Kotaku reviewed Metaphor: ReFantazio and wrote a political science dissertation instead.

Ah, Kotaku. They received a turn-based fantasy game about a young man riding a magical unicycle to fight anxiety monsters, and they returned to us a sociology seminar with footnotes missing. I read this review twice — once for the prose, once looking for the game — and I found it the second time only in a small clause, sandwiched between two paragraphs about allegory like a slice of jamón forgotten inside a philosophy textbook. Magnifique. A masterclass in reviewing everything except the object under review.

Observe the opening thesis: the game 'has a lot to say' and does so 'without a modicum of subtlety.' Charmant — and yet Monsieur Shepard mirrors it exactly, saying a great deal about the eight tribes and their prejudices and almost nothing about whether pressing the buttons produces joy. This is criticism as book report. He has read the theme aloud to us, slowly, the way one reads a wine label to a guest instead of pouring the wine. I do not need the allegory explained; I have eyes. I need to know if the combat sings, and on that question the review is as silent as a mime at a funeral.

And the score? There is none. Non. Kotaku, in its infinite editorial courage, reviews a role-playing game the way a man orders at a restaurant by describing the ambiance and then leaving without eating. 'Style and substance,' they proclaim in the sub-headline, having delivered a review that is neither a verdict nor a recommendation but a vibe — a scented candle of an opinion, flickering, decorative, telling you nothing about whether you should spend eighty hours of your one wild life inside this game. To evaluate is to commit; here we have only a gentle sighing in the direction of politics.

Understand me: I have nothing against ideas in a review. Proust had ideas. But Proust did not forget to mention whether the madeleine was, in fact, edible. Kotaku took a magnificent, mechanically dense JRPG and microwaved it into a TED talk about tribes, then served it lukewarm with no number, no stars, no spine. This is not culture, this is commerce dressed as a thesis defense — a blog post wearing a monocle. Two points for the reading comprehension. One point because somewhere, buried in paragraph nine, a real game briefly appeared.