Hello everybody, it’s time for another Backlog Report. As you might be able to tell, I have had a productive month. (January 2026)
As always, thoughts on each game are below:
Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc:
Honestly, what do I even say about this game? It’s Dangan-Goddamn-Ronpa. Almost everyone has at least a passing familiarity with this game. Everyone whose played can’t hear ‘Hope’ or ‘Despair’ without being flashbanged.
I’ll start by saying: I had a friend in high-school who was very into this game and series as a whole. I have had a long marinating soak in secondhand knowledge before I ever touched this game. Enough even to know the first killer. This may have predisposed me to liking this game, but I think it has enough merits to it that I would have liked it anyways.
The main reason I jumped onto this was because I was feeling the void of any new Ace Attorney game, and you can only play those for the first time once, so having a fresh experience in the same broad genre of ‘Dispute Bullshit With The Power Of Evidence’ is a plus. (Which reminds me, I really should play Of The Devil one of these days.)
For as fun as it is for AA fans, I will say that some bits and mini games feel extraneous. Specifically, I have no idea what the Bullet Time Battle is supposed to add, beyond a rather bare rhythm element. For that matter, the flashback mechanic, where you can copy a phrase and use it later, is not very intuitive. In the third case, there was a segment where I knew exactly what was wrong with the killer’s statement, but needed to use a flashback to disprove it. The trouble was, I had no idea if I was supposed to use Byakuya’s on Celeste’s, Celeste’s on Byakuya’s, or one of my truth bullets. In defense of this mechanic however, I will say that the final trial and debate using Makoto’s own hope as a weapon was very nice. An excellent example of themes in gameplay.
This may be a bit divisive, but I didn’t really care all that much for the soundtrack. It’s certainly unique, and definitely adds to the atmosphere, but my tastes just personally didn’t align with it all that much. Which is rather odd because I know that the Digimon CyberSleuth games have the same composer and I loved that OST. I think part of it comes from hearing a few songs one too many times.
The presentation is definitely unique, and the idea of moving around in first person rather than just selecting a destination like in other visual novels adds a nice bit of novelty to the gameplay. While I wouldn’t listen to much of the soundtrack on its own, I can’t deny that it helped the atmosphere. The game is cluttered with claustrophobia and mystery. There’s a constant sense of ‘when will the next murder come? I know it’s coming, but not when, or where, or who. I Am Not Safe.’ Highlighting this by contrast is the free time events, where you’re encouraged to get to know the cast. Critically, it’s impossible to max out all of the characters in a single playthrough, and unless you have the foreknowledge, the game will never tell you who is going to be next on the chopping black. Your favorite character could be the next victim, or worse, the next killer.
Finally, the story and writing. I enjoyed the overall story greatly, and each individual case has its own distinct feel to it. The game plays around greatly with its premise. As early as case two, there’s instances of evidence tampering, not by the killer, but by another student who wants to study everyone else as a form of threat assessment. Accomplices, locked rooms, ‘they were already dead,’ it uses almost every twist a murder mystery can use sooner or later.
That said, the writing isn’t the strongest at times. I made a separate post making fun of this, but there are repeated exchanges of “In other words: [the exact same thing as before with maybe one word swapped.]” Another thing this game does that peeves me is being infuriatingly vague about the outside world. To clarify, this isn’t me complaining about the basic premise of being cut off from the rest of the world, I mean the characters only sharing what they know in vague terms. Byakuya talks about mobs and secret societies pulling the strings of the government, and even shows Makoto a file about it, but we, the players, never see it. Chiefest example is the major backstory event of The Tragedy, characters only ever referring to it as The Tragedy, (capitalized,) and only ever describing it as ‘The most tragic event in the history of mankind,’ as if it being called The Tragedy™️ was a bit too subtle of a hint. I fully expect the sequels to give more details, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating in this first outing.
Trinity Trigger:
Man, nobody really talks about this game, do they? I mean, does it even have a codified tag on tumblr? I’m not sure it does. I guess that means it’s my duty to talk about it then.
Let’s tackle gameplay first, then. The weapon variety makes for some fun gameplay, with a lot of customization regarding how each one feels and handles. On the flip-side, since each weapon for each character has their own equipment slots, this customization can get overwhelming. Also complicating matters is the stamina gauge, or synchro gauge as it’s called here. Having a hard limit on how much you can hack and slash makes for some awkward combos, and there’s not much that can really be done to extend them. There is a perfect dodge mechanic that will refill this gauge, but enemies aren’t really telegraphed that well outside of AoE attacks. The weapon auras, unleashes, and Trinity attacks do make a big difference in how enjoyable the game is, however, especially in conjunction with the boss break system. The overall resulting rhythm is not very different from Octopath Traveler’s philosophy: whittle down your enemies’ defenses steadily, then unleash your best attacks while their guard is down. Awkward mechanics aside, the moment-to-moment action is fun.
One other thing to keep in mind is the party AI. If at all possible, it would be best to play this with some friends, because the AI only has enough situational awareness to dodge attacks as they come. I had to set both of my other party members up with ranged weapons on the final boss, because they kept walking directly into the big traps he leaves behind. Repeatedly.
As for the presentation, I find the artstyle to be limited, but charming in a way. I liked the somewhat rough line work in the character portraits, and wish there was more of this style in the graphical design. The music, while not particularly strong, is solid.
The writing can be unfortunately flimsy. Characters do things because that’s what they need to do. Zanyis helps out Cyan because that’s the vision he was sent, and that’s about it. Elise gives the deconstruction about the gods of order and chaos being neither good nor evil as soon as we meet her. I just sat staring at the screen thinking ‘Is this the kind of theme that should be spelled out? I kind of feel like that should be shown.’ One thing about the writing I can unabashedly praise is the worldbuilding. It can feel very ‘town of hats’-ish, but each and every town has a reason for why it’s like that, and it all ties back to the central idea of gods’ conflicts involving humans in the crossfire. The godly weapons, or Arma, that form the dungeons of the game all have unique effects on their neighboring town. There’s one town where everyone is deliriously happy, and there like that because the Arma nearby has broken, and that makes the surroundings inherently unstable. There’s a decayed swamp that’s been flooded because the Arma has sunk into the sea. It’s just such a juicy concept, and I’m glad it’s explored throughout the game.
Triangle Strategy:
This game has been sitting around in my library for a few years now. I’ve touched it occasionally, but frequently dropped it in favor of other games, mostly in a different genre. I once made a post about how strategy games are great unless you have The Stupid. Unfortunately, I had The Stupid plenty of times. However, with Tactics Ogre Reborn showing me how to love tactical games again, I decided I’d try to finish this game. The result was a very enjoyable story, and a solid strategy game.
The narrative is usually the first thing that people bring up in regards to this game, and with good reason. The constant decision-making between each chapter truly makes the player feel involved. The story reacts to the player just as much as the player reacts to the story. The political balance presented in the scenario actually makes sense in that each of these nations has a vital resource, but needs the other two to function: hence, the political tension between each of the countries makes sense. They have an actual reason to fight each other beyond ‘Country E believes might makes right, and wants to rule the world!’
Now onto the presentation. This may be a bit unpopular of an opinion, but being completely honest, I don’t think the HD-2D style works as well here as it does in Octopath Traveler. For me, the highlight of OT’s artstyle was the big impressive spritework of the bosses, and seeing how all these different abilities toyed with the lighting. TriStrat has some impressive set pieces, and some expressive character sprites, and even goes so far as to have unique character art not just for each character, but different art depending on whether that character is in the present or the past. However, none of these separate pieces of the visual design ever really felt like they fit together. The distant background is only ever a map of Norzelia, and the bright bloom can go so far as to make the characters blend into the scenery. Further weakening this is the less than stellar voice acting and direction. As a Xenoblade 2 enjoyer, I can excuse some of this, but Serenoa never not sounds like he’s forcing his words out. At least the soundtrack is good, without any qualifiers.
I, when I mostly cured myself of The Stupid, really enjoyed the gameplay. I found that the system of follow-up attacks, movement, and recovery time lent itself to a combat where it always felt like something was happening, and that any one decision could win the map or derail my entire plan. There were even some fun considerations in that how the game rewards you for playing isn’t always the optimal move. (I.e. if you drop this enemy unit, you’ll only do a bit of scratch damage, but if you just attack him, your other unit can circle around, and get a follow-up attack in.) Unfortunately, I do have complaints here too.
The maps can feel claustrophobic at times, especially when the enemies decide to cluster around a specific area. More to the point, the UI is a bit finicky, and not very intuitive. Flicking the camera stick to rotate by 90 degrees sounds like a good idea, until you scroll too far one way, try to quickly adjust, and now you’re looking too far the other way. I actually would have preferred a more limited camera option, lien how Tactics Ogre only let you view things from the side or above. Also of note is how long the ai takes to make decisions regarding enemy units, even if that decision is just ‘walk two steps forward and one to the left.’ It made for some very awkward pauses that the fast-forward button simply could not affect.
I’m not exactly very fond of invisible parameters. It was an annoyance in Tactics Ogre, it is an ongoing annoyance in my current run of Shin Megami Tensei IV, and it was something of a bother here as well, even if it contributed to my sense of immersion. The good news is that TriStrat handles them almost ideally: after the end of your first playthrough, the curtain is pulled back, and the game becomes one-hundred percent transparent with you, not only about what increases your virtue stats, but what yours currently are, and what they need to be to unlock new characters you might have missed in your first run. (I never ran into Decimal. I will be replaying the game just so that I can finally meet him.)
I fear that I’ve come across as too negative in this post. I hope not, because I genuinely loved this game. I’m looking forward to playing it again, and maybe making better choices this time around.
The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom:
I’m actually at something of a loss for what to say about this one. Saying anything good seems obvious, but anything negative seems contrarian.
I’d argue that while it is a good game at heart, many of its design choices worsen pre-existing problems with Breath of the Wild. (Which, yes, there are a few of those.)
The obvious issue that many people point to at first is the weapon breaking. Sure throwing breaking weapons for a bit extra damage can seem satisfying, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is no permanent upgrades to your arsenal, outside of recovering the Master Sword. The fuse mechanic was obviously an attempt to soothe this, but all it does is place a bandage over it. A not-very sticky bandage at that. I’ll get into more detail later, because it’s part of a wider issue, but fusion is generally more fun in theory than practice.
Before I unload all my problems with this game, I want to say that I genuinely enjoyed my time with it. Despite not feeling all that long, it somehow snuck into my top twelve longest played games on my Switch library. I loved exploring Hyrule again, and seeing how things changed and evolved over the past few years. It’s a kind of reinvention that makes Hyrule feel like a real place, where things can change and grow. I like most of the soundtrack. It falls into a lot of the same ambient noise traps that BotW had, but the combat themes all felt fresh and fun. Exploration was, for the most part, constantly engrossing. I enjoyed many of the sidequests, seeing how they had miniature character arcs of their own. Some of them didn’t even feel like sidequests!
Especially, I loved (most of) the dungeons. The long climb and aerial ascent from Rito village felt cinematic in a way not many other games can manage.
All this said, I did have my issues with the game. This is where my complaint about fusion comes in. The UI is not only barebones and flavorless, it’s also tedious. Fuse is just not intuitive of a mechanic. For you to use it as a patch for weapons, you’d have to fish out your desired material, hold it, exit the menu, drop it, and then use the Fuse rune. If you hold it, exit the menu, and just hit Fuse, Link will put the item back in his endless pockets, making you do the song and dance twice. Fusing things to your arrows is less steps, but paradoxically just as much work, as you have to hold down the item button and the bow and arrow button as you scroll through your endless collection of items for maybe two or three categories that all do the same thing. Sorting by most used can alleviate some of this, but it requires having gone through this at least a few times. Fusing a rock to your stick to clear away rubble for the first time is novel: you’ve just used your new abilities to make a new tool for yourself and solve a problem! The 491st time, you’re just dreading the moment it inevitably breaks.
While I enjoyed the Sky islands, there’s not many reliable ways to get up to some of them, which means either putting in all of your orbs towards stamina and gliding from the nearest sky tower, or just plain waiting around for a piece of them to fall from the sky. I like the idea of the depths, but there wasn’t much down there that could hold my interest for long. While exploring the surface is bright and vibrant, and there are no two areas that are quite the same, the depths is dull and tedious. Sure, there was the Yiga quest line, but schema stones and auto build were not very much worth it.
While the dragon tears offer an interesting stand in for memories, they have the unfortunate side effect of cutting most of the tension from the story. Worse, they can make Link and the people around him look stupid. You’ve already seen your gf [redacted for spoilers], you already know where she is, so why are you charging head first into the obvious trap? (Obviously, Link can’t afford to take the chance that it’s not not Zelda, but does he ever share his visions with anyone? It feels like that would be pertinent information to share.)
When I finished the Rito dungeon, and got my first companion summon, I was so excited to have a party in my Zelda game. Unfortunately, half of the Sage abilities are highly situational, and since all of the summons follow you around, they can crowd the player, and make you activate powers you either don’t want or have no need for at the moment. I actually turned off the sage of spirit’s summon, because using her construct mech wasn’t fun. (I love mecha, they managed to make handling ancient technology mecha unfun.) You can turn these off at any time, for which I’m grateful, but you’re also giving up all of the free help offered.
Crafting vehicles was something that I only really enjoyed half of the time. Once you know the formula, there’s not very much to it. Wheels go on flat thing make car. Fans go on wingtips make plane. Rinse and repeat. There were some shrines that actually made unique use of the ultrahand, and I enjoyed these a bit, but they also illustrate a problem I’ve had with both BotW, and TotK: several times, it feels like I’m being tested not on how to solve a puzzle, but on how well I know the games physics engine. There’s a difference there that’s hard to explain, but it’s there.
This kind of game philosophy was actually why I chose to skip Echoes of Wisdom entirely. Yes, it’s very cool that Zelda got her own game entirely to herself, but it’s more of the type of game that expects you to break it with whatever bullshit you can MacGuyver together, which, frankly, I’ve had more than my fill of.
I don’t mean to sound too negative in this review, because I genuinely enjoyed most of my time with this game. However, the problems I have with it are problems I’ve had with its predecessor and might be shared with its sibling Echoes of Wisdom. Frankly, I wish there was more of the classic 3D Zelda formula. Heck, I would love to see Zelda’s take on a Metroid-like!
Even with all of the peeves I have with this game, I never felt like I was forced to play more. Unlike Bravely Default 2, I never felt like I was forcing myself to like it. It just quietly crept up on me until one day I’d decided to finish. Funny how that works.
TRON: IDENTITY:
As a self-proclaimed TRON fan, I’ve been wanting to play this game since it was first announced. Not because I thought it would be the Best Game Evar, but mostly because it was new TRON in a time when we weren’t sure we were ever going to get more TRON, in any form.
As with anything having to do with The Grid, TRON: Identity has an absolutely gorgeous visual style. Neon lights and constant color give everything a vibrancy to it. For a visual novel, it doesn’t get much more ‘visual’ than this. The sound design is not too far behind. Some tracks are better than others, but for the most part, I’d call this a worthy addition to TRON’s collection of OSTs.
As far as gameplay goes, the card shuffling minigame of clearing Identity Discs is an enjoyable interlude between major story beats. The extra goals add a welcome bit of challenge to the experience, and add a nice little bit of cosmetic customization for your efforts.
I do have a minor qualm about the timeline and premise of this game though. The background and backstory that you are able to discover implies that the programs inhabiting the Arq Grid are all ISOs, and that Flynn specifically designed this grid for them as a refuge because he feared that Clu was going to do something drastic. While the discoverable flashbacks have Flynn’s voice down, I have to question when and why Flynn would ever do this. Obviously, back up your data, of course. But the entire tragedy that sets up Uprising and Legacy is that Flynn is so caught ip in his hubris that he has no idea that things can and will go wrong, let alone how badly they go wrong until Clu is staring him in the face.
While discussing the plot, I wish more was done with the titular Identity Discs. There’s interesting flashbacks that are gleaned after the minigame, and one character suggests copying certain data, which opens up a lot of fascinating implications, but there’s never any mention of people swapping discs, or abandoning discs.
This actually goes to my central thought about this game: I wish there was more to it. I thoroughly enjoyed and loved this game, but I wish there was more to it. The story is very short, able to be cleared in a single day, and there’s not any way to record how many routes you’ve seen except for the last playthrough. The scale is kept small so that the player can focus on the noir mystery, but there’s only so much variety in each run. There’s secrets and flashbacks to discover, but not as many as there could be.
TRON: Identity is a game that implies more than it shows. While short and thin, I do think it’s a worthwhile experience for any fan of the franchise. Plus, this has gotten me very excited to play TRON: Catalyst.
