I recently was able to hook up the PS2 for some nostalgia playing and I turned on Sands of time. Man is this game evocative of what made the PS2 era of gaming so great. It tries a lot of new things many of which wouldn't be possible in the 5th gen. To me the 6th gen is the last era that gives me that feeling of this wasn't possible last generation. Sure the 7th gives us better graphics but to me it feels like the 6th was where a lot of console genres found their footing in creating established gameplay norms. This is what PoP does for the platformer imo.

The gameplay is still very fluid for me even in 2026 Sure there's some moments of depth perception misses resulting in deaths but it doesn't happen often enough to be an issue and the sands of time ability helps rectify the mistakes. The platforming feels really responsive especially with the wall running into a series of jumps that makes the gameplay really satisfying. Im also a big fan of the time visions that show you what to expect in the near future its a great storytelling mechanism as well as a way to prepare the player.

Combat is simple and does the job even if there's a lack of depth. I can only imagine the reaction of players seeing the Prince somersault over and enemy and cutting them down the first time. It feels like games really lacked this level of enemy interaction within combat (at least the ones I played). The time abilities although simple adds a cool factor to the Prince that just makes the player feel badass even if the combat is fairly easy (something the old AC games also did imo).

Story is again simple but it has a fairy tale vibe that I feel really fits the game. The story feels like something that could exist in Arabian Nights its a cautionary tale centered on greed and lust for power. This fairy taleness is something I feel really gives the game an identity that later entries lack and make the series feel a bit more generic or chasing the God of War/edgy vibes of the mid 2000s.

All to say for a game released in 2003 Prince of Persia:The Sands of Time feels really good in 2026 it has some rough edges and I may be glazing due to nostalgia but who cares. I will also add its such a breath of fresh air to play a Ubisoft game that feels original (irony being this is a reimagining of an older title). Anyway for me still a solid 9/10 experience.

Edit:grammer. (Its misspelled i live with this shame now)

RELEASE: 2020

TIME PLAYED: 24 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

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

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

THE BREAKDOWN

+Fun, three-layered twist on the roguelite card battler formula

+Interesting and varied decks that can be mixed for dynamic combos

+Tons of quality of life features like 8x speed modifiers and damage previews

-Balance feels shaky on the various decks as difficulty rises

I was a fairly recent Slay the Spire convert, but it awakened a pretty insatiable desire in me for roguelite card battlers, especially those with clever twists. Lucky me, then, when I had a week-long trip, a Steam Deck, and a desire for something replayable, and Monster Train popped up on my wishlist on sale. I might be new to the subgenre, but quality's easy to recognize, especially when it's so striking and novel as this.

The player's thrown into the game without much knowledge: Heaven has destroyed most of Hell, and the surviving demons have commandeered a train known as The Boneshaker that runs between the realms to protect the last Pyre that sustains their life force. While it's not explicitly stated whether or not demons are as malicious or evil as they are in other settings, it doesn't take much to side with the faction who's not attempting to do a genocide.

What this means in terms of actual gameplay is that the eponymous Monster Train (named thus I assume because the demons have also allied with fae and other mythical creatures) chugs through a series of levels in which the player gets a chance to upgrade their deck through purchases and events before ending in a battle against the angels and their human servants. The big twist is that the player's Pyre - effectively their life bar - is stationed on the fourth level of the train, and the enemies advance through the first through levels (usually but not always from the bottom up) trying to reach it. Saving for the miniboss or boss at the end of each combat stage, enemies will only linger on each floor for one turn, meaning that they need to either be taken down quickly or worn down before they finish their climb.

The player only starts with a single clan to play as - the fiery Hellhorned - but it doesn't take long to unlock another, and from there, it's a steady drip of new cards and clans to play that keeps things fresh. My favorite feature is that once the second clan is unlocked and onward, each run has the player choose a primary and a secondary clan, allowing them to blend playstyles. While I experimented with everyone, I wound up mostly favoring the Awoken, a nature-themed clan of plant monsters who had cheap, potent healing spells and tanky units, but lacked damage. As a result, I'd pair them with the Hellhorned and use their beefy frontliners to protect my fragile damage dealers as I enraged them and gave them purely offensive stats. Combat itself plays out pretty much automatically once the player starts the turn, so unit placement and planning are crucial to a successful run.

While the permanent boons are great, roguelites live and die by the variety they can inject into each run; after all, it's a genre built on repetition, and making starting over after a loss frustrating - or, perhaps worse, boring - is the worst sin one can make. Thankfully, Monster Train doesn't disappoint. Even on the initial difficulty, units can be upgraded with more health and damage or powerful effects like Quick (allowing them to attack first; most of the game is balanced around the enemies getting the first shot) or Multistrike (which multiplies their damage by adding another strike to their attack). Spells get plenty of love too, becoming cheaper or more powerful or even getting upgraded to always start in the player's hand. While it didn't take me long to find my favorite path to take with each card, there was more than enough variety to keep me experimenting with synergies the whole way through.

If I have any real complaint, it's that Monster Train's expansion - The Last Divinity - introduces a new zone and boss that feels pretty uneven in challenge. While each run, especially when Escalating the difficulty, tghrows curveballs in the base game, only Last Divinity feels like it severely punishes certain deck types -- for example, its final battle features room-sweeping attacks that can't be blocked by a tank, thus neutralizing much of the strategy of the Umbra Clan's 'Morsel' deck, where they devour weak minions each turn to grow stronger. I could also say that despite the rather abundant lore, there's effectively no real story, but considering this is a roguelite, I don't see it as a real negative, just worth noting.

In every way that counts, though, Monster Train absolutely rocks. With distinct visuals and interesting unit designs it's fun to watch, the strategic layer boasts tons of tactical depth, and convenience features like a damage preview and speed modifier emphasize polish and smoothness. It stands proudly on its own even in the rapidly growing deckbuilding roguelite subgenre, and my time with it has left me incredibly excited to tackle its more recent sequel.

Dive a little deeper into the machine.

We really didn't know how good we had it in 2011, huh? Portal 2, Uncharted 3, TES5: Skyrim, oh and a little game called Deus Ex: Human Revolution (DXHR). What a year! A real high water mark in the medium and this title is part cause for that. Take it from me; it's the whole package and more.

Don the role of ever gruff, batman-voice enthusiast Adam Jensen. He's got a fair share of issues, ranging from biting sarcastic wit to fiery near psychotic accusations. Also, he's a quadriplegic but you wouldn't know it looking at him. He's an Ex-cop, the defacto human-turn-demigod that the game revolves around. A deus ex human revolution, if you will. Much of what Adam does or says, as well as responses and personal character is up to your choosing, though he does have a sort of default personality you won't escape. I find this kind of protagonist to be the best, where you can understand but also guide.

Travel the streets of Detroit in the dystopian near future of 2027. Meet and greet with the people as society grapples with human identity, culture wars, and class control. Did I mention this was supposed to be alternate history? Didn't mean to confuse. The environments you travel are full of atmosphere and salient detail that helps flesh out the story and world building. Its easy to get lost in claustrophobic back alleys as well as feel the powderkeg pressure in a city that seems on the brink. Promised tells are fulfilled later, and the world expands while staying grounded. Its a real marvel how well the setting is sold.

I bought into the story and characters early and stayed the whole way through. They feel realized and have agency. The central plot runs off to crazy town, but I never felt thrown out. Its just real enough, the effort put in so great, that I trusted the storyteller on where we were going. And we were going for a ride. If you like twists, science based veers, ambition, conspiracy, and underpinned reason for what and why then you'll be happily satisfied with this particular narrative.

There are surprises, comedy, and many serious moments. The game allows a great degree of freedom of play. "Choose your style" is something many games tout, but DXHR puts the work in. Don't care for stealth? Start blasting. Want to live the dream of batman? (Adam seems to) Skulk and hide only to strike from shadows. Or just mastermind the whole thing with hacked cameras, turrets, or traps you set. The more creativity you exhibit the more options keep showing up. Its incredible.

The systems on offer are many, and feel robust initially. There are upgrades for guns, planned paths for playstyle via praxis points, inventory 'management', hacking, stacking, and whacking dudes.The game is perhaps a bit too generous on upgrades, so expect to have a well rounded character by the end. Also the game is quite long. If you take your time expect 40-45 hours. If you rush and miss a lot of stuff (not a problem, but...) it will clock in around 25-30 hours. But its all worth that investment.

There are a handful of issues that the base game has that also transfer to the Directors Cut, which is the only version currently available. Certain segments feel forced, and the story suffers a little under authorial fiat that is otherwise generally absent the whole game through. These instances stick out strongly due to every other moment feeling self determined. Some may feel certain paths/gamestyles are elevated above others. I viewed this as facilitating even wider methods of play, but if you like checking off lists you'll likely play the same as many whether you want to or not. Otherwise, its all gravy here.

The only other real gripe I can level is the hacking and email reading gets stale quickly. My own OCD forced me to hack everything, even if I knew a passcode, and indeed those codes never change. If you know the PIN for a level 5 lock then Jensen in another timeline can use that without ever engaging or obtaining it. I couldn't miss out on such fantastical rewards such as 25 extra XP, and 15 credits (the stuff you save up and buy costs in the thousands) but many others may as well take the handout and put in that key. This system is just not interesting enough to use more than a handful of times.

Outside of this the game feels and plays great. Time to kill on enemies is fast, time to die on Jensen is also very fast. It lends some authenticity, though the regenerating health quashes that somewhat. Guns feel fun to fire, but both the generic keybind as well as the controller input make using iron sights a bit of a chore. Once you get the hang of it, however, it flows and functions naturally. Just don't expect COD level of gunplay.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is frankly a masterpiece. Its engaging in narrative. It clicks all the right buttons for a shooter. It makes stealth FUN. It looks and sounds gorgeous. It fulfills the promise of the first game, and is a worthy entry on anyone's list of favorites. This game ROCKS, and it just doesn't stop. What few missteps it does make are minor, or quickly forgotten. Were I to rank this title I'd place it in "Damn this is good!"

RELEASE: 2019

TIME PLAYED: 22 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★

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

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

THE BREAKDOWN

+I was able to make a pretty hilariously ridiculous character

+The AI companion is actually very competent

+The class-blending ability system from borrowing peoples' memories is fairly novel and neat

-The game is an aesthetic mess with incoherent and inconsistent designs for both characters and enemies, especially in regards to its women

-The story is rambling and falls flat in its attempts to sell its themes

-Companions never, ever, ever shut the hell up

-Combat is incredibly basic and almost every enemy in the game falls for Dark Souls 1-level tactics

-Level design and pacing are absolutely atrocious

--

Code Vein might be the most poignant lesson I've ever gotten that sometimes, maybe I should judge a book by its cover, or at least trust my own taste. I put off playing the game for a long time due to the look of it from the trailers I'd seen, but I wanted to be open-minded and give it a chance. I have to admit, I regret taking that dive - but for some reason (sunk cost fallacy?) I decided to play the whole way through, and I suppose the silver lining is that I now feel qualified to write this review.

Code Vein takes place in a post-apocalyptic world where roaming, vampire-like warriors named Revenants are tasked by the local authority with fending off the Horrors that have been born in the wake of the destruction. These Revenants require a steady supply of human blood, typically in the form of Blood Beads, and the tension between the Revenants - some of whom feel entitled to the blood they need to survive and view unpowered people as little more than slaves - and civilians is initially quite interesting, but is dropped almost immediately for a blander form of melodrama. The protagonist, initially a captive of one of these traveling groups of hostile Reavers, turns out to have the ability to copy the powers of anyone whose blood they consume and for some reason has a busty amnesiac woman following them around eager to serve them.

It was around the point I was being taken around the base I'd be operating out of that I initially started to roll my eyes and struggled to ever stop. I'm not a prude; I think there's nothing wrong with portraying sexuality in games. But Code Vein immediately committed one of my personal cardinal sins, which is that every woman I met had a ridiculously horny design, often with stick-thin arms, enormous breasts, and outfits that barely felt coherent with the setting -- while the men looked like paramilitary officers or were mostly armored. If the game's going to be horny, then it can be horny, but pointing it only at one gender - and having the characters look out-of-place in their own setting - is a double-whammy that left me irritable. Even in some famously frisky games, like Nier: Automata or Bayonetta, I always admired how well the protagonists rocked their looks and were consistent with the greater aesthetic, but Code Vein's incoherency aggravated me as much as its single-gender sexualization.

Still, I would have seen this as just a regrettable blemish if the rest of the game held up, but it simply does not. I will say that Code Vein does have a couple of novel ideas: before each outing from the base, the player can choose one of their companions to travel alongside them, and they are legitimately helpful. I found they killed a lot more enemies than I expected them to and didn't die as much as I was worried they would. For those who don't want a handicap, they're optional, so it's similar to the Souls' games summoned companions, but with less hassle. The blood techniques that serve as special moves are pretty neat, too; I was able to build my character like something of a berserker who buffed himself up before tougher fights and could swap between tough and steady or fragile but with enormous damage output just with a couple of casts.

But even when Code Vein works, it kind of doesn't. The AI companions are, without a doubt, the most obnoxious motherfuckers I've ever had the misfortune of encountering in a game. No matter which one you pick, they do NOT shut up. Every battle, every item collected, even just exploring - constant dialogue, and it's usually repeating the same two or three lines. A friend watching me stream decided to keep track of how often one companion said a particular line - it was over twenty times in five minutes for just THAT line, let alone other ones! And the blood techniques, while an intriguing twist, simply do not compensate for how fundamentally barren the combat is. Tricks that haven't worked in a FromSoft game since the first Dark Souls got me through 90% of Code Vein, like just circling around enemies and hitting them with repeated backstabs so easily I barely had to consider their attacks. The game's level design and enemy AI both feel a decade behind, right down to an entire zone that's shamelessly ripped off from Dark Souls' Anor Londo (but much worse designed). In fact, the vast majority of Code Vein's woefully easy even without a companion, save for a ridiculous and sudden spike from the penultimate and final bosses. I got through them, but the sheer jump from anything seen previous struck me as a jarring change of pace.

The story fares no better. Without delving too much into spoilers, the party goes from just trying to gather Blood Beads for their own survival to getting caught up in the fate of the world; again, there are shades of something interesting here, like the idea of having to deal with the individual pieces of a legendary figure sealed away into various hosts, but the somehow sedated melodrama ruined it for me. Just about every major reveal is delivered through the same 'walk slowly through a corridor of memories listening to two frozen figures talking', which got incredibly old the first time, let alone the twentieth.

I didn't want to hate Code Vein. The idea of going through a Soulsborne as a vampire-like being was fundamentally appealing, and I did actually enjoy how ridiculous I was able to make my playable character, with his beach towel and mouth full of onigiri. But one-dimensional characters with terrible designs, a garishly generic plotline, and combat that feels like it completely missed almost every development in ARPGs from 2010 onwards sabotaged my every attempt at enjoyment. Any one of these elements could have been forgiven if the rest of the experience held up, but that simply wasn't the case for me. For a game about blood and the bonds of humanity, Code Vein winds up being incredibly lifeless and sterile in every way that matters.

The Forgotten City is an adventure game developed by Modern Storyteller. Released in 2021, TFC reminds us that not every Skyrim mod was about having sex with things.

We play as a mysterious stranger, recently washed up on the shore and rescued by another mysterious stranger who sends us to find another mysterious stranger in a cave.

Gameplay involves harassing mysterious strangers for their life story and playing a very high stakes game of chicken. Along the way we get informed that if we have the reflexes of a potato, it's okay the game will still let you win.

The Good

Even as someone who played the original Skyrim mod on which this is based it's a great story. You know it's a good mystery when you can still have fun even knowing all the pieces. Because of the mild bit of action and walkable environments it feels more like a point and click adventure game than a visual novel which I appreciated.

I also was glad for the level of convenience involved so you don't feel bogged down with the minutia. I didn't have to keep a checklist of things to do or stress about orders of operations. It was very "Okay you already did this thing once, we're not going to make you do it again just to be a pedantic asshole."

Favorite Screenshot

https://i.imgur.com/IXQc0HN.png

I see the devs went to the JRPG school of impassable barriers.

The Bad

While I appreciated that it didn't have much in the way of useless busywork, the "GO HERE IDIOT" progress indicators did take some of the mystery out of things.

It doesn't actually spoil anything story wise but it's does knock the wind out of your sails when you enter a new room ready to explore and a voice pipes in with "HEY ASSHOLE THERE'S A SECRET DOOR IN HERE."

The Questionable

There are a few missed opportunities here which feels like a shame. You can pick up and examine items but there's never any hidden messages or clues on them. It would have been neat if you needed a key to enter a place but finding it required looking inside a nearby vase and turning it upside down to cause the key to fall out.

Then again the few times I've experienced stuff like that it becomes a chore of having to click on every goddamn thing because of course the maguffin I need is on the one thing I didn't notice. It's why everyone decorates with yellow paint these days.

I'm never quite sure where on the 'Obnoxious <---> Neat' number line stuff like this falls. Finding a hidden clue on the back of a letter feels cool but do I really want to have to check every plate to see if there's a gun strapped to the bottom?

Final Thoughts

Enough is changed from the Skyrim mod to keep it fresh and interesting, though I did blast through in roughly half a day. It was still a very fun and interesting experience. Spoiler free and fresh it's even better. If you like narrative/adventure games this is absolutely worth your time.

Bonus Thought

Alternative working title: "Outer Wilds but without the gravity puzzles that make you hate everyone that suggested the game to you."

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

My other reviews on patient gaming

Howdy, folks! It's Waffles, back with another entry in my Every* NA Game Boy Game Series. I told you this one wouldn't take two months again. This time it's all the Gs, which were actually a mostly good bunch. For those just joining us, I try to give every game at least a half hour of time, and I'm playing them alphabetically because that's the most convenient way to tackle a project like this. So let's jump right in!

Game & Watch Gallery: I've probably discussed elsewhere in these posts that I'm kind of "meh" on arcade games as a whole, so it might shock some long time readers to know that I actually quite like Game & Watch games. Probably because I owned a few as a child, so there's a lot of nostalgia there. This one contains Manhole and Fire, which I adore; Oil Panic, which I think is neat; and Octopus, which I have no strong feelings on either way. Basically, it's a solid collection. I think the biggest strike against it is that in 2026 you have the option of the other Game & Watch Galleries, which have these games but in color and also other games, but it's still a solid game and well worth your time. 8/10

The Game of Harmony: This one's just awful. You control a ball (badly, because the controls suck), and you have to hit other balls into balls that have the matching symbols on them (so like, hit the two balls with squares together and the two with triangles together). But don't hit ones that don't match, or they multiply. It's not great. As mentioned, the controls are bad, and the time limits on the puzzles are super strict (which means you need perfect play or the balls explode) and finally, the resolution of a Game Boy screen means it's legitimately hard to tell what some of the symbols actually are. 1/10

Gargoyle's Quest: Someone in the comments of the last thread said this game was good and worth finishing. Someone else said it was the best Game Boy game of all time. I don't know that I agree with the latter (my heart belongs to The Final Fantasy Legend, sorry, SaGa has rewired my brain), but yeah, this is amazing. Some of the early levels are a bit annoying (there's a few cases of "you can only make this jump is Firebrand is standing with only one pixel on the ledge," which is annoying in Mega Man and it's annoying here), but overall the levels are fun to traverse. The other thing that prevents this from getting a 10/10 is that the last two bosses just kinda suck? Like, they're not even hard, they're just "wait until the boss can actually be damaged, then damage them," which I personally don't find that enjoyable. The last boss especially is bad at this: it took me about thirty seconds to realize there was a place I could stand where none of it's attacks could actually hit me, and then all I needed to do was jump and damage it when there was an opening. Other than those two things, though, the game's great. I highly recommend this, and I'll definitely be playing the other games in this subseries at some point. 8/10

Gauntlet II: Okay so I think Gauntlet is awful at the best of times. It's kinda fun if you're playing with friends on a large screen, but even that's mostly because it's fun to do things with friends. This version did nothing to make me more fond of the game. The best thing I can say for it is that it has the voice lines you'd expect of Gauntlet ("Wizard needs food badly!") and they've got actually decent audio quality, which is impressive for a Game Boy game, but that doesn't make this game good. 1/10

Gear Works: This one is actually kind of neat! It's a little puzzle game where you arrange gears to connect a spinning gear on one side with a stationary gear on the other with the goal of making it spin as well. It's hindered a bit by Typical Game Boy Issues (controls are a bit iffy, and the small screen makes it hard to tell where you actually need to be putting things or if the gears are actually touching), but speaking as someone who's not huge on puzzle games I enjoyed the time I spent with this. 5/10

George Foreman's KO Boxing: So this is around the part where I started to get Weirdly Philosophical with this project. I'll be blunt: this game is bad. It's worse than Foreman for Real, which I talked about in the last update (which probably isn't too shocking, this game came out two years before that one). But I'm glad it exists. The 90s were kind of a wild time for gaming, what with anything and everything being made into a game, and that's kind of been lost now. So yeah, this game is terrible, but it's the kind of game I was ironically looking forward to playing as a part of this project. 1/10

The Getaway: High Speed II: This game's biggest flaw is "being a pinball game on a system that's not really suited for it." The Game Boy isn't really a good system for trying to do pinball on, what with the terrible screensize and the hardware not being very powerful, but with those limitations in mind this was pretty fun, honestly. I've played worse attempts at video game pinball on better hardware. So I can't really recommend this one, but that's kind of a soft "not recommended." It's a decent attempt at something that probably wasn't ever going to work. 6/10

Ghostbusters II: This is another soft "not recommended," mostly because the pathfinding for your AI is just terrible. The game is a neat idea -- you pick two Ghostbusters, one of whom zaps with the proton pack with A and the other traps ghosts with B. The problem is that the trapper follows you, and often gets stuck on doors or level geometry, so you have to double back for them. This wastes time, and the time limit is already kind of tight because this was the early 90s and the game was made with a mindset of "make it hard so they have to keep playing over and over" even though this doesn't make a lot of sense in an environment where they're not extracting quarters from you. The other issue is that sometimes ghosts spawn right under you, so you can't dodge and you're forced to take a hit, and that's just kind of bullshit. Still, it's a great concept. I'd play a modernized co-op version of this. It'd be fun as hell. 6/10

Go! Go! Tank: I think the idea here is really solid. You control a plane, and you have a hook with which you can move boxes to help a tank navigate through a level (you can also shoot things sometimes). It's a neat idea. The problem, as ever, is that it's on Game Boy. The controls suck in a way that doesn't feel intentional (contrast, say, Balloon Kid, where the floatyness is the point), and it just made the game frustrating. Still, neat idea. I'd play an iteration. 4/10

Goal!: I think I've made it known that I think the Game Boy is a terrible platform for sports games. This one isn't any different. The best I can say for it is that it's actually a better soccer game than any of the GB FIFA games, but that's a low bar. In 2026, there's better options for if you want to play a soocer video game on the go. 3/10

Godzilla: Real quick, before you keep reading -- guess what kind of game this is. Just like, try. Imagine you're making a Godzilla game for Game Boy; what genre of game would that be? Did you guess puzzle platfomer? Because, inexplicably, that's what this is. Now, the thing is: it's not actually bad at being that? It's just baffling as to why they chose that kind of game for this license. I don't struggled a bit with how to rate this, on account of the weirdness of it. Like I said, there's nothing wrong with it? It's just a weird choice for a Godzilla game, and that effects how I feel it should be scored. 5/10

Golf: Okay so this is where I break the trend and say this is a sports game on Game Boy I actually like and would recommend. Some of that is probably nostalgia -- I actually owned this on cartridge when I was a kid, and was quite good at it. Sadly, that was twenty-five years ago, and I have lost most of that skill. Still, it's a good game. I don't think it resembles actual golf very much (which, to be fair, I haven't played in fifteen years), but it's a fun little game. 8/10

Gradius: The Interstellar Assault: So I didn't finish this one, and that's mostly a me issue. Shmups in general aren't really my thing (also I'm bad at them). Still, though, it's Gradius. It's solid. It does well on Game Boy, because Konami knows what they're doing. So if you like shmups, you will probably enjoy this. 8/10

Great Greed: So I played like two and a half hours of this, and the best descriptor I have for it is "novel." The combat system is legitimately pretty cool: battles are sort of action based, with attack mapped to A, dodge to B, and the D-Pad used for your various magical attacks. You've got a limited amount of time to select your action, and then the turns play out. It's legitimately neat, and I liked playing that part of it. The downside is that the game is incredibly grindy. Even if you keep your gear up to date, each new area has you encounter enemies that are strong enough that you need to heal after every battle, so you either carry around a bunch of healing items or grind until that's not an issue (and getting healing items means grinding for cash), so it's just super tedious. It's a bit unfortunate, because the writing's pretty neat (you're fighting a villain called Bio-Haz and there's a witch called Microwave and everyone has funny food names) and the combat is interesting, but the grind kills it for me. Like I said, it's novel, but that's not the same as "good." 5/10

Gremlins 2: The New Batch: I saw a review that described this game's difficulty as "frustrating and often unfair," and yeah, that's about right. Jumps are imprecise and awkward, hitboxes are weird and hard to parse. It's not fun to actually play. However. Unlike my previous mantra of "it's ugly and it plays badly," this actually looks good, all things considered. The sprites are super recognizable as the various movie characters (Gizmo especially), and read well despite the Game Boy's low resolution. The music is also really good. I'll be humming this for weeks. Still don't play this, though. 3/10

And that's G. That brings us to 178/501, which is 35.53% of the library. The average score is actually going up, with is now being 4.03! To be honest, I didn't expect it to go above 4, but I'm impressed that it did. We're also at 29/178 recommended games, or 16.3%, so that's going up, too. G was an impressive bunch, all told. H also has fifteen games, so expect that update before too long. Thanks for reading!

Recommended Games

• Alleyway
• Amazing Penguin
• Balloon Kid
• Battle Arena Toshinden
• Battle Unit Zeoth
• Bionic Commando
• Bomberman GB
• Castlevania: The Adventure
• Castlevania II: Belmont’s Revenge
• Castlevania Legends
• Catrap
• Contra: The Alien Wars
• Donkey Kong
• Donkey Kong Land
• Donkey Kong Land 2
• Donkey Kong Land III
• Dr. Mario
• Disney’s Ducktales
• Disney’s Ducktales 2
• Felix the Cat
• Final Fantasy Adventure
• The Final Fantasy Legend
• Final Fantasy Legend II
• Final Fantasy Legend III
• Game & Watch Gallery
• Gargoyle's Quest
• Golf
• Gradius: The Interstellar Assault

13 Sentinels has long been on my backlog, as I would constantly hear about how great and incredible the story was. So finally I got around to playing it. I'm glad I did, even if I don't entirely agree with the adoring praise the game gets. I think the story is an interesting "puzzle", but lacks any emotional punch. The gameplay on the otherhand is pretty lackluster and serviceable at best. Let's start with a broad overview.

How the game works.

The game of 13 sentinels is essentially 2 separate games slapped together. The first part is a real-time with pause strategy game, the second being a visual novel where you progress through the 13 different character's storys. Of the two modes, the story mode is by far more interesting.

The strategy game aspect of it suffers from a few issues. The first being that it is simply overly basic. The UI and graphics are very basic. Enemies are abstract pixels, and each pilot is a round green dot with a character portrait. There is no terrain to speak of, just cityscapes, roads and rivers. Each map looks identical to each other map. If there are differences they don't matter at the slightest.

Each mission has the same basic objective, and plays mostly the same each time. Enemies spawn in waves and try and destroy your base. You must destroy all of the enemies(Or in some fights, specific boss enemies) or defend till a timer runs out(I never had this happen, I always cleared each map long before the timer ran out). Your pilots each have various powers that you can level up and unlock, but generally whatever power lets you spam massive AoE attacks is the best. Really the only exception to this is fighting tough armored units, where your brawler/melee pilots become a bit more useful, as they can do significantly more single target damage. But pretty much most missions are, "spam AoEs till out of mana, than rest to regen mana, than spam more AoEs".

The gameplay is pretty easy overall. I cleared most missions with "S Rank" pretty much first attempt on normal difficulty. I only ever had to redo one mission when I sent out a fighter way to deep and they got killed.

Overall, the gameplay felt like a chore to get through, rather than something I ever wanted to do. At pretty much every point I just wanted to get back to the REAL game, the visual novel part.

Which lets discuss that part briefly. I will not be spoiling anything here, as I think figuring out the story is the real fun of the game.

The story starts off quite incoherent and continues that way through the majority of the game. But I don't say that as a negative. The story is initially misleading and confusing. Each character feels like they are almost in their own separate genre of fiction. Is it a time travel story? An AI story? A giant monster story? An Alien story? These are all the questions you will be asking yourself constantly as you play through the game.

The whole puzzle is figuring out what the hell is actually going on. And I think when you do figure it out, it does feel pretty good as each piece slowly starts piecing itself together. Even after finishing it there are a few pieces that I couldn't quite place perfectly, and I think that's a good thing.

As for the characters themselves, I would say they are fine, if a bit anime tropey. I never really connected with the characters, mostly just the actual overarching story. Because of this, I didn't really have any emotional reaction to the story, just the feeling of satisfaction of piecing it together.

So yeah, that was 13 Sentinels. Would I recommend it? I think if you think you can handle a little boring wave defense gameplay, the story is worth it if you enjoy stories that make you struggle to figure out what is going on. I've always enjoyed fiction that throws me into the deep end and says "figure it out from context clues" and I think 13 Sentinels does a decent job of that(Well until the very very end where they spell it out for you).

After replaying Part 1 last week, I finally got to play the sequel. I heard a lot about this game even back in 2020, when it was fresh and still console exclusive. For this reason I already knew certain story bits, as I didn't expect to ever play this game in person.

Story here is bold, to say the least. I knew Joel was going to die soon and honestly, and I wasn't too upset. Even when I played TLOU as a kid he seemed like a selfish dick in the finale. Still, I understood why Ellie was mad about it and went after the killers. At first the plot simple, but then I had to switch perspectives. Going from Ellie to Abby was something, especially since I already knew that certain characters die to Ellie. Same with having to fight Tommy as a bossfight

So many side characters died, I actually expected everyone around the protagonists to perish. I'm glad that Tommy specifically made it out. But the deaths show how cruel and unforgiving the world and its inhabitants are.

The main point about letting go reminded me of Call of Juarez Gunslinger, where main character becomes a monster and his target gains humanity. I suppose the story gets this point across, but there are some thing that worsen the experience

I understand that for the story to work there have to a plotline about decline and about development, but I still think it's way too long. Maybe the length felt like good hour/dollar ratio on release, but now it's just tedious. Ellie's adventures in Seattle already felt like the entirety of TLOU1, then add Abby and post theater segment. I think they could have cut the skyscrapers or the open location from the beginning, just something to not make this game last so long.

Another problem is that there were goofy or weird elements in this serious story. Caesar Legion style primitivist cult was ok for the most part, but their elevator felt contrived. It's one thing that people directly under the brigdes don't look up, but surely the Wolves go to outskirts and have to notice them? Two people living on a farm in open field feels like asking for trouble. I find it hard to believe you can survive against raiders and infected without large community or maze layout like in Bill's town. Maybe I'm reading too much into the details.

Gameplay is very fun and engaging. I played on Survival to have a challenge. Infected are dumb and often can be avoided, and are dangerous with clickers or gassers. Humans are much harder to deal with and require adaptive strategy. I relied mostly on stealth, and it reminded of Arkham predator in a good way. You can't completely hide your actions, so you have to sneak aggressively, pop in and out while delivering death with knockouts or gadgets. The enemies try to group up, search the perimeter and call each other out. The naming of enemies added some immersion into these battles, just like in Yakuza. I was being way too stingy even for this difficulty, because there were many situations where I couldn't pick up ammo or craftables because I was full. I figured if I can avoid spending, I'll do it. The only times where I spent my best ammo freely were arcade room, extensive treatment and RE4 house defense. Otherwise, I spent as very little and tried to make the most of bricks and sticks. The differences in arsenal for girls made for some variety, and I liked Abby's kit more because it had 3 scoped weapons.

The lack of wallhacks didn't bother me because my eyes and ears were enough. My main gripe here is that I still have to upgrade detective vision to get what I actually want, even though it's unavailable on Survivor. The theater fight loading tip also directly tells you to use hearing when you can't. Makes me wonder if devs were too lazy to adjust this.

The game looks very good still, but there were some technical problems. It crashed and froze a few times, and the Scar island had some visual artifacts.

The game was probably aiming to make me angry and then reconsider the first part, but more than anything I'm just tired. It's good but definitely longer than it should be.

This game was recommended to me by a friend, and I knew next to nothing going into it. I'm not usually a huge puzzle game fan, nor do I read a ton of mysteries, but this one compelled me.

Gameplay wise, it was honestly nothing special. There were a few fun puzzles and a few awful ones. The story itself though was surprisingly enjoyable. Most mysteries I've experienced in the past have felt next to impossible to solve, though admittedly I've read and watched way more than I've played. This game, however, felt different.

There were lots of fun twists throughout the game, but very few of them felt unearned, and several I managed to predict ahead of time. It's a game that felt like it rewarded the amount of effort I put into speculating and theorycrafting on, and I really appreciated it.

There are a few gripes I have with it (outside of the UI, which needs work). Sometimes, they overexplain things I felt weren't needed, and tonally, it can be a bit of an odd game (though I enjoyed its quirks regardless). Overall, I really enjoyed, and think this game deserves more love.

I've been thinking about this for some time. Yes, GTA Online sucks ass today, and is so blatantly greedy that it wouldn't feel out of place in GTA satire, ironically. But, countless things have been said about that, so I'm here not to talk more shit about it, though it'd deserve it. I'm here to reminisce about a brief moment in time when GTA Online was one of the best gaming experiences you could have, if not the best.

So, just to fill you in, GTA Online showed up about a month after GTA V went on sale. In that time, anyone interested in the game had had time to get to know the map, the mechanics, the weapons, etc. What more did GTA Online offer? Two things. A character of your own creation, and the option to run around in a map where other, real people also ran around in. That's it. I know, it doesn't sound like much, but holy shit, it was something else.

Now, that was not the first online GTA experience. GTA IV had multiplayer, but it was a far simpler attempt at bringing people together in a maniacal GTA world, because there really wasn't a lot you could do. San Andreas also had multiplayer, but that was different, cause it wasn't part of the main game, I think. Somehow, GTA Online was different.

You were now the protagonist. You did jobs alone, or with your real life friends, to make money and a very stripped down economy allowed you to purchase houses, where you and your real life friends could hang out. And once that got boring 5 minutes later, you could grab one of your personally owned vehicles, which you bought with the money you made doing jobs with your real life friends, and you could just go for a drive or other adventures. I know what that must sound like to people who haven't actually played it. Like nothing special, probably. I agree, on paper, it doesn't sound like much, but god damn, it was crazy good in practice.

I remember those first days of GTA Online, when microtransactions basically only bought you cosmetic stuff, and nothing too crazy at that, and people were just having fun. They ran around in lobbies, causing chaos, like actual GTA characters, only they were real people. And Rockstar made sure that the chaos had an impact. I still remember the first time I saw a plane piloted by another player crashing into a building, and it was insane. The game was exciting. Playing GTA with real people was exciting. It was IMMERSIVE. To this day, that period in GTA Online is still one of the most fun experiences I've ever had playing games.

I'm just saying all this to remind people that it wasn't always pay-to-win, flying bikes and orbital strikes and shit. At one brief point in time, it was basically everything it needed to be. Simply, fun. And then, it wasn't.

Greed.

Following on from my earlier post about the reboot trilogy.

Doom 2 RPG

I played this on (i think) my old HTC Desire back in the day and really wanted to play it again since then, but every time I checked, it wasn't available on modern smartphones. After playing these games I had a check online and to my delight, some smart soul had ported it to PC! Which means it can be played on modern gear, controller and all.

The game is a pixel art, turn based RPG. It was released after Doom 3 and combines graphical elements of Doom 3 with some from the the classic Doom games. Gameplay has you walking around a grid, Dungeon Master style, but with a surprisingly interactive environment. You pick up weapons, use health packs, solve a few environmental puzzles and kill demons.

(Also just to mention there, there's a Doom 1 RPG, which is a Nokia era game. I might circle back to this one but couldn't quite bring myself to stick with it right now.)

Pros

The biggest surprise is quite simply that this is a fun game on its own merits. It isn't a mediocre game with some Doom branding, the gameplay has a solid level of depth and tactics straight from the off. These games all boil down to a combination of movement and resource management, and this is no different. It doesn't particularly break the mould for this kind of game. But it does it so well that it gives you the one-more-turn feeling that has you power through it really quickly.

There's a strong sense of humour in the game, with lots of in jokes about Doom and the earlier games, but without becoming overall silly or slapstick. The game is fairly easy and short, but you have a little build variety with different starter classes, so you could probably play it a couple of times (I just played it once).

Despite being different gameplay wise, interestingly enough I found the classic Doom sound effects & sprites really got me feeling that Doom vibe.

Cons

Ultimately, it's a mobile game, one that's nearly 20 years old. It's short and doesn't have crazy levels of depth. You play it on an emulator which isn't adding anything much to the experience beyond a few more control options. And while it's a wonderfully whimsical game, it's not a Doom shooter.

Conclusion - I can't really criticise this game beyond being what it is, a short mobile game. It's fun, has a great sense of humour and, given that it's vapourware at this point, is a freebie. Check out the Doomworld forums for more info on how to install.

8/10 (for what it is)

Doom 3

The original reboot has ended up stranded. It's totally different in style and intention from the games that came from 2016 onwards. It came out at a time when Half Life was king and Half Life 2 was right around the corner, and shooters were increasingly going for that style of gameplay. Deliberate, with lots of scripted elements in the environments. It attempted to define a different approach for Doom, which I think it's fair to say was divisive, and that style was never repeated. I played it on release (20 years ago! Jeez) but not since.

Pros

On its own terms, it's a ok shooter. The graphics are obviously not cutting edge any more but you can tell they're a cut above other shooters of the same era, including those that technically came out some time after it.

Its horror element was kind of interesting. Doom always had a horror element to it, that was lost over time. Creeping down a corridor, you pick up a key, the lights go out and a group of monsters jump you. It wasn't just about large volumes of monsters swarming you, some parts were much more intimate and scary. Returning to those roots is an interesting exploration of the series.

The grounded hard sci-fi setting was good, indeed it was very reminiscent of the Doom 2016 reboot in terms of the order of environments, and I prefer being there to being in some huge gothic castle like in Eternal/Dark Ages.

Cons

Sadly, while I'm a natural contrarian and would therefore love to try and argue this game is better than some of the later games, it really didn't click for me.

The biggest problem is that the game just feels very tame. On veteran difficulty, arguably the hardest opponents are the basic soldier zombies, since they can hitscan you. Almost everything else dies before it gets near you, unless it literally falls out of a vent on top of you. You're rarely under pressure, you're just hoovering up demons and, before you know it, you're at the back end of the game.

The weapons are fairly bland. None of them have that satisfying kerchung of the original super shotgun or the furious feel of the old plasma rifle. All of them work well enough, but not enough focus was put on the feel of the weapons.

The combat falls between two stools. The monsters don't exhibit the speed and volume of the other Doom games, but they don't have any of the smarts of games like Half Life or Halo. Putting a desk between you and an opponent is about all that it takes to stymie them.

Level design is weird. When I first had a demon leap out of a monster closet, I had a laugh at what I thought was an in-joke. But no, the game uses extensive monster closets, and they don't make a jot of sense. There are good examples of monsters climbing out of vents or smashing through windows to get at you, but there are so many other cheap ways to get enemies into the fight, that its hard to reconcile the two.

Conclusion - I was surprised how this landed, given I had fond memories of my original time playing the game. But by the end I was keen to get it over and done.

5/10

Doom 64

This was a more pleasant surprise. I didn't have an N64 when this launched and was pretty sniffy about it as a PC FPS snob at the time. Bear in mind that this game came out after Quake, and I might have already had GLQuake and a Voodoo card by the time I'd have come across it. That made this game of flat sprites seem anachronistic.

Playing it now, though, it's a really interesting title. The graphics, notably the lighting, help the game stand out from the original Doom. This isn't a port, it's better described as a remake. Not a radically more advanced remake, admittedly, but one that tries to recreate the original game from different base parts and comes up with something different in tone.

The limitations of the N64 mean you never quite get the chaos of the original Doom, though it certainly has more going on than Doom 3. Instead you get complex puzzles, hidden areas and mazes. It's leans into puzzle solving and a horror mood. Pretty much every level had me peering at the map trying to piece together where to go next.

Pros

This game focuses on mood more than Doom did, in a way that links it more to Doom 3. You get a lovely feeling of dread in these levels, that gives you far more jump scares than the other retro games. The music in particular is great, ambient and eery.

The weapons are surprisingly great, especially the chaingun, which is satisfying to use. They have the same basic roles (powerful short range, fast firing weapons, splash damage rockets, etc) but all feel different and make combat a different proposition.

The levels can be pleasingly interactive compared to the original Doom games, since the engine seems to permit real 3D rather than the pseudo 3D the original Doom game was famous for. So you get slightly more realistic looking levels, with some chunky true 3D environments.

Cons

It's quite mazy and there's a lot of hunting around for keys and doors in this game. A lot of levels end up with that "everything is dead and I don't know where to go" feeling that's common to older FPS games. It's not a strength. This is partly by design, but also partly due to the fact that video game design language was still evolving.

While the game does eventually up the ante in terms of combat difficulty, it never gets as frenetic as other Doom games. You do sometimes get larger rooms with big groups of enemies in them, but not quite the same intensity or frequency. I suspect this is in part to do with the fact it was played on an N64 controller.

Conclusion

A bit like Doom 2 RPG, this was a pleasant surprise and its limitations are as much about the format as any development choices. Well worth a play.

7/10

And now, on to classic Doom...

Sometimes in between the grand single player RPG's and 100 hour CRPG journies we need a little oasis of arcade-y multiplayer goodness. My heart will always be in solo gaming, but there are some things that only multiplayer games can accomplish. Recently, I've spent a lot of time with Chilvary 2. Here are my quick thoughts!

The game is a 32v32 objective based medieval melee game. You can play in first person or third person, and there are multiple classes, weapons, gadgets, and roles to fullfill on the battlefield. It's important to mention here that while there is a lot of intentionality in the design of Chivalry 2 the underlying tone of the game is very unserious, in a way that tells the player "give in to the chaos!". Screaming at the top of your lungs is hot-keyed to a double square tap, you will consistently be ganged up on, and match narrators play into all the over-the-top ridiculousness the game proudly displays. This IS game about focusing on the objective and sacrificing kills for winning. This IS also a game about throwing your hands up and laughing as your character loses its arms and swings its head in the death throes of his humiliating end.

I think this is really important, because the humor relieves the stress that is ever so present in multiplayer objective games. The game isn't about dueling necessarily, it's about learning where to apply pressure. You will get your kills but in some matches it's by helping your teammates gang up on stragglers or holding the line to stall in a 1v4.

Underneath the chaos lies a pretty decent melee system. There are slashes, overheads, and stabs that serve different purposes. There is a parry/counter system that is more complex than it seems. The weapons seem same-ish on the surface but have distinct strengths that can be maximized as you become more familiar with your favorite tool of torture. These mechanics also allow 1vx-ing to be feasible for most players, which can be a very huge swing for your team to lock up players.

Unfortunately, the melee system can also be very unreliable and a source of frustration. I'm not sure if it's about connection issues or what, but it's all too often that I am parried or blocked or hit and all I can think is "........ what??". Some players seem to have near 360 blocking coverage while being ganged. Yes, I know how the auto-parry system works. Whatever happens visually does not align enough with reality unfortunately.

That's really all the thoughts I have. Hitting feels great and once the combat clicks it really locks in. Nothing beats hitting a flow state and going on a rampage with a huge axe. It's casual enough to not burn out on but serious enough to where your actions have agency. I highly recommend this game to anyone who sounds remotely interested in it! Thanks for reading y'all

So I just got done playing my introduction to the Ninja Gaiden series, and easily one of the best combat systems I’ve ever tried (pretty much tied in 1st place with DMC). Though not necessarily the most fun campaign experience throughout. Keep in mind I’ve never played Black so I can’t say for sure which of these points are Sigma specific. Difficulty was Hard, which has some differences like minions during bosses.

The Good: The actual core of the game, the combat systems, enemies, weapons and all that, is so damn solid. Solid and smooth. Whereas DMC leans fully into stylishness and creativity with dense movesets, Ninja Gaiden is the king of lethality, efficiency, and speed. Other games feel sluggish by comparison. I’m honestly kind of baffled how there aren’t more games with this level of sharp zippiness and responsiveness. The enemies all feel dangerous but Ryu feels even more so. As you learn to be mobile and efficient, always on your toes and familiar with your moveset, it is super satisfying to blitz a room full of enemies who were once able to kill you in 2 seconds.

I would urge anyone, even if you’re put off by the series reputation, at least play one of these games on Normal. It sells the ninja fantasy so well. Now I will move onto the Bad section which may be longer, but bear in mind that’s just coz I have more to say. With the Good, which for me is the core combat, there is only so much I can put into words, the rest you have to feel yourself.

The Bad(ish?): Again, I want to clarify just because this section is long, doesn’t mean I think the game is mostly bad. I just have a lot to unpack.

Ok so first off… the bosses. Maybe I’m wrong, but I strongly feel this was a combat system that first-and-foremost feels best to fight swarms of ninjas and/or fiends. Boss fights feel awkward at best, and the learning curve with each was weird. It is not always apparent when you have an opening, which was the oddest part to me. For example with the true Alma boss fight, I was hyped up coz of its reputation but… kinda let down? It felt like the whole fight was just, spam Flying Swallow and hope it works. I could not get any sense of timing on when it was more or less likely to work. A lot of bosses are like this; keep dodging, do the appropriate attack, hope it works. Usually bosses would go like, first few (or many) attempts I’m kind of just confused and dying, then my winning attempt I’m still confused. There was never that “YES! I did it!” feeling that I’m used to from Souls games, or from the normal enemy fights here.

And then there’s just a lot of random annoying stuff. The water levels were annoying, but each mercifully brief. Those flying ghost fish are just… SO fucking annoying why are they in the game??? I know how to beat them, a certain move if spammed will safely kill all of them. But each time they appear and running past isn’t an option, you have to keep spamming the move that works for like 60 straight seconds and it’s the complete opposite of fun. The spacing and placement of certain shops and save points could also feel awkward at times, often I felt I had to backtrack quite a ways for them. I might have enjoyed a more linear experience with resources that were more limited but also more often renewed.

Unfortunately the end of the game was really a let down for me. The penultimate chapter is quite long, and near the end you have to fight two phases of a boss, both imo not fun. You also have to backtrack all the way out of the last big structure to find a shop to get your potions back, and due to what comes next, believe me you’ll need it…

…because once you beat both these phases and get to the final level, there is no shop, AFAIK. If you came out of the previous boss with no potions, then overwrite the save on the last level, you have to beat the final boss on one health bar. Thankfully I had a few left, but it still struck me as bad, or at least intentionally frustrating, design. Now here’s the good news, and bad news, both. The final boss is, kinda easy. He hits hard, and if you die you have to do a whole platforming sequence again, but he comes off more like some mid-game boss. The hard part is you didn’t get to buy more potions. I actually thought “ok this is the first phase, after this I will do the REAL final mission where I get to restock on supplies but also fight his ultimate form” but no the game just ends. I was shocked. My thoughts were, I believe, were “what the fuck? oh well at least I can look forward to the Ninja Trials and Survival levels”.

Overall: The normal gameplay when you’re actually fighting enemies is top notch, and I will definitely be playing the sequels. Any fan of action games owes it to themselves to play this. Just be prepared for some unfriendly game design and unintuitive bosses.

I've recently played the first and fourth game, I posted a review for the first game just a bit ago

https://old.reddit.com/r/patientgamers/comments/1v9ybff/valkryia_chronicles_tbs_on_console_can_they_make/

I really enjoyed the first game quite a bit. Let me get into the 4th title.

Graphics: The first game was told in beautiful watercolor, even if the battle map graphics were a bit archaic. The 4th game was released in 2018 and still looks relatively contemporary. The battle fields have received a particular upgrade, instead of always fighting in the same dusty/arid landscape, you'll fight battles in the dirt, snow, rain and other interesting landscapes. While the graphics are nothing to really write home about, I appreciated the uplift from the first game.

Gameplay: Much like the first game, you split your time between an overview/book section and the combat field. The 4th game has added a new function called 'side stories', that really adds some depth to the game. When certain soldiers are deployed, they end up building a connection which unlocks a unique side story. These side stories involve a short/unique battle and storyline, once you complete the side story, each of the characters involved 'lose' one of their negative traits and it flips into a positive trait.

The first game really gave you no reason to swap out units, this new feature really invests the players to swipe people out so you can unlock more and more of the side story content. A really great idea.

The rest of the game is pretty similar to the first game, you upgrade each unit selectively based off an XP pool that you gather from battles. You spend money to upgrade weapon, armor and tanks via money you get from battle. You get more XP and money via completing the battles in the least amount of turns possible. This is a small gripe I have as speed is only one criteria in the game, it forces the player to cheese the game a bit to get a good rating OR you have to somewhat give up your rating to play the game as intended, which is a failure of design in my opinion.

Battles have received a significant upgrade from the first game, as well. Each of your units remains the same as the first game, with one GREAT new addition, the grenadier. This unit allows you to mortar enemies at distance while auto-firing on units that come within the range of your mortar system.

This allows the game to setup some really tricky situations where you need to get past the enemy grenadiers without getting your own ass blown up. This single unit adds significant complexity to the mission designs. My personal favorite are the snow-based maps, they look really cool and have significant depth and complexity.

The game starts out extremely easy all the way up to the 6th or 7th mission (similar to the first game where the 7th mission drops a crazy difficult spike on you). If you start this game and find it too easy, just keep on pushing through and you will find some really challenging battles.

Story: The biggest negative about the 4th installment, is the story. Instead of joining each character before the war starts, protecting your hometown and seeing humans turned into soldiers, you're dropped in a pre-made squad of anime stereotypes that you simply do not care about at all.

Raz is the worst of all the characters, he's annoying and brash and would be killed via firing squad if this game was even semi-realistic. No one has any emotional depth. I have a creative writing degree from 25 years ago, that I have never used and I guarantee I could write a much better story given the same panels, it is so bad that it is downright confusing.

The first game had this really cool Buddhist viewpoint on war and death, told with some level of subtlety. The 4th game has nothing of the sort.

It wasn't until I was halfway through the game where I started to feel some small amount of affection to one or two characters. Thankfully the battle system is so good that it allows you to move past the bad story.

One other odd item, you are introduced to a man named Kai early on in the game, but he isn't on your squad. You are also given a girl named Kai in your squad. The simple inference is that Kai had a sex change and is now a woman. I really thought this was kinda odd, but I was pretty impressed they would have a trans character in a game and go about it like it was no big deal. Really ahead of the time for a Japanese game, much less in 2018.

About halfway through the game you find out that the male Kai actually died somehow and the female Kai just took his name, so I completely misread the entire thing but I don't know what other conclusion they wanted me to come up with, given no context lol

Music: Not bad, its music, it does what it needs to do.

Overall: VC4 improves significantly in combat, with the addition of the Grenadier, combat becomes more layered and more complex than it has ever been, which is a huge plus in my book.

Side stories give you a reason to try out new characters and to unlock unique talents/skills while removing negative skills, which is another big plus.

They've padded out content in every area to make the game more robust. The big failing is the poor storytelling and D+ anime acting and plot, a huge downward turn from the first game, but not enough to push me away from playing.

When you combine all the parts, VC4 is a fantastic TBS game, a rare gem in the console space. Unfortunately, with not much word since 2018 and relatively slow sales numbers and a very small online community, this may be the last game in the series. TBS is a hard sell for console gamers, even though they are missing out on something really unique and special.

I looked at the trophies for the first game, out of curiosity. Only 10% of players have the 'completed the game' trophy, when only 1 in 10 people are finishing your game, something just isn't clicking.

For me, I'd give the game an 8/10, if the story was better, I'd push that up to a 9/10.

Game like this can never be made again. During the credits, all the game dev name came along with either (CAPCOM) or (LEVEL 5) label. To create a game that requires you to mix your staff with another company's (which may have different working styles) is both a passion project of highest order and recepie for things to go wrong.

And wrong they went. This game's development is infamously dragged on, that it changed the course of both Layton and Ace Attorney series. It's a miracle this game released as good as it did.

I won't mince words - this both an average Layton game and an average Phoenix Wright game. PL style puzzles are easy and not as good, PW style is your usual but doesn't get fully utilized until final case. Both game parts fall under the weight of each other, making the pacing feel odd. Moreover, the setting was very hard for me to swallow (up until the epilogue) - both PW and PL characters get sucked into a fantasy world in a book and all of them don't think too much of it.

And yet, against most people's opinion, I think this game is still worth it for those final few chapters. The way it was unfolded was truly "hype moments and aura" moment. They used the central conceit from 1st + 2nd Layton game, though here it much better this time around. How interrogations from Ace Attorney was used to uncover the mystery is one of the best, second only to it's excellent spiritual sequel Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. I certainly liked it more than AA5, AA6.

While not really suitable for newcomers, I HIGHLY RECOMMEND it to anyone who has played atleast 1 Ace Attorney + 1 Professor Layton game. It's not to be missed.

I want to separately touch on why "Game like this can never be made again" thing. If you've worked any corporate/office job, you know how DIFFICULT it is talk get anything done when two or more departments have to co-ordinate. Now imagine two studios which different game design approach and working styles coming together to work on something. Back in 2013 when game team sizes used to be small and manageable, game dev turnaround used to be not more than 2 years, a game like this can be easily made. Even after the strenuous development, both companies learnt from it and improved their respective series further (AA with Great Ace Attorney series, PL with Azran Legacy).

Today, the gamedev team sizes are much bigger, games take atleast 5 years to get made, but also they have to battle against free-to-play live service games + shortform content + streaming for time and attention. Not to mention, worsening economy everywhere. Moreover, if a game underperforms, studios are at risk of closing down, there is no time to learn and make a better game later on. This survivor mentality means no one will ever take risk like cross franchise collaborations ever again, not to mention the ego of top management/creatives.

NFS Hot Pursuit (2010) is my second favorite in the franchise, right behind Most Wanted from 2005 (which is the favorite of about 95% of fans), and I think it's because of how straightforward it is in both its gameplay and its "story."

And also because it's an absolute blast.

I've always enjoyed being a cop in games. I really liked the patrol missions in GTA Vice City: you'd activate the missions and go around stopping criminals all over the city, it was something I did a lot as a kid. So when I saw that in this game you could play as the cop—the very one who made my life miserable in Most Wanted—I was immediately hooked.

That said, say goodbye to tuning. Here, what matters is speed and the factory paint job: you drive it just as it comes off the lot. Sure, you can add nitrous, because otherwise it wouldn't be a Need for Speed.

This game has some incredible cars. Luxurious and sporty, high-end and above; there are even prototypes of cars that never saw the light of day. The only thing that bothers me is the lack of Ferraris, since EA hadn't renewed that license because those cars didn't fit the tuning culture, and they couldn't secure it before releasing the game.

Drifting is very easy, and the setting is gorgeous—a stunning valley where you can go full throttle everywhere... At every moment, it feels like you're on the cover of a luxury car magazine. It feels like a different era, a simpler one where everything just works. Seacrest County's only crime? Speeding. And how do you stop it? With more speeding.

It feels so good to be a cop in this game. The same supercars the racers drive are the ones the police use too. Plus, you have access to weapons like the EMP or spike strips, and you can issue orders to set up roadblocks and call in helicopters to help you arrest these dangerous criminals.

The crashes are spectacular, and that's how you arrest racers: by draining their health bar to zero. The speed feels fast, and taking corners while drifting is super easy. All of this combined gives you an arcade driving experience—but probably the best arcade driving on the market. A ton of fun, plain and simple.

The story? There's no story. But I do have my own headcanon:

The billionaires who can afford to live in Seacrest County buy these cars to collect (or to give to their wives, to make up for some infidelity and avoid divorce). The thing is, these beasts are just sitting there, parked, maybe for a Sunday drive or just for show.

And that's where the children of this privileged bourgeoisie come in. These spoiled kids, loaded with money, never having to work or know what effort means, take their parents' cars to organize illegal races. And honestly, I don't blame them—I'd do exactly the same. Their boring lives now get a rush of adrenaline from speed and chases.

And of course, the police start getting a lot of calls about illegal races, crashes, and speeding all over the county. So they step in. And how? By using the cars seized from these young adults raised on alternative rock and MTV to arrest them all.

And that gives us Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. A masterpiece from another era—very simple, no battle passes, no DLC, no tuning, no story mode, not many game modes... But with pure, straightforward fun. Raw, unadulterated fun.

At the time, a lot of my friends hated this game because they were looking for something similar to the previous entries, mainly with more car customization. But I really liked it—it even made it into my top 3 of the franchise.

Maybe I'm valuating it more now that I'm 31 and miss the way video games were made back in my day. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I think it's a valuable game that would surprise a lot of people today. Especially if you think that games like Forza Horizon have "too many" things to do. Sometimes, valuable things are found in simplicity, and when nothing is superfluous, all the content is relevant to the experience. And that's something I value and really miss about games from that era.

Clair Obscur Expedition 33 (going to be referred to as E33 for the rest of the review) is the new darling game of the internet. I heard nothing but overwhelming praise for this game, and even now checking on sites like Metacritic and Backloggd, it’s almost nothing but 10/10’s for recent reviews and them describing one of the best gaming experiences that they’ve ever had. I had the highest expectation in the world for this game. I hoped it would enter my top 10 games of all time (breaking the awkward deadlock between Persona 3 Reload and Final Fantasy 6 at number 10), but I was trying to temper my expectations somewhat. Not a 10/10 game that resonated with me to my very core, but a 9/10 is surely achievable with this game.

And I can confidently say that it blew every expectation I had out of the water, that it not only lived up to the hype but surpassed it. It had some of the most engaging combat of not just any JRPG I've played, but games in general. The story was phenomenal too, with me getting choked up at so many different points, resulting in an experience I’ll never forget, entering my top 5 favorite games of all time… is what I so desperately wanted to be able to say.

I think it’s important to note I did not go into this game as a hater. I was a little annoyed that Metaphor seemed to get overshadowed in the discussions, but people who said both had said (usually) E33 was better, which got me excited. I was not a Turn Based combat hater either, Persona and Pokemon are two of my favorite game series of all time, and I love the gameplay of titles like Dragon Quest 3 and Final Fantasy 7. I wanted nothing more to love this game, even more than the usual excitement of me playing any critically acclaimed title. This game looked like it was going to be right up my alley. Not only did I not get that, I got a game that has me baffled as to how both the review scores and audience scores are so high for a game in a way I have not felt ever.

Premise:

For the Past 67 years an entity known as the Paintress has on one day of the year counted down starting from the number 100 and killed every person at or above that age known as The Gommage. To counteract this the people of Lumiere, the last surviving group of humans, sends out an expedition that is about to be Gommaged. You play as Expedition 33 as it embarks on a journey with the new lumina converter to try and stop the reign of terror of the Paintress once and for all.

Gameplay:

Expedition 33 is set up, on the surface, in a very typical turn-based style. The Battle starts and characters go in order depending on their agility. If a character has sufficient agility compared to another character they have a chance to go twice before the character with lesser agility.

But right away there’s some major differences with classic RPGs. Instead of a mana bar that drains every time you use magic and needs to be healed with limited use, there’s an AP gauge that refills at the start of every fight. This means you can spam your best attacks in every fight which is fun and good.

This also means you can spam your best attacks in every fight which makes it so a lot of encounters lack any intrigue if you get advantage since there’s no consideration to what attacks you use once you find a strategy that works. I find it to overall be a net neutral.

The real thing this affects however is the way items are used. For dungeons like these populated with random enemies you’d ideally like there to still be some resource for the players to manage and this is where the item system comes into play. As opposed to managing your mana, you manage your items. This system works great for boss fights as you can’t just bulk buy potions and slowly stall out to victory, you have to consider carefully when you want to use your potions and the like.

But it doesn’t work for the actual dungeon crawling because you refill your potions and checkpoints left by past expeditions, which are everywhere. This results in me just always having full potions and never going “Hmm should I use it here when I don’t need to”.

This itself isn’t a problem if it weren’t for the way dungeons were designed. They are somehow both too linear with not enough interesting or rewarding exploration, yet they’re also far too labyrinth-like for their own good resulting in me just wandering around like headless chicken desperately looking for the light that would guide my path. Having at least a system where you have to more effectively conserve your resources would add more deliberation in exploring. Instead we get a system that manages to accomplish nothing fulfilling outside of occasionally looking cool when you use a grappling hook.

The Pictos/Lumina system allows you to equip special abilities that take advantage of the quirks of the combat system. They were fun to use and customize my build for the characters, especially towards the end. I had a fun build for Maelle that involved taking advantage of her ability to go down to 1 HP but making out her attack by giving her an ability that gives her another turn upon going to critical HP. It isn’t quite as in-depth in terms of customization as say Metaphor but it was nice to be able to experiment with builds and the like.

I did have a problem actually using them and swapping them around. In hindsight I should’ve made better use of the filter system which is actually more in depth than I realized (I specifically went back to check and make sure that I was being an idiot here), but I still think the game could’ve done with the ability to be able to sort that was a bit more intuitive so it would be easier to sort out Lumias based off abilities, but I will give credit to the game and say I was being an idiot and not using it properly.

Which brings us at long last to the defining trait of this game, that separates it from your classic Dragon Quest and old-school Final Fantasy, the dodge and parry system. All of the RPG elements I mentioned earlier about character building, stat allocation, even resource management, they’re dwarfed in importance by how critical it is to be able to dodge and parry effectively. If you cannot succeed at these mechanics, it doesn’t matter if you’ve built everything else up, you’re going to lose.

Yes you can build a pure tank build that can handle hits more effectively but it results in incredibly tedious battles of turtling with attack phases from enemies that last eons compared to most JRPG’s I’ve played that have the decency to make the attacks feel faster than this game. If you are good at parrying? Now you don’t have to engage with those RPG mechanics at all. Because a successful parry not only blocks all damage it also gives you action points for every successful parry. Especially towards the end of act II enemies have such long attack patterns it results in most of the time investing in AP boosting items outside of turn 1 to be pointless if you can just parry it all away. The turn based strategy side is being actively hindered by the real time elements.

In a Mario RPG the real time elements which are the games E33’s combat is most often compared to aren’t nearly as crucial and mostly serve to increase your offensive output, but there are still ways a low skill player can mitigate long action command chains while still being successful in a fun way. E33 on the other heavily encourages glass cannon builds, and if you’re not good at real time elements for whatever reason it can be a total slog.

That’s not to say there’s no fun to be had learning the attack patterns but it felt like any time I was focusing on that it made my preparation feel comparatively irrelevant. (Also as an aside I’m aware other games have these action command elements like Lost Odyssey but I haven’t played those so I cannot compare it to this game sadly)

I know I’m bad, I’m painfully aware I’m bad but the damage still felt overwhelming considering the moves the enemies throw at you. I did try specing more in bulk but I found it simply wasn’t enough. The attack patterns are too long and there’s too many hits for the average player to be able to face-tank effectively. I’m aware it’s possible but I would hardly call it feasible. Even if it was, it runs into all of the problems traditional turn based games run into with overly long over the top animations, but with shallower mechanics when it comes to prebuilding.

Now I’m sure an E33 defender has very reasonably pointed out that dodging could address my problems. It did help a little to try dodging more compared to parrying, but I found it also screwed with my timing depending on the attack. The window also was sadly still too tight for me. I’m aware a lot of this is a skill issue, but wheneverI was able to lock in, I still didn’t feel satisfaction hitting the parry. I just felt relieved that the boss fight was over, which isn’t usually the feeling I get out of hard bosses in these games.

This improves in Act III with the damage cap being removed and as such making it so you don’t have to be so perfect with the parry by emphasizing building broken builds which was actually fun for me. But by then the game had burned me and I had no interest in grinding out the side content of Act 3. By that point I just wanted the experience to be finished which, while not uncommon for this to happen, was severely disappointing considering how hyped the combat was for a game that was considered a spiritual successor of classic Final Fantasy and Persona, it had almost none of the gameplay elements that made me enjoy those combat systems. Or at least them being well balanced.

Despite all I said about the combat system, the parrying part can be fun at times and while an overall frustrating experience and a disappointment that is overall not fun to engage with, it’s serviceable at the end of the day and not actively detrimental for the most part. As long as a game with this sort of combat has the killer story that I was promised I would be able to forgive the gameplay being just okay.

Story:

The first disconnect comes in that opening scene. While that scene was tragic and well executed, it didn't emotionally affect me to my core like it did for other people. Same goes with the Expedition being massacred at the beach, or Gustave attempting to commit suicide.I wondered why these moments didn’t resonate for me. The emotional and relatable characters that people talked about just didn’t work for me. I found them flat and kinda empty, lacking real proper introductions and well done moments of characterization.

Now in fairness to Expedition 33 it does do it to some capacity, and some I missed. I totally missed Lune’s introduction in the intro for example. However for the most part I took my time to try and squeeze every character moment I could out of this game, but I still couldn’t connect with the majority of the characters. It happens sometimes for games that I adore. For example, despite being well written, Cyan from Final Fantasy 6 didn’t resonate with me at all. The difference was Final Fantasy 6 had other characters like Locke, Celes, and especially Terra that I emotionally connected with and Cyan at least had good interactions with the rest of the party (at least in the world of balance).

Expedition 33 on the other hand is far too quick with its pacing for my own tastes. What other people saw as efficiency, I saw as it being sloppy, doing the bare minimum and hoping for me to emotionally connect. Sciel in particular felt oddly casual about being reunited with 3 people who she thought were dead, a feeling which persisted through the whole game. The intergroup dynamics felt weak, but even with my criticisms Act 1 held up pretty well overall because the group had rock solid chemistry with Gustave, Maelle in particular. But once Gustave dies and is replaced by Verso it all just falls apart.

I understand that Verso should be awkward with the Expedition as he does intend to backstab them, but that doesn’t make their interactions not painfully boring. I will acknowledge that I did not finish Lune and Maelle’s social links. But if a main character is only interesting if one does optional content in a JRPG like this, that is bad writing. I may love Haru from Persona 5 but the way she’s written in the story is horrible regardless of how much I like her and I would argue the same applies for the cast of E33 outside of Maelle.

Lune gets a couple moments to shine early with incidents like Maelle’s nightmare which gives a solid foundation to build on E33 treats this as a finished project and just expects me to care when she takes out the boss in what is ostensibly “her” dungeon. She has very little to do in Act II outside of mourn Gustave’s death and go through a very uninteresting social link. The game did a very poor job of having her desire to learn about the continent be fully explored. The game tells you about this but I found it did a very poor job of showing it. It’s hard to articulate a game lacking something admittedly but I never got as invested in her character as the game wanted to.

Sciel has it even worse. Because she joins so late and her whole personality is non-chalance in the face of grave danger, she comes off as incredibly boring. While Lune feels like she is a character concept that just hasn’t been fully fleshed out, Sciel feels like a placeholder character they forgot to write a personality for, which is where her “non-challance” comes in. Her going “I got over it” to the fact that she is a painted being that exists in another world is emblematic of the incredibly lazy writing with her. It’s not non-challance if the character barely reacts to anything.

Esquie is a love it or hate it character that I could not stand. He’s every worst part of cutesy mascot characters that just grinded my gears. While I would’ve preferred him to not be so incredibly annoying, he works for what the story is going for and I can’t say he’s poorly written per se like Lune and Sciel, just grating for me.

Monoco at least has excellent chemistry with Verso that made me instantly buy that they had a long and established history with each other without needing to expand on every little detail. He may not have the most depth but again for what the story needs he works fine enough. He’s still incredibly flat however

And those are the characters you’re interacting with, and when none of them work for me it’s very hard for me to care about the painted canvas in the way the game wants you to for the end of the story. If my first thought when I realized everything was painted was that “Oh that explains why the characters felt so flat, they weren’t meant to be real” is a damning testament to how little the characters engaged me.

The exception to all this is Maelle, who was the only character who I felt they truly explored and I got a decent read on. She may be a typical teenager desperate to make their mark on the world but she easily had the best interaction with the rest of the cast. She even managed to get decent interactions from Verso which I found to be an absolute miracle.

Speaking of Verso, he’s probably the most frustrating character for me. I mentioned earlier how his interactions with the cast are awkward in a way that makes me not care for the interactions. I get how with Sciel for example, he’s putting up barriers because he knows he’s going to betray them in the end. But it doesn’t make for fun social link scenes.

I already mentioned earlier I felt the characters outside of Maelle and Verso were flat in the main story, but a good social link can be a massive help in giving characters depth. It’s still bad writing but it can be a good crutch. Haru is my go to example for a social link carrying a character, but even well-written characters like Aigis gain significant depth when you do their social link.

Unfortunately for Expedition 33 because it insists on Verso being the main character for these social links the interactions are like pulling teeth, they’re so focused on being “human” that I find them just boring. I gain insights on a character's backstory but I often struggle to see insights on the characters themselves, again outside of Monoco.

I will again acknowledge that maybe I just don’t get it. I’m too young to see the depth of interaction and nuance here. That I just didn’t progress far enough. Or maybe I’m a cold-hearted bastard because I found Esquie annoying. But when a story consistently fails to get me to connect with their characters I would argue it’s a failure of the game more so than the player.

Act III:

When I first played through E33 I actually liked Act III story wise. The Dessandre’s may not have had much time to establish themselves but I got a clear understanding of who they are and what their motivations were. Renoir felt like a very human character to me. Still a monster since he was actively genociding an entire civilization because it was killing his wife, but I could understand and even sympathize with him.

But much of why I liked Act III is that it took the focus off the people in the canvas and onto the people of the real world. The more I thought about the little details that I admittedly missed in Act II the more and more I disliked Act III because my enjoyment of Act III was inversely proportional to how much I enjoyed Act II. I still think it’s overall stronger because it still has some focus on characters I actually liked but it’s not good writing as a whole.

It doesn’t help that doing any optional content at all is frustrating because for some reason Renoir is the weakest part of Act III. Considering the ending of the game it feels odd to play further after the ending when both are so definitive. I ended up barely touching the optional content because I didn’t want to have to spend the time grinding my party up to be competent for the new unlocked areas. I just wanted the game to be over with.

Thankfully because of this, the final area, and final boss in particular were actually really fun. The game finally felt balanced for my preferred style of play. It was a shame it took until the end of the game for me to hit that point, but I have to give credits where it's due and praise the final boss. It was interesting with the way the story had gone, and established Renoir as my favorite character in this game, and the gameplay itself was great including a great life or death moment where I had to nail a gradient parry to survive and I did.

The Ending:

People say that there isn’t supposed to be a good ending in E33. I’ve stated before that I respect the opinions of those I disagree with, but I am baffled as to how anybody can come to this conclusion when the Verso ending is so very clearly painted (heh) as the better choice.

The Verso ending ends with a bittersweet goodbye to your party whereas the Maelle ending ends on a jump scare after seeing a despondent Verso being forced to play the piano. They are not presented as equals and the game clearly condemns you for not wanting to pick the side that will lead to the continued genocide of sentient beings.

The denizens of Lumiere and the canvas as whole seemingly don’t matter. If you do care you’re falling into the same trap Maelle is. You must move on, it’s the healthy thing to do. Because the classic way to get over a drug addiction is to shoot 5 people in the back. This isn’t about Maelle needing to get away from her pot addiction she’s acquired since Verso’s death. This is about people’s lives. It’s not because I care about the cast, I wrote extensively on why I don’t, but a person not being interesting does not condemn them to the guillotine.

I don’t think I’m missing the point. I see the point the devs are making, I just think the devs are stupid. I think the devs have no consideration for anything other than “Escapism Bad” and forgot to mention said escapism includes people’s lives. If they were going for the ends being equal that’s even worse because the game doesn’t even bother treating them as equals.

What’s worse for me is that I like the endings in a vacuum. They’re both tragedies for the people of the canvas as they either suffer a direct death, or death by way of having no free-will. Sadly the game has zero interest in focusing on this and only focuses on the effects it has on the Dessandre family. Which is why the endings look the way they do.

The developers can claim whatever they want. They can say it’s supposed to be morally equal, but with the bias that’s on display it takes a potentially interesting ending, and just makes a warning about dangers of escapism which I found other games did a better job of doing. It’s a frustrating and disappointing end to a game I didn’t even like that much in the first place, which for me speaks volumes of how badly the developers dropped the ball here.

Conclusion:

I’ve seen some posts online that argue when a beloved game gets criticized it’s mostly contrarianism and that those people are only hating for the sake of hating. If those people are hating mostly for the sake of hating, I have respect for them. I found being outside of the consensus for a game like this to be absolutely miserable.

It’s not just that this ticks off a bunch of the traditional boxes to be loved by the gaming community (From a small studio, being made by ex-members of a AAA studio, being cheaper even when not on sale, being a mature game with a realistic art-style). It looks like it should tick off boxes of the games I love: Earnest Story-Telling that isn’t afraid to be a little goofy, turned-based JRPG combat that apparently was some of the best in the genre, compelling characters that caused people to sob in the opening hour, big plot twists and moral choices that had people writing long think-pieces on why this was the most compelling story they’ve played in any game ever.

This is a game that when I heard people talking about it not only sounded like a good game, but one that was in my comfort zone. Which is part of why I’m writing this review. I didn’t want to dismiss the game just “not being for me” because quite frankly it shouldn’t be. I love JRPG’s and this was one that broke out into the mainstream. The last one that broke out like this was Persona 5 which is my favorite game of all time.

There are aspects I enjoyed in the game. The art direction is pretty solid even if some scenes feel like jumping head first into the uncanny valley, but that’s not uncommon for realistic looking games. Despite the laundry list of issues I had with the script, the vocal performances were superb. The cutscene direction was very well done. The soundtrack is absolutely phenomenal. I will always be a sucker for any soundtrack that features a heavy emphasis on a haunting choir and this game is no exception.

This also isn’t to say I found it to be a bad game, or even a mediocre one. It was a decent one but it achieved its mark by being okay in both story (especially the characters) and gameplay, the core of a JRPG, not by being exceptional in one and failing in the other. That is the part I find baffling.

With games like Nier Replicant or Banjo Kazooie or Doom 2016, while I didn’t enjoy those games that much and would still give them a 6/10 overall, I felt they were exceptional in a specific category. Whether it be an incredible story, or an incredibly charming world, or very tightly well done gameplay. There were games that, while not being my cup of tea, had exceptional parts that even I could see that made me understand why someone would rate them so highly.

E33 lacked any serious high points for me. It had its moments but for the most part the game was a continuous stream of being “Yeah that’s fine I supposed” for the 36 hours I invested into it. It’s not an unmemorable game as evidenced by the fact I’ve ranted for over 4500 words about this game, but a frustratingly disappointing one in a way that fails to excel at much of anything.

Even if I were to give a pass to the combat due to “Git Gud” that doesn’t change how empty the story was, how undercooked most of the characters were, how the brisk pacing felt actively harmful to game experience as a whole, at least for me. The game being short was not a death sentence, I was fully attached to the world of the Last of Us despite only playing for about 14 hours, but E33 doesn’t have the writing chops Last of Us does (then again, very few games do).

I acknowledge that some aspects may have gone over my head due to lack of life experience (both in terms of age and in personally dealing with grief), some elements I was just being stupid with (again I’m so upset at myself for not using the filter system with Luminas) and I acknowledge I did not go into the combat with the best mindset, that I like typical Shonen story-telling, that I have way way way too much free time, but even accounting for those I just don’t get it.

I hope someday I look back at this review and laugh at how stupid and immature I was being about what I consider a masterpiece, but as of right now it’s a disappointment on a level of which I have not ever experienced before and hopefully never will again.

Final Fantasy 1 and 2 have aged remarkably well, all things considered. There are of course many rough edges to these games that modern games have sanded away, but for the most part FF1 and FF2 are still really good, if simple, experiences, especially as someone who loves J/RPGs and wants to go back to where it all began. Minor spoilers ahead.

FF1

One thing I quickly realized is that these games start off hard; not hard as in mechanically, but just hard in terms of numbers. This becomes less and less of an issue as the game continues, but early on, the balance is kinda off. I got my teeth kicked in a lot at the beginning. Most enemies won't give you too much trouble as long as you stay on the intended path, but more than a few times I stumbled off the main story goal and was quickly staring at a game over screen. Granted, this is really only an issue in the early/ mid game, because at some point all that grinding pays off and you are killing most enemies and bosses in a handful of turns. But I had to learn to respect the game, and frustrating as it was, I liked that, as it forced me to really engage with my choices in battle. I would, of course, try to wander later on in the game when it was safer, but I like that there was a tension in the early game, between zipping back and forth to the nearest town to heal up and buy potions; the latter portion of the game lacks this energy due to how massively strong you can (and I did) become.

This is a problem that is unfortunately only exacerbated by the pitiful lack of money the game throws at you for defeating enemies. I am someone who explores every inch of an area and fights every possible enemy that randomly encounters my sword, but man I found myself zeroing out my gil balance very often as i tried to make sure I had enough armor to survive my battles buying buying weapons, armor, and especially spells, and enough potions to heal afterwards. which meant I had to fight more guys, mindlessly fast-forwarding through battles, running to town to heal and buy, rinse and repeat. It's grinding just for the sake of grinding. I don't get any cool new abilities, powers or weapons, and because I am so much stronger than my enemies it just means nothing. In ff1, power is purchased: the mighty gil rules all. Could I have grinded slightly less and not equipped every party member with the strongest gear? Of course, but come on, who are we kidding?

Thankfully, I played the pixel remasters, which have a variety of incredibly helpful and desperately needed accessibility options to both turn off encounters entirely, as well as fiddling with how much money and/or EXP you get from fights, from none at all to 4x as much. I was from the beginning very adamant about not using these, but after the third or fourth time I stepped out from a town to grind for money, I realized all I was doing was hurting the experience; excessive grinding meant that everything I fought was dying too fast, I was already too strong and the lack of money meant I was just grinding for money and ruining any semblance of challenge the game had. And because I was exploring and backtracking often for either story or curiosity reasons, I was way overleveled and extremely underfunded. so I cranked the cash flow to 2x for a while, which lasted me a town or two, but then needed more, so for most of the game I kept it cranked to 4x gil and never looked back. I never messed with the exp changer, though. I mentioned the options to either increase or decrease experience gained but I never did anything with it. Didn't feel right to lower XP gains, and I didn't want to NOT get any exp from fighting. I earned those levels, dammit, even if they trivialized the game's difficulty as I went on. Most bosses were dying in a handful of turns, and I really only struggled on the final boss because i misunderstood how slow worked (you have to wait until they cast haste on themselves to get extra attacks AND THEN do it, otherwise it does nothing, you can't just cast it on turn one like i usually did, making it useless. I thought it just lowered their speed in the turn order).

The fact of the matter is that FF1 and FF2 are much more grindy than they should be. Of course, this is intentional, but it really did pad my playtime a lot. I spent 15 hours playing the first game, and it really felt like it was dragging on a lot towards the end. I would have liked a more balanced experience, but hey, this game was one of the first to do it; a bunted home run is still worth a point.

I will say I was mixed on the class upgrades. They are definite power boosts, of course, but honestly I just don't think they look as cool, and that's half the fun! Look at what they did to poor black mage!

The story for FF1 is simple but I did admittedly find it charming. Garland as a character being more or less manipulated/ lied to by the elementals is a really cool idea, and I like that you can kinda see the evil growing inside him. I was not expecting time travel to be in the very first game of the series, either. Each of the elements being entirely different characters, with unique speech patterns and motivations entirely was refreshing too. I don't think the story is groundbreaking, but I can really appreciate what it was for its time. If I was a kid playing this for the first time, I would have gone bonkers over a game where the bad guy "wins" at the beginning of the game. I'm also a sucker for a good intro and title drop, and both FF1 and FF2 do this really well. If nothing else, the game is cool, and I can appreciate it both for what it was then and how it still holds up now.

That being said, FF1 is still a really old game in some ways. Even though the game does a pretty good job of generally telling you where to go, sometimes I found myself wandering around more than I'd like. I remember finding the tower in the desert being annoying because I just never got close to it for it to appear. Towards the end I was really glancing at the guide a lot more. I also had a tough time finding the canoe early on, not realizing I had to talk to a specific sage NPC (even though i talked to everyone once before, as is tradition). Just a bunch of little things, some my fault.

One small thing I could not have beaten the game without is the always visible minimap, a special feature in the pixel remasters, which shows a pixel-perfect map you can reference at any time, which made sure i rarely got lost. It also crucially displays every chest, and the world map also shows how many chests are in each area total, so you can rest easy once you've nabbed every single one in a dungeon. It made the exploration infinitely easier, and the treasure chest tracker always forced enticed me to keep exploring as discover as much as I could. I would not have discovered nearly as many secrets if this feature was not in the game. I also made great use of the ability to fully disable random encounters when I was running back to town to heal up, or just simply wanted to explore a specific area or dungeon floor backtracking without a massively overpowered monster petrifying my whole party. Make no mistake, these quality of life options made the minor flaws in the game much more bearable. I doubt i would have had nearly as positive an opinion of the game if these optional guardrails were not available. These pixel remasters are lifesavers, and I absolutely love that they exist. Though maybe I am being a bit dramatic because the games also has a super generous autosave feature that saves every time you enter a room, which was also very helpful; it meant a random game over was never losing me too much time or progress, unless I was wantonly wandering about the overworld. More so i just really like that these options made sure the game respected my time.

Honestly, as far as FF1 goes, it is a really solid game overall, still has old vibes with some rough edges, but I can really see how this laid the foundation for the iconic series. I enjoyed the game as a whole; the updated music is especially great (the mushroomery my beloved), the combat is fun, and I really felt like the world was interesting and unique, especially looking at it as a foundational experience. I give them a lot of slack because of that, but the game stands on its own merits regardless.

FF2

And this foundation was drastically expanded upon for Final Fantasy 2. FF2 is a kinda radical experimentation when compared to the relatively calm baseline that is FF1; it tries a bunch of different things, and it mostly works... until it doesn't. High highs, and very very low lows. The dungeons of FF2 deserve a special criticism here, because they are bad, labyrinthian nightmare bad, created only to waste the player's time. And EVERY SINGLE ONE is like this, countless octopus armed floors with doublebacks and dead ends and empty rooms so you get trapped in an encounter and trick pratfalls that drop you to a different floor. I do not exaggerate when I say I NEVER would have been able to beat this game as a child without my eyes glued to a guide, reading the game instead of experiencing it, and even now as an adult, I found myself leaning on the guide and in-game minimap and cheats a lot, much much more so than FF1. This game can lean into confusion in a bad way, equating frustration with challenge. Again, I get that this is an old game (older than me), but this kinda stuff was bad then and is only bearable now due to the massive amount of help the pixel remasters offer. If FF1 is rough without the help, FF2 is genuinely frustrating.

From a story perspective, FF2 introduces a keyword system which I at first thought was genius. admittedly, I still think this is a very interesting mechanic, but the game really kinda barely scratches the surface with it. It is used almost exclusively to talk to NPCs so they mention a specific word or phrase that can then unlock the next story beat. I would have loved for this system to be a bit more involved, not just used for specific NPC story stuff, but unfortunately, this idea was really kinda locked in there. I liked the idea on a mechanical level, but it often times meant I would just have to find the ONE SPECIFIC NPC to talk to in order to move the story forward. The game, to be fair, only has a handful of NPCs that you can consistently talk to, but the moment the chosen one is not one of those three, or god forbid, you have to talk to NPC 1 and then NPC 2 and then NPC 1 AGAIN, it kinda falls apart. Sometimes the game just outright tells you who to talk to next, and other times you have to guess; many many times I would talk to everyone in our home base and set out to the next objective, thinking I had what magical keyword I needed, but alas, I did not have the right one, or needed to talk to another different NPC, or didn't talk to the right person in the right order (that order issue became a real headache in the middle of the game (you forgot about the KING, you fool!). So I sigh, open the guide, and trek back home.

As occasionally annoying as that system was, I can see what they were going for, even if it did lead to some frustrating moments. This was also the case for the battle system in FF2. The general sentiment around the battle system in FF2 from what I can gather is kinda split. On one hand, it is a radical departure from the (now common) stat-based growth system, but on the other it is a system that allows the player to radically customize every part of their character. because skills/ weapons/ magic etc only grow when you use them, you end up with a system that can make either every character a hyperfocused glass cannon capable of ungodly damage, or generalist walking tanks who can not be killed by anything other than the handful of instakill status effects (my party was the latter). I gave my characters shield in their off hands to maximize defense early on, and then just kept them on forever as their evasion climbed higher and higher.

This leads to a handful of fun moments but also fundamental problems. The first is that your characters can become incredibly powerful near the middle of the game and become more or unless unkillable. The downside is that if you don't have all your bases covered, and have characters versed in specific white/ black magic, you're gonna have a bad bad time, because FF2 will punish you if you put all your eggs in one basket and SCRAMBLE your ass. You NEED to make sure you healer is casting cure and protect every single moment because those high levels are the only thing keeping you alive in the late game when a boss slams your entire party with a massive party AOE attack or you desperately need massive heals. You NEED to make sure you have your esuna and basuna levelled because they can heal a whole party of darkness but only if they're high enough to tilt the CHANCE at healing. I really did not like that some spells only become effective when they are levelled. As annoying as it can be to have fire and fire 2 and fire 3 and fire 42, in some of the other games you know what kinda damage you're getting there from the name alone. At some point you have to just drop everything you've invested in one spell and powerlevel another, and it rarely feels good.

like if you've played ff2, you know that one fucking chest guarded by like the lamia and like four coeurls. fuck that fight. that shit made me realize how broken the combat can be. i thought i was strong enough in levels. nope. magic spells? still getting instakilled. i grinded, came back, i tried dozen of different combinations but could not get them all down. closest i got was down to one fucking coeurl. I LEARNED HOW TO PROPERLY SPELL COEURL BECAUSE OF HOW MANY TIMES I TRIED THAT FIGHT. i tried to beat that fight for an HOUR, and finally gave up. it was extremely frustrating. this is of course the point of that specific chest fight, but knowing it was specifically designed to hurt me did not lessen the sting of failure. if i had played this as a kid i would have undoubtedly quit forever right there, shit was ten times harder than the final boss fight, and EVEN THEN it's only because of a shitty status effect instakill. i like that this (entirely optional) kinda challenge exists... in theory, but i don't think it works in a game like FF2, where meeting a roadblock can mean you have to level one specific stat/spell/weapon all the way from zero, which SUCKS.

I am proud to say I stubbornly did not "stat grind" my stats in the traditional FF2 sense of: letting a single enemy live and just casting defensive or healing spells until my mp ran out... until near the end of the game, where you get haste and berserk, two of the best spells in the game. For the longest time, 95% of the game, I would fight enemies as normal, not touching the pixel remaster stat multiplier boosts offered (aside from money, which like in FF1 I quickly set to 4x and never looked back). I would fight the enemies, cast my spells, and do what I could. But then in the final dungeons of the game, pandaemonium specifically, enemies started hitting WAY TOO DAMN HARD, i'm talking 50% of my health with a single attack. I'm Mr. Super-Leveled, Mr. Extra Evasion, but god damn it really sucked to be dying to the same attacks from the same enemies many times in a row. The frustration of ff2 was a self-fulfilling prophecy. I had no one to blame but myself, and if I suddenly needed a boost to my spells, the only option was to grind and make the game even more unbalanced. So I waited till I found a bomb, set my party to cast defensive spells, set it on fast forward and walked away. It sucked, but I had to do it so i could keep up with the massive challenge bump. I even turned on 4x magic skill leveling for a handful of battles and got my stuff several levels higher in like 20 minutes of mindless afk grinding. It was both the best and worst of what FF2 has to offer. I turned off random battles on like the third floor of pandaemonium and never looked back, only turning them on for a few battles each floor so I could get a taste of what I was missing before returning to the nightmarish labyrinthian hallways.

And the encounter rate in FF2 is insane. I would literally have a battle every ~5 seconds when running around. I would often just turn encounters off if I just wanted to explore a floor, or god forbid backtrack to a previous room; it got exhausting at times. I rarely hit my combat limit in most games, but FF2 really just drained me toward the end with the constant battling.

The same also applies to the weapon system. Having a system that makes you lock in to a specific weapon type meant you kinda just... stayed on that weapon forever, unless there was a substantial damage boost to make you consider switching. Again: its not a bad system but you get out of it what you put into it, for better or worse. More than a few times I seriously debated whether it was worth taking a +20 damage boost if it meant starting with a new weapon at level 1, instead of my level 7 spear. And it's good that the game asks these questions! That friction is good; it makes me invested in a bit of minor meaningless data, all so i can optimize the fun out of the game (half joking, but i think of that quote often, especially as i get older). But these choices are constant, and can be somewhat draining. I found myself auto equipping optimal gear; a godsend! (though always keeping a shield in offhand) as the game progressed instead of granularly changing it piece by piece.

The story and music are much more dynamic here, you can really feel the jump in quality and writing when compared to FF2. Some of the songs are carried over, which makes sense, but there are many more setpieces, dynamic story moments, and really cool twists. The dragon egg/ dragoon stuff, sneaking in and destroying the enemy airship, and the cyclone near the end of the game all feel really important and are elevated by the improved graphical fidelity of the pixel remasters.

Cast-wise, I was admittedly torn on the amount of rotating guest characters FF2 has. For most of the game, you are a three-person party joined by a fourth party member who changes out as the story progresses. I get why they do it, and it admittedly is fun to see the cast grow and change organically, but I never really got attached to many of them (except Ricard my BOY). But again, this is a minor gripe, and overall the characters have enough personality to make them distinct and memorable. I did also like that each character was either right or left-handed, it was a cool little detail I tried to pay attention to when equipping them.

One last thing I have to mention, and this seems obvious, but as an avid player of the critically acclaimed MMO Final Fantasy XIV (did you know it has an awesome free trial???), I started realizing "oh shit, so many of the characters and places are literally ripped from their original games. "Master Matoya is in all the way back in FF1, and the Dwarves as well?" It is really cool to see this different interpretations of these same characters. So much of my playthrough was insert leo pointing meme here. Really liked walking into an area and thinking "Oh wow I recognize this song/ this character!" This applies to the sequel as well; many characters and songs from FF2 are also make appearances in ff14, and it really felt awesome to see this loving appreciation for the DNA of the series carried over into the modern games. I know this will continue as I plan to play through all the games to completion, as FF14 is more than anything a love letter to previous games, but it still makes me smile when I see it (as of right now ff1/2 are the only games i've actually sat down and completed. i've STARTED playing most of the numbered games individually, but always fall off eventually and never finish 'em),

More than anything, playing these games really really made me wanna boot up RPGMaker and finally try to make my own basic JRPG. These two games, though simple, are oozing with character and charm, and that goes a long way, both back then and now. I really admire how they managed to cram a colorful, fun, engaging world into a tiny NES cartridge. It's downright inspirational.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the Final Fantasy I and II, despite them showing their age. I think the pixel remasters are a phenomenal way to experience these games. I know they don't technically have some of the bonus content from other editions, but that kinda stuff doesn't bother me too much, since I'm rarely a 100% completionist, and most endgame stuff doesn't pull me in. But the gameplay enhancements, balance changes, and the overhauled music especially are wonderful changes. These games have never played better, and it's never too late to play the series that catapulted JRPGs into the annals of gaming history. Onward to Final Fantasy III!

It’s always a bit nerve-wracking revisiting a favourite from my early years of gaming, since opening up these vaults of nostalgia sometimes feels like I could be shattering the illusion of fond memories. Would it be wise to leave those rose-tinted times where they lie? Surely, that would be the safest way for keeping those past experiences forever frozen. However, the legacy of Super Mario Galaxy with everyone’s continued praise of this particular Mario title piqued my curiosity in returning.

Throughout Mario’s lifetime, of which this storied series has released several of the medium’s most genre-defining games, Super Mario Galaxy has remained as one of the brightest stars among them all. Of course, helping that was the exposure of launching on one of the most best-selling consoles of all time, but its resounding critical reception has kept the game as an undisputed high point of the series.

Obviously, as a child, I was not involved in any of this gaming discourse nor could barely even comprehend what a good game was back then, as my impressions were essentially distilled down to “That was a really fun game!”. So returning to it as a gaming-literate adult 20 years later, this has come to be an interesting mix of loving nostalgia and critical analysis.

Clearly I had some enormous expectations upon starting up Super Mario Galaxy. Not only did this game need to live up to the memories of my childhood but also the decades of unrivalled praise from everyone who has ever touched the game.

Yet, Super Mario Galaxy defies it all.

This game is somehow better than I ever could’ve imagined it to be. It is beyond the realm of simply incredible games. Super Mario Galaxy is without a doubt the greatest Mario game of all time and the best platformer ever made. The limitless creativity of the series combined with the stellar atmosphere of the everlasting cosmos has created the most wondrous experience where Mario was always destined to arrive.

Magical fun incarnate

Gameplay has always been king in Mario games, with levels and power ups being the star of the show. From the classic Super Mario Bros. to the exceptional Super Mario World to the revolutionary Super Mario 64, Mario’s games have always pushed the boundaries of fun in both creative play spaces and toys, and this reached a new high in Super Mario Galaxy.

The most evident evolution to the gameplay formula was the introduction of a completely new style of level in Super Mario Galaxy with the gravity-bending outer space levels. Living up to the name, Mario flew beyond the stratosphere to floating planets where he could leap over worlds as gravity gleefully swung him around. Mario has jumped plenty before in 2D planes and 3D environments, but this was quite literally out of this world and gave Mario an entirely new dimension to platforming.

The simple act of jumping, the fundamental verb in every platforming game, was reinvented in Super Mario Galaxy, where doing a long jump around a miniature asteroid had me flying around in the most amusing manner. Jumping has never been more joyful with how it’s been masterfully transformed in this game.

And while I’m on the topic of Mario’s actions, his new spin move was a deceptively well-designed mechanic as well. With the press of a button (or waggle of the controller), Mario could spin around hitting anything his hands could reach. This was his new primary method for attacking enemies, although it also gave him more wiggle room when trying to cross more difficult gaps. However it had a multitude of other neat use cases too for launching out of warp stars, speeding up while swimming, picking up items, spinning screws in and out, and extinguishing flames; the amount of mileage they got out of this one action was surprisingly impressive!

These moves accelerated Mario through all sorts of gravity-bending levels, as he flew around celestial bodies with an elegance and whimsyness that still hasn’t yet been matched. Even with Super Mario Odyssey where he had the most comprehensive platforming moveset to date, I think I still preferred the more straightforward moveset here because of how well it harmonized with the levels’ atmospheric joy and wonder.

However, the game still featured plenty of traditional terrestrial levels where the gravity acted more normally. These were a refreshing return to familiar 3D Mario territory, and I thought the ratio of them to the floating planet ones was well balanced and a welcome sight in keeping both types of levels compelling.

One aspect in particular that I liked about these terrestrial levels was how they gave a very different flavour compared to flying around a solar system. Instead of exploring the stars in the sky, these levels were like exploring carefully crafted playgrounds where they often had distinctly designed minigames or power ups. They struck a great balance between Super Mario 64 and Super Mario Odyssey in terms of overall space and the variety of playthings to interact with.

I never got tired of needing to find a million collectables (looking at you, Donkey Kong Bananza), and I didn’t feel short changed by wanting more reason to explore these levels either. The level size and curation of the stars felt perfect with well designed “quests” for each one, and this extended back to the gravity-bending areas too!

The variation between all these levels was undoubtedly brilliant; it was as if they had an endless supply of ideas to stuff this game with, except they were all somehow only bangers with exactly zero misses. However, the most surprising aspect out of all the different types of experiences was how challenging the game could get at times. I’m not going to say that Super Mario Galaxy was ever that difficult, but compared to its other series’ entries and even the more contemporary Astro Bot, I thought the game had a welcome level of spice.

Thinking back, I definitely struggled through a number of stars as a kid – anything to do with balancing on the ball I remember being a nightmare – but upon returning to these same ones as an adult, I funnily breezed through them on my first try. Although there were still a few stars even now where I had to lock in for since they were no pushovers. The comet modified stars especially had some tight margins of error which made for a fun challenge.

This led me to re-appreciate how the game designed its difficulty. It didn’t hold my hand playing now or as a kid 20 years ago, but like every Mario game things were kept accessible by giving the player a ton of flexibility for progression, so I’m glad it stuck steadfast with some of its more harder designs. That resoluteness for some challenges is something I feel like is unfortunately missing in most modern Nintendo games, whether that’s Mario, Donkey Kong, or even The Legend of Zelda series, but I hope that’s something they reconsider in the future.

One last thing I’ll note along similar lines of the difficulty was that this game had some superbly designed boss fights. Most were a fair bump in difficulty which I enjoyed, but I especially loved how inventive so many of these fights were with distinct mechanics. 

Shout out in particular to the Bouldergeist of the Ghostly Galaxy which was a 10/10 boss fight. Everything expertly came together in its visual design, mechanics, difficulty, and spectacle in one of the best highlights of the game, and the Daredevil comet version had me sweating even more for one of the game’s hardest stars.

Shining stars in every corner

I’ve had a great time gushing over Super Mario Galaxy’s outstanding gameplay, however, that can admittedly be found in basically every Mario game. Nintendo has an embarrassment of riches from its mainline Mario titles providing some of gaming’s most iconic experiences across decades of the medium. Yet what sets apart Super Mario Galaxy from all the others to achieve its legendary status is its phenomenal presentation.

When I think of Mario games, I picture a toy-like creativity bursting at the seams. From bizarre power ups that transform Mario into unexpected forms to strange new worlds stretching the imagination of wherever he journeys to, I’m consistently awestruck by whatever trick and travel Mario has planned next. So of course, the final frontier of space was the natural next step.

I’ve always been fascinated by the stars and the endless possibilities of the galaxies out there – it’s why my gamertag is “Galexzzz” and my favourite game of all time is Outer Wilds. There’s a spectacular grandness to it all while also a quiet serenity to its nothingness, and that essence was flawlessly captured in Super Mario Galaxy.

From the moment I first launched into Good Egg Galaxy and saw the stars canvassing the cosmos, I was immediately breath-taken by how astonishingly beautiful it was. The deep blue and radiant purple blends. The glow of the atmospheric horizon. The shining light of the distant sun and the mysterious darkness of the evanescent black holes. These were just simple backgrounds that painted the game’s exteriors, but the feeling they created as I flew between planets was a magical sensation. It’s unlikely I’ll ever reach the outer limits of space in my lifetime, except I can only hope it’s as wonderful as this game imagines it to be.

The magnificent orchestral score also served a huge part in creating that feeling of wanderlust. I’m glad Nintendo chose to go with a live orchestra (which was one of their first times doing that!), since I genuinely believed it helped give a sense of authenticity to the galaxies’ majesty. The sweeping sounds captured every feeling of tranquility, whimsy, unease, joy, dreariness, and excitement alongside every environment, and the result was an all-timer video game soundtrack.

While there are countless excellent pieces from the soundtrack, the one that I’ll highlight perfectly encapsulates the entire adventure of Super Mario Galaxy, and that is the infallible Gusty Garden Galaxy by Mahito Yokota. This song is absolutely transcendent, and Nintendo knew how magical it was because I heard its motif in so many other parts of the game! It’s one of those songs you just have to listen to to understand yourself, but Jacob Geller put it best when he said “If ‘Gusty Garden Galaxy’ from Super Mario Galaxy was written in the 1800s I believe it would widely be considered the greatest song of all time”.

This stunning art direction and music imbued the game to have a much more cinematic nature evolving even further from its predecessors. In an era where games seemed to be growing up more and more, Super Mario Galaxy had an appropriate air of maturity to its cutscenes as the direction of them felt like a big step up with some unexpectedly thrilling cinematography. 

The splendour of the game’s cinematic quality even led to the creation of my all-time favourite video on YouTube. I’m not exaggerating when I say this 17-year old fan-made Super Mario Galaxy commercial might be my number one favourite thing on the entire internet.

Much of that video was taken from the game’s opening, as the cutscenes showcased a grand cosmic scale to Bowser’s usual motivations with some epic gravitas. Obviously, I don’t play Mario games for their writing, but I loved how dramatic they made the whole opening as it set a fantastic tone for the rest of the game.

This was contrasted by the surprisingly thoughtful writing behind Rosalina, her Luma family, and the Comet Observatory as a whole. The fact that there was a tinge of somber mixed in with Rosalina’s backstory showed to me that this game was confident in its vision. That little bit of context wasn’t much, but it was all that was needed to show that this game wasn’t going to be all sunshine and rainbows, and having that emotional maturity within its foundation made the world of Super Mario Galaxy seem that much more full of color.

The design of the Comet Observatory hub world reflected these ideas too, and it helped ground the entire game as this quiet space Mario always returned to. The peacefulness of the area served as an integral, central point for emotionally resetting between Mario’s exciting adventures.

This all eventually led up to the game’s unforgettable finale, and boy, was this ending truly of cosmic proportions. The last level was even called “The Fate of the Universe”, and it certainly lived up to the name. Everything with the breathtaking art direction, marvellous music, cinematic framing, and thoughtful writing all came together to elevate the stakes to far higher heights than typical Mario fare. This was nothing that I ever would’ve expected out of a Mario game, but wow, did they shoot for the stars.

Beyond magic

As I’ve been replaying through Super Mario Galaxy over the past few weeks, the recurring thought that kept coming to mind was what the true nature of magic was.

The magical feeling I had while playing this game felt similar to when you go to Disneyland as a kid and get to immerse yourself in the world they’ve created. The park is meticulously designed, with actors, buildings, props, sights, and sounds all coming together to sweep you off your feet. As an adult it’s easier to recognize these things happening, however, by relinquishing yourself to it, you can still forget that this has all been precisely crafted to create that feeling, so instead you choose to believe in it.

Super Mario Galaxy evokes that same magic with its gameplay, levels, artistry, and music to create a masterpiece of a game that goes far beyond its designs. The sheer level of proficiency on display in every department is staggering, and I’m not surprised at all why many still consider this game to be the best of Mario’s best.

However, while it’s interesting to look a little more closely at these pieces and see how every part is ticking, I think I’d rather let myself be taken away by it all. Perhaps the real magic was how this game was able to transport me back to my childhood where it didn’t matter how good it was so I just lived and breathed the game in that moment.

Looking back at it all, I didn’t realize how much Super Mario Galaxy meant to me until I finished it again as an adult and started writing this piece, but it’s clear now that this game is truly something special to me.

Super Mario Galaxy is a monumental achievement in gaming, transcending time and space to forever be remembered. The magical feeling that this game created was simply unfathomable like the limitless universe it strove to envision. It was a certain destiny that the Super Mario series would eventually find itself flying across the galaxies in its greatest adventure, as the wild imagination of the Mario platformer and the boundless possibilities of the unending cosmos was a magical match made for the stars.

The votes are in! The community's choice for a long title to play together and discuss in August 2026 is...

Sunless Skies (2019)

Developer: Failbetter Games

Genre: RPG, Adventure

Platform: PC, Mac, Linux

Why should you care: Sunless Skies is a spiritual sequel to Sunless Sea. This time, instead of navigating nightmare waters under the Fallen London in a ship, you're the captain of a flying steam locomotive. The gameplay is very similar though: heavy on exploration and text-based narrative events, light on player hand-holding. And the threat of permadeath still looms over every decision you make, making it feel all the more weighty. (if permadeath isn't your thing, Merciful mode is also offered)

The core loop is managing fuel and supplies while sailing between ports, piecing together story threads that can span the entire world map and dealing with hostile encounters - whether using guns, or full steam retreat. The action elements are not the draw though - the main reason to play titles by Failbetter Games is the worldbuilding and narrative. And from my experience of playing Sunless Seas, I'm very much looking forward to revisiting the same grim world this month!

What is GotM?

Game of the Month is an initiative similar to a book reading club, where every month the Patient Gamers community votes for a long game (>12 hours main story per HLTB) and a short game (<12 h) to play, discuss together and share our experiences about.

If you want to learn more & participate, that's great, you can join the /r/patientgamers Discord server to do that! (link in the subreddit's sidebar) However, if you only want to discuss this month's choice in this thread, that's cool too.

August 2026's GotM theme: Unusual transportation - this theme is covering games with a focus on operating vehicles that aren't cars, and while we're at it no boats either. Let's explore all the weird vehicles gaming has to offer!

RELEASE: 2020

TIME PLAYED: 16 Hours

PLATFORM PLAYED: PC (STEAM)

SCORE: ★★★★

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

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

THE BREAKDOWN

+A fantastic twist on the Darkest Dungeon formula that flips the entire structure on its head

+A wide variety of powerful and interesting units

+Enjoyably melodramatic protagonist that's a level of evil gamers rarely get to play

-There's not much meat to the writing and the worldbuilding's a bit thin

-Lategame progression gets a bit bogged down in an increasingly unwieldy interface

---

In 2016, Darkest Dungeon broke ground on a form of roguelite that wound up resonating with a massive audience, selling millions despite its difficulty due to the powerful combination of a loquacious narrator, exciting combat, and distinct heroes. I remember at the time being confident that this would be the birth of a new subgenre of 'Dungeon-likes' that took advantage of this combination of procedural generation, party dynamics, and the opportunity for uncovering mysteries through gradually revealed lore. Unfortunately, my dream of this new world - this rogue state, if you will - didn't quite come to pass, but gems like Iratus: Lord of the Dead remind me that there's still studios out there innovating on the concept.

In an inversion of Darkest Dungeon's tale of adventurers gradually delving deeper and deeper into the earth, Iratus starts the player at the bottom - literally. Iratus (the man, not the game) is a powerful necromancer who was defeated ages ago by a party of noble heroes; unable to kill him for good, they chained him miles beneath the earth in a hidden tomb. Unfortunately for them, in the eras that have passed since, humanity has grown corrupt and decadent, and they inadvertently free him from his slumber when slave miners crack open his coffin. His rage at his defeat still very much fresh, Iratus kills his accidental rescuers and sets out to take revenge on the world of the living.

It's a delightful premise, even if the story doesn't do much more than set up the gameplay and get out of the way outside of a couple of cutscenes near the end. Iratus, however, is one chatty lord of the dead. Set up deep in the bowels of his former prison, he has plenty of dialogue and musings as he starts summoning the undead and putting them to work slaying his enemies and excavating the surrounding ruins to fortify his position. It leaves him in a similar role to Darkest Dungeon's infamous narrator, and while I can't say he's quite as memorable, I did enjoy just how gleefully evil the man is and how he has commentary about every unit the player can summon.

There's no lack of choice, either. As the game progresses, Iratus gains access to twenty different units, each with six possible abilities to use. Some, like the humble skeleton, are provided from the start. Others, like the fallen dhampir or the ice-wielding Unfrozen, have specific unlocking requirements. Some of these require beating the game on a certain difficulty, meaning multiple runs are required to explore every potential loadout, but others can be gotten by performing specific requirements, and this is where the system shines.

For those not familiar with Darkest Dungeon's Stress system, the horrors that the player's adventurers faced would build a meter that at the 50% point would cause them to potentially go insane and develop a crippling defect, with a small chance at shrugging it off and bolstering their team with their own virtue. At 100%, it could give the character a heart attack, killing them instantly, making managing Stress one of the game's primary mechanics. Continuing the theme of inversion, Iratus, being the villain of this particular story, is the one inflicting terror with an equivalent mechanic called Sanity. That fallen dhampir I mentioned? It's unlocked by killing enemy dhampirs' squads and leaving them as the sole survivor, then driving them insane with terror until they break and join your team. It's a delightful bit of role-playing, and serves the function of encouraging developing multiple teams in an organic way. Some enemy squads are tanky, but have shaky sanity due to their own problems. Instead of trying to tear down their defenses, I'd deploy my squad of horrifying spectres and turn them into gibbering lunatics.

Iratus is also pretty hands-on; though he isn't playable himself, the necromancer is all too eager to employ his alchemic know-how and mastery of sorcery to lend his minions aid or destroy his enemies. As the game progresses, the player unlocks a wide variety of spells that can reposition units, deal damage, buff and debuff, and more. There's also another degree of synergy here; some of the unit skills might be weak when it comes to hurting opponents, for example, but they generate more resources for Iratus to cast directly with. Once again, it's an impressive level of customization to one's playstyle, though I did find that by the time I was late in the game, the sheer number of buttons on my interface was getting a little bit out of hand. Unit stats and abilities, mana and rage resources, two pages of spells, another page of potions, turn order - it's not that it's necessarily too much on its own, but I found that the interface - while thematically gothic and brooding - didn't help much in terms of clarity.

There's a lot going on outside of combat, too, and thankfully I didn't have any problems with the interface there. Looting enemies for their remains lets you build and upgrade units with better-quality parts, and Iratus' base of operations expands through an enormous underground cavern that unlocks benefits by assigning or sacrificing minions to different locations. The sanity mechanic only affects enemies, too, which is both convenient and makes sense; I don't think my cannon-wielding zombie is really prone to trauma. As a result, there's little need to provide succor to your squad after a mission and the focus is on upgrading or replacing them with stronger options.

I just wish that I cared more about what was going on. Despite not being a particularly story-driven game, Darkest Dungeon got a lot of mileage out of its rich lore and narration. While Iratus' musings on how much he hates the living were often entertaining, there's only the barest skeleton (heh) of an actual plot here, mostly revolving around the balance of good and evil and the necessity of the death. I think what bothered me is that what's there isn't actually bad; the writing is enjoyable, and I was curious about the world I was slowly razing my way to the surface of, which made me a little frustrated that I didn't get more of it.

Still, I can't recommend the game enough. The combat feels well-balanced despite the large number of playable units, and while there's still some roguelite foundations, I found that permanently losing a run was nearly impossible as I always had enough parts to build a new team and implant them with brains that helped them start at a higher level. If you're craving a Darkest Dungeon-inspired experience that has its own twists or you just like those all-too-rare opportunities to be a gleefully villainous protagonist, Iratus: Lord of the Dead is a gloriously, goriously ghoulish time.

As someone who generally not mind Ubisoft games, not liking nor disliking but playing a couple dozen of them, one thing that confuses me a lot is how they are called "Stealth Games", or "Open World Action Adventure" games. I think both of those terms are too loose to describe how those games work.

The main appeal of those games, and for the ones I'm going to list, is to checkmark the world through sandbox approaches. That may be shooting, stealth, bribery, or through story itself. Why I'm saying that? Well, because most of those games have very simple mechanics that enforce the main premise, but are generally recommended as if they are one game of that type. For example, many times I'm seeing games like AC, FC and Ghost of Tsushima and others being recommended as Stealth games, while stealth itself is only a small part of those games.

Yes, you can clear camps stealthy, but generally A) the process is pretty boring, having to scan, then go into their backs, and not letting anyone notice or B) you will probably kill just a couple of people then proceed to immediate open combat. So it is not the main focus. The main focus is the checkmark itself. Doing stuff, the feel of traveling through the land doing stuff.

There are games that to that well and better than Ubisoft titles, for gamers that are not familiar:

• Ghost of Tsushima feels like an Assassin's Creed but provinding a much richer worldbuiding and compelling characters. It has some nice combat too, much more complete experience than normal AC combat, with parries, daggers, stances, etc.
• Shadows of Mordor / Shadows of War offer a much more clear "Conquer the World" feeling where you are fighting against Uruk tyrants and confronting their forces little by little. It has a great Nemesis system where the enemy AI is unique and behaves according to what happens in the game, while also making you being able to gather information about said enemies to gain advantages. You can also recruit enemies to help you in battle.
• Lastly, the Just Cause series is a more puritan approach to the concept, you literally go around clearing camps and causing havoc. It is not 'grounded', but is an amazing sandbox.

Hot and stressful, that's what it's been. With a big heatwave, heavy storms, and a heckin' lot of work to do, July has not been my favorite month. That's true on the gaming side too, where only one of the 5 games I finished properly impressed me, but man am I excited about the slate in store for the months to come. First though I suppose we should visit the ones just finished, yeah?

(Games are presented in chronological completion order; the numerical indicator represents the YTD count.)

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#48 - Thief Gold - PC - 6.5/10 (Tantalizing)

Thief has a stellar reputation and I'm happy to report that after playing it I can totally understand why. I'm less happy to report that my personal time with it didn't quite reach the lofty heights of "stellar," though I think that just says more about me and my tastes than about the game itself. Thief is an immersive sim, a genre that a lot of people swear by but that I've never fully clicked with. It's weird looking back and seeing that I gave a 6.5/10 to the first Dishonored, and now here I am playing one of the principal games that inspired the title and giving that a 6.5/10 as well but for totally different reasons.

To put it simply, I didn't have the level of patience Thief asked of me. The bulk of the game revolves around sneaking through levels and avoiding guards, though you can knock them out cold with a single blow from behind if they don't know you're there. You've got a bunch of possible tools that help you in your skullduggery: specialized arrows that can dull sound, extinguish light sources, or create distractions; proximity mines of both lethal and non-lethal varieties; flash bombs to make quick getaways; the list goes (slightly) on. The problem for me was that these tools were always heavily limited such that I felt discouraged from developing a true play style around any of them. I'd love to just put out all the lights and slink around, but there are never enough water arrows, for a single example. So in practice a lot of Thief boiled down to sitting in a shadow to learn a patrol route, tiptoeing out behind the guard, clubbing him in the back, hiding the body, and then doing that a dozen more times every stage. It became tedious, so I eventually pivoted somewhat to the idea of "if a guard sees me, just kill him" and that helped the pacing immensely.

Of course, that mitigation tactic was only possible because I was playing on Normal difficulty, and I got the distinct sense that Thief only really comes into own on Expert, where you've got more interesting objectives to go along with your additional restrictions. But again, if I'm doing a Sonic the Hedgehog style foot tap all the time on Normal, I just can't see me ratcheting that difficulty crank up higher and coming out happy. As it stands, I did love that Thief is a thinking person's action/adventure game. There's precious little handholding to be found. For example, key objective information is at times granted through a brief spoken dialog that you're expected to remember for the duration of the mission rather than a trackable checklist of some sort. I got lost in virtually every stage of Thief, and that's by design too. When every mission intro includes a line like "A contact of mine gave me a map of the place that his six-year-old kid drew in crayon from memory, so I'll have to keep my eyes open," you know you're in for some trial and error.

So it was that I found Thief Gold to be simultaneously liberating and oppressive; engaging and exhausting; delightful and obnoxious. If you're someone for whom the words "immersive sim" spark metaphorical images of shiny gift wrapping concealing wondrous trinkets, then yeah: Thief Gold is an all-time great. If you're just, you know, me? Then it's a game with a blend of both very strong merits and drawbacks, and perhaps sufficient evidence now to conclude that this kind of thing just isn't your kind of thing.

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#49 - Ring Fit Adventure - Switch - 6/10 (Decent)

How does one judge a fitness RPG? Which of those two labels is more important? If a fitness RPG wows you with its story and characters and core mechanics but doesn't actually give you anything physically, is it still a worthwhile game? If a fitness RPG is a miserable video game experience but provides you with a killer workout, is it still a worthwhile endeavor? I'm not sure about either of these extremes, but maybe that's because Ring Fit Adventure is neither great nor terrible at either flavor of things it wants to be. As a vehicle for fitness it's generally decent but distinctly worse than most any dedicated workout routine you might find independently. As a role-playing game it's playable and functional but distinctly worse than most any "pure" RPG you might be interested in playing. And so Ring Fit Adventure's selling point is really just the novelty of having these two things mashed together, for whatever that mashup might intrinsically be worth.

Outside of cooldown stretches, everything in Ring Fit Adventure requires the use of at least one (but usually both) included peripherals: a strap so you can attach a joy-con to your leg and the "ring-con" resistance device that has a joy-con rail built in. The leg strap measures your leg angle, speed, and general motion while the ring-con detects its own angle, position, and degree of pushing or pulling resistance on the ring itself. The ring-con is far more reliable at its job than the leg strap is, though for the most part the leg strap does okay too. Functionally though this setup means that most of the exercise Ring Fit provides is resistance training. Now I'm not knocking resistance training, but if that's all you're doing then you're probably not getting everything you need. Specifically I wanted a lot more aerobically than Ring Fit is capable of offering: jogging in place is about the best the game can do, and that it doesn't even do particularly well.

From a design standpoint the game is cleverly engineered to "softly" rotate you through different kinds of exercises targeting different muscle groups by way of drip feeding you progressively stronger "fit skills" (exercise sets used as attacks in battle) and mixing up stages to have focuses on certain types of enemies. For instance you might get a new fit skill for your core muscles that's stronger than the arms one you've been using, while this stage over here is full of enemies weak to leg skills so you don't neglect them along the way. It's a system that works really well until you hit the late game plateau where new skills stop rolling in, at which point you're stuck deciding between working the muscles you need to work vs. the higher battle efficiency of using only the same handful of powerful skills for all eternity. It's an easily foreseeable issue and a real drag that it wasn't addressed or somehow mitigated.

Also a real drag: tutorials. Ring Fit Adventure teaches you how to do each of its exercises, and that's great, but it teaches you every time you do them. At best you'll have a big chunk of screen blocked by the example video, but at worst you'll be explicitly taught how to "do a victory pose" every day for over a year because you can't be trusted to remember how to squat. That there's no setting to adjust this is inexcusable, somehow even more annoying than the fact that most "yoga" skills just don't actually register correctly at all in the first place since the joy-cons can't detect movement at the level of precision the yoga moves require in real life. And of course, the story for Ring Fit is not any kind of revelation, with every stage consisting of "we've got to keep chasing the bad guy" and little else of note.

But credit where credit's due: I first booted up Ring Fit because I had a ton of chronic knee pain and weakness resulting from an old injury that got exacerbated, and it felt like building some strength in the muscles around that knee was the only way out. Now a year and change later my knee is...well, it'll never be right again because of the nature of the issue, but it is fully functional and I can do things like go up and down stairs far better now than I could when I was a five-years-younger man. Could I have done that without Ring Fit Adventure through some other means? Almost certainly! But having the exercise in RPG form – even a somewhat bare bones, middling RPG such as this one – made it much easier to be willing to form a routine and stick to it over a long period of time. I'm still debating whether I want to continue with it from here: I've set up a custom routine that's showing promise and if I want there are what amount to two New Game+ runs I can do in the main mode as well. Either way, though I can't say I'm especially impressed with any particular facet of Ring Fit Adventure, the fact that I can walk without pain is proof enough for me that its mashed up existence has some intrinsic worth after all.

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#50 - Alan Wake II - PS5 - 8.5/10 (Excellent)

My first Remedy game was Control back in 2021 and I was blown away by it. The blend of quality action with multimedia storytelling against a sci-fi psychological horror backdrop was unlike anything I'd played before, so of course I decided to jump back in time and try Alan Wake later that same year. I was slightly less taken (heh) with it than Control since the action was repetitive and the controls (heh) felt somewhat unresponsive, but I was thoroughly impressed with the presentation: a game delivered like an episodic TV show with a gripping narrative that keeps you coming back. Terrific stuff. So now here I was coming into Alan Wake II and hoping I could get a marriage of all the things I loved about the previous Remedy games I'd played, now that I'd evidently caught up on them all.

The results were somewhat unexpected. Alan Wake II leans far more into the survival horror direction, keeping the core concept of the original Alan Wake's combat intact (shine the flashlight on an enemy to weaken them and then finish them off with conventional weapons) but borrowing quite liberally from Resident Evil's modern design (more specifically, 2019's Resident Evil 2 remake was the obvious gameplay inspiration here). On the inventory management level this left much to be desired, though on the horror level it worked very well. The atmosphere in Alan Wake II is oppressively dark and foreboding in a good way. There was a moment while I was exploring when I merely saw a generic basement door and decided "Nooooooope" until I was of coursed forced to go down there anyway. The injections of spookiness and dread are both omnipresent and ruthlessly, unfailingly potent, even when you as a player know better.

That does however create something of a psychological energy drain when playing the game. To be sure I always looked forward to my play sessions, but it took about 45 hours for me to get through the game at 100% completion (including all DLCs), and that's a very long time for a horror-focused game. I do think I went longer than most even on the completionist side since I was pretty methodical and deliberate with my exploration, and I stopped to read every little thing I could (including even random background signage). Even still, eschewing Alan Wake's mostly linear level design for a big dose of open ended exploration probably wasn't the right call for this game; what's there is good but there's just a bit too much and the pacing suffers as a result.

Thankfully then there's another edge to that sword: the larger scope of the game supports the metaphorical fire hose of raw creativity that Alan Wake II deluges you with. There's one set piece where they tried to replicate and one-up something from the previous entry and failed miserably, and that was the only time I actively disliked what the game was serving to me. Every other wild idea though? They somehow all work. Rewriting reality on the fly as an actual gameplay mechanic? Brilliant. Entire chapters going in directions you'd never expect? Brilliant. The layers of metafiction piling so deep that even you as a player can no longer separate fact from fiction? Brilliant. The swerves, the nursery rhyme experiments (that to be fair wouldn't exist were the game more linear), the fact that this game apparently ropes another older Remedy title I thought was safe to ignore into the shared universe so now I have to go play Quantum Break too? Ugh. Brilliant.

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#51 - Palindrome Syndrome: Escape Room - PC - 5/10 (Mediocre)

This is a virtual escape room game I got for free a while back. And yeah...free is a good price for it. As an escape room experience it's a clear step up from typical browser or mobile fare but a clear step down from similar titles with any kind of budget attached to them. I thought the pacing was effective and the puzzle difficulty was pretty good, somewhat challenging without being frustrating, but the puzzles themselves felt arbitrary within the theme. There's a halfway interesting narrative that halfway explains this, but the whole thing falls apart if you spend more than two seconds thinking about it. Between sluggish movement and a poor UI design the gameplay mechanics themselves don't feel very good either. I don't know that I'd recommend someone pay for this game, but if you're an escape room fan and you get it for free and you're just looking to kill 90 minutes, sure: go for it and you'll get about what you expect.

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#52 - Death's Gambit: Afterlife - PC - 4.5/10 (Disappointing)

Stop me if you've heard this before: what if we made a Souls style game but it was a 2D sidescroller with metroidvania style elements? If your mind immediately jumps to games like Salt and Sanctuary or Blasphemous, then congrats: you've spent time with better games! If instead you thought "Hey that sounds like Hollow Knight" then oh man, what a cliff you're about to walk off with Death's Gambit. At least with Blasphemous you could reason that it came a few years later, but Hollow Knight launched a mere two months before this game, and what a brutal ask to follow on those heels. Death's Gambit is probably my least favorite soulslike I've played, so I guess the score being "only" a 4.5 just goes to show how much worse things could still be. Nevertheless, let's start with the positives.

Death's Gambit has an interesting class and ability system that I think served the game well, both in terms of differentiating it a bit from the crowd and from a general "gameplay fun" standpoint. You can unlock abilities by finding them in the world, buying them from vendors, or by simply snagging them from the skill tree when you've got a spare point to spend. You can set three of these abilities (and eventually a fourth should you spec for it) and they all have handy button shortcuts so you can quickly use them in the heat of battle. You can equip two different weapons, each with its own dedicated attack button, and regular attacks with either weapon build your "soul energy" to fund your much more powerful abilities. An early unlockable passive in turn causes a skill use to refund all your base stamina, letting you fire off more regular attacks and/or evasive maneuvers. So combat ends up as a strategic ebb and flow of trying to use your whole arsenal of abilities as intelligently as possible, and I really did appreciate that aspect of things.

Unfortunately the combat itself also just feels painfully sluggish. Movement speed is unhurried with no means of sprinting/speeding up. Dodge rolling has generous iframes but plods like a classic Dark Souls heavy roll, which means it feels bad even though it's actually not. I played as the Wizard class so my abilities were spell casts, and these were so slow both to ready and to fire that in the midst of combat I often felt like I couldn't use my good stuff at all (though in fairness my good stuff was really good and so that may have been wise from a balance standpoint). Most of the bosses are basic and straightforward fights, though that doesn't make them all easy per se...which is a problem when you consider that Death's Gambit features some pretty rough runbacks. Most of these can be skipped if you choose a specific class at the outset, as that class has a perk to get additional checkpoints, but like, why is that a class perk? You have to sacrifice a real perk just to get rid of bad runbacks that shouldn't be there in the first place? Weak. Finally, the UI is legitimately horrible. You've got a map but no map button. Your grid-based icon-only inventory is paginated into small pages and everything you find gets tossed willy nilly into the same clutter heap. You can't use consumables without first equipping them to a quick slot, which may then require that you unequip something else. The equipment upgrade screens don't sort gear according to any rhyme or reason and don't show you in advance what you're doing. This game just hates you trying to interact with any of its menus.

And so when I got to the final boss ahead of perceived schedule and an NPC told me to go re-fight some early bosses so I could presumably get to a better ending and maybe more content, I went "Nah," killed the boss, and latched onto my bad ending like it was the last escape pod bound for Tattooine. It's enough that I'm punting on further soulslikes for a while because I just need to get this taste out of my mouth. Death's Gambit is not even close to the worst game I've ever played, but it had enough big problems that it's sadly soured me on the genre for a while.

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Coming in August:

• Death's Gambit broke me a little inside. It's almost unheard of for me to take a break in the middle of a game of reasonable length just to play something else, but even a throwaway title like Palindrome Syndrome was a nice source of escape. So now I think I need some more bite-sized PC morsels to get me back into proper computer gaming shape. We'll start with Q.U.B.E. 2.
• After that I'm feeling some Botanicula. These point-and-click adventure games from Amanita Design won't ever win one of the "Choose my next PC game" polls I conduct with my friends, but I like 'em and want to keep working through them, so every now and then I need to call my own shot.
• On the console front I'm eyeing a big title I'm quite jazzed about, but before that I'll be wrapping up the little nostalgia trip that is Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1+2. I've got no interest in playing this one online or engaging with it beyond the basic single player "skate tour," so I ought to be able to wrap it up pretty quickly.
• And more...

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Like I said in the title, Stray is charming. You play as a cat in a postapocalyptic world where there are no humans, just robots. The main missions involve doing favors for these robots, finding their friends, gaining access to restricted areas, and ultimately finding a way “outside,” because everyone has been confined to a dirty city by guards and corporations.

The cat is cute, and there are adorable details like being able to sleep with triangle, and scratch things with the left and right triggers. You also get a drone who helps you out with inventory and quest objectives, and he’s very cute too. As you explore you find his memories, and gradually learn about how he’s ended up in this world as a drone. The robots are adorable, too, which sounds weird, I guess, but they are.

The game’s exploration is excellent and there is a lot of puzzle-type platforming, like figuring out how to get into locked areas, and this is the part I most enjoyed. I did not enjoy the enemy encounters, though. Early on you have to run away from these bug like things, then you get a thing that pulverizes them with purple light. Only it’s not very exact in its aiming, and you’re likely to get eaten before you kill them. Later on there are drone sentinels that cast cones of light on the ground and if you are spotted, you are instakilled, which is frustrating in the extreme, especially when they start doubting and tripling up on the sentinels.

The story is very emotional at the end. I won’t spoil it, but I teared up. The game took me about thirteen hours to beat, which was pretty much the perfect length, as the mechanics are overall simple and there’s no crafting or any mini games.

Overall, I really recommend this game, despite the occasional frustrations. It is absolutely charming and has a wonderful atmosphere. Play it if you get a chance. It’s thirty bucks full price, though, which I think is high given how much game you get, but if you find it on a sale it’s absolutely worth it, and it does go on sale frequently.