grabbed a bunch of ps2 isos of the weirder stuff on the system to mess around with on pcsx2. it really can't be overstated how much of an eccentric library this system had
played a couple hours of (dot)hack, this one I did have as a kid. there was a period moving into the new millennium where a small handful of media engaged with the internet and online games as a spiritual experience, like we're accessing another plane of reality where we do not belong. it has a lot of campy jrpg stuff reminiscent of the time, but it's similar to serial experiments lain as far as japanese media about humanity looking at an unknowable thing and trying to derive order from it
got about an hour into the nightmare before christmas dmc-type thing that capcom made, because the premise sounded unbelievably funny to me. the combat feels like if dmc4 nero only had two slash attacks, the basic devil bringer grab, no gun, and incredibly unreliable defensive options. the repeated music and combat barks are mind-numbing, and it has that distinct "somehow getting lost in a straight hallway" quality of ps2 games. not enough novelty to make up for what a drag the game is to actually play
never tried god hand before now. I can kind of see why some people just totally bounced off of it at the time, it's trying to be a very complex and punishing character action game at a time late in the ps2's prime years where stuff like god of war was popping off by sanding a lot of those rough edges off. it's a bonafied cult classic for sure, though I think people often have an overly rosy recollection of clover's games at the time
was a little surprised no one of my friends ever heard of the maximo games considering they were outright spiritual successors to the ghosts and goblins series. the first game feels like a relic of a time between jak 1 and 2, borrowing the bouncy-cartoony look of the former with the uncomfortable crudeness of the latter. I'm not sure if it's a good game, but it's a shame that so few people even know about it