end.
It is not in depth as something like Three Houses/Hopes or Path Of Radiance/Radiant Dawn. Hell, it isn't even really more in depth then something like New Mystery Of The Fire Emblem. However, judging it on it's own terms it still fails it's own potential narratively. They decide that the 4 heirs to the thrown can't die but they aren't used by the plot outside of their intro arcs other then to say a few lines. Then there we see clear favoritism.
The plot twist of Alear being a fell dragon is super predicable, the four hounds being constant villains on maps lowers their feeling of threat given you've kicked their ass so many times before you seal the deal, Sombron's motivations aren't revealed until the very last chapter. it's just not very good. The story probably would have been better if they let Zephia be the main villain using Sombron as a puppet, in truth long dead and unable to return. Zephia is the driving force of narrative conflict for the vast majority of the game as it stands. Instead she is in the long line of evil Fire Emblem women who just wanted the main baddy man to love them.
By the end I did like All the Four Hounds, I did like Lumera, I did want more of the other queens, I want more but that more isn't there even as fun bonus content. Unlike Awakening, we don't have fun free post game content that lets you learn a bit more about the baddies and dead characters. Instead, we probably simply will not get more content of them given it seems the wave 4 DLC story is set in an alternative universe. That isn't so bad if not for the fact I didn't care to know more about a ton of the roster of this game. Most the characters are fairly lack luster. There is some of the best characters in the series like Yunaka, Timerra and Merrin who I really like. Yet, it also has a lot of the most broing ones
The lack of paired endings also really lessens the games overall impact, there is no shipping element which reduces a lot of the fun of Fire Emblem but it also really locks every character into 1 predestined fate. Including several endings that are like "They marry some random NPC". If the game didn't want character chosen romance they could have chosen to have canon relationships between characters, sexualities explored in depth, characters with romantic histories, desires, and how those might come in conflict with their roles. Despite deromancing everything the game still needs to leave everything ready for the player character, for us to be able to marry anyone we want. Now no longer homophobic but also the game censors and dulls a lot of the romances from the Japanese end which only makes it weirder.
The lack of shipping mechanics truly is a regression of the series and a regression of the plot. I am totally pro people having canon sexualities and having limited relationships but I am also pro being able to pair up anyone with anyone. However, this game only took steps backwards outside of the wish filaments fantasy of being able to give that pact ring to anyone. Which for people playing in English is still a let down with the lack of I Love Yous and other clear signs of romance, in fact several characters using terms that actively throw away the idea of romance in that.
This too could have been done better, if the intention was for a bunch of platonic relationships, which I think is a bad choice, it's still lacking. The supports instead very often lead to the A rank having the people declare they are friends. Even people who knew each other for a long time before this are declaring friendship at A rank. As if like, they weren't already friends. It often makes these supports feel like C rank supports in other games. C rank is when a bound of friendship that is important should be forming not A rank. A rank doesn't need to be romantic but it should mean this person is irreplaceable like a best friend. Instead some A ranks are like "I guess I don't hate you totally" and that is just, not compelling as a reward for going through so much together.
Then we have the Somniel which without voice acting feels a lot more lifeless despite the ability to see characters in a bunch of settings and in different outfits. It's extremally lack luster and everything in the somniel could have been better.
The minigames are mostly annoying or pointless, the Fishing game at it's highest rank feels impossible, the wyvern game is my favoirte, it's fun but it has 3 stages it's nothing, petting somni feels weird, and the training mini game is a rhythm game with no rhythm. if they had cut any of these features to further develop the other features it would be a massive improvement.
Then there is cooking, which lacks the vast array of voice acted special lines between characters and feels far less personal and far less desirable if not for the low amount of support gained it would be a feature that mostly just exists to maybe give minor stat buffs but could also tank your stats.
The core features you want to access the Area and The Ring Chamber are behind loading screens and have no menu access making them take an extremally long time to go between and making them fairly annoying to access especially for someone trying to optimize their characters. The ring chamber is mostly full of pointless features, there is only a handful of decent bound rings, polishing is nothing, buff the weapons of emblem rings requires you to grind a very slow bonus mode or online. The Arena is mostly hurt by not just little you do things instantly they need to load you into a mock battle that then can be skipped only after both characters have done a voice line and then if your raising emblem ring levels the support has to load then you can hit skip then return. It's very inefficient.
Then there is character customization, what should be one of the best features of the game is utterly pointless. There is no mechanical benefit which is not needed but there is also no real cosmetic benefit. The Sominel RNGs characters so you may not see your favorite in the cute outfits you pick for them and no outfit can be worn into battle a feature that massively reduces the fun of dress up, they don't even show up in supports. It is just a hole to waste precious smithing resources into. Dress up is one of my favorite things in games but eventually I just stopped caring at all because it was just done so poorly.
The Emblem Rings are a great addition to the game but also feel lacking in their features. Gender locked avatar characters is one annoyance but due to how few lines they get in their pact supports you don't get a great sense of character. instead they mostly are just a mechanical tool and narrative McGuffins. Sometimes their supports are great mini jokes or whatever and good like Soren's but it fails to give the level of attachment the characters in the game feel to the emblems which makes many scenes in the game far less impactful.
The way they work mechanically is great, they feel amazing, powerful, useful, and fun. They really make the moment to moment gameplay a lot better and they bring some really fun flashy shit to the table that is just an utter blast to see. They for sure make most the characters feel legendary with the exception of like Leif who sucks.
The map design is fairly solid, while the game forgoes any form of diverse map objective, every stage being defeat the boss it uses mechanics on each stage to make it feel more like the objectives they are emulating and make each chase to defeat the boss more exciting. It's not as fun as the wildly diverse objectives of pre-awakening games but it is the best map design since New Mystery.
Skirmishes are functionally useless for grinding leveling up old pals and SP gain is slow making it really easy to fuck up builds and just have to live with it. Then it is just so easy to become over leveled on accident anyway but the game feels fun when your stomping it so it's not that big of a deal but it feels like a little flawed in several ways. Sp books should have been obtainable through normally non online gameplay.
Overall, I really like the game, I think the game is utterly full of flaws but like there is a lot of steps forward here i want to see followed. I am not going into full detail about every system but in general the gameplay is just so good that it carries it through most the flaws. However, if these flaws aren't addressed in future games the gameplay can't do the heavy lifting. I leave the game feeling disappointed but having fun. My hope is the DLC waves ignite some kind of massive fire in me of "wow this is a master piece" but I doubt the ability of some multiverse story to do that. I just hope whatever it is we see added to the game will add more to it in an exciting way.
I think this is a game that will be highly highly loved at it's time and slowly but surely fade from relevance as a game people remember faintly like "Oh ya, I did like that game didn't I" unlike a lot of the other huge memorable bangers which invoke a strong feeling of hate or love from people. Let's hope IS takes lessons from this game for future titles and makes something that can easily be the best game in the series for now, it's above average for a Fire Emblem Game.
7/10 Good but not great, not amazing, not perfect. It will probably be one of my favorite switch games of all time cuz I am a long term fan and there is enough fan service but the lack of post game, NG+, romance, etc simply means I don't feel driven to play it again and again like I felt with Awakening, Three Houses, PoR, RD, etc.
If you enjoyed this review please follow this account or go support me on Patreon or give me some ko-fi all of which you can do by going to the Carrd in my bio.
Once upon a time, the yaoi section of the book store (if there was one) was a mere handful of books wrapped in plastic tucked in at the end of a sadly small manga self in the back. What was there was usually the same story with only a few variations, but we took what we could find because it was better than nothing. Flash forward to now and I'm happy to report that my local bookstore has a whole horseshoe of shelves with every manga imaginable, and it's no longer as 'easy' as looking for the glint of plastic. Just the fact that I can make monthly trips there and come back with a small pile of things to read and review has to be a testament to how things have changed.
but SAG happened before Golden Globes, so i think votes may have split there and given that craig didn’t get a BAFTA nomination, it seems likely now.
At the SAG, he was with ADM and TA, while ADM didn't make the Bafta shortlist. He only had TA, there was no split of votes. It seems that the Europeans liked TA more than the Americans.
At the Oscars, he is competing with both characters.
I think Daniel was left out because no Luca Guadagnino film has received a single nomination, and not even a Brit like Craig could be saved. From what I've read, Queer is a disappointing film, so they put Grant in.
I watched queer and honestly didn’t like it much, it felt like Luca wanted to tell us so much in a subtle way and ended up being a confused mess
Craig was good in it, i am not sure enough to deserve an oscar nomination. I need to see timmy to judge who, imo, should be in the 5 with adrien, seb, ralph and colman.
Also i saw i tweet with scene from the movie that said you can tell when the actor(s) are straight and i lowkey agree lol
