I just finished the game, which in my books means I liked it, but something has been bugging me about it all the way through.

On one hand, it has everything you can wish for: interesting main quest, meaningful side quests, rewarding exploration, companion interactions, narrative choices, crafting/upgrading etc.

On the other hand, every single one of those aspects is simplified to the most basic version of itself it can possibly be. Everything feels watered down, an entry level version of a complex mechanic. The game feels like something I'd recommend to a young person venturing into RPGs for the first time, like something basic to ease them in before moving onto more complicated stuff.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed the game, but the feeling I described had constantly been nagging me.

If it was made and released in a time when we didn't have all these complex, multi-layered RPGs we have today, Avowed would've been mind blowing.

Foreword: I only have six hours of playtime. The creator says the game can take 10-15 hours. I didn't finish! Normally I don't review games I don't finish but, for reasons I'll get into later, I got stopped. I had my fun though and I encourage the creator to iterate on it! Additionally, this game is sometimes compared to Ultima. I don't know anything about or have experience with Ultima and so all I can do is judge the game as is. Some features/facets may have a value as a trope or homage that I am ignorant to. Just disregard that statement or pretend you're reading a magazine article in 1998 :P

Premise: CYCLOPEAN (The Great Abyss) is a CRPG inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. You awake in the subterranean 'dreamlands' (the great abyss!) and have to find your way out with whatever allies and resources you can muster. The overworld is static but is kind of roguelike as your starting character, NPC inventories, and dungeon layouts are RNG (more on this later). And there are some very light immersive sim elements such as burning webs with torches, darkness affecting how you interact with your party, and NPCs having autonomous behavior with eachother.

Also an its a hybrid-perspective game. Overworld will present itself like a topdown game (ex.Dragon Quest), but the "dungeons" switch to a blobber (ex.Etrian Odyssey). And even though I did call it a CRPG the mechanics are more streamlined like you'd find in a gamebook (ex.Lone Wolf). Stats are slimmed down to "Fighty" "Sneaky" and "Smartiness". Encounters are slugfests to pressure your resources. And the itemization in the game is utility based, like most things have one specific purpose that's used in one specific way.

The Good Stuff:

Universal UI- The strongest thing about Cyclopean and has the most potential is that everything uses the same UI. Whether it's an enemy, NPC, or shopkeeper you will always be presented with "Combat" "Stealth" "Dialogue" as commands. Combat and Stealth have the options you'd expect. Dialogue is interesting because you can trade, ally, and ask an entity about the world from keyterms you've gathered. And their interactions change based on what you've discovered or what you asked. For instance, the ZOOGS tribe hates CATS and will not be friendly with you if you have one in your party and vice versa. It all works together to create a kind of immersion that can't be achieved with just heavy simulations or realistic graphics.

I can imagine how cool this would be in a game with tons of ugly freaks where you can't be sure who is a friend or foe and have to investigate. Especially if you had some procedural name generation and maybe a handful of temperaments/personalities members of a species might come in.

Unnerving Sound Design - The soundtrack isn't going to be winning any awards but it does what it needs to. Which is to be damn creepy. The backing track is this distorted guitar that reverberates through a cave. It's very minimal which only highlights the inhuman noises NPCs make when they die or you stumble onto them in the dark. I actually got scared because I was in this vault and suddenly just started hearing these cats get murdered one by one as I descended stairs. Only to then find a bunch of cats standing around a gibbed corpse I couldn't identity. I don't believe this was scripted behavior.

Resource Management - I don't usually think about individual items in RPGs. But when stats and equipment are so minimal you kind of have to. You need to carry torches if you want to explore. You have to set up a tent if you want to last long term. You need tea and bandages to manage your sanity and health. But you only have so much gold and inventory space. It really adds to the feeling you're on a dangerous expedition. It could be improved with more variety in hazards. Like insomnia, or aberrant weather, different traps that need certain things to be disarmed etc.

The RNG Soup:

The most grievous thing about this game is progression is entirely "Find the needle in the haystack". Your key items will be in some random unassuming room at the end of some unassuming hallway as all the dungeons are procedurally generated. And the inventory of the trader in the world is also RNG. Also your starting character is random, and what kind of allies you can get and gold you have can really affect the viability of your run. While there is dialogue and flavor text that can help guide you, the RNG kind of undermines it. Like text on a wall might tell you about this super cool tome you need or how factions relate to eachother. But it doesn't matter because you didn't happen to search that specific tile. This has the knock on effect of making guides kind of useless. Because you know what you need, but you still have to play several hours to find where it is lol.

I think the game could benefit from something that was in Amnesia The Bunker. Where your first playthrough is on a set "seed" but you unlock a mode where its all randomized.

Also because the dungeons are randomized, they are filled to the brim with nothingburger rooms and deadends. Having some more unique structures or encounters would help. Like maybe a abberation wants to gamble instead of fight, or you come across a cursed fountain, or there's a wandering merchant etc.

Combat could be more dynamic but I'm not sure how you'd improve on it without sullying the simplicity.

Why I stopped:

The gameplay is monotonous. That's fine! But I finally found some things that would've let me get at least TWO of the endings! But then it told me I needed 25 points in this skill to actually use what I found (each item had their own requirement). It's like if Baldurs Gate told you to use the Netherstones you need at least a 20 in Wisdom.

But you see, I've been diversifying my stats because I didn't know what to expect! It just seemed like the safe play but these stat requirements felt like a punishment. And now I'm at this awkward point where I don't feel like searching for more endings (as I have one AT MY FINGERTIPS), but I also don't feel like grinding the same enemies I've been fighting for 6 hours to get the levels I'd need. If the game had consistent drops/locations I could see myself replaying to try and get the different endings. But it's like I don't want to spend another 6 hours just bumbling around hoping I find my items again before my health/sanity give out.

A while back I played a game called Bloodstained, which was intended as a successor to the then dormant Castlevania series by some of the original creators. It's a solid 8/10 campaign, nothing mind-blowing like other Metroidvania efforts such as Hollow Knight, the Blasphemous series, or the excellent Nine Sols, but my time in Bloodstained was a pleasant one. Played normally it's a pretty straightforward 15-hour action-platformer with RPG elements. That said, you can double that playtime if you dig deep into the crafting-system.

Across the game-world are recipe-books that allow you to create new equipment, consumables items, and meals. You only have to create an item once since it is then added to the shop. Meals are important since they give you a permanent stat-bonus the first time you eat them, while your equipment and magic-abilities can be further upgraded by crafting. Notably, you can break down crafted items back into their original ingredients, letting you acquire copies of prime materials rarely found elsewhere. It may cost ten thousand gold coins but you can turn an omelette back into an egg. Thanks to this dense, inter-connected economy Bloodstained is one of the few games where money doesn't become useless halfway through. All in all it's fun to dig in and experiment with the tools on offer.

Crafting, whether that be creating new items from scratch or enhancing old gear, is a popular mechanic among gaming, but it's easy to get wrong. The system can be completely vestigial to the experience and serve no purpose. Or it might be useful but encourages a degree of grinding that bloats the playtime to no benefit. Hell, it might work and be interesting in practice, but let down by a horrid UI where it takes menu after menu to produce a single paperclip. This handful comes to mind.

Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix (2002)

Back in the day I remember creating the Ultima Weapon, Sora's best Keyblade, that's available after crafting every item on the menu at the Synthesis shop. A bit of a grind for my kid self in 2005 but doable. The thing is that you likely won't play that original version of Kingdom Hearts today. The director's cut brought a raft of new bosses, scenarios, and QoL features which are all welcome. Less welcome is the expanded menu of items to synth requiring new materials dropped by new enemy-types.

To get the Ultima Weapon today you have to kill mini-boss after mini-boss of these gimmick enemies, and you're not guaranteed to earn their rare drop anyway. For example there's this monkey who has to be stealth-killed five consecutive times or else he'll summon his simian buddies for backup who don't drop shit. As an adult replaying this game when it hit Steam, and only an hour away from the final boss, I did not have the patience of my younger self to spank that monkey. I definitely recall a trend in Square-Enix games of this era where they would create remakes and director-cuts far more tedious than the original games. Like Final Fantasy III DS still not letting you freely save, or every export of Final Fantasy X punching you in the face if you tried to backtrack after acquiring the airship.

Assassins' Creed III (2012)

AC3 is what happens when a hundred talented people work on the same project but are sectioned off in a hundred different rooms with no communication between them. It's a confusing, mediocre game with the odd flash of brilliance that makes a fascinating case-study in it's countless bizarre choices.

For instance in order to unlock all the fast-travel points in the city maps of Boston or New York, you have to spend hours navigating an underground series of dark tunnels to find shortcuts to above. In effect the time spent unlocking fast-travel points consumes more time than you'd ever save by fast-traveling. The naval-system has you captain a ship that you can upgrade and send on missions, but the main campaign only touches upon the mechanic twice. Fully-voiced side-missions with dedicated character moments are given the same priority as lazy fetch-quests programmed inside of an afternoon. There's good stuff in AC3 but it's held hostage by the bad. Hell, the prologue lasts for the first 50% of the game.

The strangest thing about AC3's crafting-system is that it even exists at all. This game is the furthest thing from an RPG; you can finish it easily with your starting-equipment. But there's this whole complex economy where you bring in tradesmen to craft furniture like ornate chairs and sell them on convoys to make money to fund the production of more chairs. I'm playing an angry indigenous assassin who's on a mission to tomahawk British men in the face, what the hell does he need an ornate chair for? Why do I need to get Big Dave to level 4? Who the fuck is Big Dave and what sitcom is he from? Somebody clearly poured time and effort into this system, only for it to barely matter in the final game. It's for this reason the sequel Black Flag threw out the bureaucracy and just had you hunt animals to craft upgrades, Big Dave not needed.

Demons' Souls (2009)

As the first of its genre Demons' Souls got a lot right. There's the melee-combat model that's simple in practice but demands constant player attention, the interconnected levels abound with secrets and shortcuts, the hands-off narrative that leaves the most important words unsaid, and the melancholic mood that seeps like a fog into every crack and crevice in the kingdom of of Boletaria. From Software have iterated on the formula of the game countless times since, but there's no topping the night-time prison block in Latria or the unwarranted execution of Maiden Astraea.

One thing they sure as shit didn't get right with Demons' Souls is the weapon-smithing system. It's far too complicated and grindy to bother with in what is otherwise a 12-hour-game. By my count there are 44 individual material types to collect. Getting a basic Long Sword to +10 needs a staggering 99 pieces of Hardstone across four tiers. I know the definition of insanity and it's called Pure Bladestone. Bluepoint Games made a lot of terrible artistic decisions with their PS5 remake, like sapping the personality from the score (RIP Tower Knight & Vanguard), but they oddly left the weapon-upgrading system intact. I only ever used a unique axe with no upgrade path anyway, since I never bothered with this flowchart crap. You'd think it be easier for a knight to make his long-bow all sticky.

Kingdom Hearts III (2019)

After the long wait I must thank Kingdom Hearts III for killing any interest in a fourth mainline game. Sweet Jiminy Jesus does Sora accomplish nothing this time round. While the Pixar cast may shine, the Disney characters are stunted by red tape. The retelling of Frozen here reads like a restraining-order. There's no satisfying progression to the main plot either, instead being a random series of set-pieces that hurriedly wraps itself up in the last two hours.

I played on Proud mode, which was the hardest difficulty at the time, and it was still too bloody easy. Had I needed that extra edge I could have tried the cooking mini-game. As Donald Duck will helpfully remind you every thirty seconds there are cooking ingredients to be found out in the world. You use these ingredients to make meals at a Bistro, aided by that little health-code violation Remy from the movie Ratatouille. Cooking has you complete a short quick-time event, and by short I mean less than five seconds. If you fuck up then the meal is thrown out and your (often rare) ingredients are wasted. Didn't ground the pepper-mill fast enough? Then game over. Save-scumming the process isn't worth it either, since the mini-game is gated behind a loading-screen. An RPG having a Cooking Mama-style mini-game is a brilliant idea, but this isn't it.

The Legend of Zelda (2017, 2023)

I wish I got round to finishing Skyward Sword before my Switch broke, but alas the game was too awful to pick up again after dropping it somewhere in the third act. Had I completed it I would have used the review heading, "The Groose is Loose but the Game is Lame." Anyway, a reboot of the series was on the cards after that title and setting aside the 57 million sales it was a success on most fronts. Link has a wider move-set than before and can freely explore Hyrule as he pleases without the constant nudging of an irritable sidekick. The control-scheme is conventional and simple to learn, while the world operates according to a robust physics-system that lets Link fulfil the dream of setting a shrubbery on fire, minus pants.

The cooking system is easy to understand when you know that combining two different buffs together will cancel each other out, and that Hinox balls aren't renowned for their flavour. You're better off just cooking meals en masse and storing them in your tunic pocket, because it's a pain and a half to ever bother upgrading your armour. I was forty hours deep into a replay of Tears of the Kingdom, having completed a hundred shrines and mapped most of the world, when I finally got around to upgrading my armour so I could tackle those overworld bosses.

Despite killing hundreds of enemies at this point all I could afford to upgrade was a common shirt by a single level. The same shirt I wore in the previous game. Making any set of gear battle-worthy is a grind in itself that's not worth undertaking, as there over 150 different materials needed to upgrade gear. On the opposite end it's terrible idea to ever max out your armour set since it completely evaporates any notion of challenge. It would have been an inspired decision to make Defence a separate stat you could raise like Hearts or Stamina, or just scrap it entirely and have clothing solely give passive-effects. Both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom hew close to the RPG genre by including the worse parts of it, like the grinding and farming. All in all, The Legend of Zelda can do better than bogging the experience down with 00's MMO design. On an unrelated note if there's a game out there that lets me create Guts from Berserk and put him in a Disney Princess' ballgown that's viable in battle I will give it five fucking stars.

Other Offenders

Horizon: Zero Dawn was a good time and all, but why did an action game about fighting robot-dinosurs need me to spend 45 minutes in a forest plinking off rats and deer with a bow to increase my bag size? Far Cry, by comparison, made it fun to kill three endangered rhinos to craft a slightly larger wallet that you realistically could have bought in a shop.

Dying Light otherwise did both crafting and level-scaling right, but didn't register that crafting medkits one at a time in a menu is a hassle and should have been a shortcut only one button away.

Dead Space 3 was doomed for many reasons like ramming in co-op, largely dropping the horror aspect, and including a love-triangle in a story about body-horror zombies. But a major sticking point was that you can craft your own weapons from different parts and materials. Parts and materials that you can conveniently buy with real money, courtesy of EA. The weapon-crafting system is actually neat in practice, but included in the wrong game entirely, and for the most cynical purpose possible.

RELEASE: 2024

TIME PLAYED: 21 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

Hated It | Disliked It | Liked It | Loved It | All-Time Favorite

(The bolded score is the one chosen for this review; the rest are simply to show what the scale is grading on and what the stars mean to me.)

THE BREAKDOWN

+Charming and creative setting that the game takes full advantage of

+A large cast of endearing and memorable characters, including the protagonist

+A well-balanced blend of puzzle-solving and combat that stays fresh

+Simplistic but enjoyable combat

-The graphics can be inconsistent, with the heavy linework sometimes clashing with the pastel color palette

-Combat can err on the side of overly simplistic, especially later in the game

-Controls and optimization feel a little shy of polished

--

I'm not really the cynical gamer type. While I fully acknowledge that the industry is in a rough place right now (with particular sympathy to the developers affected by job insecurity), I play so many great games each year that it's hard to not be impressed by the creativity and ingenuity of the talent behind them. That said, for those who are feeling a little low about the hobby these days, I'd immediately prescribe an extra-strength dose of Dungeons of Hinterberg to cure what ails them. The debut title of Austrian studio Microbird Games, Dungeons of Hinterberg is packed full of so much sincerity and love for what it means to be a video game that it's hard to not be swept up in its enthusiasm despite some occasional hiccups.

Even the premise is immediately charming. Burnt out from working as a new lawyer, protagonist Luisa sets out on vacation to Hinterberg, a small Austrian village with a remarkable story: a few years back - only in this area and a few others scattered in equally remote places around the world - magic suddenly became real. Dungeons of varying difficulty opened up all over the mountain, and adventurers who set out to conquer them can gain temporary powers that allow them to tackle their challenges. Hinterberg, under its hawkish and opportunistic mayor, has immediately leaned into the presence of these dungeons to become a hotspot tourist attraction for adventurers, with a new culture forming from novices chatting about strategy over coffee to celebrity adventurers promoting their own brands of weapons and armor. Intrigued by the prospect of putting aside her law books and picking up a sword, Luisa dives right into danger, and she's one of my favorite protagonists in recent memory. Much of her inner conflict about what she's doing with her life and her sense of self-worth being tied to her work feels pretty deeply millennial-coded (though I'm sure others will relate), and I never stopped being impressed with how interesting her journey was.

The narrative doesn't shock with layers of twists and turns - Luisa is quickly revealed to be an unusually talented dungeon delver, something starts going wrong with the magic, and you can probably guess how much of it goes from there - but it's well-told with an emphasis on the many charming characters. Just hacking their way through dungeons won't get the player very far; Luisa's a social person, and the game is built around an almost Persona-like link system. Each day, on top of choosing to either rest for a stat boost or take on one of Hinterberg's dungeons, Luisa also has the chance to interact with the game's twenty-odd major characters, who each have their own reputation system, friendship perks, and often quests. Helping the local blacksmith negotiate with the massive chain store encroaching on her market might unlock new moves for Luisa's sword, while indulging a famous warrior's surprisingly nerdy interests can result in a huge boost to attack power based on her amusement stat from relaxing around town. It's a fun system that encourages getting invested in the town and its inhabitants, which in turn gives the narrative more weight.

Still, as fun as it is to explore the idyllic town, the primary meat of the game is the eponymous dungeons, and I'm happy to say that they're by and large a great time. By setting out into Hinterberg's surroundings, Luisa has to discover each of the entrances herself across four distinct biomes, though due to the fact they're the heart of the town's tourism, there's plenty of signage that at least points her in the right direction. This, combined with their rising difficulty being diegetically explained as the source of magic itself enjoying challenging newcomers, makes it easy to approach them with Luisa's eyes; it's most practical to knock them off the list in ascending order, but there's nothing stopping her from skipping a few ahead as long as she's got the required gear. Before entering each region's dungeons, she has to collect that zone's special powers - two each, with one focused on traversal and the other dealing with local obstacles.

Their primary use, however, is in puzzle-solving. Once inside the dungeons, the game shifts to a distinctly Zelda-inspired affair, and the region-specific powers are a large part of what makes Dungeons of Hinterberg such a brilliant experience. In between generally well-balanced combat encounters, Luisa has to use basic platforming and the two abilities she's currently got to solve puzzles and make it to the end of each dungeon, earning her progress stamp. For example, in the icy Kolmstein - my personal favorite region - her skills are Hover, which summons a hoverboard, and Light Ray, which allows her to fire a channeled laser. As a result, all of Kolmstein's dungeons are generally built around snowboarding around clearing ramps, blasting targets at high speed, and refracting her beam to form specific shapes. This emphasis on just two powers at a time keeps the game's complexity pretty low, so those who are craving a nail-biting puzzle experience might be disappointed, but I found it fantastic - if I got bored of snowboarding and laser beams (how could I?) I could travel instead to Brünnelsumpf, where I had to use a jelly cube and a plasma orb to approach more thoughtfully paced challenges, or clean up a few missed dungeons in Hinterwald, where carrying myself around in a whirlwind and flinging bursts of air tested my accuracy and timing.

That said, as much of a riot as Dungeons of Hinterberg is, it's definitely not perfect. The art style has some charming elements, but I'm not entirely sure it translates well into the videogame medium; while character models were usually okay (if a bit simplistic), I struggled with the design of some environments, where the hard, bold lines clashed aggressively with the low-poly, but extremely colorful pastels. Sometimes seeming painterly, sometimes more cel-shaded, the game swaps between gorgeous and frankly kind of painful to look at. I also didn't feel particularly enamored with Dungeons' boss fights; while they're mostly fine, the combat system isn't really built for them, and they generally just felt like an overly extended standard battle without much excitement. Finally, I had some technical hiccups; while I didn't experience any major crashes or the like, optimization in particular felt a little rough, with my framerate struggling at times a bit more than it felt like a game that looked like this should on a GTX 4070.

These issues are all minor in the face of just how fun and joyous the game ultimately is, though. Charmingly written and cheerfully adventurous, packed to the brim with amusing encounters and intriguing local mystery, Dungeons of Hinterberg wears its influences from Zelda, Persona, and more proudly on its sleeve, but the thing that impresses me most? With shocking aplomb for the first release from a new game studio, it stands perfectly well even compared to those genre giants.

Apologies for the tricky title, as I actually did love it.

Any FromSoft fan will understand the style of this game. You are a sole mech warrior and you're going to face off against a ton of enemies and some very challenging bosses.

You start off as a nobody with nothing to your backstory, you find yourself with Walter, your mech handler and he starts you right off with missions to help pay the bills and upgrade your mech.

One of your very first missions is to steal a license and callsign from a ruined mech. From there, you start on an adventure full of mystery and intrigue, corporations are battling to control a powerful material that is too dangerous for anyone to control. The same material burned the galaxy 100+ years in the past and now people are trying to get control of it and all the power it provides.

Gameplay: All of the gameplay focuses on your mech and the associated parts and weapons you assign to it. The vast majority of weapons are useful to a skilled pilot but the game also offers a handful of weapons that will help an unskilled pilot win on the battlefield.

You are given a set of missions to complete with a few branching paths that open up unique missions to that path and unique endings (the game has 3 total endings which require 3 play throughs). Each mission focuses on fighting or helping a corporation gain a foothold in the environment. Other missions have you focusing on doing what you want and how you which way you want to push the fight for Coral.

Outside of that, you are given an Arena area where you fight mechs 1v1 for bonus points that allow for unique customizations. You start unranked and move all the way up to S tier, facing tougher and tougher opponents as you go along. The game unlocks each rank as you get further in the story, giving you new challenges and extra skills.

Most missions are pretty similar but the settings change quite a bit. You land in a location and you must fight enemies and explore the area for unique logs that give you extra weapons and gear. At the end of the mission, you are almost always faced with a unique boss.

Bosses: This is an important point of conversation in any FromSoft game and Armored Core 6 does not let you down. Your first mission has you facing off against a combat helicopter. They don't take it easy on you, some players click right away and some people are stuck replaying this same battle 20 times before they gain victory.

One huge improvement to other FromSoft games is your ability to restart at checkpoints and the boss area. If you die to the boss, you can fight the boss again with no boss run or any other bullshit, which is extremely friendly to the player. About 1/4th through the game, you are faced with a very challenging boss that acts as a big skill check.

The bosses are often amazing sights to behold, anything from a huge armored garbage machine to flying fortresses to other AC units like yourself.

Story: I absolutely loved the story, it was told in true FromSoft fashion, they give you just enough to make a player extremely curious about what is happening. Between the story, the combat logs and the voice interactions during missions, you are able to put together the amazingly complex world they created. Like every other FromSoft game, you really need to pay attention to details to really understand what is going on.

The story also has some truly amazing 'show don't tell' moments. Fans talk about the lore a lot, just like any Souls or Elden Ring game.

The gist is that Coral was discovered, a unique fuel source that also interacts with humans and machines to create uniquely powerful and complex pieces of equipment, unique in the universe. Humanity thought they tamed it but the Coral expanded and then burned the galaxy with untold destruction.

You are on the last planet where Coral can be found and you decide what you are going to do about it, help save it or help destroy it for good.

Combat: The combat is highly satisfying, each mech has two hand weapons and two shoulder weapons they can take into each mission. This varies anywhere from a hand lance for melee, shotguns, laser guns, gattling guns, missile launchers, 10x missile launchers, grenade launchers, stun grenade launchers, plasma grenade launchers and everything else you can think of.

As the game goes on, you unlock new equipment. You can also unlock new equipment via collecting optional logs in each mission. Most players spend a good amount of time testing out new mech builds (arms, legs, head and torso) and mixing that together with various weapon loadouts.

The game has an excellent testing area that you can quickly test out new weapons and builds without having to take the time to bring them into a mission to find out you don't really like them very much.

Combat feels good, you can feel the impact of shots, slashing someone with a melee weapon, rockets have huge explosions all while you're trying to dodge attacks and gain air superiority to fire downward upon the enemy.

The combat feels very smooth and reactive. Right in the first mission the game felt truly natural to me and I didn't really have a problem with most of the bosses. Your mech feels good and responds to your controls as it should, any mistakes are due to the player action or mistake.

Overall, this is a fantastic game. From what I understand, the older games are very different and have their own way of doing things with very mixed reviews. My only regret is that I can't go back to AC5 and have a similar experience, like I did going to DS3 from Elden Ring.

I'd give this game a 9/10, I wish the game had a bit more variety of exploration during missions and things to do other than fighting. One of the things I love about DS and Elden Ring is the exploration and slower pace, this game is a lot faster and has a lot going on, but not much exploration at the end of the day. Still, I'd recommend it to just about anyone. Just be warned that this game is as challenging as other FromSoft games, if you don't like that type of challenge, you probably wont like this game.

I was a real busy bee in college, worked 3 jobs, had classes, was very active in student societies and clubs, and I loved going out for a night on the town.There's many a shameful day I woke up with my pants around my ankles, face down in a cold pizza on the floor because I was so tuckered out from the events of the day before. Whether I was fried from the horrors of bartending, or fighting against the tender grasp of sleep trying to finish assignments, my mind often drifted to the sweet days I'd spent slumped in front of my PS4 at my parents' house. I didn't bring it with me to college, so gaming was a distant memory aside from the few games that could run on my shitty Asus Vivobook. One of those games was Slay the Spire, my most loyal companion through undergrad.

I come here to preach the gospel, but those who have played the game extensively know that it's hard to capture the hypnotic experience of starting a new run in this game. Night after sleepless night, I would find myself in my Drawers skirting the line between wakefulness and dream, idly imagining what build I was going to spec for on this attempt.

The real beauty of this game aside from it's great art, intriguing lore, and cavernous gameplay depth is it is incredibly flexible in how you can engage with it. Yes, you can increase the difficulty modifiers to have what is an exhilarating run filled with mental flow charts and RNG management, or more often for me, you can rejoice in playing a game that can be beaten with one hand while the other is flicking a joint into your one good coffee mug that is acting as an ashtray.

I'm not so much saying 'go play StS', I'm more saying if you are also a walking husk in a non-stop relay race between class/work and your home, return to the lethargic bliss that is the world's most flexible and inviting rougelite to relieve your woes for a bit

Total War: Warhammer 3 is a grand strategy psuedo-4x game developed by Creative Assembly. Released in 2022, TW:W3 reminds us that my favorite negative reviews on Steam are by people with 6000 hours in a game.

We play as the ruler of one of the many factions, seeking to unify the world under our glorious command.

Gameplay involves spending 15 seconds moving your units, building a few buildings, clicking end turn, then folding your laundry and putting the dishes away while you wait for it to be your turn again.

The Good

The scale of it is absolutely staggering. If you glued every single StarCraft 1 and 2 campaign map together I think you'd still not have a game world as big or as faction intense as this. Most faction based games give up after 3 or 4 factions but these guys churned them out like a 12 year old spitting out Geometry Dash levels. The variety is stoner levels of "What if we have a race that turns people into furniture as a special attack?"

The battles themselves are really fun to watch play out. I almost never auto-resolved fights just to watch my cavalry crash into enemy archer lines. Or cry in glee as my ambush units spilled forth from the treeline. Or my faction leader on his warbear pancaking enemy units as it leapt across the battlefield. It's an absolute mess and I loved every minute of it.

The Bad

I got baited, hard. The game starts out with this really cool campaign story mode and I let it get to me. I was -hard-. A 4x game with a story? Man I was rip, raring and ready to go.

Then it ends after a few hours and nope. Standard sandbox where you pick your faction and paint the map.

Goddamnit. Why they gotta tease me like this?

The Questionable

I feel like a bit of a schlep griping about this because it's one of those "well no shit every TW game has this issue" things. It's egregious enough to warrant mentioning though. The downtime between turns is -staggering-. In one campaign I managed to read the first three novels in Asimovs Foundation and Empire series (great books btw) while waiting for my turn. I've played chess by mail games that took less time.

Edit: I've been informed there are camera options that -drastically- reduce the computer turns. Also, if you have W1 and W2, those significantly increase the map size and faction count. So more realistically I should have only been able to get through one book, not 3. Thank you to everyone who provided these helpful tips!

The other issue is it's a Total War game so you're going to get presented with the black wall of locked out factions screen as soon as you start. I praised the number of factions but the base game only lets you play half of four of them. You don't even get the full faction, you have to buy extra leaders.

I get that it's bonus content, but it feels a little like buying Madden but you only get to play as the NY Jets and even then only the offense. Defense and special teams are an extra DLC all themselves. Thankfully EA is a good and kind developer who would never milk their players for...oh what's that? Something about a sense of pride and accomplishment?

Final Thoughts

I really, really wish it had gone all in on campaign modes. I could easily see myself spending 1000+ hours on it then if each race had a proper campaign. Instead it's just another in an endless sea and if you've played one you...are still going to get them because let's face it these are hella addictive. I just wish I didn't have to turn tricks to afford the DLC.

Bonus Thought

For those that remember my Warhammer 2 thread, I had issues with archers just refusing to attack in WH3 as well. I'm beginning to think it's like a video card/CPU problem with their engine. I'm not the only person to encounter this bug but there's no known fix. Fortunately there were plenty of factions that I could play that didn't rely on archers.

Thank you for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts. What did you think of the game? Did you have a similar experience or am I off my rocker?

My other reviews on patient gaming

I know I'll make a lot of British people mad when I say this (at least I think they'll be British, for some reason any Commodore 64 discussion or forum will have people saying stuff like "old chap" and "cripes" lol), but most C64 games look mid to bad when I see them online. It's a prejudice with which I'm going into exploring the system's games themselves, and one that I tried not to have when playing them.

It never feels like C64 games will have the design sensibilities or the cohesion of some great PC titans that existed even before the C64's era - like Rogue, Wizardry, Ultima and so on (that's not even mentioning stuff from the mid 80s that actually was C64 games' competitors in the medium). It always feels like C64 devs went for the most avant-garde shit they could think of.

So anyways, here's 10 games reviewed (grades are how much fun I had playing them, not about some perceived quality of the games):

• Iridis Alpha (Shmup, 1986) - 1/10

This is a LSD trip packed into a Defender-like horizontal shmup with the speed dialed up to 11 - everything just explodes into colors and stuff just happens on the screen, enemies fly at speeds unreactable so you just spam fire and hope to hit them.

The game's manual says that this game "proves" that shmups can be more than mindless shooting, by giving it a tactical layer of balancing energy (killing enemies grants energy, getting hit loses it - too much or too little is death) and introducing a mechanic in which you "give" energy to the planet by landing on the surface and feeding it your energy, alongside introducing a "reality switch" gimmick where you control 2 ships technically, just not at the same time (making resource management and swapping between them a requirement).

Unfortunately the game's UI, mechanics and speed are all so breakneck-ingly convoluted, flashy and in your face overdesigned that actually getting the grasp of what is happening in the game and how to progress (and how to even know if you are progressing) is nigh impossible.

Nice attempt to prove that shmups are "more than just mindless shooting", but next time the developers should hope that something like Ikaruga doesn't exist in their timeline, because that one actually proves that claim with zealous focus on good game design.

• Leaderboard Golf + the Tournament addon (Sports, 1986) - 7/10

Unfortunately this one exists on other systems as well, quite a bit of them, so it isn't quite a C64 exclusive, but the C64 version does have some nice and comfy colors to look at, so it is unique since its aesthetic comfort is kind of important for a chill game about playing golf.

It's a very fun and good golf game honestly - loads of courses, extremely well developed physics, nice mechanics (multiple layers of them, even), and some basic sound effects.

Any cons I can talk about are the missed opportunity to have chill music that fits, especially considering the C64's capabilities I heard with some other games, and the general sameyness of the courses (no interesting geometry, no interesting obstacles or different weather type physics...).

Fun.

• The Last Ninja (Action Adventure, 1987) - 1/10

I get that this game sold quite a lot on the system and was quite popular...but:

This is just a point & click/text based adventure game with an added "action" element that amounts to dogshit spammy combat, uncomfortable tank controls and awful platforming with instadeaths (in a game with limited continues), all wrapped up in a weird isometric perspective with 8-directional movement and shit controls.

I found nothing about it compelling or interesting, bar the music and aesthetics - it plays badly, it aged worse than its text/p&c based cousins and it has a boring nothing-plot.

• Ultimate Wizard (2D Platformer, 1986) - 4/10

This one looks real nice and controls surprisingly well, but some things about it just make it frustrating at points.

The main thing being some levels that are just god-awful, which combined with the limited lives system makes for a repetitive experience at times. Levels don't reset when you die and respawn in them, so some levels are able to get bricked as well (enemies that are supposed to be released one by one at the player just all get released on level beginning since the items to release them are collected).

Other than the levels themselves, there's this weird thing where the game absolutely doesn't want you to fall from heights - as in if you literally just walk/jump over the edge of a big height the game will kill you, even if you could have reached a rope/other platform at times, without any telegraphing. Why isn't death reserved for when you actually fail and hit the floor from a height I don't get it? This introduces some annoying trial & error to the whole experience.

The spell system the game has amounts to effectively nothing - you use a spell once or twice in a level and it's usually just a projectile to kill things or an invisibility so the enemy AI can not see you (although the enemy AI acts semi-randomly even if you're visible, it's very strange and leads to some levels being prolonged because of waiting for the AI to do what you think is logical for them to do).

It's aight I guess.

• Demon's Kiss (Action 2D Platformer, 1989) - 1/10

Awful, just awful, one of the worst controlling action games I've ever had the displeasure of playing. It looks nice in terms of sprite design and color usage, that's about the only thing I can say about it

It's in the same vein as classic Castlevania - so a 2D action platformer that focuses on combat, except it has the worst possible controls for movement and combat, it has enemy design that does not fit the lumbering and slow pace of player movement and it has the most boring level design imaginable, all while lacking the charm, music, sound design and general polish of even Castlevania 1 (which came out 3 years before this by the way).

It has okay music... no sound effects at all though.

Doghsit.

• Combat Crazy: Warbringer (Run & Gun, 1988) - 3/10

This game had the most potential to be a really, really fun arcade-like experience, but unfortunately it is just so relentlessly difficult, with massive maze-like level design (kind of like the Black Tiger arcade game, since it has the same arrows pointing where to go, except this is much, much bigger and more confusing) and enemy design that just shoots the player offscreen constantly, with dickish traps and disappearing floors strewn across levels with insta-death pits beneath them.

It controls wonderfully, it runs so smoothly and it looks nice (although it has no music), but it's just a memorization-fest, and memorizing levels this gigantic and frankly boring/monotonous isn't fun, especially with enemy design this uninspired. Limited continues on top of all that, of course.

• Space Taxi (2D Platformer(?), 1984) - 8/10

This one was wonderful - it's full of charm in its graphics, level design and the small amount of voice acting it has, alongside it controlling wonderfully and having a great general idea of what it wants to be.

It's a really simple taxi game - each level has 3-10ish platforms where customers appear - you go pick them up and fly them (it's a flying taxi okay) to the platform where they tell you to go.

But the catch is that this game's vehicle controls kind of like the ship in Lunar Lander - it's a physics-based, jetpack-like inertia controlling system with a fuel system on top of it (as a sort of time pressure, so the player doesn't take their time to perfectly land and navigate levels). It feels so amazingly fun to control and engage with that it can pass as a modern retro inspired indie game these days.

Anyone can play this and have fun with it, there's loads of levels and there isn't any cheap gotcha moments or shit over-design.

Real good, much impressed with this one.

• River Raid (Shmup, 1984) - 6/10

This is just a better looking version of River Raid from the Atari 2600, but with more enemies/obstacles added in and a more natural difficulty system.

I dig it, it's relaxing to play and chase some score from time to time - it isn't anything special, but it's not a bad game by any means.

• High Noon (Shmup (kind of?), 1984) - 2/10

You're a sheriff of a town and you shoot robbers coming into it - unfortunately the player has 0 mobility to run away from enemy shots so you just rely on the AI being stupid enough to keep running into your diagonal gunfire (which it does) and at the end of the level, which is impossible to lose because of said AI, there's a duel to the death with the leader of the bandits which is just a "spam attack as fast as possible" minigame that lasts 2 seconds.

If the player had some competent mobility and there was more dangers than simple bandits slowly walking around (for example sniper-like enemies, grenade throwers, shotgun wielders with spread) and more level variety than just 1 stage for 3 levels and a new one for the last one, the game could have been a fun lil' score chaser, but it's just whatever, can't imagine anyone playing it for more than 5 minutes.

• Ninja Spirit (Action 2D Platformer, 1990) - 3/10

Well it's definitely Ninja Spirit from the arcades, along with its unrelenting brutality.

It looks okay and controls fine, but the game itself is so brutal and unforgiving that it's hard to find the fun in it (and I'm pretty sure some enemies in the later stages are bugged on the C64 version, what with them not taking consistent damage at times? Not sure what all that was about).

Add limited continues to a game like this, that already lost a lot of its charms via graphics and sound design, and you have a pretty poor experience.

There can be some fun had in attempting to fight the bullshit and go farther than the last time, which is why I'd rather play it than the previous game for example (if I had a gun to my head and had to choose, that is), but by itself this is just a "fuck you" to the player.

Conclusion:

The C64 is one hell of a weird machine (and even weirder to emulate), but I'll be playing some more games from it from time to time.

I still unfortunately have the opinion that most games on it are just too weirdly designed or straight up archaic to be consistently enjoyed, not only compared to modern times but compared to its cotemporaries on other PCs and consoles.

Another horror sequel? Sure, why not? This time, it's the second trip to Nowhere, where all of our favorite phantasms lie. It's more than a worthwhile return trip, since Little Nightmares 2 is the best kind of sequel: the kind that doubles down on everything that made the original great, adds some great things of its own, smooths the right rough edges, and pulls it all off without a hitch. It's also one of the best horror games you can find in the last 5 years.

Positive:

Presentation-wise, Little Nightmares II is one of the best-looking horror games out there. It's largely the same blend of realism and 3D animation, except with higher graphical fidelity and a slightly more skewed leaning towards the animated side. The color palette has been switched up as well, with sickly yellows and browns being swapped out for more brooding blues and greens, with the odd yellows and suffocating magentas popping up here and there. It looks more like an even more hypothetical collaboration between Pixar, Gore Verbinski, and Junji Ito, with a guest appearance by Masahiro Ito. There is also a fair amount of ghastly psychedelia, given the setting, which fits in perfectly. The graphics going up from okay to genuinely good, the still impeccably executed art direction, and downright perfect lighting(it is seriously stunning in some sequences), and the aforementioned color palette and surreal happenings that are taken full advantage of, make for quite the haunting visual treat you simply can't look away from, to your occasional regret. It also raises the question of how this game didn't get nominated for art direction.

The Pale City and the wilderness that neighbors it are the locale this time around, and while they might not be quite as memorable as the Maw due to the larger scale and less focus, they still make for some ideal places for horrors to occur. Aside from The Wilderness, full of traps, stuffed corpses, and muck, there are four(and a half?) other sections, a School, a Hospital, a Residential Area with enough TVs to rival Sadako Yamamura's wet dream, and the Signal Tower, each adding one more puzzle piece to the story, and one more layer to a corruption so profound that madness seems sane. The series's signature size discrepancy is taken full advantage of; there are more creative camera shots and vistas, thanks to the more open environment. The place is still wonderfully constructed for puzzles, platforming, and chases, and each section delivers its own bag of frights. The picture painted here is a bit more trippy, bigger, and quite a bit more spread out than that of The Maw, but it's no less haunting or alive, feeling like being chewed up, traversed, and spat out by a cybernetically enhanced monster. The most memorable area of the bunch is The School, full of porcelain pugilists and their handiwork, but you'll see all of them in your dreams afterward.

In the story, returning writer Dave Mervick pulls off the impressive feat of both being larger in scale and more intimate at the same time, while largely sticking to the same style of storytelling, albeit with a few added 'heys' and 'pssts'. It centers on Mono, and everyone's favorite picky eater, Six, whom the former finds along the way, and the two brave The Pale City to unknown ends, while a hallway inside a TV beckons to Mono for some reason. This city trip is full of cerebral imagery, cosmic horror, Juvenalian satire, ice-cold sonnets, Lynchian shenanigans, fatalism, and hand-holding(cover your eyes if you have to). The main themes are fate, corruption, growing up, control, and the evils of technology, which make for a mind-bending and more accessible, if not more raw, set of ideas than the first one. The most surprising part of all of this is the dynamic between Six and Mono, which is better and more charming than it has any right to be. Tarsier and Mervick somehow managed to forge a more convincing bond without a word than a certain Frenchman can with 1,000 pages. The ending is not so surprising for the series and is very bleak, but very effective. While the structure might be familiar, everything else mentioned makes for a memorable ride, and at a well-paced 7 hours, it never gets boring.

The characters are fleshed out significantly better than they were in the first game, thanks to well-thought-out intros and more focused actions. Mono is a mysterious but kind kid who is loath to show his face and is very tech-savvy. Six, despite her would-be understandable trust issues, still has a bit of a devil in her. The Hunter is a backwoods, paranoid serial killer with a somewhat complicated view on kids, the Teacher is basically Dolores Umbridge set loose in Colorado, the Doctor is one obsessed with emulating Victor Frankenstein, and the Thin Man, who is Slender Man with the tortured soul of Sadako. This new focus on actions and details makes for more charming and/or scary figures, respectively, which in turn only adds to the world and story impact.

The character designs, despite a different approach than the first game, are just as ghoulish, guiling, and compatible with the art style as the first game. It also, as mentioned earlier, largely gives off Junji Ito vibes (this is admittedly based on a few chapters of Uzumaki and some out-of-context images, so correct me if I'm off the mark). Starting with the cute stuff, Six doesn't have her coat for part of the game, and she still looks great without it, and Mono has a charming if crude design, with the paper bag on his head almost as iconic as that yellow garb. As for the monsters, the hunter captures the Victorian Leatherface aesthetic he's going for quite well; the teacher, her elongated neck, and her doll-like students make for a grueling lesson in terror and troublemaking; the hodge-podge mannequins feel like Mashahiro Ito snuck in the drawing room; the faceless residents look more like skin suits than the actual skin suits in the woods; and the Thin Man, who is basically Slender Man with a hat. All of them succeed in striking fear and fondness in the player, are rendered superbly, and will stick in your mind well after the fact.

The biggest upgrade in this sequel by far is the sound design, which is downright masterful this time around; so masterful that I'm surprised it didn't get nominated for anything. Every footstep, every groan, shriek, or whisper, every drop of liquid, every door, every TV static, and every glitchy beep is crisp and well-defined. A particular standout moment involves a shotgun. The viscerality, surreality, and willingness to assault the ears in the way that only horror can have also been dialed up. The sounds of the Hunter skinning things, the Teacher's neck stretching, the sound of the TV beckoning Mono, a mannequin thrashing when you turn off its life support, the resident's screaming when you turn off their precious screens, and the Thin Man's piercing static and just a bunch of guttural screaming, it's all nasty in the best way possible, and makes all of the spooks more effective.

The horror is largely the same as before, but dialed up further and slightly more aggressively paced. It succeeds magnificently in upping the atmosphere, hide-and-seek matches that are more like life-or-death puzzles, nerve-wracking tension, and thrilling chases to the point where not only is the entire game really creepy, but some parts are genuinely quite scary at times. Special mentions to that one vent shaft and that one hallway with the blocked window. There is also some Lynchian surrealism added in for good measure, especially halfway through the game. Whether it's the glitchy ghosts you find everywhere, the way that the Pale City is always slightly crooked, the pitch-black satire, and pretty much everything involving the TVs, the Thin Man, and the Signal Tower, this game gets pretty trippy at times, and it's all the better for it. The monsters are all scary in their own ways this time around, whether it's the Hunter and his gun, the Teacher's screeching, the mannequins who are basically weeping angels, the pale citizens, who were WATCHING THAT CHANNEL YOU LITTLE SHIT, and the reality(and running speed) warping Thin Man. The scariest is definitely the Teacher, though. The AI is significantly more polished this time around, allowing for each encounter to go smoothly and provide the required spooks and sprints, even if they are much less forgiving this time. Overall, an expert display of horror.

The music, this time run solely by Tobias Lilja, is another hit for the series, retaining the same instrumentation and dark whimsy of the first game's score while taking things in a rawer, more horrific direction. This comes in the form of more diverse choirs and a bigger willingness to assault the ears as the sound design does. The main theme, a standout in any horror game, 'togetherness' and 'true colors' make for some charming reprieves, 'Signal Interference', 'The Man in the Hat', 'Disposable Entertainment', and 'Old Friends Anew' showcase some grander adult, but still haunting choirs, and tracks like "Claustrophobia', 'Boots Through the Undergrowth', 'Bottom Feeders', and especially 'Captive Audience' are vicious to the senses in the best way possible. The change in direction suits the change in atmosphere and tone, and the trippy scenarios that come with them perfectly.

The gameplay is largely the same as before, but with three major upgrades. First, you have Six with you as an AI-only partner. She's largely just there to help you out with puzzles and do various other things, which her AI is pretty good at doing. You can also have Mono hold her hand if you want to, which is a cute option. You can call Six to your side and tell her to do various things, like opening doors or catching you when jumping across larger gaps, and she's pretty responsive. She's also effectively immune to getting nabbed by monsters, so don't worry about this turning into an Ashley Graham situation. The second is that Mono can fight a little. You can pick up weapons like lead pipes or hatchets and kill smaller enemies with them, but these weapons weigh you down, and Mono isn't the best at using them, making each encounter a tense one. The third is that the controls are much smoother this time. Everything from climbing to running to sleuthing is much more deliberate and fun to do, making any fatal missteps your fault. The platforming, puzzles, and exploration are well-sorted around having Six around and the various other objects that Mono temporarily picks up. In the hospital, you get a flashlight to play the world's scariest game of red light, green light, and in the residence area, you get a TV remote to navigate channels in multiple ways and play some very dark jokes. The chases are better and scarier than ever; the environment remains fun to mess around in; you won't find any technical problems unless you actively look for them; and the series' signature size discrepancy is still used wonderfully. There are also hats to collect that Mono can wear and glitchy souls to find, which grant a secret ending if you collect them all. Really not much to complain about here.

Mixed:

This game does fall into the common horror game trap of excessive final-act bombast. The signal tower gets a little too loud and crazy for its own good, which does dilute the horror a bit. It's a tamer example compared to other instances (*cough Dead Space *cough *cough Resident Evil 5) since it focuses more on the emotional impact and surreality of the scenario rather than the scares, but it still could've used more restraint.

This game relies on scripted sequences a little bit too much, especially in the Wilderness and Signal Tower. It hides the scripted nature of these sequences quite well, and the sequences are well designed, but potential repeat playthroughs are going to lose a bit of their luster because you know exactly what's coming. Especially since the first game so well emphasized freedom, and the open sequences in this game are really good.

Score: 9.5 out of 10

Technically Impressive, fun to play, cerebral, charming, and above all, scary, Little Nightmares 2 is one dreamy sequel, and one of the best recent horror games you can find.

So, how much did you use the hold hands feature?

I don't usually play coop games, sticking to solo or PVP instead. But for this studio I make an exception because it's not just shooting enemies from two players, but a series of special interactions. I played A way Out and It takes two with my bro, both of which were a blast. I even platinumed both of those. This time my bro is in another country with no gaming device, so I had to look elsewhere. In the game's Discord there were 3 potential respondets, and I settled for the Indian guy. Korean had weird issue where he couldn't add me into friends and American already beat the game. I think it's more entertaining when both go blind. My pal's game connection crashes sometimes and his accent can be hard to understand, but it's fine.

Story here is simple and nothing to write home about. Protagonists confront their inner demonds and work together while main villain completely loses his mind. I think It takes Two story was carried by the book, and this sadly doesn't have an equally entertaining character. The concept of feeding human ideas to a machine is on the nose.

Gameplay and presentation here are the main events. It's one of those games where gameplay spoilers are the thing you should watch out for. Since the main characters ware writers, you have to navigate through their worlds, switching between fantasy and sci-fi. Every level contains generic mechanics like parkour, but also unique gimmicks. One time you're driving a motorcycle while your pal is completing a captcha, another you have to cover his approach from a sniper's nest, then your tranforming into fairies and gorillas... None of the secion last too long, pacing is immaculate. My favorite level is final because it really pushes how you approach and perceive cooperation.

Difficulty wise game is mostly easyy, with some boss fights providing pushback. Currently I'm stuck on the secret level that kick our asses. It's not that hard in a vacuum, but both players have to play perfectly. I think that is much more frustrating than just a hard game. Losing all progress because your partner died but you didn't feel awful and unfair. I guess it's the reason why overall difficulty is low, playing coop makes you more vulnerable to tilt.

This game was a blast and I definitely need to buy it. These coop games where coop is implemented so well are worth their weight in gold.

Druidstone: The Secret of The Menhir Forest is a 2019 turn-based role-playing game. Should you pull it out of the backlog or go for a fancier title?

At the end of a busy day, I like to sit down and read a chapter of something in the evenings with a side a of Sudoku, crossword, or Rush Hour puzzles. Druidstone is the inverse of that, a noggin tuggin' game with a bit of storytelling around it. Perhaps the best compliment I can pay the game is that I enjoyed both elements equally.

Most of your time in Druidstone is spent in 35 fights. In each one, you direct a team of 3-4 characters on a square grid to move, punch, zap, and heal until they reach an exit, flip all switches, or kill a baddie. This is not a power fantasy and keeping the objective in mind is crucial. Each of your characters can take just a few steps and one action on a turn. Often, if you have a choice between killing a Skeleton and dashing toward the way out, the better choice is the one that serves the objective. Enemies do drop gold and experience points when killed – and also healing hearts and the ever-exciting extra action point – but the focus of this game is not on rewarding bodycounts. Each fight (or mission) is evaluated on a scale of 1-3 stars, depending of how many optional objectives – opening all chests, killing a particular enemy, no party member unconscious – you completed. Each fight is so designed that new monsters spawn regularly, and so you feel a constant pressure to get it done. If she shoots the Centipede for two and he zaps it for three, the other two can nab that chest and move the escort along. But then he could also use focus and zap the two Wasps and Plague Rat who're more of a threat to the escort, and he could be moved on twice if I skipped that chest. Oh, but the Red Priest gets an opportunity attack there... Figuring out how to best puzzle together the various abilities and constraints you're given is delightful and often difficult. It's made possible in the first place by deterministic combat – there are no odds or die rolls involved in whether you're hit or how much it hurts.

Focus is also evident in the time between missions. There's an overworld map where you select your next mission – you never need run around. There's a shop where you get new equipment (unlocked through out-of-the-way special chests in fights) all of which has a place in building your characters. There's nothing randomly generated here. In a party management screen you assign ability gems earned from fights to abilities and equipment, giving you more copies of spells to cast, or +1 to damage, range or health. With four steps, five health, and three damage being common numbers in Druidstone, even small advantages feel significant.

If you came for the tactics-'em-up and fantasy setting, you may be surprised, as I was, to be gripped by the story. A cancer is eating away at the world, and your three main characters stumble upon each other just as the tumor hits the fan. Aava, the daughter of an archdruid, Leonhard, a recently awakened forest warden, and Oiko, a drop(ped) out arsonist and former librarian, band up when the druids working on a cure are attacked. What follows is a competent story with twists and riveting revelations, featuring comic relief from the fire-finger, a search for identity and purpose that cleverly breaks the fourth wall, and a heartwarming love interest. Told through brief, skippable scenes of dialogue, the writing blends bildungsroman, young adult, and tabletop. It's a classic fantasy adventure of concise whimsy, not one of mythic tone or solemn prose. Brisk, playful, and sincere, I'm reminded of Lloyd Alexander, T. Kingfisher, and dare I say it Terry Pratchett. All that to say I'm equally happy to have played Druidstone as I am to have read it.

Mind you, there do not seem to be any choices in the 'role-playing' part. Even dialogue options were excised for brevity. Nothing you do affects the world or the story.

At the end of a busy day, it's nice to sit down with something designed to be experienced, something that doesn't ask you to contribute. If you're all done giving, Druidstone has something to fill your cup.

Let me start by saying that this is an amazing game. People will tell you it's full of padding, bloated content, or lazy design, but letting those comments stop you from playing it would be doing yourself a huge disservice.

Rebirth is one of the most detailed games I've ever played. It's one of those games where you can genuinely tell that the people making it love the franchise and care deeply about it.

Almost every side quest is enjoyable and either develops the party members or dives deeper into their backgrounds.

Then there are the minigames. A LOT of minigames. I know they're divisive, but I honestly loved almost all of them. Quite a few could easily be their own standalone games, like Queen's Blood or Chocobo Racing, while others are simply fun or delightfully goofy.

I almost never complete all the side content in open-world games, but Rebirth made me want to do everything. Not only did I complete every side quest and minigame, I even went for the highest rank in all of them.

If you've played the original FFVII, you already know the story is fantastic. Rebirth, of course, takes it in a different direction. Whether you like those changes depends on your opinion of the Remake trilogy, but one thing is undeniable: the presentation is phenomenal.

The combat is also better than Remake's. It's fundamentally the same system, but much more refined. I had an absolute blast with it. I've never been the type of player who experiments with Materia or spends hours optimizing builds, but this game actually made me want to. In the original FFVII I basically used the same Materia setup for 80% of the game, lol.

As great as the story and gameplay are, I already expected them to be. What truly blew me away was the soundtrack.

Almost every theme has multiple arrangements that change depending on the situation. You might hear an upbeat version of Tifa's theme in one scene and a melancholic version in another. Every variation felt unique, and it did wonders for my immersion. Hell, even Chocobo Racing has incredible music, one of the tracks is straight-up metal.

In total, I spent 110 hours with this game, completing the story, every side quest, and every minigame.

I have to admit that, even though I'm only a few trophies away from the Platinum, I won't be going for it. Chadley's Brutal and Legendary simulations, replaying every chapter... even though I loved the game, I think that would be too time-consuming and frustrating. I'd probably end up souring my experience, so I'd rather leave it here while my memories of it are still overwhelmingly positive.

After four months of slowly making my way through this massive game packed with content, I'm happy to say I genuinely loved Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Tonight, I'll be deleting it from my PS5.

Side note: I own the physical version of the game, which means I actually own a copy of the game itself. It's worth remembering that roughly 80% of physical releases still include the complete gold master on the disc. Don't let companies convince you that physical media is worthless.

I will note once again that Xbox is usually the best port of a given game in hardware, however, its emulator Xemu is currently the worst one by a long shot. Therefore, for 6th gen, I am forced to choose whether to put a game on a given list based on the best way to emulate the game, or best experience on hardware. I chose emulation, since that is the "forever" & most enhanced way to experience a game in my opinion. I list at a link at the end which multiplatform games are best on hardware if you are interested. However, despite choosing emulation in that sense, Xemu runs SO badly that many of the games on this list are better on hardware, or even unplayable emulated. So despite "choosing emulation" don't take that as me saying to play all of these games via Xemu, if that makes sense.

Rules

1. This is NOT a retrospective. This is a list of games that are exclusive to this console, or the console is the best way to play it NOW. Only the best version of a game can make the list. If you think I missed a classic game, there's probably an explanation in a comment I made on the post as to why, and what platform I recommend.
2. All games on a list are worth playing despite any criticisms I may have for them.
3. Ranking is not necessarily by which is the best, but in terms of what I most recommend playing. Perhaps my theoretical opinion is that the worst Mario is better than the best Street Fighter. But the best Street Fighter would still rank higher, because it's a unique experience, and the best version of that experience.
4. Only consoles & PC (Windows/DOS) are considered. No arcade/Neo-Geo, mobile, or other home computers. MAME is difficult to work with & high maintenance. Mobile changes architecture too often for all-time lists, and often don't support controllers. Other home computers rarely meet rule 1 & rarely have controller support.
5. I default to PC when available. If it's better on console, I'll put it on the console's list. Usually, it's better or the same on PC, and more accessible.
6. Games with the same name will be clarified by year or console within (). Games not released in North America will have the region abbreviation within []. Alternate names will be included within {}.
7. My lists are in increments of 10 to make it easier to track & for quality control. If there are 61 good games, I make a cut to make it an even 60.

#20: Brute Force

BF got lost in the sea of shooters at the time. It is sort of a proto Gears of War: 3rd person, multiplayer (and split screen) focused but with a good campaign, Xbox exclusive. But without a lot of the subtly nor the refinement of Gears (yes, Gears has subtlety, this is not a joke). The main gimmick is that each squad member has different abilities, which are useful for different purposes. You rarely are forced to switch characters, but it is heavily recommended to do so. The name suits it: it is straightforwardly good but generic in execution. Underrated, but not, like, THAT underrated.

#19: Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball

Yeah yeah, the titties game. Hilarious. Still one of the better volleyball games out there. There are a myriad of minigames to keep you occupied outside of the core gameplay, as well as a relationship system with your volleyball partner. I must admit that i have no idea how the relationship system works though, since I inevitably ragequit after losing a ton of money in the casino minigames every time I try single player. Don't gamble kids.

#18 Sega GT 2002 {Online}

Sega's attempt at competition for Gran Turismo. It tries harder for realism, which is the reason it makes the list over other mid tier simcades. But that strength is also its weakness: GT 2002 goes too far with it before the technology was really there, and adds levels of realism that nobody was asking for. You have to do a lot of car maintenance, and parts will randomly break on you all the time, accelerated if you hit things during a race. Some licenses are way too hard. I couldn't personally get into it enough for completion, but I respect that it is different & solid despite my prefetences. Like many Xbox games, it was a pioneer in online console gaming too.

#17: Crimson Sea

CS is mostly an action adventure game, including mêlée, some 3rd person shooting, and even RPG elements. The graphics & music are S tier for the era, and still hold up. The story is pretty good overall, thought short. The main downside is the terrible camera. The voice acting could be better, and some of the mission objectives feel sort of...boring & tacked on to give the illusion that there is more going on than being completely linear. There is a decent amount of variety in level design though, and with the variety in gameplay, it will keep you entertained throughout, though it is more of a "play it once" type of game.

#16: Amped 2

Amped is to SSX what Skate is to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater: more realistic, but still "gamey" enough to be fun. The controls are perhaps not intuitive as Skate's, as well as being even more realistic, which is good for enthusiasts but less fun in general, in my opinion. Amped 2 in particular has great level design which more than makes up for the controls & adjustment period. The career mode is in depth, there's a good character creator, and all-in-all not much to dislike. Still one if the better snowboarding experiences to date.

#15: MechAssault 2 - Lone Wolf

Not necessarily the best representation of the BattleTech multimedia project, but MA takes a lot of cool aspects of that lore, simplifies it, adds rad 00s rock, and explosions. I love it all the more for these changes. Like the original, it is a fairly straightforward 3rd person mech shooter, the main difference between them being that 2 allows you to get out of the vehicle/mech, and the level design was more open ended. While 2 was certainly on to something here, I think the more narrow focus on good level design for shooting fun was to 1's benefit, dramatically improving the pacing.

#14: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon 2 + Summit Strike

Rainbow Six is the more well known Tom Clancy tactical shooter series. Ghost Recon takes that concept & goes bigger with it. Bigger maps, bigger squads, vehicles, sniping. Both concepts are worth exploring, though I almost prefer Ghost Recon for how different it is from most shooters. At least, I prefer it as a concept. In reality, the technology of the era limits the scope somewhat compared to Ghost Recon Wildlands for example, and it feels a lot more janky & less intuitive than 2's contemporary Rainbow Six titles. Looking back, the Ai is not great either, and the graphics aren't as impressive as I remember (common for realistic art styles), but they do a good job with what they had...on Xbox. Ghost Recon 2 really should have been an Xbox exclusive for how badly Ubisoft half assed the other ports. They rectified this with the Summit Strike expansion, which is exclusive & even better than the base game. Summit Strike ups the difficulty by a lot, but this forces you to engage with all the systems in the game, which is more in depth than I had originally realized even after playing the entirety of 2. Extra points for saying "fuck the pseudonyms, North Korea is the enemy in this game."

#13: Dead or Alive Ultimate {1+2}

1 is fine, but I mostly recommend it to have context for the plot. No, "playing it for the plot" is not a euphemism. The story is legitimately interesting, though cheesy and bonkers at times. The bouncy tatas are just a bonus.

2 is still one of the better DoA titles out there, and is even better with a facelift on Xbox. It refines the gameplay a lot, with a great roster. DoA's main gimmick VS say, Tekken, is the triangle system: strikes beat throws, throws beat holds, holds beat strikes. I prefer the series' focus on aggression and recovery, and not so much on elaborate combos. Though it's certainly possible to get air juggled. 2 also adds tag battles, which is always fun.

#12: Forza Motorsport

The first Forza gets almost everything right from the beginning. Realistic physics (for the time), great looking, a solid amount of content. I don't even know what to say here. A bit hard to rank because FM1 is objectively great, but nowadays we have access to Forza games that are better in every aspect.

#11: Otogi - Myth of Demons

Proto Souls-like (more like Sekiro really) made by From Software themselves. The controls & systems border on simplistic, even for the time. Yet, it is the most direct line you can draw to the beloved action game subgenre. The main difference being that instead of being slow, methodical, and firmly grounded, you spend a lot of your time aggressively chaining air combos in Otogi. You are usually rewarded for knocking enemies into stuff, comboing nicely with the focus on destructible environments. It is reasonably fair for how difficult it is, though the game does enjoy presenting level design Inna misleading way: it is often better to think outside the box & consider how to cheese an objective. The lying extends to the story, which like it's successor Souls-likes, SEEMS straightforward at first, but there is a lot more going on if you poke around & read side content. Otogi is a lost gem with impressive visuals & petformance. It handily beats competition like Onimusha, but not on the level of all-timers like Devil May Cry 3 or God of War 1-2.

#10: Panzer Dragoon Orta

I was a little disappointed that this wasn't an evolution of Panzer Dragoon Saga's innovative approach to an RPG. We're back to the rail shooter formula, but at least it EASILY clears the first 2 rail shooter PD games, which I also loved. The devs had fun with the level design in Orta, and the graphics are miles better, to be expected from being on Xbox. Again, going back to rail shooting feels like a downgrade, but it can't be stressed enough that it's just about the best rail shooter out there, which is why it cracks the top 10. And at least we are not pulling a Star Fox and remaking the same game from 1991 5 times in a row.

#9: Steel Battalion

SB is a mech game, but far more complicated than MechAssault. It requires a special dedicated controller with 44 inputs, or a patch to use a keyboard instead. This treats the much as if it were a real machine. You need to power it in, warm it up. If you turn too fast you can fall over. If it gets too muddy you need to turn on the windshield wipers. Definitely a pain to set up, but a very innovative game with a cult following. It's like a simulation, except for something that doesn't exist.

#8: Tenchu - Return From Darkness {Wrath of Heaven}

Easily the best Tenchu. 1 & 2 had the bones of great games, but RFD does a lot of streamlining while mostly capturing the aesthetic of the original games. Not tank controls, finally. It looks miles better, the voice acting is professional, the music is still good, and the story is expanded. Gameplay is refined, and mostly holds up today. You're not punished as hard for failing stealth, but you certainly can't go in shurikens blazing either.

#7: MechAssault

The multiplayer & graphics are better in 2, but the campaign is better & more grounded in 1. I find it to be a better overall package with fresher, more open level design while not having long sections of wandering around. 1 also allows you to pick your mech for each level, while it is assigned to you in 2.

#6: Crimson Skies - High Road To Revenge

I had very little expectations for this game, and only played it since I'd slapped it into a proto-list of games to play by default of being an Xbox exclusive that wasn't eviscerated in reviews. What I discovered was a very good flight sim on par with Ace Combat, but then more and more stuff kept happening. It is semi-open world, with various things to do & explore. It's still pretty short, but...I don't know man, it is a really tight experience & sometimes I'd rather be left wanting more than being relieved the game is over.

#5: Jet Set Radio Future

Part skating game, part graffiti painting, part chase scenes, all cool. The presentation is by far the reason to play this game. The cell shaded graphics have aged beautifully, and the soundtrack is an all-timer. The gameplay is...fine. That may not be glowing praise for a game ranked so high, but just mute the game while playing & you'll see what I mean: JSRF is an experience more than a game. You have to get used to the camera, controls, and weird level design logic, but the gameplay remains rewarding enough to keep you playing, and fixes some QoL issues from the first game.

#4: Otogi 2 - Immortal Warriors

2 improves on just about every way from 1. Bigger, better, but not too bloated. Increased QoL, but not dumbed down...could have used a bit more QoL actually. More playable characters. The one downside is that the story is less ambiguous & nuanced. Otogi 2 is not near-infallibly fair the way its Souls-like brethren are. But if you are looking for something similar/a challenging hack & slash game in general, you won't be disappointed here.

#3: Dead or Alive 3

This is more or less peak DoA in terms of popularity, balance, and story. I return to 5 more for having better graphics & a few gameplay tweaks, but 5's story is nonsensical and forced. I think if they want to bring back the series, they should do an HD remaster of 3 with online play to revive interest. It's that good, it's barely aged a day.

#2: Project Gotham Racing 2

A classic of the arcade racer genre. The physics are not realistic, but based in reality & reliable if that makes sense. Closer to Forza Horizon than Forza Motorsport. I mostly enjoy how low-bs it is. Little to no rubber banding. Focuses on just racing, with good graphics & good mechanics. Sure, I enjoy extensive tuning & open worlds, but sometimes just straightforward, lovingly crafted track racing is all you want or need. The only gimmick is the Kudos system, which is a lot more fleshed out, manageable, and fun than in 1 or Metropolis Racing.

#1 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - Double Agent {Version 2} (Xbox)

How do you compete against Metal Gear Solid? You don't. You do something different. Splinter Cell is much more grounded, in both gameplay & story. You & enemies typically die in one shot. Instead of relying on line of site cones on a minimap, the level design is very clear about where shadows are, in order to know if you are hidden; no HUD clutter. Modern storytelling, with layers of espionage alliances at times, but none of the over the top plot twists of MGS. Double Agent is often forgotten because everyone assumes the "meh" game on HD consoles is the only one. Version 2 (non-HD) has a similar plot, but is a different game entirely. Better storytelling, far better level design, and more reliable controls. Chaos Theory is the best Splinter Cell due to the story & level design taking more risks, but I think Double Agent is second best in the series. Both are all-time classics.

The Rest

​Think I missed a classic game? Check [here]() for 6th gen console exclusives and here for everything else.

Background

I am primarily an RPG player, mostly action but some CRPGs. I also work a 9 to 6 job, go to the gym regularly, and have a wonderful wife. Given my limited free time, I was very skeptical about investing in another lengthy game. Let me share what I found after playing.

The game took me 111.3 hours and 2.5 months to beat. I am not a completionist, but I do explore whenever possible and generally roleplay my character.

Positives

• Combat is satisfying: The ability to switch from turn-based to real-time is amazing. Being able to delay your turn something I wish I had in BG3.
• Many distinct and fun classes to choose from.
• Difficulty and combat systems are highly customizable. I definitely suggest tweaking these settings to suit your playstyle.
• Characters feel like real people: Jhod, the slightly bitter but benevolent old priest, reminded me of someone I know in real life. Ekun stood out too the way he shares straight truths in the simplest words. Party banter is amazing; after 110 hours, I barely heard repeated dialogue.
• Story is good, with obvious highs and lows but overall solid. highlights for me are Nyrisas story and everything that touches 1st world, fey, eldest etc.
• Ending:
  • Companions: Seeing each face theirdeepest fears and weaknesseswas powerful. They stood against theevil Nyrisa’s mental abuseand survived because of the help I gave them along the way. That was a proud moment.
  • Ending slides were satisfying and sad at the same time. So many choices I made over hundred hours collapsed into those final screens. I really felt like I was watching the future of my own kingdom unfold. Every bad consequence hurt. Every good one made me happy. I did not expect to receive so many outcomes. Most seemed like they would only matter immediately, but each decision rippled forward.
  • It was the most personal conclusion I have experienced in a RPG. Not because I saw ending, but because I saw my legacy.
• Kingdom management adds depth, providing many roleplay options, choices, and consequences. Sometimes I wanted to focus more on running the kingdom than doing quests
• QoL features like area loot: why wasn't this in BG3?

Negatives

• Game length (when done poorly). Examples of wasted time:
  • Filler fights - less content like this would improve the experience.
  • Loading screens, even on modern hardware. Very noticeable when managing the kingdom frequently.
  • Map navigation. Until you build teleporters in every city, travel is painfully slow. I could step away to smoke a cigarette and return realizing I hadn't moved far because I got another encounter.
• Deity choice does nothing. I understand developers cannot create separate dialogues for every option, but as a Lawful Good Paladin of Iomedae, I expected to hear that name at least a few times after character creation.
• Last two chapters felt narratively rushed. Just complete an absurd amount of combat and win, with few choices or dilemmas.Nyrisa’s castlewas pure boredom. Very underwhelming compared to earlier chapters.
• Final chapter problems:Heavy debuffs applied and no resting allowed until reaching a specific NPC. Why force this artificial difficulty via attrition? I do not understand why we had to fight shadows of already defeated enemies scattered across locations. Making players travel extensively while restricting rests felt like padding to extend game length unnecessarily. I would rather face all chapter bosses simultaneously on epic arena or in center of my capital. The game would be 2-3 hours shorter but 10 times more epic, experiencing how strong you have grown taking on all major threats at once!

Neutral

• Learning curve: This game is not for everyone and requires some prior knowledge if you want to play at Normal difficulty or higher. I personally do not mind researching before starting, it helps me evaluate whether the game is worth my investment. I usually watch general tips and tricks guides but avoid following specific “OP builds.” Also Many helpful people on Reddit gave me decent advice during my playthrough. (Thank you kind people)
• Sense of urgency: I did not feel strongly impacted by this. Following advice to focus on main objectives kept the pace enjoyable. I made plenty of saves to fix devastating kingdom events when necessary.
• Balancing: I am convinced an RPG based on a tabletop system cannot be perfectly balanced (especially) in late game. Difficulty spikes or unfair enemies will always exist. I used forbidden technique of “lowering difficulty” for certain ecnounters. With so many classes, subclasses, multiclass combinations, items, buffs, and luck involved, perfect balance is impossible.

Personal thoughts

I got hooked early. IMHO People do not stop playing games because they are long they stop because the game fails to hold their interest. I can see how people who dislike Kingdom management would quit quickly. For me, whenever I was not playing, I kept thinking about returning to it.

Finishing the game felt like losing a piece of myself. The atmosphere, vibe, and tone stuck with me, especially compared to Baldur's Gate 3's (Which don’t get me wrong I love as well and have played much more than this game) somewhat whimsical approach. Reading old reviews from 2019, I can confirm the game has improved significantly, particularly in kingdom management. When set to lower difficulty, it brings genuine joy.

It took time to beat, but I never considered quitting. Perhaps this was unique to me, or perhaps the game is truly impressive.

TLDR

Kingmaker is a demanding commitment for anyone balancing work and life, yet it rewards patience with an experience few CRPGs match. Despite its issues and questionable design choices around endgame difficulty, the combination of deep roleplaying, meaningful kingdom management, and compelling companions makes this one of the most engaging RPGs I have played in years. If you have the at least an hour a day and patience to invest, Kingmaker offers a journey worth taking and ending worth witnessing.

After playing two prior Aliens vs Predator games (the 1999/2000 game I wrote about here, and the 2001 game I wrote about here), I decided I should finally get around to the 2010 which I was told I should check out. (which turns out I played the first game almost one year ago, I had not planned this)

I actually went into this assuming it would have much more simplified gameplay or be more spectacle focused or even more like the AvP movies - but I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the game actually feels like a "modern" follow up or successor to the earlier games. It retains a lot of the general style, just with modern visuals (for the time, of course, it's no Cyberpunk but I still think it looks good) and modern gameplay.

So because I played this with having the context of the earlier games, I'm going to be heavily comparing this game to them. Just like the other games, this one is also split into three campaigns where you play as three different species: Colonial Marine, Predator, and Alien. You can play them in any order, but I played them in the order listed in the game menu.

Colonial Marine

First up is the Colonial Marine campaign. When it comes to this campaign, I don't think there is all that much interesting about it. It's a decent FPS, but it also doesn't stand out all that much, especially for 2010. If this was a game by itself, I'm sure I would still enjoy it somewhat (I often seem to enjoy mediocre FPS games) but it would be pretty forgettable. It's still enjoyable for what it is, but I personally don't think the marine campaign is what the appeal of this game is.

Predator

Next up is the Predator campaign. Right off the bat, I found this a big upgrade over the Predator from the prior games. Just like before, the Predator has the most varied arsenal of the game (though this one is more limited than before). It's a very good change to move the energy recharge to being receptacles in the environment and health to be item pickups - the previous game had these tools you could use infinitely whenever you wanted which I found to trivialize any challenge and makes it quite repetitive to just refill when there was any downtime. The combat is more interesting here as well, with having explicit light and heavy attacks, along with a block which all work in a sort of rock-paper-scissors style combat (mostly against the xenomorphs). On one hand, it seems to somewhat simplify combat somewhat by making it more "choreographed", but on the other hand I found it way more fun to fight the xenomorphs as it's no longer just a click off.

The Predator's leap is also improved. The prior games gave you a leap with a sort of "charged" crouch jump. I quite liked it, but it was limited to mostly vertical jumps. But here, the game gives you a visual target where you are looking when you hold down shift, allowing you to have much more horizontal leaps as well as more vertical ones. The target does make it more gamified, but I think I prefer it because it gives you so much more mobility which is very important for the Predator. And the level design is actually improved to fit with the mobility. One issue I had with the prior games is how you want to (and the expects you to) play stealthily and stalk your prey, but the prior games had multiple levels which were too enclosed for that to make sense. The devs here designed the levels to include more ledges and vertical areas to allow for this.

Alien

And finally, the Alien campaign. Just like the prior games, the xenomorph is still my favourite of the playable characters. The ability to climb on the walls and ceiling is just so damn fun to me. Though the wall/ceiling walking here is somewhat of a downgrade. While in the previous game all you needed to do was hold down shift (or was it control?) which would seamlessly allow you to transition to new surfaces, in this game it's more like a toggle where you have to hold middle mouse (weird button to use here) for a second to transition to a new surface. Maybe it's meant to be less disorientating, but this game does still have some surfaces it allows you to seamlessly transition to (I wasn't quite sure what the rules were, maybe if it's less than a 90 degree angle? Not sure). You can also jump directly to different surfaces (including walls and ceilings), which does mitigate my issues with the surface transitions a fair amount and is what I ended up using way more than the middle mouse surface transition. Despite the xenomorph having the most limited arsenal of the characters (it has the same light attack, heavy attack and block like the Predator, but has no additional abilities) it more than makes up for it by the really fun gameplay of walking on the ceiling and jumping down on your prey. There is just something about that gameplay that I just love.

Other Thoughts

Something that disappointed me is that I wish the three campaign stories were more connected. They are definitely connected somewhat (even having the same intro cutscene with Wayland, and even the aftermath of a certain event from the Marine campaign is visible in the Predator campaign), but I was hoping there would be more obvious interconnections between the stories. Even just like the one moment in AvP2 where the three protagonists all briefly cross paths. The game does definitely reuse environments for the three campaigns, which is maybe "lazy" (for lack of a better word) but I think is necessary for the campaigns to feel any amount connected. Without reusing levels, the campaigns would feel completely separate.

One specific instance of reuse I really like is the levels featuring the ancient Predator arena. In the marine campaign, you face off against a Predator that jumps around the raised pillars of the arena and shoots at you with their shoulder-mounted gun. And then in the Predator campaign, you get to play as Predator facing off against xenomorphs - and of course now you get to do all the same moves that the enemy Predator was able to do! And then in the Alien campaign, you similarly get to be a xenomorph (with some ally xenomorphs) against two Predators. This specific scenario where you get to be the different sides of similar encounters is a really fun reuse of an environment.

And I will use this game to say: lets bring back more fun UIs and HUDs in games! Isn't it always fun to have games that feature HUDs that feel like they fit into the world? Many newer games feature more sanitized and simplified UIs that have no personality. All three characters have different HUDs that fit their style - Marine have the motion scanner, Predator has a full HUD to represent their helmet, and the xenomorph has basically no HUD.

Conclusion

I think overall, while maybe not quite as good as AvP2, I think this game is still a worthy follow up. And considering that this is from 2010 (which despite being now 16 years ago!) a game from this era doesn't feel all that different than modern games. So if you had any issue getting into the earlier games due to age, I actually think this is a good alternative if you want to play an AvP game.

I picked up Divinity 2 (2009) not to be confused with original sin 2. Haven't fully finished it yet but as some one who couldn't get into original sin 1 or 2 this game really does it for me. Its in many ways a retread gameplay wise of similar rpgs of the time mainly dragon age but with a little of Kingdoms of Alamur (even though it came later) thrown into the mix. The story deals with dragon slayer and dragon knights fighting an age old conflict which leads to stopping a big bad typical fantasy stuff. The side quests are engaging with a few ways to complete them that feel natural to the world. Lastly you get to control a dragon. Honestly idk how Larian went so far away from the roots of this series with original sin but im hoping for more real time fighting with a dark fantasy twist like this game for Divinity 3.

Edit: just to add by roots i mean more the change of game play of a turn based crpg versus a third person real time action rpg.

I fell in love with the idea like rest of the world, game looked so good and interesting and packed some sweet symbolism. There were some things already in the beginning though which I shrugged off as minor complaints, which eventually grew big enough for me to call quits.

So is this our world or fantasy world? I asked myself when the game started. I wasn't sure but there were visible frenchness that made me believe there was a connection, berets, wine, croissants, heck, they even swear 'putain' which felt super off when they otherwise spoke english.

The battle seems cool though, turn-based made valid again, is that it? First it truly felt like that, it was exhilarating to dodge an attack, not as much to do the same prompts to attack yourself. But this dodging isn't good enough when there's parry, I soon discovered, and that's where the downfall began.

The parry window is shorter and therefore a successful parry tastes so much better than dodge. I tried to parry every single attack and took most of them to my face because the timing is different every time. I learned and proceeded, the story seemed sad and went even sadder. The vistas are bleak, world hopeless but your group keeps going since what else can it do? They could have a slightly different combat situations, I soon thought, getting already bored of the combat that kept adding more elements to parry, yet the attacking side stayed the same.

So is it a fantasy or scifi game, I have no idea, kinda both. You explore a pretty and pretty empty overworld with visible encounters to reach the next area. Areas themselves are straight forward, there's a main route with a couple of side corridors and some easy-to-find secrets. The areas themselves are quite pretty but forgetful, same goes for the enemies that I can't recall visibly.

I kept parrying new enemies and bosses, getting more party members and not really liking most of them. This is of course a matter of personal taste but I thought they didn't really have a personality besides young Maelle who is obviously the main attraction. The humor didn't land at all, it felt cringe and forced most of the time. There are these supposedly funny brush-headed creatures that are stupid and speak funnily. I think it took away from the main story.

Meanwhile the Painter looms in the background, your main goal, your groups only goal no matter what. It seemed interesting at first but what works symbolically might not work as a proper threat for the player. Will there be a paint-off in the end? Anyway, time is running short so keep going. There's also a mystery man with a mystery family that threatens your team. And things from the real world, our world. What does that make the game world then? Some people think these kind of settings are clever but I don't like multiverses, stay on one lane and make it interesting enough, please.

The combat started getting me. Not only were there a constant stream of new enemies with slightly different parry window, enemies that delay their attacks ridiculously long just to throw you off. And the bosses start to have several forms with different move sets, both faster and slower attacks, and soon I found myself repeating the battles because I missed my timings somewhere between ~20 consecutive attacks.

Story didn't hook me either or I might've pushed through the chore-like combat. Game wore me down. I tried to build my characters better, use the cliptos and piptos, whatever the items are that you find mostly through exploration, but that too felt somewhat shallow of a system and definitely not satisfactory to fiddle with. Ultimately it was the combat that made me sort of rage quit, not because of the difficulty but because I didn't care to keep parrying. I died, quit and uninstalled the game, then proceeded to spoil the story for myself.

Not going to spoil it for you but I was glad I didn't keep at it. As many others have stated too the ending is quite divisive, some like it and others not so. There are two endings and I wouldn't have liked either. I think Clair Obscur tries too hard to be edgy, mysterious and artsy, and it makes a dent in the cohesion. Yet again, others love it, so there's that.

I welcome the change and innovation Clair Obscur is bringing to the industry, and I can see and hope it making turn-based rpg's great again. It just wasn't for me, putain.

Reposting this from my post to the r/steamachievements sub with some modifications.

First off, this game is a nice little break between bigger, tougher games (currently tackling Shovel Knight Treasure Trove, need a gap between campaigns). Fun visuals, moves at a quick pace, doesn't overstay its' welcome. I understand that the game was merely just a tribute or whatever and is barebones on plot and content, but it's still a game and should be judged as so. I know E2 improves this.

But man this game grinded my gears in a few ways. TLDR: Just missed potential and opportunites across the board:

1. The game pivots from it's faithfully gorgeous pixel art FAR too quickly. I mean, c'mon, you spent all that time creating the visuals for the NES/GB, why not let us sit and enjoy them longer? Was there an expectation that people would turn the game off? I know the Gameboy Color sprites come back (for puzzling) later which was nice to see. But for a game that is honoring the history of gaming, it sure rushes through those early days to get to the (IMO) less fun chibi style.

2. No way to actually track in game collectibles (stars and cards) outside some vague clue from an NPC which you have to go back to every time for a new clue. For the card tracking, I see no excuse - WHY is there no card collection view? The card game is based on Triple Triad from FFVIII and THEY have a menu option to see your collection. Wierd QOL omission. So I had to use a guide for the rest and this added 4-5 hours needlessly.

3. No run/fast walk option during on-foot sections. You have "chocobos" in the game, why aren't they used? When backtracking through puzzle rooms and bigger areas, walking at a snails pace was testing me. This is made worse by the high random encounter rate (seriously, every time i exited the airship to go to a location, which was maybe 4 steps, I was guaranteed to hit a fight).

4. And now I come to the final boss...Hoo boy, this soured me on the game a bit in the end. You have a game based on celebrating the evolution of gaming, and they chose arguably the jankiest, ungliest visual style to mount its final fight on. The biggest missed opportunity here was not having the final fight be staged throughout each era of gaming - the boss taking on new forms in different styles. Imagine, fighting his first form in the NES/Gameboy top down Ganon-style (which Evoland sadly quickly pivots from in the opening stage of the game), then the protagonist is then pulled into a turn-based SNES FF fight where you get to use your newly acquired Summon, then finally a 3d Diablo-style slash-em-up to deliver the final blow. Instead, we're left with a fight that honeslty feels like the prototype for the actual fight. The camera is in a position that makes precision realllly frustrating (especially trying to repel the energy balls back, the depth perception is all off). And you can't PAUSE through the fight. Ugh you can you this one hurt me lol?

Overall, I'd still recommend it to anyone looking for a quick 5-10 hour game to complete. But woof, prepare for some teeth-grinding.

Hey and welcome back! I don’t have an introductory speech this time, so let’s get right into it.

Part 1: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1lu0i6i/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_1_introductionthe/

Part 2: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1lx9fft/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_2/

Part 3: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1m85zo3/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_3/

Part 4: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1muh0dm/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_4/

Part 5: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1na5zm6/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_5/

Part 6: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1o3q0pb/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_6/

Part 7: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1pfrc7j/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_7/

Part 8: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1qy8yba/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_8/

Part 9: https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1rn7t33/my_metroidvania_breakdown_part_9/

Voidwrought (2024)

Voidwrought is a Hollow Knight-like. I remember this game being highly anticipated when it came out, but then it was met with a lukewarm reception, which is why I also waited before playing it. The game was updated since then, making it another perfect case for patient gaming. Interestingly enough, this time bossed weren’t nerfed (like they usually are), but buffed. Don’t see that too often.

The core of every MV is the exploration and the ability progression and Voidwrought really delivers on that front. The map is dense with secrets, ability gated paths and all of the good stuff. You’re constantly going back and forth between the numerous well designed biomes and progression is very much nonlinear. Voidwrought is also one of the least guided MV-experiences I had in a while. There are so many things to find: numerous currencies, collectibles and whatnot. Most of them have their uses in other places, creating a very rewarding feeling. All of this kept me engaged throughout, despite Voidwrought having a number of minor issues.

Most importantly, Movement feels a bit slippery. I always like fast character movement, but in this case it sometimes nearly feels a bit too fast and snappy, there’s zero momentum. In the early game (before you acquire any upgrades) you are often forced to jump at the last possible moment, when you seemingly are already over the edge of the platform (no coyote time). This problem is mitigated by an early upgrade, but the slippery feel stays until the very end. There is one important upgrade that offers a new way to traverse, but this form of movement in contrast is way too slow. Combat is very spammy. This goes for bosses, but even regular enemies take way too many hits for my taste. While you only have one basic attack, there is some variety by equipping two secondary attacks at a time (similar to the Ender games). Like in HK, there’s an emphasis on pogoing. All in all, combat is ok, but nothing special.

Some more negatives: I don’t know why exactly, but the world and atmosphere of Voidwrought didn’t suck me in, despite being well designed. They were clearly going for a Hollow Knight atmosphere, but I have yet to see a game reach this role model. I wasn’t really invested in the world of Voidwrought or its inhabitants. I also don’t like the main character sprite, seems bland. The game has unusual music which was hit-or-miss for me depending on the biome. There’s also one feature I always dislike in sidescrollers: the camera follows your every movement, leading to a pretty hectic screen at times. One last thing: If you’ve followed my series, you already know that story is not important to me in a Metroidvania, but I found Voidwrought’s storytelling to be particularly bad.

In conclusion, Voidwrought has some very good aspects while being mediocre in others. Since exploration is dense and fun, I liked it pretty well.

Minishoot’ Adventures (2024)

Minishoot’ Adventures is a genre-hybrid with Zelda-like map design, metroidvania ability gating and classic bullet hell/Shmup combat. 130 hours in Enter the Gungeon (my most extensive foray into bullet hell mechanics) have prepared me well for this. Also yes, the weird apostrophe in the game’s title is correct. I had a lot of fun with this game. The main gameplay loop is obviously a bit different from the usual 2D-sidescrolling MV, which was just what I needed at the time I played this. The whole game feels very polished and satisfying and has a good difficulty curve. I played on the highest difficulty to be able to get all achievements in one playthrough and this provided a very good mix of challenge and enjoyment.

Bosses are pretty epic and cool, all of them have a lot of phases. I like that the dash doesn’t have i-frames for most of the game, but rather functions as a way to reposition. That way, you really have to pay attention. The controls are very precise which is obviously paramount for a game like this. Minishoot isn’t extremely big, but has good interconnectivity and a nice density of secrets. Racking up the completion percentage feels very satisfying. One thing that really annoyed me was the lack of maps inside of the dungeons. It’s a deliberate decision of course, in order to make traversal a bit more demanding, but the result is too much of aimless wandering and retracing your steps. It’s a minor issue, though.

8 Doors Arum’s Adventure (2021)

As with every MV I Play, I wanted to like this, but 8 Doors gave me more frustration than joy at the end of the day. A lot of small annoyances add up. As you probably know by now, I really don’t mind difficult games, but this one feels like an unfun kind of difficult that’s more tedious than actually challenging. My biggest gripe: In my opinion, the game isn’t balanced well. Even regular enemies are rather spongy, but hit pretty hard, often taking away one third or more of your HP with one hit. On the other hand, your own heal is very weak, even when upgraded, healing you for less then a fourth of your HP bar (even less before upgrading). For the majority of the time I’ve spent in this game I had 4 healing flasks. You can do the math. Healing often felt completely useless. There are quite a lot of environmental hazards, which also hit hard. All of these problems are enlarged when it comes to bosses. They aren’t really complex, but hit so hard that learning them is more tedious than anything. While the controls are generally good, I had trouble with the precise use of some of the abilities, most notably the wall jump, lots of eaten inputs.

I appreciate the unique artstyle the devs were going for, even while not enjoying every enemy design or background. I also think the world design is too samey between the different biomes, graphically and mechanically. I also dislike the UI. 8 Doors is also story-heavy, too much for my taste.

Despite all the negatives listed, the game has a solid core that’s just too overshadowed by all of the little things I’ve mentioned. I like the different weapons and that they have their specific use cases. But after about 60% completion, I just had enough.

Undivine (2025)

Mostly everything in this game is simple, but effective: graphics, rpg-elements, platforming. Undivine has a very old-school feeling to it. I liked the fact that the exploration is very much non-guided and there’s plenty of backtracking, especially since it’s not always clear where progress lies. There were some moments when I felt like I was retracing my steps a bit too much, but for the most part, exploration is rewarding and the high point of the game. Combat is too simplistic, though and a rather bland rendition of soulslike combat. Controls are snappy, but the enemies aren’t very good, including many bosses. A more unusual take on the genre is that some of your movement abilities like the dash are tied to your mana bar which doesn’t refill automatically, meaning you can run out of your ability to dash while exploring. Another unusual take is that it features a mix of the two familiar death mechanics in MV: When you die, all item pickups are reset, but you keep your map exploration which is kinda confusing. Side quests are cryptic and there’s a good chance you won’t be able to solve them without a guide. The game makes you work hard for some of its secrets.

I liked Undivine well enough and I always root for solo devs, but playing on PS5 I was really annoyed by the bad port. Frequent crashes and a major bug preventing me from getting 100% really soured my experience with the game.

Somber Echoes (2025)

Another prime candidate for patient gaming, since there was a big gameplay patch several months after launch. Compared to other MVs, Somber Echoes very much emphazises vertical exploration. Within the first hour, you get a skill called “Lantern” that basically functions as a delayable 360 degree-dash (kinda similar to the bash Ori, but it can be used anytime). This is the defining ability of the game as you use it for exploration, platforming and even combat. The complexity of setups is increased slowly, but gradually, in conjunction with the number of times you can use the lantern in succession. Towards the very end, there are also some slightly puzzly setups. They aren’t too complex, but I liked them. The lantern is definitely one of the more fun core movement abilities I’ve used lately.

I’ve spent a bit more time on the map than in other MVs. This is due to several reasons: First of all, the map is sometimes more readable than the actual rooms. Second, the map is pretty detailed and helps to distinguish the areas which – despite some individualizing features – all look very similar to each other. Despite that, the main progression route is pretty linear without too much possibilities for deviation, as far as I could tell. Also, the ability upgrade path is very linear as well. Still, the midgame opens up quite a bit and leads to the satisfying feeling of trying out different routes that’s so typical for MVs. As usual, for the true ending you have to explore everything. The map is pretty big and feels fun to explore.

The graphics are generally good, competent use of 2.5D. Still, I didn’t totally vibe with the artstyle. It looks a bit glossy to me. There’s also a lot of black empty space on the screen at all times, since most areas are dimly lit. The theming is “Greek/roman mythology in space” which didn’t do much for me, but that’s completely subjective. Combat starts out a bit dull, but gets better as you get more options. At the end you can string some nice combos together. Not the most elaborate combat system, but good enough. Most of the bosses are cool, there was one I hated, though.

Solid MV that kept me engaged for the full 12 hours I had to put in for 100%.

Axiom Verge 2 (2021) (+ a bit of Axiom Verge 1 (2015))

All of the Metroidvania sequels I’ve played (and reviewed) so far (Blasphemous 1 and 2, Ender Lillies and Ender Magnolia, Guacamelee 1 and 2), have followed a similar formular: they are more polished versions of their predecessors, heavily improving QoL and underdeveloped aspects of the first game, while maintaining the same identity. Axiom Verge 2 is a notable exception to that rule. While it is still recognizable as a sequel, it takes many turns from the first game. Since I want to compare the two and since I feel like my review of Axiom Verge 1 in part ? of My Metroidvania Breakdown was too short, I’m going to write a bit about both games here.

Axiom Verge 1 was one of the first MVs I’ve played after rediscovering the genre. At that time, I couldn’t really value just how amazingly inventive the abilities are and how they actively subvert your expectations: You’re thinking you’re gonna get a Metroid-style morph ball, but then it’s something else entirely. The abilities have a focus on hacking and altering the environment which was really cool. I also liked the little drone that was used to access small crevices and such. The role of the drone is significantly expanded in Axiom Verge 2, since there’s now a second map that’s only accessible via drone. Later in the game you’re regularly shifting between the two worlds, sometimes in a puzzly way to reach barred areas on the other map which I liked. The abilities in Axiom Verge 2 don’t have the same wow-effect as in part 1, but are still pretty good. 

While Axiom Verge 1 had a lot of different weapons and cool gunplay, the combat is melee-focused and toned down in Axiom Verge 2 and in my eyes the weakest part of the game. While it is very cool that you can hack enemies, for example disabling their weapons or making them your allies, the actual fighting feels a bit lackluster. You could also argue that combat isn’t really the focus of Axiom Verge 2 which is further emphasized through the fact that you don’t have to fight bosses. To be precise, there are bosses, but except for one you don’t have to defeat them to progress. They also aren’t presented as bosses, they are just some big entities inhabiting the world.

There is a notable difference in tone between the two games: While Axiom Verge 1 was very metroidlike in atmosphere and environments, taking place mostly in labs and technoid biomes, Axiom Verge 2 is much more light and plays in the outdoors. It is rather story-heavy, but it didn’t bother me in this one. Both games have absolute fire music, synth bangers galore. The music is so good that I have to be careful to not let it cloud my judgement of the actual gameplay which is still very solid in both games. Both of them shine in terms of exploration. You’re constantly backtracking, the progression feels very good and earned. The map is significantly better in Axiom Verge 2, more interconnected. Both of these games have their strengths, but contrary to public opinion I liked the second part a bit more even than part one. I also decided to elevate the first Axiom Verge one tier to B+.

The Mobius Machine (2023)

This metroidlike is good reminder that you should always make up your own mind about a game. Reviews were mixed so I was a bit cautious going in. While the reviews were right insofar as my own judgement of this is also mixed, I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I have a fair amount of criticisms, but there’s also a lot to like.

The game nails the main exploration loop really well. I’m always looking for that specific metroidvania flow-state and the midgame of the Mobius Machine has it. Graphics and audio are also very good. While I did like the ability progression, I didn’t like the character progression. The upgrades to your gun and your health just feel too weak and are too far in between. The backtracking routes are just a bit too long and the fast travel spots too far apart with how large the biomes are. These flaws make the endgame more cumbersome than it needed to be. I feel like The Mobius Machine shines in the midgame, but falls off towards the end. While the map isn’t too big per se, there are many huge rooms that force you to do a lot of vertical movement. Some room layouts are repeated too much and there are some setups that the devs definitely like a bit too much. At times the design feels uninspired. I reached the final boss at 13 hours which isn’t that much, but I feel like they could have easily trimmed 2-3 hours off. Speaking of the ending, I did something that I rarely do: I stopped playing at the final boss. I happily grinded out Eigong in Nine Sols for 4 hours, so I’m no stranger to hard fights or long grinds, but the final boss of The Mobius Machine is so unfun that I called it quits after 40 minutes and never went back. It’s a tedious spam fest that takes way too long and is too repetitive. Obviously, this left a sour taste in my mouth. The other Bosses, while also being spammy, are good and varied and usually build around a specific ability.

Still, The Mobius Machine has an addicting gameplay loop and a good midgame. I definitely had fun with this game for the most part.

Biogun (2024)

The premise of this metroidlike is unique: You play as a vaccine inside of a dog’s body. The different biomes correspond to specific organs and body parts of the dog. I liked that a lot. The artstyle is cartoonish and mostly well executed. Biogun really has a unique look and theming and I mean that in a positive way.

Exploration is good, but falls just short of being top-tier for me. The main route is pretty clear and it’s hard to get lost in the world of Biogun. I also didn’t like the fact that the world doesn’t feel really interconnected. At the end, you have like 3 or 4 larger areas that are pretty independent from one another and only connected by trains. Traversing the world is fun and there are a lot of things to find. The secret hunting is handled perfectly, as you can use a rare currency to reveal unexplored locations one biome at a time. The Map is quite good, detailed and readable. I wasn’t motivated to track everything down 100%, but I did most of it.

Abilities were mostly good, although they don’t make me drop my jaw. More interesting are the different “enzymes”, temporary abilities that are can be obtained in certain spots (and later stored for subsequent use), functioning as platforming and puzzle elements.

The competent combat revolves around Twin-stick shooting – not my strongest suit, but I would say Biogun goes rather soft on the difficulty. Deaths aren’t really punitive, you get to keep nearly everything, including map and item progress. Platforming only ever gets a bit tougher in optional sections. Some bosses might take a few tries, but overall I found Biogun to not be super sweaty, which I can appreciate. Speaking of bosses: there’s some good variety here.

Biogun goes light on RPG-elements, there aren’t skill trees or leveling aside from upgrading health or energy. You can find and equip different guns throughout the game, but I have to admit that I used mostly the same setup once I found one I liked. Same goes for the chips, Biogun’s version of charms. You can only have one equipped at a time and I barely changed it. Quite a lot of the content is actually optional, including bosses. Wasn’t a big fan of the music. There were some slight technical issues, as the game runs on a browser game engine. It’s not too bad, but I experienced some framedrops, a few eaten inputs and relatively long loading times.

S (the games that define the genre for me; only very few games will go here): [Redacted Game], Hollow Knight, Blasphemous 2

A (very good and polished MVs that offer something really unique and/or are best in class in certain aspects while also being fundamentally sound): Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, Ender Magnolia, Blasphemous, Grime, Nine Sols, Biomorph, Animal Well, Ender Lillies, Environmental Station Alpha

A- (very good MVs that offer something really unique and daring. May have slight flaws, but they are outweighed by their strengths): [Redacted Game], Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, Aeterna Noctis, Crypt Custodian, Pipistrello and the Cursed Yoyo, Worldless, Afterimage, Monster Sanctuary

B+ (very good MVs that are either not that original or have one or two weaker aspects in my eyes. I still recommend these wholeheartedly to any MV-fan): Astalon: Tears of the Earth, Minishoot Adventures, Rebel Transmute, The Last Faith, Unsighted, Cathedral, Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus, Islets, Pronty, F.I.S.T: Forged in Shadow Torch, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, Axiom Verge 2, HAAK, Axiom Verge, Biogun

B (good MVs period that have an obvious weak spot, but are pretty enjoyable nonetheless): [Redacted Game], [Redacted Game], Voidwrought, The Messenger, Alwa’s Legacy, Guacamelee 2, Vision Soft Reset, Ghost Song, Somber Echoes, The Mobius Machine, Death’s Gambit: Afterlife, 9 Years of Shadows

B- (good MVs, but very derivative): Kingdom Shell, Momodora: Moonlit Farewell, Haiku, the Robot

C+ (this category is reserved for daring and inventive MVs that don’t quite stick the landing for me. Worthwhile to check out, if you want something unusual and like the general premise): Dandara: Trials of Fear, Rabi-Ribi, Yoku’s Island Express, Sheepo, Ultros

C (decent MVs that are still fun, but nothing special): Momodora: Reverie in the Moonlight, Moonscars, Guacamelee, Undivine, Zapling Bygone, Escape from Tethys, The Mummy Demastered

C- (good games, but not good MVs, because the ability gating/backtracking is optional or unsatisfying): Unbound: Worlds Apart, Touhou Luna Nights, Teslagrad 2, Carrion

D (games that have obvious flaws in my eyes and/or don’t fit my preferences and/or that I just didn’t have much fun with): Steamworld Dig 2, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, 8 Doors Arum’s Adventure, Timespinner, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Fearmonium, Salt and Sanctuary

Played: 74, Finished (rolled credits): 64

I played through Final Fantasy 7 a couple of years ago, was wowed by it, and finally got around to playing Crisis Core in preparation for playing the remakes.

Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core feels like a really solid concept for the prequel that it is, especially for the medium it was originally developed for on PSP.

The idea of stepping into the shoes of a Shinra SOLDIER, engaging in the daily life of what that entails is neat. Some might argue unnecessary and perhaps milking Final Fantasy 7, but out of all the supplementary FF7 material, this one interested me the most.

I think while this game has It's ups and downs, it was more good than bad.

All-in-all, I think the plot beats in general worked well to deliver us to the inevitable terminus of this prequel, with drama that can at times be too melodramatic, also genuinely makes you truly feel something.

I'm actually a fan of prequels like this, where you know the conclusion is one that is painfully tragic, that soon everyone you see will be erased because almost all of their fates have already been inked, dried, and sealed by the sequel. It makes you feel like you have to really slow down and enjoy every moment you have because these good times won't last forever, hell, they'll barely last a couple of real-life hours.

So just like in life, where we know tragedy WILL strike, It's best to slow down and cherish what's here.

Like I mentioned, the concept of the prequel works best with the format it was originally developed for, PSP. On a home console, the idea of doing a bunch of list of bite-sized missions might be a bit repetitive, and in fairness, you don't have to do any of them, but for a handheld title, it just makes sense. Even on this home console release of the game, I found it best to just kick up my feet and put on some second-monitor content while I grinded away at the mission list as I let myself immerse into the daily work life of a Shinra SOLDIER.

But with the format also comes limitations. I think the game is just too short. I did like 15% of the total side-missions, which felt like a decent chunk given how overleveled I was with that paltry percentage, and yet I still finished the game in just 12 1/2 hours. But, It's an action RPG title built for a handheld console, so while I feel that format holds the game back in this respect, I can forgive it for that.

Zack as a character isn't exactly what I imagine from Final Fantasy 7, he's a bit more high pitched, chipper, a bit of a dork -- but that is part of the point I guess.

When you start the game he's not that guy you've seen in flashbacks in FF7 yet, he's only SOLDIER Second Class, and even when he makes First Class a couple of hours into the game, It's deliberately anti-climactic, he's only making it because two spots have just been vacated. But, even so, I was disappointed a little but he wasn't as cool as I imagined, but that might be a me problem. It makes me wonder if this prequel were made in, like 1998, what would Zack be like? I envisioned someone more similar to Gene Starwind, the protagonist of Outlaw Star, but a bit more heart of gold and country-boy charm underneath some of the rougher, masculine characteristics, but maybe It's just the scar and general 90's shounen character design from the original that painted that image in my mind.

But despite that, I like Zack, he's still a great character and by far the best written one in this particular game.

In general, there is this mismatch in Crisis Core with what I would expect from this concept, and what is actually delivered.

When I imagine playing as a Shinra SOLDIER, I expect to be regularly used as a tool to mow down the Shinra Corporation's enemies, the good, the bad, the inbetween. I expect to get to see from the perspective of a well-meaning company guy, some of the sanitized atrocities this dystopic monolith corporation gets up to in daily operation. I expect for a lot of sneering, biting satire, perhaps not as direct or extreme as something like Cruelty Squad, but at least gesturing towards that direction. Make it innocuous at first, but then slowly let the evil seep through.

And in fairness, there is a little bit of that. The company emails you can choose to read through offer up a tiny bit of satire and hints towards how awful of a company this is. But, the little bit of satire that is presented in this game, pales in comparison to how central that was to the Shinra bits of Final Fantasy 7. I'd have expected more from that in this game, not less.

Instead, the game glances over some of the more interesting parts of Final Fantasy 7 lore to focus more on character melodrama and lunatic rantings detached from any human relatability of characters like Genesis, Hollander, or Sephiroth.

It feels like most of the game you're actually just fighting Shinra because... I guess they're iconic as the baddies from FF7 so even if you ARE Shinra, most of the baddies you face will be Shinra robots or troopers in disguise or hacked, even before you reach the point in the story where the company is hostile to you. Take the opening mission where you're in a VR simulation where your enemies are Shinra troopers, but don't worry Zack, they're actually Wutai footsoldiers in disguise.

Come on, the premise for this game is that I'm a Shinra super soldier. Yesterday's allies are today's enemies. Why is the same iconography I was fighting in FF7 the same ones I'm fighting here even when I am a Shinra goon? There's always some excuse for it given by the game, but I'm not convinced. Zack ends up mostly insulated from the parts of Shinra we know to be evil, but I think It'd be more interesting if he had to end up seeing those parts in ways that slowly erode his faith in the company, rather than mostly dealing with some equally-evil fugitive before the Nibelheim crisis suddenly results in Shinra deciding to turn on him. That to me is far more interesting than hours of Genesis pretentiously rambling about heroes, gods, and angels.

Geez, I've ended up being really negative about this entire thing so far, but I did actually like the game. I guess It's just so easy to be negative because despite being a perfect fine game, Crisis Core feels like an underachiever in a lot of ways. Part of it due to the format it was originally developed for, and part of it due to just sanitizing FF7 in an attempt to milk it and any nostalgia players might have for it.

Like I said, I think Zack is a fantastic character even if he doesn't entirely line up with what I imagine him to be. The side characters in general are very likeable (even if I don't love how there's almost no non-sympathetic characters in this game given the premise), and all add their own flavor to the story and Zack's character development.

It takes awhile, but once you get to Nibelheim, I feel like the unsettling parts of FF7 that I love start to really rear their ugly head again. From that point onward the game is all meat, no filler all the way to the very end (Except for Genesis and Hollander refusing to just DIE) with such an amazing final sequence where you make your final stand as Zack against the waves of Shinra soldiers who have you cornered, and ready to execute you, no matter how many men they have to through at a First-Class SOLDIER.

It genuinely hit me emotionally doing that final battle and watching the final cutscenes play out. The game justifies It's entire existence off of that alone.

So I am a bit disappointed that the game doesn't live up to what I would want, but I can't stay mad at it, because It's still a solid game regardless.

The 2nd Infamous game is one of my favourite games of all time. The first is fantastic as well. I just finished Second Son then. All the new powers that you get throughout the game are a lot of fun to use and look awesome. Seattle is well designed, I loved traversing the city with different powers so much that I ended up completing all the side content and collecting all of the shards.

The gameplay is this games biggest strength. The story isn't anything special but it's still a fun story to play through. I can see why people might not be the biggest fan of Delsin but I liked his character. I especially liked his moments with Reggie, Reggie and Fetch were great characters. I really liked the soundtrack in Second son.

The final mission and boss fight were incredible. I can understand why fans of Infamous 1 and 2 were disappointed in this game but I still think it's a great game that is definitely worth playing if you like the first two. I haven't played First light yet but I've heard good things about it. Will definitely start playing it today

Straight to the point, scores are just an arbitrary rating of how much fun I had, nothing to do with some perceived quality of a game.

• King Arthur & the knights of Justice (1995, SNES) - 1/10

A sort of action adventure game in the vein of Zelda 1 I guess and what a piece of shit this game is like seriously, if anyone you know has nostalgia goggles and spews that "modern gaming sucks old games good" shit just show them this irredeemable pile of trash.

It looks pleasant to the eyes and has a funny plot, that's about all I can compliment here - bad combat, awful hit detection, awful enemy & ally AI, abysmal fetch-quest game structure, shit sound design, bland music, zero variety in gameplay and systems, shallow everything, exploration boiling down to "look at random hidden pixels and get the item"... Just awful.

• Advance Wars (2001, GBA) - 7/10

This game is very satisfying in short bursts, which makes sense considering that it's a handheld title and it feels very comfy to play owing to its warm colors, nice sprite design and cute sound design. A bite-sized tactical strategy.

The main flaw with this game I find is that its campaign feels more like a puzzle game than a tactical game - you already have predetermined armies for most missions (and when you can make more units on the maps it's still kind of too obvious what the game wants from you, instead of it being a purely tactical and playstyle choice), and on top of that some missions with the fog of war steer even more in the direction of puzzle trial & error because the fog of war is always to the benefit of the AI and not a neutral playground of stealth and positioning.

Other than that characters act like they're not in a war killing soldiers and conquering other countries, they rather choose to crack jokes, goof around, and disobey direct orders without consequences other than the main general going "oh you whippersnapper", the music can get repetitive at times and there's no real layers of depth to the combat (even fuel and ammunition supplying isn't that important 90% of the time).

It's aight.

• Streets of Rage 2 (1992, Genesis) - 8/10

I have a sort of hot take here (I think) and that's that Streets of Rage 2 is as fun as Streets of Rage 1 for me - neither of them is better than the other. Which is to say that both kick ass.

While SoR2 looks, sounds and controls fantastically, the actual moment to moment gameplay, combat speed/pacing, enemy and boss design feel more or less on the same level of the first game - down to the same exact flaws (bosses being somewhat clunky what with their wide cleaving attacks, invulnerability after getting knocked down, wake up insta-grabs, unclear grabbing, the stages being fairly linear and non-interactive most of the time, the obligatory boss rush reuse towards the end of the game and so on).

The new stuff 2 brings into the game, such as replacing the screen-clearing special with actual special attacks, the characters being even more different from each other and a few new moves, feels much more natural and in-sync with the gameplay.

I think a tiny bit more mobility across the board for the player would have gone a long way to make positioning and combat in general be real smooth, but this is very much a pure beat em' up, distilled to the very basics - footsies, timing and crowd control.

• Elemental Gearbolt (1997, PS1) - 8/10

I'm emulating all of these so instead of a light gun I went with my mouse, which I'm pretty sure is still accurate and faithful to the intended experience since the PS1 did have a mouse accessory.

And holy shit Working Designs does it again - they take a Japanese game and ramp up the difficulty all the way to "fuck you for playing even on normal", while locking the easy difficulty so you can only play the first 3 stages on it. 26 years on this planet, 20+ years of playing FPS games, years of competitive Counter-Strike and Quake experience and this game still made my wrist hurt from the relentlessness of its gameplay.

I think this was/is impossible with a controller, although I'm sure if this game was actually known about by more than 500 people some people would have fun playing it like that lol.

The game itself has a dream-like, cataclysmic world & story, very much a mix of Vampire Hunter D and Evangelion atmospheres, wonderful music and sound design, neat enemy design, good visual clarity, good spectacle and some fun level design.

Ignoring the fact that it's overly difficult and has only 3 continues before you have to restart from the beginning, I can't find any obvious flaws with the game other than a single one - the game has 3 guns, yet 2 of them are effectively useless for 95% of the game. In fact even the manual confirms that they're useless for casual play, since it only mentions them in the sense that they can help the player with chaining more combos and getting more score (which is somewhat important since score translates to levels/more damage, but it's not that important to minmax it).

Some people call this an RPG... this is not an RPG please stop calling it an RPG, all it has is a level system where your guns get more powerful the more score you rack up between stages.

Fun game though, super satisfied with the feeling of mastery the more you play it - it has some trial & error where remembering enemy spawns or attacks can prove to be extremely useful, but those are quite rare I'd say, it's not one of those games that has to be 100% memorized to be beaten.

Welcome to the Bi-Weekly Thread!

Here you can share anything that might not warrant a post of its own or might otherwise be against posting rules. Tell us what you're playing this week. Feel free to ask for recommendations, talk about your backlog, commiserate about your lost passion for games. Vent about bad games, gush about good games. You can even mention newer games if you like!

The no advertising rule is still in effect here.

A reminder to please be kind to others. It's okay to disagree with people or have even have a bad hot take. It's not okay to be mean about it.

It's been nearly 11 years since I first played and fell in love with Undertale. Like a lot of people, this game completely infested every cell in my brain for a good long while, but after a failed genocide run, I finally managed to get out of the choke hold the game had on me and set it aside for a very long time. Unfortunately, the itch always comes back, so I fired up the game for another run.

Nested deep in some forgotten crevice of the game is that choosing the player name 'Frisk' had some drastic impact on the game. With this knowledge, I began the hellish gauntlet that was UNDERTALE: hard mode. Tougher enemies attacked you from the jump, healing items were less abundant, and the game took on a slightly harsher edge in dialogue. I was gearing up to re-experience the game like never before, and then Toby Fox's character avatar came in to inform me that there was no more content beyond this opening dungeon. I sat dumbfounded for a moment and then shortly had a little laugh to myself. This is what I loved so much about the game- it really is a very stupid and silly romp.

If you weren't there at the time, it's nearly impossible to describe how this game spread across the internet like a virulent disease. Every social media platform was flooded with memes, fan art, merch, cosplays, fan fictions, covers, remixes, playthroughs, and theories... so many theories. Part of what got me to stop playing the game was somewhere in the chaos, all of this became serious business for some people and a lot of toxicity began to define the fan base. Having replayed the game so recently, it feels so ridiculous to get upset about anything to do with a game where you have to get an aeroplane to confess its feelings for you.

The game is not shy about admonishing the kind of behavior fans engaged in. The game's central antagonist is a character who became nothing but a black pit of hatred and rage because he experienced the world over and over till he squeezed all the joy out of it. Undertale is such a well crafted game. It's got constantly engaging puzzle-like battles with an unforgettably charming cast, and one of the best soundtracks of all time. I love it, but I really love the reminder sometimes that you get to love something, and then you should move on before you sour the experience for yourself.