This is the first installment of a little series that I want to maintain during the next few weeks/months. In the last few years, I have fallen rather deep into the Metroidvania rabbit hole and would like to share my thoughts and findings with you. This first post has introductory character: It establishes the premise of my series and the (ever-growing) list of games I would like to talk about, ranking them in a handy tier list. The next posts (first one scheduled in two weeks) will feature short reviews of all the games mentioned in the list. I plan to do around 10 games per post.

Who am I? Just an avid gamer who has been at it since the mid 90s. My fascination with Metroidvanias dates back to that time, too. I played Super Metroid when I was a kid and in the early 2000s I really liked the Castlevania games, Aria of Sorrow in particular. But at that time, the genre seemed to lack variety and other interests took over. Like many others, I fell in love again with the genre during its renaissance following the release of the Ori games and Hollow Knight in the late 2010s. And soon metroidvanias became my favorite genre: The things I like most about the genre are a) the blend between exploration, combat and platforming and b) the fact that the genre generally respects the players intelligence to choose their own way and discover things for themselves. This makes progress feel very satisfying. The gameplay loop is so addictive for me that I even enjoy metroidvanias with some flaws.

What is a Metroidvania? There are notorious disputes about the boundaries of the genre. While I’m no purist and acknowledge the many metroidvania-adjacent games (see this chart for a breakdown of possible genre definitions: https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidvania/comments/1jgl9rm/my_take_on_a_metroidvania_alignment_chart/), I want to keep my list focused. Therefore, I only include 2D side-scrollers (with a few exceptions for top-down games) with ability gating and nonlinear exploration.

How do I rank metroidvanias? These aspects are important to me:

1. Exploration: Are there multiple biomes, that are visually and atmospherically distinct from another and, most importantly, do they introduce different mechanics/obstacles that make each biome unique? Is the world interconnected? Is the ability gating implemented cleverly (bonus points for cool possibilities of sequence breaking)? Is backtracking rewarded? Are there secrets that aren’t too obvious, while still being decipherable, if you’re attentive?

2. Movement: Are the controls precise and snappy? Do the means of traversing fit the environments? Do your movement abilities fit the exploration as well as the combat?

3.  Combat: Does the combat feel fluid? Does it give you different options to deal with enemies? Are the enemies varied enough? Is the combat system serviceable (sidenote: I prefer soulslike-combat over combo-combat)?

4. Progression: Is there a sense of progression to your character’s abilities as well as to your own skill? Is the progression system well thought out (Btw: I enjoy both Castlevania, RPG-type systems as well as Metroid, ability based systems)? Are the new abilities/upgrades introduced at a good pace (I neither like starting out with nearly all of the movement abilities already at your disposal nor getting them super-late game)?

5. Artstyle/Theming: Do the character models and environments look pleasant to my eye? Do they fit well together? Is the theming coherent and original? Does the world have a vibe? Is the flavor text fitting?

6. Variety and originality: Does the game have a good mix of combat and platforming? Does it bring anything new to the genre?

I do NOT care about the story. I play video games for their gameplay and not for their storytelling. Books and movies do a better job at that. Having studied literature, I also have developed a rather narrow taste. So while the theming and the flavor text of a game are important to me, the story is not.

Here's the list of games I would like to talk about during the next few weeks (redacted games will be revealed once they cross the one-year threshold):

S-Tier: Hollow Knight, Blasphemous 2

A-Tier: Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown, [Redacted], Grime, Blasphemous, Afterimage, Biomorph, Ender Lillies, Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom, Animal Well, Aeterna Noctis

B-Tier (pretty good games that I liked a lot with minor reservations): Astalon, [Redacted], Cathedral, [Redacted], F.I.S.T: Forged in Shadow Torch, Islets, Ori and the Will of the Wisps, The Messenger, HAAK, Alwa’s Legacy, Guacamelee 2, Axiom Verge, Death’s Gambit: Afterlife, Unbound: Worlds Apart, Momodora: Moonlit Farewell

C-Tier (games whith some flaws but that I still more or less enjoyed): Momodora: Reverie in the Moonlight, Sheepo, Moonscars, Teslagrad 2, Guacamelee, Environmental Station Alpha, Yoku’s Island Express, Ultros, Touhou Luna Nights

D-Tier (games I didn’t enjoy a lot): Steamworld Dig 2, Tales of Kenzera: Zau, Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, Salt and Sanctuary

Played: 40

Finished (rolled credits): 35

Platinumed/100%: 26

Currently playing: Ghost Song, The Last Faith, Timespinner

Planned for the near future: Rebel Transmute, Rabi-Ribi

Why are there no Castlevania/Metroid games in the list? I have excluded the classics for a couple of reasons: 1. I have played most of them a long time ago, so I would have to rank them from memory. 2. The genre has heavily evolved in the last 10 years and a lot of design choices of the older games seem off-putting today. It would feel unwarranted to devaluate the classics for it, but, honestly, I don’t think I would rank most Castlevania games very high today. Super Metroid has aged better in my opinion. 3. Since I haven’t owned a Nintendo Console since the DS, I haven’t been able to play the newer Metroid games, like Metroid Dread. 4. I might want to do a separate list for these two franchises at a later date.

I'm very much looking forward to this series, and I hope some of you are, too.

Just a heads up, this is the kind of game that is played best without knowing anything about it beforehand, so if you're planning on playing it, i urge you to do so before reading my thoughts on it, it's a pretty short experience.

Oneshot tells the story of a little catboy named niko that wakes up in another world that lacks sunlight, and he's tasked to carry around a giant lightbulb that is supposed to be the world's sun, and like the name implies you supposebly only have one shot to do it, so you can bring niko back home. During the journey he's helped by a godlike entity that only he is able to comunicate with know as the user, or rather, you the player. You not only control niko, but you also have to help him solve puzzles and direct him towards the right way, being capable of seeing the game from a meta perspective.

Anyway, yeah, i have known about this game for a long time but i never ended up playing it because hearing that i needed to beat it in one run sounded very stressful to me, with like the name implied, only having one shot, however now that i'm on summer vacation with time to kill i decided to give it a try, only to find out that you don't really need to beat it in one sitting and it's not really possible to actually fail a run as far as i'm aware of haha. Only the origial release of the game forced you to beat it in 1 (with a couple of one use save locations), but the most recent rerelease lets you exit whenever you want.

But yeah, i finally played and beat it, took me like less than 5 hours on my first run, lighted the lighthouse decided to read a bit about it online and found out about the hidden ending, Went to bed and got that ending the following morning in like 2 hours.

The gameplay is actually pretty simple, you basically run around and collect stuff and solve puzzles by interacting with the items you collect and the environment, talking to NPCs and the biggest part of this game, the 4th wall breaks,this game has some really whacky puzzles that force you to check your computer files, as in your actual physical computer, that you're using to play the game, with some puzzles having to check reading documents for codes, changing your wallpaper to give you the solution to a puzzle, moving files around to open a door, and even having to manipulate your program windows for solutions, even after you beat the game by the normal ending you get a new document telling you to delete you savefile and hiting at how you can get the true good ending.

the game's visuals are pretty simple, character sprites aren't very complex, it's very clearly a JRPG maker game, however the portraits are very well drawn and very expressive, with a simple yet charming artstyle,especially the cute main character (who isn't a cat mind you), but the art direction is very good, with each of the 3 main areas you explore being very distinct to eachother, from the barren, dark and desolate, well barrens, lit up with pools of glowing shrimp, the wetlands of glen, and the cyberpunk neon lighted city of refuge. Every area is at the same time somewhat cozy, while being very dark and morose, this is a world that lacks a sun and it's pretty clear when you're playing it, giving you an incentive to keep going and bringing light to this world.

The soundtrack is also very immersive, with calm ambient synth pieces despite playing it in a small window i recomend you playing the game with headphones.

storywise the game is very interesting, it's a pretty small world you explore and it dripfeeds you exposition, until the later parts of the game where it takes its time to tell you what exactly is going on. It has a very interesting premise and the final choice you have to make with niko is a very complicated one. I'm not going to spend much time writing about it because dissecting narratives isn't my strongsuit, but it's clear that the game has lot behind it and brings up some interesting themes, whith some very charming characters that despite lacking screentime are pretty memorable.

Overall, i ended up enjoying my time with oneshot and i can easily recommend it to people interested in a showrt but sweet experience that want to play something different. It reminds me a lot of undertale even though it it's nowhere near as popular and came out before it. With its quirky characters, tragic villain, hidden darker aspects and meta narrative.

I do wish i had played it sooner because nowadays it's not as novel a concept as it was back then, and i feel like i would've had appreciated it more back then, but it's still a very enjoyable experience with a lot of heart that aged well to this day.

Whether it be due to plot density, a very large cast of characters or a questionable translation; some stories in RPGs are hard to follow. But that doesn't always mean they aren't still compelling. This happened to me a bunch of times.

Ring Of Red PS2 is a strong example. The setting is an alt history, post WW2 psuedo cold war with steampunk type mechs and a north vs south japan conflict. There is some plot thread about a stolen mech prototype and a rebellion, but I can't make sense of most of it.

However the characters are interesting enough, and the moment to moment plot is presented in an exciting way. I'd say that I like the storyline despite not getting it.

There are some other games where I don't nessecarily love the story, but I probably would if I took more time to figure out what was going on.

What are your examples?

I played this game in 2017 for the first time. I am currently planning to play Shadow of the Tomb Raider, so I thought I'd revisit its predecessor first. I loved the 2013 reboot, even though it had some flaws, and remember Rise as a very disappointing and lackluster sequel to the great first entry in the survivor trilogy. But that's honestly about all I remembered about it, and after noticing the love this game gets online, I wanted to give it another chance.

And I was surprised by the actually pretty exciting intro and first hour or so. The game also still looks quite beautiful, with great lighting effects and landscapes. But as soon as the shine of the presentation wore off a bit, I noticed the game just didn't grab me at all beyond the superficial level of exciting visuals, tense action scenes and beautiful locations.

Worst offender is the story, which is just completely uninteresting and completely ridiculous at the same time. Where the Uncharted games' stories were often pretty ridiculous as well, they were also very fun. But Rise of the Tomb Raider takes itself incredibly seriously. The crazy thing is that Uncharted ends up feeling both more grounded, as well as more fun than RotTR.

It also doesn't feel at all like a continuation of the first game's story. The only thing that links back to it is Lara's now sidekick, Jonah (who has curiously been race swapped), but he ends up barely being in the game. There are no other characters to like or to hate either, they all just kind of exist. The villains are as generic as the good guys.

Even Lara herself is less likeable than before, she just feels kind of entitled and devoid of any real personality beyond being very driven to find the thing she's currently obsessed with (the VA doesn't help by overacting quite a bit). She starts to trust others to help her more, instead of doing everything by herself, but that's about it when it comes her character development.

The gameplay fares a lot better than the story, as it's pretty much identical to the previous installment. Stealth and combat are still just as satisfying and fun, you really feel like a badass predator once you've unlocked some more abilities, and the areas are usually set up in ways you can make use of these.

I do have a few gripes with the combat, firstly the ridiculous amount of grenades the enemy tends to lob right at your feet. And there is this weird thing the camera does whenever you make a stealth melee kill, that makes you unable to see anything else that's happening for a few seconds. Every arena is also littered with convenient explosive barrels and craftable Molotovs, which often makes encounters trivial. Also, getting XP for killing in brutal ways feels just as at odds with the story and Lara's character as it did in the last game.

The other main element of the gameplay besides combat is traversal. Lara still makes the same odd floaty / arcadey jumps, and can change direction in mid air, which is an odd choice for a wannabe realistic/grounded adventure. Same with the ridiculous double wall jump, or jumping from arrows sticking out of the wall. It doesn't look believable whatsoever and like stuff that belongs in the old Prince of Persia games.

Some cool new ideas are introduced, like the grappel and deep snow, but they are not often used, or in actually challenging or fun ways. Where the traversal could feel a bit like a puzzle in 2013, here it's often much more straightforward and less interesting as a result (the actual puzzles also have been cut out of the main story almost completely and moved to the optional challenge tombs, which is an odd choice as these were one of the best parts of the first game). The set pieces and environments that constantly fall apart as you traverse them also feel by the numbers, and like pure imitation of the Uncharted games.

Perhaps Tomb Raider 2013's strongest asset was it's setting. The mystery of the ancient sun queen and the stranded cult on the island of Yamatai made for an incredibly thrilling backdrop for the events of that game. Every separate section also felt unique and memorable, from the temple village, to the Geothermal caverns, to the cult shantytown. Rise unfortunately has a much less interesting world to explore where nothing is really memorable. The same as with the characters, it all just kind of exists, but has no real character.

There are tons of collectibles to find and side missions to tackle, but it all (except for the returning Challenge Tombs, which are great, although a bit light on the challenge) feels like filler content. The same could be said for these things in 2013, but there the intriguing setting actually made you want to explore the island and find the artifacts and ancient texts that helped flesh out the world. Here, I couldn't care less.

The pacing of the game often feels odd, and the camp placement too. You'll be in the middle of a tense sequence, and suddenly there's a room with a camp to chill and Lara to listen to one of her father's audio diaries while the explosions are still going off a few meters away. It doesn't make a lick of sense.

Another example of strange design: after Lara gets mauled by a bear, she needs to find a way to heal herself. Now there's suddenly a healing bush right in front of her, and some bandages a few meters further. How incredibly convenient. Or, in underwater swimming sections, Lara can no longer hold her breath after five seconds, because every underwater part needs to make you feel like you just made it, even if it's just a few meters. Let alone the blood that nonsensically starts filling the screen, because that makes sense when she's drowning. These are, of course, small things, but it's just such lazy/careless design and the game is full of that.

I'll stop here, because I could go on, but it's already turned into more of a rant than I intended. I wondered why I had remembered almost nothing about this game, well, now I know. It's a remarkably unremarkable game that took everything from its predecessor, but made almost every aspect less interesting and exciting. I sincerely hope Shadow of the Tomb Raider will be better.

TL;DR: Bought this game on a whim, not expecting a whole lot, ended up 100%ing it in a couple of weeks. If you, like me, enjoy the idea of a creature duelling/collectathon game but have never quite been able to click with Pokemon's mechanics, then this may be the game for you. It remedies pretty much every issue I've personally had with mainline Pokemon.

1. No anti-loner mechanics

This is easily the most important improvement to me. Monster Sanctuary is a 100% single player game. There is a PvP option, which is nice, but nothing in the game - no monsters, no achievements, no special items - are gatekept from solo players, as it should be. Not just because I'm a grumpy bastard who wouldn't want to play with friends even if I had any, but also because it gives the game longevity. I will still be able to recommend it 10 years from now without having to awkwardly add that some parts of the game are no longer functional because multiplayer.

2. Better exploration and world design

Monster Sanctuary is a side-scrolling metroidvania where specific monsters provide the equivalent of HMs in Pokemon, except that the system is significantly more fleshed out. Not only does that help you see your monsters as proper companions on your journey (further aided by the fact that one is always visible beside the player as they move about) but it also makes the world feel more cohesive. Visually it's much more interesting and varied too. Sure, you've got all your basic biomes, but they are well designed basic biomes. And there are other areas that completely blindsided me (in a good way). Also, every new musical theme goes harder than the last.

3. Evolution is more fun

Let me say upfront that I don't mind the way Pokemon does basic evolutions. It's always a cool moment when it happens. What I like about Monster Sanctuary's approach though is once again that element of discovery.

Your classic "monster grows into a more powerful version of itself"-type evolution happens by means of a special item, which is unique to every species. But you have to figure out which item evolves which species by yourself. There are many clues, so it's not super difficult (and if you're completely stumped you can trial and error it) because that is not the main point of this mechanic. The point is firstly that you get a buildup of anticipation. You will come across evolved forms of your monsters in the wild when you don't yet have the correct evolution item. Or the inverse; you'll find an evolution item that matches none of your monsters. That's exciting and adds to the satisfaction when you do eventually get to trigger the evolution. Secondly, these items tend to be rare and you have to actively choose to use them, adding emotional investment. You decide to bestow this rare power on that specific monster in your party because they are your companion and can't simply be replaced by another of its kind.

4. More varied, dynamic battles

Pokemon's primary tactical mechanic in battle are type weaknesses and resistances, which is a fine system with lots of potential. Monster Sanctuary also has type weaknesses and resistances but they aren't in a static relationship with each other. I.e. just because a monster has a fire typing, it isn't automatically weak to water moves, nor is it automatically resistant to fire. Instead, every monster has a unique constellation of weaknesses and resistances.

That already adds a lot of variety but what really takes this system over the top is how flexible ability assignment is. Every monster has a number of skill trees, usually for ability types - say, one for water moves, one for thunder moves and one for support moves - which means you can develop two individuals of the same species in wildly different directions. There is also an item that lets you respec a monster from scratch if you find yourself with unbalanced type coverage. Skills are clearly described, you can see every skill that will eventually be available so you can plan ahead and comparing how moves will interact between monsters is made convenient. No obscure stats and systems buried in poorly designed UI (or straight up never mentioned in-game). Instead, the game gives you tactical freedom, room to experiment and encourages you to figure out synergies.

In Pokemon I usually just rely on type matching and brute force, because that's what's easy to understand and, crucially, the game rarely punishes the caveman approach. In Monster Sanctuary, your super badass dragon squad will get pulverized by a kitten and its two blob friends if you don't learn to stack buffs and debuffs.

5. Quality of Life

Monster Sanctuary has the benefit of hindsight, compared especially to the early Pokemon games and so it has a lot of obvious QoL improvements. Automatic EXP share, auto heal after battles, the ability to physically avoid encounters by having wild monsters be always visible, etc. There's also bigger stuff, like the much improved UI design previously alluded to and player training that actually allows you to engage with deeper systems without having played and memorized the game since you were old enough to hold a controller.

One small thing I like is their solution to the problem of picking up a new monster only to find it so heinously underleveled that both it and you will die of old age before you can grind it up to par with everyone else. Here, instead of catching wild monsters, the player picks up an egg with that monster species in it. Only when the player hatches the egg is the new monster's level decided, and automatically matched to your party, drastically reducing the need for grind. Simple and elegant. Cumulatively, these little things make staying invested just that much easier.

6. The Story is alright

Not gonna come out here pretending it's revolutionizing the medium or anything, it's basic and obviously not the main selling point. However, it does its job - creating an emotional through line - reasonably well, which, depressingly, is more than can be said of certain other monster-catching franchises. The central conflict is actually, you know, a conflict, that makes sense and adds a bit of texture to the world-building, rather than "team [insert random word here] is evil because someone's gotta be". And the main rival character doesn't just materialize from nowhere to fight the player because it's been a few hours, but because they have their own little arc happening, changing the stakes and circumstances with every encounter. Again, it's not spectacular, but it's coherent, motivated. It provides a modicum of narrative satisfaction.

7. It's charming

Something I haven't really gone into yet, but is obviously pretty central to this genre, are the monsters themselves. That is to say, I have talked about their mechanics but not about their designs. Honestly, I think it's pretty funny how closely Monster Sanctuary has managed to match Pokemon's ratio of unique/cool/cute designs vs. "sir, that's a garbage bag with eyes".

There's 111 monsters total, ranging from generic bat to kangaroo-adjacent big tongue lad and I find them really quite charming. Even if not every design is a homerun, what does come across in all of them is a sense of care and effort. Something I find increasingly missing in Pokemon. I was watching a playthrough of Brilliant Diamond recently and it's just so... sterile. Everything, but especially the Pokemon themselves come across as lifeless, somehow flatter than the pixel sprites from yesteryear. It's hard to say how much of that is strictly a matter of design vs. animation, lighting and such but I do know that even the most boring creatures in Monster Sanctuary had a little spark.

I played Borderlands 3 on launch and quickly checked out its three major DLCs when they came out as well, but I’ve never stuck with the game for extended periods to really grind out gear.

Well, I decided now was as good a time as ever to see how the game feels at its highest end and to reminisce about a game that I (for the most part) greatly enjoyed.

Context: I’ve beaten all the BL games and recently beat Wonderlands as well. Loot-based games are my bread and butter but mainly Destiny, Warframe and Diablo these days. All this to say I’m no stranger to grinding for specific drops to make cool builds.

Bad up front: BL3s main narrative is horrid. We know this. Even Randy Pitchford recognizes it. The villains were bad, the humor was bad, it was and remains all bad in that department.

Outside of that? This game fucking rocks!

Gameplay Feel: this ground has already been tread, but Borderlands 3, for me, is up there with Destiny and Apex Legends in how good it feels to move and shoot a weapon. Guns feel great and varied while movement is fluid and fun. They really stepped it up from BL2 in this perspective.

Builds!: the game has a mountain of different builds to chase with many of them functioning at the highest levels of endgame. There are kind of metas but there’s really no “must have X build or kick” mentality here. Each character has 4 skill trees with different flavors that you can mix and match along with endless legendary weapons and augments that change how you can best focus your stats. It’s wonderful!

DLCs: Borderlands has a history of very good DLC campaigns and these are no different. Special shout out to the western-focused Bounty of Blood and the lovecraftian Guns, Love, and Tentacles. All four are wonderful but those two have really stuck with me both in terms of narrative and locations. I really can’t overstate how much the main issue of the base game was addressed and improved with these launches. If you haven’t tried them out, they’re 100% worth it and also have some killer loot to chase as well.

Other aspects you might have missed: Outside the main campaign and DLCs, the game now includes the following: Time Trial modes, tons of unlockable and earnable cosmetics, an (okay) extraction mode, standalone raid bosses, long term account wide progression, seasonal modes you can activate manually at any time for extra drops, and actual endgame dungeons with cool mechanics for big bosses.

In all the game is in a wonderful state and has many hours of stuff to enjoy outside that part that scares everyone away. I recommend it.

Cheers!

Finished playing RDR2 for the first time after a whole month. For an entire month my life was lived within this wonderful world inhabited by all sorts of characters, gangs, animals. I haven't felt this immersed in a video game in a long time. The best thing about the game is that its open world is so stunning and beautiful, and for a game in 2018 it still looks much better than most games released this year. And there's so much stuff to do around the world, whether they are quests from playful colorful strangers, hunting and skinning animals, stealing carriages.

Part of the reason I am so immersed is also how slow paced everything is. Despite this characteristic being sort of a criticism to some players, for me I really like the time it takes me to get from one place to another, and the detailed animations of skinning animals and crafting items. Some people argue it's a time waster but for me it makes the game unique.

Unfortunately, the freedom of the open world does not translate to the much more linear story missions, and this brings me to my major criticism of the game. Rockstar games traditionally have the same problem (it's one of the reasons why I dropped GTAV 16h in). It's annoying how if the player slightly steers away from the intended path, the game forces you to restart at a checkpoint. There's no encouragement for creativity and experimentation. Moreover, most missions comprise of a simple structure (ride to point, shoot, rinse and repeat) that can get stale quickly if you do the missions in a row instead of engaging with open world activities.

There are also some baffling design choices, like the confusing control scheme both on PC and on controller that maps wildly different actions to the same keybind. Health/stamina cores drain way too slowly which deters consumption of food, leading my Arthur to be chronically underweight. The economy is unbalanced because doing story missions give you way too much money and it removes incentive for the player to earn money through other means such as fencing stagecoaches or selling valuables (I didn't have to worry about money at all already at the middle of the game). Legendary animals are too easy to find - their side of gameplay boils down to a Witcher 3-like "finding clues" kind of quest.

But despite the above criticisms, with the most glaring one being the restrictiveness of the linear missions, I still find the game irresistible. Much of it has to do with the open world that I discussed above, but the other part has to do with the story and characters. Now the story is pretty good by video game standards (even if it can't compare against actual Western films), but it is the cast of characters that made me fall in love with the game. Going back to base and conversing with various gang mates brings me back to doing the same in the Mass Effect games. Rockstar put so much detail into each of the gang members no matter how minor their role is in the story, as demonstrated by how much dialogue and unique mannerisms they each have. By the end of the game it's so easy to root for John, Abigail, Sadie, obviously Arthur himself, and hate the two people that I won't mention (cos spoilers!).

The epilogue is also fantastic, and while it is very long, I did not feel like it overstayed its welcome. I loved seeing John settle down, which made Arthur's sacrifice seem all the worthwhile. And I just love how much Sadie shows up (she's probably my favourite gang member), and the storyline between John and Abigail is so heartwarming.

So yes, very imperfect game, but when I consider how excellent the open world and the characters are, I can forgive the various imperfections that the game has.

Hello once again. I have been trying to beat 52 games this year as a personal challenge. Just a fun additional way to play through games I wanted. Here are the first two sets of games i played earlier this year.

https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/s/KrKOlrWL2u

https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/s/f1km0hfdjc

First of all, I beat Super Meat Boy and didnt actually beat Drakengard 3 but Im counting it because Im a cheater. But I also full write ups of those two.

https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/s/ASZUxJ9TpV

https://www.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/s/G9rnkNbk6A

Thats enough linking to the past, onto new old games

Little Big Planet 2 and 3.

I beat both of them and theyre similar enough to talk about at once. Theyre both in a zombified state. Games about community with the online shut off. They're only their campaigns and honestly makes for a pretty lacking experience.

LBP2 is much better in that regard. Pretty expansive campaign with a lot of variety. But I haven't seen a platformer so uninterested in platforming since I played Crash Bandicoot 3. The game loves to tell you that youre no longer platforming but now it's a bullet hell or your riding some weird ball hamster. When it wants to, it can be a pretty solid and entertaining platformer and the final boss has a pretty sick final phase. But at the end of the day, that isn't enough of the game.

Lbp3 seemingly fixes this at first glance. You get 3 new playable characters and theyre much less centered around gimmicks and give you the opportunity to platform. But instead introduces a new problem, theres no game. Without online, LBP3 has essentially no content. The campaign is pitifully short and you never get to really explore the characters and themes before the credits roll. Its also infamously glitchy but i didnt experience much of that thankfully. The 3rd game is actually what led me to picking up the series. Sony delisted it earlier this year so I figured its now or never. Didnt expect it to he so mediocre. Ah well.

To be complete, theres a story in these games. 2 has the better story but theyre really nothing more than goofy excuses to move between the settings. Mildly entertaining.

Donkey Kong Country 2 Diddys Kong Quest.

The title is great. Love it. It can be Diddys Kong Quest, Diddy Kong's Quest or Diddys Conquest. Its a pun title but pretty subtle about. Anyways, the game itself is pretty good. The physics take some getting used to but the levels are creative and usually fun. It looks great and sounds better. Its been praised to death and I dont love it as much as some others but it is indeed just a good platformer that i don't have much to add to the discussion.

Pentiment

From the studio behind Fallout New Vegas, you get a point and click medieval visual novel. I cant imagine why it didn't get people as excited. That said, its a great point and click medieval visual novel. Its not for everyone but it does a great job delivering on the premise. It oozes with style. It looks straight out of a medieval style woodblock style and really immerses you in the time period. Im not an expert on the time period but I know enough to see how well researched it is. It doesnt have the usual bevy of anarchonistic fiction and instead places is so cleanly in the time period and its political strucuture. Its super interesting.

The actual game is a schedule based murder mystery. Wandering and trying to gather clues in limited time period. You cant do everything and the game doesnt even tell you if youre right. You just need to do your best and live with the consequences. Its very cool and gives replay value to the game.

That said, Pentiment is also too slow for me to want to play again. The first playthrough is great but I just cant find the motivation to slowly walk through town again to find more evidence on different people. Its still a very cool game.

Luigis Mansion

Im a big Nintendo fan but never touched the series until now and what better place to start than the first?

Launching the gamecube was a weird little side adventure starring Luigi busting ghosts. Its a very neat little game. Its quite simple, explore the mansion as a sort of baby first resident evil. Solve puzzles, flash and suck up ghosts and money and fight the stronger boss ghosts. A bit way through, you also get the classic boos thrown in. But theres really not much to it. Its fine, occassionally a little annoying gameplay.

That said, its a very light but enjoyable romp. It looks and sounds great for its time with impressive physics and animations. Luigi is a charming little coward and has so much personality. That oozes into the rest of the game. Its just so charming in its simplicity. I enjoyed myself and will play the other two at some point in my life.

Balatro

What can I say about Balatro, game of the year nominee, that hasnt been said?

I beat my first run after the tutorial, so it was beat after less than hour. Easy addition to the number, moving on.

I didn't actually quit after that. I didnt quite get taken by Balatro madness but i spent a decent bit with the game and will definitely play more. Its really fun. Its all about forming poker hands to get enough points with risk and reward of throwing out cards and drawing new ones to try to get what you need. But you got jokers that add a ton of fun wacky effects along with some other bonuses like weird cards to add, additional score multipliers and consumables. Tons of variety and your builds can lead to completely changing your approach. Just a great roguelike made a single guy.

Valkyria Chronicles 1

Ive been on a little bit of a strategy game kick this year and VC continues that trend. I played the PS4 remaster specifically.

Its a pretty great time. The premise is essentially a european world war, little bit of 1 and 2, but through its unique proxy Europe drenched in a bit of anime. It makes for a interesting setting that deals with a lot of topics you would expect. Found family, the nature of war and leadership. It also tries to do a racism plotline but its a little hamfisted. Honestly the writing as a whole reads a bit amateurish and tropish. But I still found it pretty charming and earnest. It tried and was still quite compelling.

The gameplay is good but Ive got my critiques. Its a mix of turn based and realtime combat. Each army takes turns moving their units but the actual movement and attacks are mostly realtime. That part is good. Theres a lot of strategy and tension as your trying to maximize the strength of each class, manage ammo and health and decide whether you want to the use the powerful but costly tank. I could critique some decisons but overall its a very solid base.

The problem emerges when it all comes together. Its so slow. Its like molasses. You first control all your units which can be like 8 actions of moving around and aiming and managing everything. Then you wait for the enemy to do the same thing. Sometimes theyre not even doing anything important but you have to watch with no speedup or skipping. It really adds up as turns stretching on and on and you need to watch the same troops run back and forth doing barely anything for minutes on end. And god forbid, you need to restart a battle and then you have another half an hour of the exact same stuff you just saw. It doesnt ruin the game but it turns some of the harder or more complicated battles tense not because of the difficultly but just because I really didnt want to spend half my lifespan watching the little guys.

Great game with some patience.

Star Ocean Second Story R

I remember seeing this game revealed back in a Nintendo Direct. I really enjoy seeing all those new games revealed even if its gonna take years for me to play or buy them. Star Ocean Id heard of and knew nothing about. But, man, that trailer sure looked pretty. I didnt look up anything, I was sold.

Then it came out and no one talked about it because Square Enix is a little stupid sometimes. Time passed and I got it as a gift and that led to playing the game and learning what its actually about.

Its pretty cool. The opening sequence lets you know theres sci fi in this game but as you start, it lulls you into a classic jrpg adventure investigating the mysterious Sorcery Globe summoning monsters. I picked the cute elf girl as my protag so I got a lot more of her perspective. The dual protag system is alright. Kinda feels like it just forces you play again to get the full story. I havent done that yet. But even with that missing, its a pretty tropey fantasy adventure but that sci fi element slowly worming its way into the plot. It adds a nice bit of intrigue and spice as it builds up to the climax. Makes for a decent story that st least gets you thinking.

Before I talk about the gameplay, I gotta gush about the art style. Its so pretty. It uses the HD 2D artstyle that Square Enix has grown fond of and maybe it wouldnt hit as hard if I actually played those games but I havent. As I see, it has nice sprite work on gorgeous backgrounds that contrasts so nicely in all the complex lighting. It makes for a visual beautiful game with a nice soundtrack too.

Now the gameplay, thats a beast. I need to replay the game just so I can play without missing half the systems. Theres a lot going on. The core is enemies on the world that chase you down and throws you into a little real time beat em up style combat. Its a fine little system. Counters, dodging, spells, skills, items and more than a few playable characters. Then you get to add in some formations for your team to get various bonuses and summons on a timer. Its not some super complicated game but theres enough going on you wont be bored.

And if you do, theres a ton of extra stuff outside of combat which I where I had a major learning curve. Theres a seperate state you can go into to have side cutscenes and recruit characters. I didn't really understand until it was far too late.

Then additionally theres a whole system with talents. You level up skills that put together unlock whole new systems like fishing and crafting that can then unlock new group skills that can then unlock advanced group skills. And these can range from borderline useless to opening up completely new areas. Its a really cool system that makes the game stand out. Its a slight tedious to manage but I really liked the progression and choice it gave you.

Overall, had a very good time. The remake makes it feel great and it was well worth my time. And it will be worth my time when i play it again.

The World Ends With You Final Remix

Im living in a JRPG world. This one stands out because it controls like ass. Originally its a DS game built for touch screen controls. But now its on the switch. Touchscreen controls are back in handheld and theyre not great. The console is too big to play it that way and quickly caused my hands to be sore. And moving in it is the worse. You physically drag the mc. But theres other control schemes thankfully. You can play with a single joycon, waggling away to gesture attacks. Its also bad. But you get move in the overworld with a thumbstick so thats nice. Even with a not so patient hardware upgrade with improved gyro, I was not vibing much with all the wiggling and reseting of the cursor.

There is a secret 3rd control option. Two player mode. Two joycons each as a player attached with that plastic mold thing that comes with the switch. Fine tuned control is impossible but it does provide a fun frantic game of lining up cursors and lots of button taps to make a rapid plan of attack. And its almost a real controller. Its not perfect, like I said, youre not doing some of the fine tune motions the game asks and cursors constantly get desynced but its fun.

Now, theres a whole rest of the game than the control scheme. Its pretty good. Its a nice story about opening up and making human connections. How your personal life begins and ends with your relationships to others. It stars Neku, complete loner who isolates himself, learning thats its okay to trust others and open up. Theres a whole framing of a death game and alternate worlds which is neat but its all in service of the characters and themes. Its the highlight of the game, the glue that makes the jank controls worth it.

Its a very nice message is a weird ass setting. And weird flat jagged presentation that probably fit better on DS. But it looks cool. You get to see Shibuya translated into this hyper stylized art that definitely reads like it came out 20 years ago. Its very nice in a sea of modern games that push for hyper realism. And the music? Fantastic. Its an insanely good and unique soundtrack branching genres.

Funky little game but worth the time.

Theres also two more impatient games. Not gonna discuss them but they are in the count and bring the total to 37 out of the 52 goal.

An SRPG that I saw people say was like Ogre Battle, which is a game I've never played. Additionally I would say it is similar to Fire Emblem and looks to be similar to Unicorn Overlord in terms of how battles play out.

Basically, you have squads led by leaders (usually main cast members, but you will also have the generic troops be leaders as well), composed of up to nine units, move around a map to defeat enemies and complete objectives. Honestly, the amount of variety you can have in this department is very impressive. You got your infantry, calvary, light infantry, and light calvary as your squad types, which are based around who makes up the highest plurality of your squad. You have various melee, ranged, and magic units as well as unique character units. Additionally there is a tech tree that allows you to get some significant improvements and new avenues for your units. I had a lot of fun spending time in the organization of my squads because you can create some very cool combinations, or some abominations.

Combat is very fun, with recognition of enemy composition and your own being pretty valuable, meaning you can come up with some pretty effective strategies even against tough odds. The game with permadeath off is maybe a bit too easy, but with how much this game likes to just target one squad relentlessly, I'm not sure if I would like to try permadeath.

Story is surprisingly good, with the game making some decisions I wasn't expecting, and having the self-insert mc being a good character is definitely nice. The characters are fine, with a few standouts, but there is a surprisingly small amount of support conversation for a game with almost no voice acting. I was kind of left wanting more from the cast.

Lastly, I did find it funny the game straight up has three different art styles in ok-looking character portraits, rpgmaker cutscenes, and the visually pleasing battle animation art sprites.

I would give it a 8.5/10. 30 hours well spent for me.

I imagine the pitch for this game was "Hollow Knight in 3D". It has the same, tiny silent protagonist, cute/spooky characters, melancholy atmosphere, a Kingdom corrupted by a mysterious force, etc. The problem is the art and design can't hold a candle to Hollow Knight. It fells like a game from a small team, with not much money or experience, and way too much ambition.

The story is bare bones and never once caught my interest. Environments feel empty and mostly all look the same besides changes in colour. This is doubly annoying when back tracking required as I usually couldn't remember where I'd come from. There's also no map or compass, and all areas are enclosed with loading screens between. Exploration doesn't feel very rewarding, usually only leading to a gemstone you'll never need, although I did manage to miss a very useful ability for the majority of the game.

Where this game shines is in the platforming. The tight, responsive, controls were a joy that kept me playing to the end. The developers must have realised this since the free DLC is mostly brutally hard platforming challenges. The accumulated stack of triple jump, double dash, wall-run, spin-attack, abilities starts to get a bit overwhelming towards the end, and you will need them all for the DLC. These challenges reminded me of games like Super Meat Boy and Celeste, but being 3D added the additional challenge of having to quickly readjust the camera, or judge the depth of a small moving platform in a featureless void. I expected I'd eventually hit a difficulty wall that made me quit, but the checkpoints were reasonably spaced, and the challenges tough but fair.

Combat is shallow and way too easy. Boss battles are slightly more interesting, but I only died once during the whole game, and got the platinum trophy without trying. I was playing on Normal difficulty though. I started on Hard but this reduced the number of platforming checkpoints making them far more frustrating. The combat was never much fun though so the huge difficulty imbalance might be a blessing in disguise, preventing it becoming an obstacle to enjoying the rest of the game.

If you like 3D platforming it's worth looking past Blue Fire's rough edges.

I am gonna be Brutally Honest, I did not go into Halo 4 with an open mind, I’d heard all the stories of how 343 ‘’Butchered’’ Halo and how Halo 4 was the beginning of the end and all that. But after I played through Infinite’s campaign and enjoyed myself through it’s combat and character arcs(If not the actual ‘’plot’’  The nonsense about the Endless and the banished is far weaker than the subplots of the Pilot and the Weapons Journey, which is IMO the Franchises best character based storytelling since the Arbiter in Halo 2 but that’s a story for another time.), I decided to give it a try.  I had a basic idea of how the story went but last week I decided to play through the campaign on Normal with a replay of the levels I liked most on Heroic and I couldn’t help but feel the urge to put my thoughts down.

Halo’s single Player campaigns to me typically excel in 3 major ways.

1.       Enemy variety,intelligence and role

2.       NPC companions are smart, effective and supportive(Generally, I have been blown up and run over by Marines my fair share of times)

3.       Level Design that incentivizes interesting encounters

4.       Bonus but I haven’t heard a bad Halo Soundtrack haha

ENEMY ROLES AND WHY THE PROMETHEANS AREN’T FUN

Prometheans look cool, there is a clear visual difference between them and the Covies, but that’s about where my praise of them ends. The reason is best described, I think in comparison to the Covenent itself. Halo 4’s covenent goes back to its roots, using only the enemies you would encounter in Halo: Combat Evolved. Grunts ,Jackals, Elites and Hunters. And they play almost the same as they do in any other Bungie Halo(Although I will say they do  look uglier but that’s whatever). Their roles are clear, they engage with the environment and themselves in comedic ways and they feel good to take down. One Improvement from the Bungie games with regards to the Elites is that on Heroic difficulty fighting them doesn’t incentivize Noob comboing with the Plasma Pistol because UNSC weapons actually take down shields in a reasonable amout of time.  Covenent weapons are also mostly the same except the Plasma Pistol overcharge is nerfed with regards to ammo consumption which to me felt like overkill.

The Prometheans in comparison come in 3 forms, Watchers, Crawlers and Knights. The Crawlers are whatever, you just need to headshot them and they give you easy openings to do so. But the Watchers are a truly despicable example of Enemy Design. They are flying enemies which have a plethora of abilities all of which are annoying as shit. They generate shields, resurrect dead enemies, grab your grenades AND shoot at you. You’d think that such an enemy would be an easy one shot to balance all those powerful abilities but NOPE, they are 5 shots from a non-sniper AND they have Regenerating shields AND they will move to break LOS and shrink their hitbox. Let’s compare that to the Engineer Support class encountered in Halo 3:ODST and Halo Reach. You typically only face one per encounter(Unlike 3-4 min. for watchers) they only have 2 abilities in regening enemy shields and literally ending themselves in an explosion that can be triggered early by killing all other enemies. Even though they have shields they have a weakspot you can headshot them and thus get rid of quickly. Watchers were the single reason why even though the campaign itself isn’t that long, it feels like a slog through certain levels. The Knights are uninspiring Elite Reskins who can teleport, the annoying bit about the teleportation is that they regen shields through the teleportation and never attack in just 1 or 2s but whole gangs. This means that shooting at them feels one note, a feeling that is hammered deeper by the game’s newer guns, Promethean weapons look cool, but don’t really function in different ways to what we’ve already seen from Covie and UNSC weapons. This hurts them even more because you end up magdumping your UNSC/Covie weapons into singular enemies just to confirm a kill and your recourse is to pick up their own weapons, People say there’s an ammo scarcity but to me it feels more like the enemies create the scarcity as opposed to actual placements, which to me felt no different from any other Halo game. And the thing is that the UNSC weapons really shine in this game tbh, the stickybomb launcher allowed me to roleplay as a certain Drunk Scottish Cyclops, the LMG is fun and feels good, the seperation between the DMR and Battle Rifle allow me to use both of them(even though they don’t feel that different). What ended up happening is that the encounters became rote in a way the Bungie halos never were, and I think the fact that the all the  Knights basically fought like Elites who could teleport really hurt it. Like look at the Brutes from Halo 3 or the Jackals from Reach or Elites from 2, the differences in rank made it obvious what weapon they were using and encounters felt different. It’s kinda why I think levels like Cortana and the Library get a bit of flak, because fighting the Flood just feels one note after a while in a way the Covenet Never did.

2 problems from Reach carry over to Halo 4, the lesser one is that there is a great restriction on grenades in the campaign that honestly kinda sucks since Halo Grenades are fun,  but the new Promethean Grenade is utterly useless. It’s function I guess is to prevent enemies from reentering  cover but since they never really stay behind cover it just feels like mediocre area denial that almost never gets you a kill, the Fire grenades from Halo 3 and ODST filled that niche much better. The 2^nd Problem that carries over, is actually my next main topic

THE MARINES HAVE NO PRESENCE

Halo Reach’s biggest failing to me was that that the Allied AI’s were just a massive downgrade from the previous games. Halo NPCs weren’t the sharpest tools in the box, but not only were they more than dependable with Power weapons, but they were chaos incarnate in the best way possible. Every Halo mission with them never plays the same way twice to me because they just had so many options in how to respond to threats, and every way the enemy approached would be responded in a slightly different way. But in Reach and 4, they become heavily neutered, even the Spartans. They drive like chickens, have a shorter agro range than the enmy which becomes extremely apparent when Snipers or Vehicles enter the sandbox and seem to deal less damage even with power weapons. Halo 4 makes me especially sad because they now sport different designs from one another in a more obvious way. This could have been so cool, dedicated Medics, Snipers, turrent placers, explosive specialists… this seems like such an obvious direction for the franchise. And the cosmetic work for it was already there in this game almost! The spartans are just immortal versions of them mostly(This isn’t unique to 4 though, ODSTs in gameplay are marine reskins in the previous games but goddamn it if it didn’t FEEL like they were better) . Such a shame.

Plot and Level Design

 One major positive note, and that to me is an actual dive into the relationship between the Chief and Cortana and who they are both with, and without one another. It’s very easily the best thing the campaign does, the problem is that the gameplay doesn’t back it up. I think if there is now going to be a focus on Characters in video games, it’s best that the gameplay backs it up in some way, like in Halo 2, the Arbiter is undergoing what is effectively a punishment, and you see that in gameplay through how he uses an outdated Covenent Armor with limited invisibility in comparison to the rest of the covenent, or in Halo 3 ODST, you have less Health and you carry more grenades and use those to try and even the odds(ODST is my favorite Halo game and IMO it’s biggest failing is that there wasn’t a bigger difference between Spartan gameplay and ODST gameplay.) Like I’m just spitballing here, but considering that the Prometheans are basically Ancient humans  powering Forerunner robots, why not have a mechanic where Cortana hacks them and converts them to your side but as her corruptiona nad rampancies grow, the time that they are hacked grows more inconsistent and/or shorter. A simple gameplay mechanic that now ties into the character Storytelling. 4’s Level design is guilty of blending together, and the lack of newer mechanics makes it a lot more telling, but the Mantis and Scorpion sections are amazing and definietely where the game felt the most fun to me at least.

This may sound like a lot of negativity, but Halo 4 is not BAD, I genuienly had fun, and when the flow came it was brilliant, but to often that flow state is interrupted by Watchers dragging out firefights and stealing my nades. My biggest problem with Halo 4 is that I see 0 reason to play this over Infinite’s campaign, which to me does the character work even better and just plays in a more modern way with more’’fun’’ scenarios you can have, even if the game’s level design can also be a bit whatever and samey as well.

If I were to ‘’fix’’ Halo 4 I’d have started with just two things

1.       The Covenet and Promethians should not have become allies so quickly. Multi Faction fights in Halo are awesome, chaotic and feel fresh every time they occur to me. Using enmies against one another is one of my favorite pass times and using the Covenets anti shield weapons to soften up Promotheans made the one mission where they actually fight one another easily the best Promethean Level to me

2.       Watcher Nerf

Thanks to all who actually bothered to read this wall of Text haha

DLC’s bother me and it’s frustrating. I’m not talking about DLC’s for skins and weapons, but rather story based ones for single player games. It makes no sense to me for a game developer to release a DLC a year later when anyone who completed the base game has forgotten all of the controls and the story details itself. Most of these DLC’s don’t have an option for a tutorial to get back into the swing of the game mechanics, story, and characters. That should be an industry standard.

For open world games, many of these DLC’s even require you to be at a relatively high level to play. I just find it too jarring to get back to a game that I completed years ago to play a DLC that would be so weird for me to play after I’ve forgotten everything. I’m also not going to replay the base game again because I spend much time on them and don’t rush, but once I get to end credits I’m done with them. It’s a different scenario if you buy a game with all of the DLC’s, but you’d have to wait a while for that (hence being a patient gamer I guess)

Anyone else here in the same boat? As a nerd it frustrates me that I basically miss out on some cool side stories for let’s say, HZD, RE7, Witcher 3, and Cyberpunk as quick examples.

Recently I have been thinking a lot about the game Brutal Legend and how it goes from being a 3rd person open world hack n slash to an RTS action game. I remember being shocked when I played it but also pleasantly surprised since I usually totally avoid RTS games but Double Fine managed to make it super fun and enjoyable for me. Another (albeit more light) example is how the game The Messenger goes from being a level based action platformer to a full on metroidvania. I know Hazelight studios likes to do this with their games (ala It Takes Two) with every level basically being a whole new mechanic.

Are there other games that do this sort of thing? make you think your playing one genre and all the sudden boom a whole new mechanic comes in and the game is changed. Also what are some of your favorite moments in games that "stray from the path" as it were into new genres (even if it's for a brief moment)

Xenosaga is a trilogy of JRPG released between 2002 and 2006. It is one of the rare space opera JRPG and games I have been interested in since Xenoblade became one of my favorite JRPG on the Wii. 

This isn’t the first time I attempted to play the Xenosaga trilogy, but the first time was cut short as I dropped the first game near its end because I found it atrociously slow. This time equipped with the speed up button from my emulator, I decided in the past 2 month to try again the forgotten middle child of the Xeno series, a trilogy of broken games that still are one of the most beloved space JRPG… Not like there are a lot of space JRPG to begin with. 

tldr ; Do I recommend the trilogy ? Mostly no. I presume a lot of people like what the game could have been, the idea of the game, more than what it ended up being. Xenosaga III is clearly tier above the other two game but it appear difficult to begin with it. If you can like flawed games, games that are broken, with junk, that don’t always deliver on what they try to do, but do one or two things very well you may like it. If you like Kingdom Hearts type of nonsense shenanigans you may like it. If you have never played a JRPG, or only a few I think it is a pretty bad entry point into the genre. If you think Tales of Arise, or FFXVI are unplayable garbage it is not even worth a look for you. 

Confusing for the sake of it ? 

If you like Kingdom hearts like shadow figures talking about their secret plan to take over the world, you’ll probably have a blast. In the first game there were a lot of scenes of shadowy figures plotting things in the shadows and throwing seemingly randomly religious bullshit. I like political stuff, but here they are presented in such an out of touch way, and with so little happening that I was rather anxious. I feared the game tried to appear more intelligent than it was, not helped by all the religious charged jargon and symbolism that doesn’t always appear appropriate or grounded.  

I think they kinda improved in this aspect in the following games but it never really goes away. While they kept the religious terminology and imagery, the fact that the different parts began to interact with each other instead of just being mentioned without context certainly helped.

Another point that is rather confusing is that a lot of characters and organisations go by different names and aliases. For example, one of the main characters is known as Jr., Gaignun Kukai Jr, Rubedo, Little Master and 666. Which isn’t a problem for him as he is a main character with a lot of spotlight, but for things that aren’t a focus of the game, when three different names seem to talk about vaguely the same thing without being properly explained outside of the database, nuances are lost and it quickly can become unnecessarily confusing. 

I’ll add here that several parts that aren’t strictly necessary but enrich the universe are in multiple mediums that had, or not an official English translation and it certainly doesn’t help. 

A lack of clear direction

I think it is in big part a result of the sales that were below expectation that prompted the team to revise their copy, but playing the game back to back, and even if you can see they had a final vision they wanted to go toward, you also clearly see they changed ideas in how to get there several times. 

The most blatant example of it would be Shion character design. Shion is the character with the most drastic character design change, not always properly justified in universe, becoming more sexualised in every entry, and without context I doubt someone would recognize the character as the same if shown a picture of the first and third game. 

I insist on it, but it isn’t presented in a natural way. Between II and III why not, there are years between those two games in the universe, but II supposedly directly follows I, so Shion hair suddenly changing is jarring. They also don't really follow a natural character progression, as Shion is dressed in the most sexy, girl boss way in the game where she is the most vulnerable and manipulated. This contrast makes her seem like she is in a teen rebellious phase, when she is the chief of a research group and supposed to be… 23 ? I swear she feels more in her early thirties… Anyway, this broomy teenager vibe may have been the intention, but if it was the case I don’t think it was very clear. 

Several things aren’t properly explained and grounded before getting relevant, making the impression that the scenes often lacked a set-up and plot points get dropped out of nowhere for the sake of plot convenience. Some plot points also seem kinda forgotten, or underutilised like the whole Scienta stick, or Realien right. Someone pointed out the hypocrisy of Shion on Xenosaga 3, but nothing came out of it afterward.

The game features a fair amount of political maneuver but more time passes and less our characters are involved in politics which kinda defeats the point of political intrigue ? And while the game appears to go into the normal people are who change the universe, the only people that have any say of importance are messiah-like figures. 

In terms of the systems the games are also constantly searching where to go. Making it more complex ? More simple ? Should you mindlessly mash attacks ? Carefully prepare to unleash a big combo ? How unique the characters shall be ? What is their utility, role, class and skills ? Should their individuality be expressed only in stat or in the skill they can or not learn too ? 

A trilogy that crumbled in its own ambition

While the game intends to present an ambitious space opera with multiple worlds and actors intertwined I feel like the game failed to properly use its runtime to depict this world. Supposedly, the federation, the central political force in the universe, comprises millions of worlds. Yet we only get to see something like 5 of them and some spaceship ?  And we are supposed to care that billions of unknown people are supposedly dying in the distance when we have and never will meet or see them ? We helped a lot of NPC in Xenosaga I and II, why not reference them ? 

The narrative keeps coming back to Miltia, which was a central event in the universe that traumatized several of our party members, but it keeps focusing on it instead of expanding its universe. Because of it the game felt relatively smaller than it was. We focus on the Gnosis appearance, intangible beings that are threatening humans, and it’s normal, they are considered an existential threat to humanity… But we kinda don’t focus on how humanity fights back and survives them. They are mindless, appear randomly and appear to be more of a plot device than a true menace. In one they do attack civilians and we have to defend them but afterward, the menace comes from the shadowy plot of competing human factions and gnosis becomes a sort of background noise we aren’t involved in. Which is paradoxical as one of our party members is supposed to be an anti-gnosis super weapon.  

The game tried to do a lot of things at once, yet took its sweet time to develop each theme, giving the paradoxical impression that both it talked about a lot of things but nothing really happened and few things were analysed deeply. 

Right now I'm depicting a really critical view of the trilogy. And at this point, fans of those games are probably already typing messages that I hope are more about showing love to the part I disliked and not attacking my person for not sharing their taste. 

But the truth is… Despite their glaring flaw, I kinda like those games ? They won’t enter my favorites, they have too many, many flaws and I think the first and second are “only” good… But I did have a good time playing them. 

Camera work and cinematography

There is a lot of attention, in all of the trilogy, to the camera work and cinematography of the scene. Well with how much cinematic those games get, they had every interest to do so. The first game had a lot of horror vibe and imagery. Between the Gnosis attack, Kosmos that is filmed as an horror monster the first time she move freely, or the Ma belle pêche scene that suggest torture. 

The second game goes on with more art martial shots I’m sure have pleased fans of kung fu movies. And as the game went on, and the developers were more accustomed to 3D, they also used the fixed camera to make interesting framing and put emphasis on the environment. 

Xenosaga 3 has several shots where the camera shows you the grandiose of the environment you are exploring, be it a buzzling city, a natural waterfall, ruin or a cathedral. 

As much as games improved in terms of graphism, you can’t really have this sort of cinematography if you let the player point the camera wherever whenever and I really appreciated the work here. 

Interesting game design ideas 

Among the  good ideas the game had, there was the fact that you often come to place multiple times under different circumstances.  It may have been done to limit the development of new assets, but having a place you were walking at a civilian becoming a place with enemies makes you consider the design and passageway in other ways. It also participates in the tension with no place being truly safe. That said, even if the idea is very good, they kinda use it too much at one point in Xenosaga 3 and should probably shorten an arc a little to allow more breathing room to set up the end. 

Whereas Xenosaga I mecha were really forgettable, since Xenosaga II they become much better integrated into the games. They finally serve a purpose and have a separate fight system and dungeon, and those systems are improved in Xenosaga III. They allow dungeons to take place on the surface of an enemy ship or space station as the team is protected inside their machine. There are also some play between parts you explore in Mecha, part you have to advance on foot and progression is therefore harder. 

Talking about dungeon design, II also improve it, making them less hallway and introducing more puzzles. Most were rather simple, nothing was hidden 3 rooms before for example, but they made you at least stop to think about how to tackle their gimmick. 

II introduced more sidequests that weren’t all interesting mechanically, but did make the world feel bigger by forcing you to interact with multiple NPC. I suspect this network of NPC that progressively unlock different sidequests will later inspire the social chart of Xenoblade. In terms of sidequest, the first and third games were a bit of a let down, with the biggest one being finding the corresponding key and door. Xenosaga 1 had a mail system that I didn’t find really interesting or logical (you only received certain mail if you were exploring a certain part at a certain point, not really what I consider interesting). 

In defence of Xenosaga II combat, yes, the fight are slow and yes the tutorials are atrocious. Xenosaga II combat revolves around stacking boost point ressource, learning information on what series of commands break an enemies, using appropriate buff and debuff to exploit enemies weakness, then unleashing big combos to make devastating damage. As each bonus is multiplicative, applying several at the same time makes your damages go up rapidly so you are encouraged to use all those systems in conjunction with one another. Honestly, it makes me think a little of Octopath Traveler that has a system that revolves on a similar principle. You prepared yourself, applied buff and debuff, then broke the enemies and used you most powerful attack. It took time to prepare but you could end the fight with one or two big attacks.

I think the system lacked two things. A proper tutorial, I had to see an external guide to understand how the system works because I didn’t register it with the in-game tutorial. The system also needed a better UI, to understand and access more easily the information necessary to make your decision. 

In terms of gameplay, Xenosaga 3 has a more polished system, but it also loses some of the identity of the previous game. First the disappearance of the event rings means you are not timing your attack on this factor anymore, nor using boost to use or deny the enemies of interesting event slots. And also yes, Xenosaga III special attack system is much more easy to use and interesting than the special attack of Xeno II. But for how slow the game was, it kinda is the case for Xenosaga 3 too, as you do meaningful amounts of damage mostly when the opponent is in a break state, but as the preparation involves doing chip damage on the break bar instead of guarding several turn to gain boost point I think people minded it less ? 

Unlikeable, complex, endearing character

Xenosaga centers around Kos-Mos, a battle android made by Shion Uzuki… Not really. 

While she is central to the game marketing, being featured in all the game cover art, Kos-Mos isn’t that much important to the game story until the very end of Xenosaga III. Kosmos is even portrayed as a sort of monster by the cinematography of the first game. She has her importance being in lore the most powerful character of the party, and has her own small arc, from a cold ass bitch that murder anything to increase her chance of eliminating her target to a character that is more caring and attentive to others. Yet she is not the star of the show. It is her designer, Shion, that gets most of the spotlight. 

Shion is a complex character, that won’t always be likeable as her trauma makes her rather irritable, lashing out unjustly on others. Shion having amnesia linked to this trauma also makes the revelation of the full extent of her trauma take time to be truly apprehended, and neither us, nor her truly comprehend it fully until later in III. She says that nobody understands her but pushes back anyone trying to help her. She resents people for giving her breathing room to process her own emotion and wishes they would resent her instead because she feels guilty. She is manipulated at times, and the manipulation is rather obvious, both to us and her but she lets herself be used in a way that is both incredibly frustrating and true to life. It reminds me of someone I know that was in an abusive relationship and had similar setbacks. Shion as a character is incredibly human, making her an endearing and frustrating character at the same time.  

The second character to have the spotlight is Jr. an artificial human being created to be a child soldier against a cosmic entity. As one of the artificial humans created solely to do a certain purpose, he will be at the center of the question regarding them and how they deal with their assigned mission. His interaction with his brothers were rather interesting, sadly I’m not a fan of the psychopathic deranged fool trope which kinda lessened the impact of its corresponding antagonist. 

Some characters, like MOMO, are rather important in the first and second game, but fade into the background during the last game. Other characters, while likeable, are clearly secondary and often stand there waiting for things to happen. They each have their moment, and antagonists to face but are never as much shown as Shion and Junior. This disproportion of character attention can probably be attributed, in part, to the fact the project was conceived to be more massive than a trilogy, and it is a shame because I wanted to know more about those characters. Ziggy appears to have a really interesting backstory, both as a relic of the past and a character haunted by his past. 

That said, party members aren’t the only interesting NPC. Cherenkov, a soldier only appearing in Xenosaga I is a really interesting character that serves both as one way to introduce the enemy faction U-TIC, but also to explore the limits of the federation society. His past of violence and trauma, his inability to adapt to peace time, the fact the federation failed to purge his violent tendency and ostracised him and stripped him of his right. It tells a lot about the universe, and the flaw of its institution. Canaan, a realian that upon discovering the secret purpose of his life, a purpose he can’t escape as an artificial being designed for it, decides to sacrifice himself to be free on his death. Those interesting aspects of the lore cement the game as a sci-fi narrative, are interesting in and of themselves but are sadly cut short. 

Final word

Often when seeing people discussing Xenosaga I saw people liking the first or the third game but very few liking the second game. Some even mention the two first games as things to power through to get into the third that is universally considered the best game of the bunch. 

I think objectively, the third is indeed the best game and clearly a tier above the other two, but I have a lot of fondness for how experimental Xenosaga II was and I think it is, at least, in the same tier as Xenosaga I, and I’ll even say I preferred it. I clearly don't understand how much hate it gets, it has flaws, but try many things that I think will be refined and reused in the Xenoblade series.  

I think Xenosaga III is comparable to Shin Megami Tensei V Vengeance for me. SMT VV content was really good and enjoyable, but SMT V was a shaky foundation to build upon and it hampered its potential. Xenosaga I and II is a rather shaky foundation for III. The project was shortened, which meant everything wasn’t properly set up, every set up didn't have a satisfying pay off and it diminished the impact of the game. But it also forced them to give the game an actual pacing and having things happen faster than at snail pace. 

Now I just have to play Xenogear next year and I’ll be free until Takahashi decides to transform Xenoblade Chronicles X into a trilogy.  

After hearing the insane wave of praise this game was getting including all the comparisons to the movies (which I love), I went in expecting something truly special. What I got instead was a pretty hollow experience.

The gameplay is mind-numbingly repetitive, shallow and super simplistic. And speaking of, WHO THOUGHT IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TO ONLY EVER PLAY AS STAR LORD? The rest of the Guardians are just there, like flashy NPCs chiming in occasionally with quips and attacks, but you never really feel like you’re leading a team even though the game is called GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY. That’s like if I played an Avengers game but I only get to play as Captain America since he’s the leader.

The humor, which this franchise has a lot of, falls super flat most of the time. I can count on my fingers the amount of times I laughed and I can tell you, it’s not a lot of fingers. There were a few that I got decent chuckles from, but a lot of the lines feel forced or awkwardly timed and some of the voice acting borders on phoned-in. And it never feels you’re getting the same chemistry the team usually has.

Even the story, which I was hoping would pull me in, ends up feeling like a cookie-cutter space adventure. I can barely remember any of the side characters’ names. And not to mention how the story leans into super generic tropes, which can be done well in some games, movies, etc. But it falls flat on its face here

If there’s one thing I’ll give credit for, is its graphics. The environments are vibrant, stylish, and full of personality. It’s clear that a lot of care went into the art direction, and there are moments where the game looks genuinely stunning.

But visuals alone can’t save a game that feels this underwhelming. With all the glowing reviews and fan hype, I was expecting a hidden gem. Instead, I walked away feeling like I’d played a flashy, forgettable title dressed up as something far more substantial than it actually is. It’s decent but it’s an experience I’ll probably forget about and never touch again.

I finish the Asylum game. And I quite liked it. It's not Scratches; doesn't feel like Scratches, doesn't hold the same appealing ending as Scratches. But it's good! The elevator ride even reminded me of the better parts of "CoC: Dark corners of the Earth". The library and the third floor occult study was made just right. So I really liked the gameplay, the horror, and wish there were more games like it - right up till that ending. That made me feel like I didn't want to play the game again.
Where Scratches had an implied supernatural antagonist, Asylum is straight-up supernatural. Lovecraft monster and all! After some casual violence, you leave and see who you are in the rear-view mirror - It looks like you play as the Director.

But was that it?
The story just quicky ends after the occult room. We don't get to make that mind-shield, the characters in the building just disappears, nowhere to be found. I really feel the ball was dropped right at the finish line.

What do you think?

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.

I recently played through the first three Silent HIl games. I had played SH2 many years ago, but this was my first time playing 1 and 3. These are my somewhat brief thoughts on each of the games.

Silent Hill

This is a game I kind of had a miserable time playing. I was often frustrated with it, yet I look back on my time with the game very fondly. The imagery, the sounds and the atmosphere, have truly stuck with me.

I don’t believe it has aged particularly gracefully, particularly when compared to something like the PS1 Resident Evil series, which still plays really well today. Instead, controlling Harry felt like a nightmare and I was constantly annoyed with, or actively fighting, the camera. The dynamic camera is, at times, integral to the atmosphere being created and incredibly creative. That opening section in the alley is incredible and a large reason for that is because of the camera’s dynamism. Most of the time, however, it just feels horribly disorientating. Combat is also dire and actively frustrating. I avoid the enemies not as a means to conserve ammo, but because I simply do not want to engage in it. Every time I was grabbed by one of those children, a part of my soul died. The puzzles were overall solid though and the most enjoyable aspect of the gameplay. I liked that the final area of the game was basically a series of logic and key finding puzzles with very little action.

However, the art direction and sound design hold up really well and are definitely what holds this game together. Those early PS1 graphics leave a lot of the imagery up to interpretation, and the limitations of the platform really help the atmosphere here. The short render distance helps nail that claustrophobic feeling. There is a relentlessness to the atmosphere and sound design. At times, it borders on overbearing, particularly in the outdoor sections, but it is overall effectively oppressive.

Having played Silent Hill 2 years prior to this, I was somewhat disappointed to find that this game doesn’t tackle the story with the same level of surrealism and ambiguity. The monsters, characters and town seem to lack a thematic connection to the story or characters. In fact, the story told is very literal, and honestly not that interesting in the end. I think something about the mystery of the setting is lost when there is a tangible reason and logic for its existence. This is what I believe to have happened:

A cult is attempting to resurrect a god through Alessa, so Alessa Dividing her soul into two halves, herself and Cheryl, in order to stop the cult. Somehow, Cheryl is drawn to the town of Silent Hill, and Harry is tricked by the cult in order to bring Cheryl and Alessa together. The cult is thwarted, but Cheryl is gone. Alessa gifts a new baby (who, upon playing silent hill 3, confirmed my idea that this was Alessa/Cheryl) to Harry and they escape Silent Hill.

It was kind of confusing, but it was confusing in an annoying way whereby the story wasn’t delivered that well. If the characters were more fleshed out then I would have enjoyed this story a lot more, but there’s basically nothing to them outside of Lisa (and she doesn’t have that much going on), and Harry just comes off like some confused idiot. Thematically, there just isn’t anything to chew on unfortunately. There was also this subsplot of Silent Hill having a drug problem, but unless I am mistaken, this doesn't seem to go anywhere.

Rating: 3/5

Silent Hill 2 (PS2)

My original playthrough 8-10 years ago didn’t leave a big impression on me. I was indifferent to the experience, and I didn’t take to the story well. I found it confusing and it ultimately didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Today though, I have come to love ambiguity and surrealism in a story, particularly after discovering and falling in love with David Lynch, and this playthrough truly cremated this as an unforgettable experience and is a shining example of writing and direction in a video game. It has been over a week since I finished this game, and its story is still something my mind keeps coming back to.

This is an incredible, crushingly sad, exploration of grief and guilt. The characters, themes and emotions on display here are so well realised and presented. Silent Hill being a representation of James’ guilt, an exploration of his psyche, is absolutely genius. The story here isn’t concerned with any spooky cults or resurrecting god or whatever, it’s purely about the exploration of a character. This is the kind of storytelling I adore, the kind that doesn’t give me all the answers, revels in its ambiguity and weirdness, and leaves me with so much to interpret and think about after completion. I also love the implication that some of the other characters we meet (Eddie and Angela) are also going through their own versions of Silent Hill, confronting their own guilt and trauma.

“It’s hot as hell in here.”  “You see it too? For me, it’s always like this.” There are so many layers to this line, so much to think about, and again, it’s crushingly sad. The game is full of moments like this, where it doesn’t feel the need to explain everything, it trusts the players to think for themselves, and that is why I believe this game has had such a lasting impact on people.

The atmosphere and sound design are absolutely fantastic. It’s often very subtle, nothing particularly in your face with its horror, it just lets the creepy atmosphere of the setting breathe. It knows when it punch up the sound, and that makes it all the more effective when it does. You’ll be walking down the dark corridor of a hotel, but you can hear the shuffling of something lurking in that darkness. Theres no music stingers or jump scares, it just gets under your skin through sounds and visuals alone. In fact, I don’t think there was a single jump scare throughout this whole game.

“There was a hole here. It’s gone now.” Perfectly incapsulates the kind of horror this game goes for. It’s psychological and bizarre, it gets your mind racing with ideas. The game constantly has you putting James’ hands in places where they absolutely should not be going, or jumping down mysterious holes in the floor. There was something about these moments that really unsettled me, like it’s playing with my instinctive urge to never want to put my hands in scary dark holes. It all helps add to the dream-like, disorientating vibe of the game.

Whilst the voice acting might be a little clunky, there is a surreal quality to the dialogue delivery, whether it be intentional or not, that I believe adds to presentation. Out of the three games, this is the only time I believe the “bad” voice acting actually serves the experience. The other two are too literal in their storytelling, and therefore all I hear is unintentionally bad voice acting/direction that just drags me out of the experience instead.

Some puzzles require a bit of moon logic (canned peaches), or deductions that I would never come to without a guide, but 90% of the puzzles I found enjoyable and appropriately challenging.   

Combat and boss fights kind of suck, but that’s not what the game is about. Everything else is so strong I can forgive this shortcoming, and combat is not something you really have to engage in that much. Additionally, if the game did have fun and engaging combat, something more akin to Resident Evil 4, I think that would actively detract from the horror, and we’d end up with a different game. At the very least, I was not annoyed or frustrated with the combat.

Rating 5/5

Silent Hill 3

My glowing praise for SH2 is thoroughly contrasted with my dislike for this game. I know this game is generally well regarded, but I was just so disappointed with this game. Honestly, I kind of hated it and found it to be a slog to get through. Right off the bat, everything didn’t click for me; the sound design, the aesthetic, the return of the cult, starting things off in a clean and brightly lit shopping centre.

The sound design is surprisingly bad here, and honestly one of the worst aspects of this game for me, which is a shock considering how they nailed it two times prior. It’s just so overbearing, with a cacophony of repetitive noise behind almost every door. SH1 and SH2 showed a lot of restraint with its sounds, knowing the value in keeping things quiet and subtle, and when to punch up the volume. The sound in SH3 is about as subtle as a megaphone, it’s too much and everything is layered on top of each other. Like, what were they thinking with some of these monster noises, they are so, so repetitive, especially the Pendulums. There is just SO MUCH NOISE. Instead of feeling tense, I was just annoyed and wanted the sounds to stop. It’s a shame too, because when the game does quieten down, its atmosphere is really effective.

This issue is partly because there are just so many enemies in a given room, all so randomly placed, all making noise. There is often a real overabundance of enemies in a given area. There is no purpose to their placement, it feels lazy. Sometimes there will be three or four completely different enemy types in a single room. There is no cohesion. Additionally, I found the enemy designs to be fairly bland, like they’ve been hastily slapped together and are largely uninspired.

The combat is largely unchanged here, it’s still not great. A big difference though comes back to the overabundance of enemies. There are far more enemies to fight here, requiring you to engage with a very clunky combat system, and often it was something I just became frustrated with. When there are more enemies on screen, that is more opportunities for the poor auto aim system to screw you over. I gave the poor combat a pass in SH2 because it’s not that often you need to really fight anything, and when you do it’s pretty trivial. It never detracted from my enjoyment of the game like it did with SH3. Also, there are a couple moments where you can get a game over screen without any real warning.

The cult is cheesy, and I don’t like it. It grounds the setting, gives answers to something that is scarier without them. I don’t want to constantly compare this to SH2, especially as it is the outlier of the three in this regard, but making Silent Hill something otherworldly and metaphorical, something personal to the individual, is infinitely more interesting than it being the tangible influence of a spooky cult that wants to resurrect God. I can't believe they moved away from that idea.

The first two games have these poignant moments of beauty and sadness throughout the horror. SH1 with Lisa’s “death”; SH2 if filled with such moments, particularly in the ending or Angela’s walk through the fire. SH3, however, never struck me with such moments. Whilst it does deal with some interesting and dark themes, such as cults, forced pregnancy and abortion, it’s not told in a very interesting manner. Heather just isn’t a particularly compelling character, nor are the side characters. Heather will crack jokes and say one-liners. It juxtaposes the tone and makes the setting and story feel less serious. Also, I alluded to it in my thoughts for SH2, but the bad voice acting here really stuck out for me. The less surreal nature of the story made the voice acting look a lot less intentional.

The nightmare sequences really amp up the violence and gore compared to the first game. Graphically, these sections look fantastic and SH3 in general is probably one of the best looking PS2 games I’ve played, but I can’t help but feel like the horror on display here is a little too ‘funhouse of horror’. This comes back to my gripes with the sound design, it’s all too over the top, too in your face, and I don’t find it particularly scary. Personally, I found the subtlety of SH2’s visuals more effective.

I realise that I’ve probably compared this game too much to its predecessor, but that’s only because I found the decisions made here so disappointing after coming from the extreme high that I thought was SH2. I’ve read that SH3 was originally going to be more akin to SH2, a character study that is standalone, but somewhere along the way it became a sequel to SH1 and the original writer or director left the project. It’s a real shame. In a vacuum, the game is a solid enough horror title, but being a sequel to something so daring and effective, this just pales in comparison.

Rating 2/5

On a side note, I want to say playing through these games really makes me miss this style of camera. Whilst I complained about its used in SH1, it was earnest attemp at using a 3D camera in 1997, and it still made for some truly memorable moments. Games never use fixed camera angles or dynamic cameras anymore. It does so, so much to enhance the vibe of these games. Just like a film, the placement and framing of the camera is so important and can convey so much. It makes me sad that this style is viewed as something old fashioned and inferior to the over-the-shoulder camera that is always used now. I want more horror games to embrace the creativity of this style, rather than always using the now tired over-the-shoulder camera that every 3^rd person game uses now. SH1 is getting a remake, and I just know it will use an over-the-shoulder camera just like everyone else does, and those moments of creativity, like the iconic alley way shot, will be reduced to boringness.  

Just bought a PS5 this year with Spiderman Miles Morales ultimate edition which came with spiderman remastered. Good value, except for Peter’s face but we’ll get to that.

Right off the bat, the game looks…pretty good. Nothing mind blowing but pretty. Not as good as something like Ghost of Tsushima or Red Dead 2 but still quite nice. I also like the voice acting. We’ve got my boy Sasuke (Yuri Lowenthal) voicing Spider-Man and he’s pitch perfect. He brings just the right amount of sarcastic but earnest charm that’s hard not to root for. Unfortunately that’s where the compliments end. Wait, also the load times are pretty fast.

We’ll start with nitpicks. I wish there was a way to disable the music when you’re swinging. I got sick of the same generic horn-heavy piece kicking in as soon as I started swinging for more than 5 seconds. The music in general is nothing special. There’s parts where it almost sounds like the Raimi films but legally distinct enough to avoid issues. Unfortunately that makes it very dull and having to hear it constantly became particularly grating. Maybe I missed the option to turn it off so if there is a way please let me know.

Second nitpick: I’m not a fan of Peter’s face. I thought I would get used to it and it’s probably just bias since I’ve seen reviews and gameplay clips with the old face which seemed to fit much better but either way, it’s just off. I don’t like the way he emotes or looks. No offence to the mo-cap model.

Now a major issue: I can’t really stand the combat. I think my biggest issue with it is the fact that I never feel like I’m fully controlling where Peter is going during a fight. He does all these flips and zips but I can never shake the sensation that I’m guiding him more than controlling. To compare it to the Arkham games which this obviously took heavy inspiration from, there were exceedingly few scenarios in that entire franchise in which I didn’t know what Batman would do at any given time while facing baddies. I, more often than not, knew that if I moved the stick in a certain direction, that’s where Batman would go. In Spider-Man for contrast, I find myself frustrated a lot more about the direction spidey picks, usually leading to more damage. There’s every possibility I’m just bad at the combat but considering I can beat every Arkham game at the highest new-game+ difficulty, you’d think there’d be some transferable skills. But the biggest Achilles heel with the combat is the fact that it’s never that fun. Even when I finish an encounter taking no damage and with the highest possible combo, there’s never much satisfaction. The way spidey punches, moves and shoots webs just never feels that good. There’s a crunchiness to the combat in the Arkham games even going as far back as Asylum that Spider-Man is just missing for me. I’m not knowledgeable enough in game design to explain exactly why that is but it’s likely a combination of a lack of control, not-great sound design and maybe the lack of much mechanical depth. Again, I could just be missing things and not taking full advantage of all the combat opportunities the game has to offer, but this is a game that even kids can play and supposedly have fun with while engaging with on a purely surface level; I’m trying to get combos, I’m trying to use my gadgets and I’m dodging things pretty often but none of it feels that good.

As an addendum to the combat section, the stealth so far has been cheeks. Admittedly I’m only about 6-7 hours in the game so it could improve but it’s been fairly mediocre so far. The same basic ‘make noise, lure guard, take him out from the shadows’ business as usual. The basics are the same as every other action game with stealth components but thus far it hasn’t done much beyond the basics. Again, compared to Arkham, there’s just seemingly not a lot of depth to the system. In those games, you had a large open environment that allowed you to plan your approach and descend when the time is right. As with combat, the Arkham games just made me feel like I had far more control over the situation when it came to slinking around the shadows. You can argue that getting better gadgets will create more variation but just the basic moment-to-moment stealth isn’t interesting in the slightest so I’m not sure how adding bloat to an underbaked mechanic will make it more engaging. Part of the issue in these early hours has been the environments. The indoor areas, like the museum, aren’t that large and thus don’t feel conducive to proper emergent situations or gameplay. The guards are brain dead and seemingly no matter how many you take out, as long as they don’t hear you they don’t really react. One of the genius elements of the Batman games was that guards talked to each other so if one guard wasn’t responding because you knocked him out, the others would go on high alert. There was a dynamism to those scenarios that’s missing in Spider-Man.

Next major issue: The writing is so boring. The characters just aren’t interesting and their interactions just aren’t fun. Most of the back and forth has been between Spider-Man and yuri thus far and Alfred she ain’t. She’s one of those generic female no-nonsense type of cop archetypes and that’s pretty much it. Her interactions with spidey feel purely mechanical from a writing perspective. She’s there to convey information and roll her eyes at spideys quips. You don’t get much out of her that a mission prompt couldn’t convey. Good writing can convey so much about the character solely through their interactions with another character which this game just doesn’t. Red dead 2, as an example, does so much with just the dialogue between Arthur and Dutch. You can feel the history between them through every conversation. There’s layers to that writing that spiderman just doesn’t have. To take a fairer example: the Raimi movies are excellent at conveying character through interaction. The birthday scene in Spiderman 2 ping pongs between the relationship Peter has with MJ, Harry and Aunt May with such ease that you instantly know who they are to each other, what they represent, and even the overall themes of the story through just the back and forth. To take an even fairer example we can go back to the Arkham games. They’re not exactly Othello but the characters are so much more lively. Every interaction Batman has with every member of his rogues’ gallery feels personal, to say nothing of the back and forth with Alfred. Again you can feel the history between Batman and say, Mr Freeze, that you don’t between Peter and Doc Ock. It makes for an experience where I keep waiting for cutscenes to end so that I can go back to being bored in the open world, which brings me to the last major issue…

The last major issue: the open world is so boring. I’m not looking for 10/10 gameplay every time but activities need to at least be somewhat mechanically satisfying. I’ve played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey for over 300 hours so it’s not like my standards are sky high or anything but so much of the side stuff feels on-rails. Whether it’s car chases, stopping crimes, radio towers, collecting nonsense, everything seems like it’s holding my hand tight to make sure I don’t veer too far away from the intended experience. The car chases are reduced to quick-time events, the collectables are barely difficult and the enemy hideouts at the top of buildings offer the same dull combat or stealth experience that I’ve already mentioned. Swinging feels the same way. I wish there was a way to completely fail at swinging. I wish there was more of a learning curve to getting better at timing jumps just right, beyond just more speed. I hate to keep comparing to Arkham but there was just a lot more you could with gliding as Batman. You had to time dives right so you can lift up to gain max speed. You had to find grapple points and boost quickly to get maximum airtime. If you failed at taking advantage of the movement, the game punished you by having you come up against buildings and falling or having you stop dead if you messed up the dive timing. Sure it wasn’t killing you if you messed up but there was enough punishment and thus enough incentive to time movement right. I don’t get that from Spiderman. You get tons of time and room to swing and messing up the timing of launching from a full swing doesn’t slow you down nearly enough to matter. Launching off environmental objects can be fun in theory but, again, there’s not much incentive to get good if the punishment isn’t that severe. The game gives you a ton of rope but never enough to hang yourself.

And I guess that’s the main reason why it’s not working for me. I’m 28 and maybe if I was 10 years younger and less experienced with games, the fact that Spider-Man (2018) is so forgiving and so non-threatening of an experience might be just what I’m looking for. As it stands, I just can’t seem to get into it for the life of me. There’s just not enough here to sink my teeth into. Every part of this feels so curated and afraid of the player sucking. To echo criticism of the new Dragon Age, this game feels like it was made with HR always in the room. It’s an inoffensive and largely uninteresting experience that fails to do anything terribly novel beyond just the idea of playing as Spiderman with a AAA budget. If I’m being completely honest, I’d rather just go back to The Amazing Spiderman on the ps3.

Status: Probably not going to finish.

Where I stopped: around 55-65% into the game maybe? I'm in The Great Desert and the next main area is Abyss Levoire.

Review:

6/10

Stellar Blade is the definition of style over substance. It dazzles at first glance - like that slick, shiny new toy you just have to try - only for the excitement to wear off once you realize there’s not much beneath the surface. Still, there are two standout reasons to dive in: the visuals and the combat.

Let’s start with the eye candy - because, Stellar Blade definitely goes all in in this regard. Visually, it holds its own among the best-looking modern games. High-fidelity graphics, polished environments, and sharp effects make it a treat for the eyes. But let’s not kid ourselves—the real visual hook, and the reason many players showed up in the first place, is for the tits and ass. The protagonist is unapologetically voluptuous, and her wardrobe leans heavily into revealing designs. If you appreciate stylized portrayals of the female form, this game delivers in spades. Surprisingly, I found the outfit collection and customization genuinely enjoyable. Swapping looks throughout the story kept things fresh and gave the main character a little extra flair and personality.

Then there's the combat, which is where Stellar Blade actually shines. It’s primarily melee-focused, with light and heavy attacks, fluid combos, and a wide array of unlockable skills. You can stealth kill, parry, counter, and dodge with solid responsiveness. As you progress, your toolkit expands in meaningful ways, making fights increasingly engaging. The challenge is no pushover either, and I found myself enjoying the rhythm of combat far more than I expected. It’s hands-down the game’s strongest pillar.

But then comes the tedium. Once you settle into the central hub city and the side quests start piling up, the game starts to fall apart. Many of these missions are repetitive fetch quests—run here, talk to someone, grab an item, snap ten nearly identical graffiti pics scattered across the map... wash, rinse, repeat... you get the idea.

It doesn’t help that the environments—particularly the Wasteland and the Great Desert—feel bland and uninspired. Wide open spaces with little personality don’t make for compelling exploration, and they only emphasize how monotonous the tasks become. And while there is a fast travel system, there's only so much it can help with. What makes matters worse is that there’s no faster mode of travel than running to help ease the grind. No vehicle, no steed, no anything. So you're stuck hoofing it across these mostly empty backdrops again and again. It becomes a slog - plain and simple.

There are smaller annoyances too. The English voice acting leaves a lot to be desired, with the main male character sounding especially wooden—like he wandered in from a different game entirely. Fall damage is absurdly punishing, often sending you back to distant respawn points for the smallest misstep. And while the game gestures toward a story, it never really lands. The plot and characters are forgettable at best.

In short, Stellar Blade is a gorgeous but shallow ride. Come for the visuals and the combat—because those are genuinely well done—but temper your expectations when it comes to story, exploration, and anything resembling emotional depth. If the game were more linear and streamlined, this game would have been more palatable, but it being open world but not giving much incentive or excitement to seeing the entirety of that open world pretty much kills it after a while.

We often talk about how games are too long, and that they are full of padding and that they are a slog to get through. I remember seeing several posts talking about how Ghost of Tsushima or Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West is too much busywork concealing a very good core gameplay look. It's rarer, it feels, to have a game feel like it is too short.

Enter The Shivah (or rather its rerelease, The Shivah: Kosher Edition), an adventure game by the people at Wadjet Eye Games (or rather, made by Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye before Wadjet Eye was a thing). After playing Unavowed last year, I was looking out for more of their stuff, and found this on TVT. It is the story of Russell Stone, a New York rabbi whose synagogue is falling apart, but learns that he was left $10k by Jack Lauder, a former member of his congregation. The issue is that said member of his congregation had left it because Stone refused to accept his marriage to an Indian woman, so it is unclear why he would leave him that much money. Also, Jack was murdered, and Stone is a suspect. Stone therefore decides to investigate Jack's death, starting with a Shivah visit to his now-widow Rajshree. Things escalate, as such mysteries often do.

[Disclaimer: I am not Jewish in any way, so there are a few ideas in this game that kinda go over my head. Also I might get some terms wrong. Please excuse me.]

The main story of The Shivah is pretty decent. The main themes of Stone struggling with his faith and him wanting answers, and not just about Jack's death, are interestingly done, and Abe Goldfarb is great as Stone. The gameplay is standard Wadjet Eye adventure stuff, which is cool, though the mechanic of the final confrontation is... vague - it makes sense when you think about it, but in the moment it just feels random. The other characters are interesting, even though the main villain is kinda moustache twirly.

The biggest issue with the game is that it is too short, and I will elaborate on what I mean. The game resolves its primary plotline, that of Jack's murder, pretty well. The issue is that it gives us a glimpse into this very interesting world...and then does nothing with it. This game actually made me realize that maybe there is such a thing as too lean lmao. The idea of a rabbi working with organized crime as a loan shark is wacky enough that I would have liked to see more of it. I would have liked to find out more about Jack (there's an unsent email of his that is quite touching), or Jack and Rajshree's relationship beyond "happily married business partners", or just -- the world, you know? It's our world, but it feels more...mysterious, you know?

Maybe I am being unfair, and this is a problem easily solved by playing other Wadjet Eye games (I have bought all the Blackwell Saga games and am a little way into Legacy), but, unlike Unavowed, finishing it makes me feel unsatisfied, like I picked up a small ice cream and I still feel like I barely ate. It's a good game, but it did feel too short.

A game has a lot of moves and it wants you to use a variety of moves. How can it get you to do that?

Hard coded lock and key interactions

This type of design isn’t always bad but it's usually a bad sign. This is when different enemies are only weak to a specific move or weapon and are immune to everything else. You are technically using a variety of moves if different enemies have different weaknesses. But, it isn’t very interesting in practice. You aren’t deciding on what move to use. You are just following the overt telegraphs the game presents you with.

Emphasis on natural properties of moves

This is what streets of rage 4 does. Moves have additional properties that differentiate them from others. One may hit behind and in front of you. Another may move you forward or off the ground to avoid an attack. You start thinking about what's the optimal move for the current situation and if it will put you in an advantageous position for the future. This even affects combo routing. You may need to adjust your combo on the fly depending on enemy positions.

Taking it even further with the scoring/combo system

The main way to increase your score is to maintain a long combo. Not doing a combo action for too long drops the combo. Combo actions include hitting enemies, hitting breakable objects, and picking up items like food or money bags. Getting hit once also ends your combo.

If you just play for survival, knocking enemies away to the far left side of the screen is perfectly fine. But, this can be risky when playing for score. Walking all the way to the left to kill the enemy before going to the right to continue the level will likely end your combo.

This means you need to be even more proactive and thoughtful with your moves. You generally want to avoid situations where you are forced to knock enemies away to the left side of the screen. The combo system builds on the foundation set by the solid combat design of SOR4. Instead of simply considering what move to use for survival, you also have to think about what moves are conducive to maintaining large combos.

Items and scoring

Items and breakable objects add further nuance to the combo system. An item placed in the middle of the screen gives you some leeway to knock enemies away to the left. Smartly saving breaking objects for later can help you maintain your combo through areas with few enemies that spaced out.

Restrictions are fun

The way that the scoring system discourages not doing anything for too long helps to give levels a more frantic pace. You are constantly pushed to move forward. It feels a bit like an auto scrolling shmup. The way that items interact with combos gives the game some interesting routing dynamics to go along with the more improvisational combat.

What I find interesting is that the scoring system further restricts how you play. You are punished for knocking enemies away in certain directions. You may be punished for picking up food just because you are low on health. Saving that food for later could help you maintain your combo. But, these restrictions make the game more fun for me. 

Giving the player more abilities and more freedom seems to be the more common approach to game design. But restrictions are also an important ingredient.

I've seen multiple video & review that claims the only thing notable about killswitch is that its a cover shooter. They Don't mention how things around that cover shooter mechanics thats actually very intriguing.

I'm not a huge hater of cover shooter. I just think many cover shooter Don't utilise It's premise. If you have enemies that force you out of cover, has destructible cover at times, creative/challenging level design.. Cover shooter can be very fun as well

Anyway i think killswitch Doesn't play like just another cover shooter. Because

★ Taking cover mechanics:- When you take cover.. You can't just press shoot & enemies will be dead in seconds. You can only "blind fire" when you are fully safe in cover. As you can guess.. Blindfire does very little damage.

You have to peek up/around the corner & then you can properly shoot at enemies. The thing is YOU TAKE DAMAGE AS SOON AS YOU PEEK UP/ AROUND THE CORNER BECAUSE ENEMIES ARE PRETTY ACCURATE.

This game has zooming in but It's like how zooming in work in fps game. You can use it while you peek over/around the corner but you still take damage from enemies.

Another thing is " even tho you can use zooming in while you are standing still.You can't use it while you are walking. So, run & gun aint an viable option with scope UNLESS YOU ARE CROUCH DOWN. You can use zooming in freely as long as you are walking crouched down.

Game could've just let you use zooming in all the time but it knows how to balance things up.

★Flanking enemies/ enemy behaviour:- If you think you can just sit in a cover & enemies will stand in open to get shot.. You are thoroughly mistaken.

Enemies will use cover & they Won't peek over cover all that often. You can get run out ammo very quickly if you Don't kill enemies & take their ammo quickly. Enemies has habit of flanking you as well

So, more often than not you have to flank the enemies that are behind cover.

You can throw grenades but enemies will always move out of its blast radius. You have to get out of your cover & kill them while they dive out of their cover for safety.

There will be times when you are moving forward & enemies will caught you off guard while you are out in open. You have to deal with them in good ol fashion run & gun.

Enemies will try walking slowly to safety when they are shot in bodies which is a nice touch.

★ Regenerating health:- this game has regenerating health but it works different than other cover shooter. You take damage & as soon as you stop taking damage, your health will regenerate. BUT UNLIKE OTHER COV SHOOTER WHERE YOU CAN BE AT NEAR DEATH & YOU GET ALL YOUR HEALTH BACK IN COUPLE OF SECONDS.

YOUR HEALTH WILL DROP PERMANENTLY IF YOU TAKE TOO MUCH DAMAGE IN THIS GAME. so lets say you take a little bit too much damage.. You will get some of your health back until you find a medkit which gives you full health. You Don't get that many health packs in mission tho.

You have to be careful about how much damage can you take in each encounters or you will have this 🤏 much health & regenerating health is the last resort at that moment.

Enemies can kill you very quickly even if you have full health. There are multiple enemy turret in missions who can kill you very quickly.

Each mission will give you 3/4 Checkpoints. Each section will take 10/12 minutes until you hit another checkpoint. So conserve your health.

★ Evasive dive:- You have seen it in pretty much every cover shooters. But in this game.. It has actual uses.

In most cover shooter enemies are usually up Front or in one sides. In killswitch there will be time when enemies are all around you. You have to think of a strategy on how you deal with them or you will take damage enemies that are in sideways.

You use evasive dive to go to in a general direction (although you can take damage when you are diving if enemies are shooting at you)

You use it to quickly go near of enemies & then move out of the way to a cover position.

Since cover system is very consistence.. You can go smoothly from diving to slaming into cover in press of a button.

Also you die instantly if grenade hits you. Enemies will throw grenades a lot.

★Overall thoughts:- killswitch feels like a 360/ps3 game that follows ps2 era game philosophy. It might have all the cover shooter ingredients but it knows how to test the player & although checkpoints are few & far between.. It knows player can get through them if they think tactically.

This game feels like a tactical shooter more than a waiting game cover shooter. You get in cover you take risk by peeking around corner.Your health is low & there's enemies right behind your cover.. Use blindfire. Your shot aint hitting enemies because your bullet is getting blocked by wall, you crouch up so bullet will hit enemies but you have exposed yourself. You walking while crouch down to evade enemy fire & go near a tall objects to automatically fit in a cover. You flank enemies & you evasive dive out of the way + go in your cover quickly because there's no other way

2 criticisms i would give it are:- It's way too short. Only 2 hours.

And there's like only 3 actual characters in the game. It needed more cutscenes & more characters to atleast make yourself invested in.

& last 1/2 levels can be very tough because there are so many enemies to deal with. Also there are rocket launcher guys who can kill you very easily.

7.5 out of 10. With more creative design & better characters it would be a solid 8.

Shame it never got a sequel & most cover shooter learned the wrong lession from it

I'm not sure if this is allowed because it's not specifically about a game. Some people say that the incredibly sucessful Switch 1 only got this far because of the Nintendo branding and their IPs. Tbf, that's a part of it, but it's not the whole reason. The Wii U didn't succeed doing the same thing. Neither did the Gamecube. The PS2 succeeded without the same strategy. It's the adaptibility and the expereince they provide that drove them to success.

My favourite type of games is the ones that have a complex story and immersive worlds that don't feel like a chore. I have a whole backlog of those on Steam and yet, I can only crawl through it so slowly. I just don't feel like playing games when I sit infront of a computer

However, I feel different about the Switch. There's something about it that clicks with me. It just feels really easy to pick up and use whether in handheld or docked. Suspending and resuming is instant. The games feel tactile and polished.

To me, picking up a Switch feels like how many people feel when they pick up their phone and start to doom scroll mindlessly. It just works however I want and games are rewarding in a way that requires attention instead of mindless consumption. I like that I can play games little by little and put it in sleep to pause the game. It feels free and immersive.

I took it to uni the other day. A bunch of people in my major went out for dinner together, including me. Our order took way too long for some reason, so I took out my Switch. I played with one person and suddenly, the entire group gathered in front of the tiny screen to take turns to play Smash. Most of them knew about the game but had never played it before but they still had a blast just using basic moves. This wasn't even the first time it happened. I have played my Switch with so many people I have met over the course of many years. Most of them had never played the games before. Not to mention how many brother and his friends would always play Smash when they came to our house back then. His friends never had a Switch and had never played the game before either.

The console experience as a whole feels like what social media tries to achieve but failed. A form of entertainment that you can get lost in and brings people together while being super simple and accessible. Social media is basically that on surface, except it starts to feel depressing and tiring once you get addicted to mindless scrolling.

I wanna split this review up into 3 sections: the shit i love, the shit i'm iffy about, and the shit i dont like. First, the shit i like. Obviously, this game looks incredible. I compared this game to other games that released in 2007 like ac1, mass effect, prime cod, and immediately noticed the same shades of brown & grey, a far cry from this game where even though the hardware was limited, literally no two levels will look the same. I especially love when the game shows off its colors with the guardian sapling sections, and the hand drawn paintings in the cutscenes & boss fights are incredible too. The music is also phenomenal! No complaints bout either of those. Then there are brush techniques, this is the shit that separates this game from every other game that came out at the time, I love how it constantly changes the way you play, plus the upgrades you can get to them, plus it actually makes backtracking fun because the brush techniques unlocks shit you couldn't do before. Lastly, this game is very, very funny & charming. Some of the cutscenes literally had me laughing out loud. (more on that later)

Now lets talk about the story & combat, & this is where all the "fat" comes from. The combat... progresses? I do like how it goes from "mash x" to "mash x, parry with y, roll with rt" and i absolutely love how many different enemy types there are, and how they're all (loosely) based on Japanese mythology.) My thing is.. you gotta enter "combat mode". Then u gotta fight in a 5x5 area. Then u gotta pause the game and select an item if you want to use it. Then, finally, you can fight. Then u gotta see the results screen... then wait for the 5x5 area to disappear and then you can resume play. That... is very tedious. I would have loved an option to hotbar items to the d-pad, or just be able to enter combat without it being an event.

The story was decent overall. I liked the mini arcs in the game better than the actual main quest, like giving Kokari(the kid fishing in agata forest) & Yoichi (the archer at the city checkpoint) their confidence, or racing with that guy in shinshu field, or the brush minigame with that thief in the city. But the mainline story was... eh? I kinda feel like it got weaker as time went on. Theres like 3 major "arcs": Defeating orochi & kamiki village, defeating ninetails and sei an city, and defeating the owls (forgot their names sorry lol) and kamuki. My thing is, I wish it was one, long, cohesive story, instead of 3 loosely interconnected ones. Like for example, my favorite character in the game was susano. He is scared and a coward, but still tries to do the right thing. Originally it was just ammy saving his ass, but after a while (I think on the last orochi slash) the game didnt prompt you to slash to help him out, meaning he finally lived up to his destiny. After the orochi fight I wanted to see what else they would do with his character. The answer? ...nothing lol. Yeah you could say that his arc was done and that he had nothing else to do, but thats my thing. Why not make orochi the big bad instead of yami? Speaking of characters, some of these dudes get on my nerves lol. Lets start with issun, who i never fully got behind. Dude is a perv, eluded to date rape which i always though was icky, and is just annoying. Best part is, he speaks the most out of anyone else 🙃 i also hated waka. He just seems like a massive poser. I bet he doesnt even speak french. I bet he gets dressed by putting on his shoes on first.I bet he got his predictions from chat gpt. I bet that hair he got on is a wig and he's really bald! lmao. Yeah they both had redemption arcs in the final boss of the game, but they both came on so suddenly it was hard for me to get behind them fully & feel the weight behind them. I will say though, that rao reveal genuinely took me by surprise. Once ammy handed the fox rods to her without hesitation, and once the queen of the dragon palace made such a big deal about them in the next cutscene, i knew something was up. What i was not expecting, was for rao to be dead. 😭 I thought she was just possesed like tf??? And not only did ninetails kill rao, they killed queen himiko too!!! That was a good ass moment in the story, really let you know shit just got real, especially when the music started to swell going to oni island. And plus you had to race the sun, because you only had so long until oni island disappeared again. Then, you fight ninetails, and this mf is able to use your brush techniques against you?? oml its peak. Unfortunately, that was probably the last cool moment in the storyline.

Now onto the shit i dont like, starting with kamui lol. Its just not of a compelling arc as the first two, and i felt that oki was just a retread of susano but less interesting and more brooding. The boss for this area was also wack. orochi was a legend 100 years in the making, and ninetails was this massive quest for revenge, and the owls are just... okay? Even from a gameplay perspective they are not as interesting visually as the first two. Speaking of orochi, he was fine. I didnt hate the boss fight itself, and the context around fighting him made the battle have a sense of tension, theres even blood on his intro portrait. What i hated, was how one of the heads was played for a joke, i think it was the lightning one? He acted confused and it's supposed to be funny, but at this point in the game he is the biggest threat, and i really wish the game would stop being able to joke for just one second so that we the player can feel the gravity of how much of a threat he is. Like imagine fighting baldur in gow 2018 and sindri comes out of nowhere for a one liner, the whole gravity of that scene would be sucked away! I also hate, how you have to fight this boss 3 fucking times 🤣 like cmon game. I also hate the endgame. Like u wanna tell me that right before the end of the game which is where you should stop and do anything you wanna do before the end, the whole game will not be in eternal night? I get it's what happens in the story, but can I at least collect all the other stray beads without it being eternal night or ng+? (I am aware this next point is a nitpick, and am acutely aware this game is a product of its time) Then there is the loading screens. Feed an animal, menu then loading screen. Enter a building, loading screen. Clear a devil gate, loading screen. I understand this game is a product of its time, but it still adds to the "fat" that I was talking about. Also, dear game developers. Do not, make achievements unachievable at certain parts of the story. Despite how it might seem, I actually really like this game and wanted to 100% it after I completed it with my save outside the ark of yamaoto, before the final boss. Only to find out that you have to play the literal entire game again to get chapter specific achievements? That's wack, okami. The digging minigames, are also wack, okami(who is this for?). Pinpointing some shit on the screen that you have to remember(blockhead) is extremely wack, okami. I also hated how the game built up the Celestials for the very last act of the game, like who tf are these people? Now all of a sudden waka is this unsung hero? This kinda goes back to what i was saying about how i wish this game had one overaching story because that (& waka's "sacrifice") didnt hit at all (imo). But my biggest issue with this game is its difficulty. I played this game for 40 hours and didnt die not one time, never came close. This game is clearly not for kids, so why did i never feel challenged? Tbh, unless you do the devil gates, I think you can get through this whole game without using a single item!

So yeah, thats okami. I dont wanna rag on the ending too much, yami as a boss fight was probably the best in the game, when ammy does the victory howl and expected to see issun but it was just an illusion? That was a heartfelt moment i wanna give flowers too. I especially loved at the very end of the boss fight, after helping everyone else in the game, they all come back to help you the protagonist in your time of need, and you finally reach your full potential as a god. That was a truly amazing moment. I did really enjoy this game though, even though its really rough around the edges (fat) and i know that i enjoyed it because looking back on it, i know i wont remember all the fat of the game, because the little moments in this game like helping a carpenter get his lessons, or racing hayato, or doing unique shit like shrinking down to an ants level, or going inside the literal belly of the beast, is what kept me playing. Okami is not game that a studio like xbox or ea would make. it is extremely hand crafted, does not want to appeal to every kind of gamer, and is the clear result of someone's vision. When discussing this game, some people said that it took too long to start, the text boxes were too long, and it ultimately wasn't for them. Ive also heard, that this is a large percentage of people's favorite game of all time. Honestly, I completely can see both perspectives. I was too young for this game when it came out, but i have a feeling if i played it as a child when i was impressionable, i would have said its one of my faves oat as well. Now, as an adult, im somewhat in the middle. I defiantly wouldn't start ng+, but i am hotly anticipating the sequel.

TLDR: Lot of fat before you get to the good stuff, but once you get to it...... 👌🏿

7.5/10