Not to sound like an epic gamer contrarian but Hollow Knight is a game I've never really understood the overwhelming hype for. It feels incredibly safe, lacking any originality whatsoever and desperately trying to appeal to the masses (which it obviously succeeded at). Most things it does pretty badly to fine with few things it's truly outstanding in.

Let me start off by explaining what I mean by saying Hollow Knight is <safe> and <desperately tries to appeal to the masses>. I think this is most obvious in its aesthetic, being minimalist scrimblo (bug)guys in a dark world. These things obviously work and have wide appeal. The easily ignorable lore-based story is also a victim of Hollow Knight's addiction to playing it safe, I really wish metroidvanias in general would get over lore-based storytelling, it's really boring. I could go on and on about how safe this game is from the world design, to the simplistic combat, to the movement upgrades being as bland as possible, but the point is that these things make game feel like it lacks any personality, putting that aside to be safe and easily marketable to the masses. It's basically The Minions but for adults. This isn't a problem depending on who you ask, but to me it really just made this feel super unremarkable. I love when games try new things being as creative as possible, this game is the opposite of that, some may even call it ehehhehehehehhehehehehhehe hollow.

Anyways on to the aspects of this game I actively dislike and think are bad. I think the easiest things to call bad are the bosses, while there are 2-3 great bosses the majority of them feel extremely underwhelming to outright bad. They just kinda feel like nothing and are very forgettable. Shoutout to the dream bosses for being especially nothing. The walk of shames back to bosses are also pretty bad but none of the bosses are really difficult enough for them to be that annoying, still worth nothing tho. The lack of good fast travel also makes some areas feel like an extreme slog to return to, very often having to retread the same ground you have before, the pretty w/e level design also doesn't help this at all. Most of the souls-inspired mechanics in general feel tacked on for no real purpose and only add tedium, I really wish games would stop taking inspiration from Souls when they have no clue what makes those games so good. I also wish there was more customization, the badges don't really give you much to play around with and aside from those there's practically nothing customizable which isn't great when this game is as long as it is.

That being said it's not like I despise this game, there's honestly a good bit of things I think Hollow Knight does absurdly well. Despite the boring setting the game visually looks fantastic and the sound design I'd easily place on top of the genre. This game also feels fantastic to control. I may think the bosses suck ass but the actual enemy design is really good, with plenty of enemy variety to make every area feel unique. It's absolutely worth noting that what this game does well it does VERY well. It just doesn't have much that really goes over the bar of <ok>.

tldr this is like basically the golf of video games when u rlly think abt it

For the uneducated, Bloodroot is a metroidvania with clear inspirations from games such as Symphony of the Night. It's also porn, porn which some might call <problematic> considering most of the cast consists of <petite bodied individuals>.

With that out of the way this game is fucking awesome, with most metroidvanias I run into the issue of simplistic combat which isn't done any favors by lackluster boss design across the majority of the genre. Even games I adore, such as Symphony of the Night, have pretty w/e to shit bosses with some exceptions. Bloodroot however has some of the best boss design I've seen in gaming period, pair this with the insane combat system, which takes notes from fighting games of all things featuring shit like cancels & assists. And then pair THAT with the movement, which after a certain point becomes so ridiculous that the only limiter becomes your skill. With all that this game becomes something that feels so unbelievably good to play it's ridiculous, very few games feel as good to play as this one. Even aside from the basic gameplay there's so much to love here, the map design is great, with my only complaint being the odd visuals and structures of some areas (I can't really fault it for this considering how low the budget obviously was). There's also an obscene amount of customization here, allowing you to have up to 9 weapons equipped at once alongside 3 <sub attacks> (basically fighting game assists). The accessories here are also all VERY good and useful, forcing you to decide what you equip based on how you want to play rather than equipping the few things that aren't useless (thank you fromsoft). Basically, there's a lot to love here, this game is VERY well put together.

Now to address the elephant in the room, which is the porn. The porn is great, I will not comment further otherwise the team at backloggd may get somewhat upset, a tad bit perturbed. But what I will say is I respect this game so hard for being what it is. I despise when games are made to appeal to the masses, things like Hollow Knight I find so safe and boring, gameplay and aesthetics alike. Yeah, the (singular?) dev could've made something with mass appeal that could've been incredibly successful given how good this game actually is. But that'd be lame. We have enough games that try to appeal to the masses, give me more games like this that appeal to only the most specific of niches.

To preface I got midway through chapter 5 with around 20 hours clocked in before deciding to drop this.

I think my biggest problem with Astlibra Revision is the story itself, which I'm not going to call bad by any extent, it's just something I can't find myself caring about in any way shape or form. The reasoning for this is it follows a lot of trends I've never enjoyed. The biggest being the focus on a <grand adventure> with little room left for characterization similar to things like Xenoblade Chronicles or Radiant Historia. I've never fucked with games like this. You could have the most kickass story of all time but if I don't care about a singular character in that story then that story sux. Honestly though I think the silent protagonist was the actual nail in the coffin for me. It's especially unfortunate in a story like this where instead of someone that could've honestly been pretty cool we get uhhh Mario from da Mario rpgs (he emotes in basically all the same ways including the gibberish talk it's weird).

The gameplay itself is pretty neat, I do actually like how mechanically it's a huge mash-up of a ton of different rpg systems. The combat is also pretty fun outside of how quickly you'll die because the lack of i-frames and enemies doing huge chunks of your health. My biggest issues were the crafting/material system being pretty tedious forcing you to grind for materials & the way chapters were generally structured. There's a LOT of forced backtracking in these chapters to solve some pretty annoying & unintuitive puzzles which I can't really think of any reason to exist outside of unsubtle padding. I may seem like I'm bitching about the gameplay a lot (bcuz i am) but I honestly didn't mind it all that much, it's pretty dumb fun when it's not annoying.

Overall I don't like, I can understand why a lotta people like it doe, I just don't fuck w/ it.

Can gamers at least try to be consistent when trashing games for having MTX, it feels like such random games always catch heat for it when there's much bigger offenders even among Capcom's own library (Monster Hunter World & Rise lmao)

I can at least understand people being upset over optimization (even if in my experience I've had little to no issue in the 5 hours I've played so far), but obviously the issue differs from person to person.

Game is fun tho, I'm having a blast, this really is just an improved version of the original Dragon's Dogma and I'm all for it.

Genuinely a pretty cool and unique anti-war story but gamers are weird about it because apparently subversion and making the player do clearly bad things against their will is taboo :^(
That aside the main character has some great characterization, I especially like how his callouts become more and more insane throughout the game, it's a really nice attention to detail. The other characters are also very well handled but Mr. Walker is what really sold the game for me.
I won't defend the actual gunplay tho it's erm not good, very annoying at points.

For a game so intent on telling you that you should live your short life to its fullest this REALLY likes to waste your time.

I'd argue that up until like October(?) most of this story feels like white noise. Nothing particularly interesting happens and I couldn't find myself caring about it up until that point. Even once you get to October where things finally start to happen it almost feels as if you're being drip fed content to further pad out the game. This of course wouldn't be a problem if the time with little actual story progression was used for characterization and buildup with plentiful slice of life segments to enforce that (something Persona 4 actually did super well), but there's practically none of that? It's very odd and makes most of this game feel incredibly uneventful. I also fully believe this to be one of the worst implementations of a silent protagonist I've seen in a game. I do not like characters constantly praising the self-insert main character, this game is full of that. Everyone thinks the MC the coolest guy ever when he honestly comes off as a pessimistic asshole, especially given some of the dialogue choices. This sucks and leads to dynamics with the main character falling incredibly flat, when the alternative could have been extremely interesting.

I also think most of social links in this game range from terrible to w/e. This becomes much more of an issue when all of the choices that help you progress social links consist solely of being a yes man. Why am I helping my friend get groomed by his teacher? Why am I telling my friend to hide his leg injury and participate in track practice despite that? Idk Persona 3 but I don't think giving bad advice should be how you further friendships but what makes number go up makes number go up. Shoutout to food kid's social link for being comedically terrible. There are of course some good ones in there with Maiko's and Akinari's being fantastic, but for the most part social links felt like a tedium. Though I will say appreciate that reload gives mini social links to the male characters who appearantly just had nothing originally? All of these are fantastic and it's so weird to imagine them being basically exclusive to FEMC content.

I should also mention the gameplay, I don't like it. I think encounters last way longer than they have any right to and that's mostly due to animations feeling like they're longer than they should be, this game would benefit heavily from a fast foward button or just a way to skip animations (something I'm fairly certain SMTV has). Some enemies also just have too much health with no weaknesses, which leads to some particularly boring encounters that last for way too long (this becomes less of a problem later on when you can make personas that easily wipe encounters). In general there's nothing much that makes the gameplay standout from other Megaten titles. That being said, all of this would be much less of an issue if Tartarus wasn't what it is. Tartarus is terrible. I don't know who thought it would be a good idea for the only dungeon to be 250+ floors of randomly generated goodness. Tartarus turns gameplay that could have been something passable into something that can be miserable at points, I should not dread having to actually play the game.

With this all being said I still think Persona 3 can be incredible when it wants to. Everything relating to Shinji, Junpei & Chidori, and the first half of December in general was phenomenal and deserves praise. Everything concerning this game thematically? Fantastic. I also love the cast and honestly consider them to be among Atlus' best characters. This game is so frustrating with how good it can be at times. Like where was all of this the rest of the game? Why can you pop off so hard for one cutscene and then have the next 5 hours of game be nothing remotely interesting. I just wish all of this phenomenal stuff was in a game that didn't suck ass and drag its feet for the grand majority of its runtime.

Grime is an odd one for me. On one hand I think the grand majority of the game is not fun to play with little redeeming qualities. But on the other hand this game has some moments that are just REALLY good. This creates an odd experience where most of my time played is really not all that fun bordering on miserable occasionally but then it'll just hit me with some peak gaming ass moment. Very odd.

Getting the good stuff out of the way first Grime's boss fights are very good, early game bosses are at worst good and by late-game most of the bosses are phenomenal. The Final Performance specifically is SUCH an insanely good fight in every way shape and form, genuine masterpiece. I also wasn't fond of many of the set pieces this game had to offer but when they were good they were GOOD, the city near the end of the game being the biggest standout for me, I love the atmosphere of that area. The story beats near the end of the game were also pretty neat, which is odd when I normally couldn't care less about stories like this. I also really like how unique the movement upgrades feel, there's the obvious standard upgrades but some others that are super unique and well thought out and well integrated into combat. The parry is also awesome.

My biggest issues mostly stem from the "soulslike" inspiration this game has and how it falls into many of the pitfalls soulslikes tend to fall into. Let me preface this by saying I adore the original Dark Souls, phenomenal game. My issue is so many games try to replicate Dark Souls and inevitably have many shortcomings because of that. Things that normally wouldn't work in other games, like the lack of fast travel and extremely punishing checkpoints, work phenomenally in Dark Souls due to how well it's designed. If it sounds like I'm sucking off Dark Souls I am, the entire game industry has been sucking it off for around a decade now and Grime is no exception. Almost all of Grime's shortcomings stem from the souls design philosophy. Travel is annoying, even after getting fast travel. The space between checkpoints is unreasonably long leading to incredibly boring stretches of gameplay where you're trying to get back to where you were. Build diversity and experimentation technically exist but due to the weapon upgrade system and how respeccing works you're essentially locked into a specific build unless you want to go far out of your way to change it. Ambience instead of actual music for basically every area sucks (especially with how good the OST can be at points). And on top of that many of the areas are just kinda uninteresting due to the game's atmosphere & tone, which is especially weird considering how aesthetically interesting Grime is. All of these problems are rooted in the soulslike philosophy. Please stop trying to replicate Dark Souls, you're not him.

Outside of those problems there are a few other things I dislike. Most notably how stiff this game feels, in actual combat it's easy to get over with my biggest problem being how little stamina you seem to have (less of a problem lategame). But in platforming it can be VERY annoying, especially with how far back you'll respawn when you fail a platform challenge at points. While some platforming is genuinely satisfying the grand majority of it is kinda jank and not really fun. This problem becomes a lot bigger with the spaced checkpoints making platforming much more punishing than it needs to be. Even outside of the platforming I'm really not too big on the level design in general.

All of this comes together to create a game where despite the vast number of complaints I have I can't seem to give this game a negative score (5/10 isn't negative cry about it) due to those great moments really just being that good. I would even go out of my way to recommend this to people who are fans of the genre. I can honestly see myself playing Grime 2 when it releases due to the sheer potential this game has to be something great.

tldr peaks 9/10 but consistency 3/10

Damn that was a game, time to explain why Tevi is my new favorite game of all time.

Just a warning I may ramble a little here.

Going over the most obvious thing first the bosses are phenomenal, I would say this was no surprise given how much I loved Rabi Ribi's bosses, but these broke ANY expectations I had going in. From start to end the bosses are constantly one-upping themselves, getting better and better culminating in some of the craziest final few bosses I have ever seen. Every boss is extremely distinct, all their movesets are completely original and at times will even take some VERY OBVIOUS inspiration from things such as Touhou and Devil May Cry. I love this, seeing Tevi pay homage to the games that very clearly inspired it is awesome, I adore seeing Tevi's own rendition of some iconic characters and attacks. These bosses are an absolute joy to fight, and this is one of those games where I will gladly bang my head against these bosses for hours on end not even realizing how much time has passed.

Alongside bosses being great Tevi also has ridiculously good balancing and gives a ton of customization through way of build variety and the multiple ways to customize how difficult the game actually is, even outside of the sheer number of difficulty options. The "ridiculously good balancing" part may seem controversial as it's very clear that some things are outright broken or have insane synergies but let me explain. A wise man once said, "You have control over the buttons you press" and that rings true here. Tevi's genius balancing stems from the sheer number of options you have that will vastly change how you play and how difficult the game is. Your base kit is balanced perfectly, everything you have feels about equal in strength with nothing feeling overtuned in the slightest. However, you can change this with optional equipment called "sigils" to make certain things stronger than others, and there are well over 200 of these equipables. You can obviously use a broken build with the sheer number of options you have, and spam consumable items while doing so, taking down endgame bosses with ease. But at the same time, you have the option to forgo those powerful options, making the game more difficult and drastically changing how you play at any point as you please. You can steamroll bosses, you can fight on an even playing field, or you could forgo all those customization options and fight with the odds completely stacked against you, I adore this type of game balancing. Very often I would fight a boss with a broken build, only to reset the fight near the end and switch to a build that would make the fight more difficult for fun. I always see people complaining about games with an obscene number of options having "balancing issues" because there's some obviously broken or weak options, even with Tevi, I've seen people complain about how bosses get easier as the game progresses, due to how powerful you can get. But I feel as if this is a misconception as to what good balancing actually is, outside of competitive games, good balancing isn't having all your options be at equal strength, good balancing is giving the player a wide variety of options to choose from with those options fluctuating in strength. Tevi masters this by having everything in your base kit be around equal strength, while having everything optional being at completely fluctuating strengths that you can change at any point. Using something less powerful will not detract from the actual gameplay and force you to avoid certain skills or mechanics, it will only affect how easy the game is, and that's why I believe Tevi's balancing is genius.

Exploration is also an absolute joy. I was a bit taken off guard at first due to how different this game's approach to exploration was compared to Rabi Ribi's. While Rabi Ribi is completely freeform with what you decide to do at any given point, Tevi takes a more linear route with bosses past chapter 1 being ordered and movement options essentially being unlocked with story progression. I may still prefer how Rabi Ribi handles its freeform progression, allowing you to get even endgame gear immediately, but that isn't to say I think Tevi is too far off with its linear progression. Tevi's linearity allows for the areas to be more catered to your current gear at any point, placing more emphasis on things that you may have just unlocked, leading to Tevi having far better areas in my opinion. Tevi's individual areas are a joy to explore and there were very few points where I wasn't having a complete blast exploring them, fuck mazes tho. Re-exploring areas to find hidden items and whatnot is also extremely fun with the only complaint I actually have being the odd number of places that look they should have items or resources.

Getting some last thoughts out of the way, aesthetically Tevi is fantastic. The soundtrack is incredible and goes way harder than it has ANY right to go and visually I adore how this game looks. Boss fights look incredible ESPECIALLY in comparison to Rabi Ribi. They have some of the coolest bullet patterns and attacks I have ever seen in a game period. I also love the artstyle of this game from the fantastic pixel art to the equally as good portraits to some of the best CGs I have ever seen, the quality here is unreal and they clearly were trying to go above and beyond in this regard. I also had fun with the story, while it's nothing too crazy and the main plot is pretty basic the characters are extremely fun, and dialogue is fantastic the whole way through. I especially love the main trio & the father/daughter dynamic between Tevi & her dad, it's really cute. I have also seen people already complaining about how "horny" or "anime" this game is and to that I say to refer to my Rabi Ribi review and read through the comments bc they're pretty funny (https://www.backloggd.com/u/AiriBan/review/953999/), for a tldr y'all complaining are pussies and only have yourselves to blame, fuck you.

I prolly missed something while writing this review but oh wellsies

TLDR this game is crazy fucking good and broke any expectations I had before it released. I love Tevi.

My most fond memory of this game is one of my friends in high school coming to my house and saying something along the lines of "BROOOOOOOO I've heard of this new CRAZY game where some CRAZY stuff happens" and I was like sure man. So I took my laptop to his house after installing this on Steam and we played through it for a bit getting pretty bored because nothing was happening. After a bit of mashing through dialogue his brother came into the room and said "What the fuck is this gay shit you're playing <f-slur>" and then promptly left. We stopped reading after that. I treasure this memory dearly.

Onto the actual game I only went back and read this now because it would be the 69th VN I've read and I thought that'd be funny. The VN itself like kinda sucks hard though, the characters are nothing and the dialogue is mind numbingly boring, if this was any longer than 4 hours(?) it'd probably be a 1/10. The entire game really just feels like waiting for the <crazy parts> to happen and even when the <crazy parts> do start to happen it's still not all that interesting as you're really just reading the same (mostly unskippable) dialogue and occasionally one of the characters says some shit like "I FUCK DOGS" in creepypasta text with some weird glitch stuff happening. Aside from some exceptions the <crazy parts> also just feel like cheap creepypasta scares too. It was pretty funny when all the characters starting saying fuck tho I chuckled. Overall not good.

Tldr read You and Me and Her, it's like this but it has fun with the concept and uses it in a way that doesn't feel like cheap horror. It also has dialogue that's actually good alongside very fun characters (I love Aoi).

This has some of the best moments in the series while also being bogged down by one of the worst chapters in any Kiseki. This is coupled with most of the game feeling like it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, instead feeling like bloat to churn out another game. As much as I love Swin, Nadia, and Renne, who were done so much justice here, I will never forgive this game for giving us another CS4 moment where so much of the story is dedicated to half assed mind control fuckery. That being said this still has some great moments with fragments and the final segment being huge standouts.

Wait everybody told me this game sucks why did it actually rock, this shit was awesome.

Obviously there's a good bit of negatives, for example the combat, but I never really cared for FF combat in the first place so this wasn't really unexpected, helps that for the most part it really isn't a slog outside of a few sequences (mostly Lightning and Hope hallway lmao). The story itself is also kinda whatever and REALLY likes to throw a ton of fantasy jargon at you which makes it a lot more confusing than it actually is. But also this is very much a game where the story is second to the main cast so I don't mind this point all that much.

Now lemme just get the best point out of the way, these characters are fucking awesome. I LOVE SNOW, the fact that he's ALWAYS playing the hero, being the positive presence in the party while also being the most childish mf in existence, such a fantastic character, also has a great dynamic with basically every character in the game which helps a lot. And he has a fucking motorcycle, that's the coolest shit ever. Sazh kinda goes without saying, I'd be surprised if anyone playing this game didn't adore him by the end. His dialogue's extremely fun and he has some of the best moments in the game, also he's a dad, we love dads. Sick car btw. Despite the constant moaning, Vanille is also really good, I mostly like her due to how great her dynamics with other characters are (especially Sazh that was REALLY good), and that's perfectly fine, dynamics usually make characters to begin with. Even Hope who I was really iffy on ended up to be great, yeah he's annoying at the beginning of the game but he gets a huge glow up past a certain point in the story, his development is fantastic and his dynamic with Snow is even better with him taking after Snow in a lot of ways. The cast just feels like a big family by the end of the game and that's great, especially when EVERYONE in the party has their own motives and aren't just following the MC because they're friends, it's a pitfall a lot of games tend to fall into and I'm extremely glad this game didn't do that. My only gripes are Lightning and Fang feeling super under baked, Lightning's case is especially unfortunate considering she's the main character and I tend to enjoy female characters being hardasses (Zero Drakengard 3 my beloved) but Lightning & Fang really don't get much meaningful dialogue and that's sad considering just how good the rest of the cast is.

It doesn't need to be said but this game is BEAUTIFUL, the pre-rendered cutscenes look incredible and still look better than basically anything today, which is insane. There's also just so many phenomenal setpieces like the entire Sazh and Vanille sequence in chapter 8, that shit was magical, it's such a great sequence that'll definitely sit with me for a while. The entirely of chapter 7 is also fantastic, y'know the one where Snow saves the day by pulling up with his sick ass motorcycle and takes out like 50 soldiers with it, awesome sequence. I especially adore Snow and Hope during this sequence and how Snow constantly trying to play the hero completely backfires on him as he's just saying the worst things possible to Hope, it's a fantastic character moment for both of them and another great sequence that'll sit with me for a long time. FF13 has a LOT of good shit like this and I love it for dat, awesome game despite the obvious flaws.

Snow is badass/10

This game is so weird because most bad games are bad due to jank or lack of polish or whatever, y'know just normal stuff like that. But everything here feels very intentional. The shitty unintuitive sticker system and combat designed around it. The "puzzles" which either involve hitting something random with a hammer, finding some random "thing" sticker that the game likely doesn't tell you about, or some other random obscure solution (intentionally sink in quicksand lmao). The obscene amount of backtracking and level redoing. The bosses being tedious health sponges or dying immediately because you brought the right thing sticker. The boring and uninspired settings reminiscent of 2d mario games alongside the lack of any unique NPCs. The AWFUL "partner" character. The annoyingly heavy reliance on the paper gimmick despite every other Paper Mario game using it as a nice aesthetic. These are all TERRIBLE design choices but not one of them doesn't feel intentional. I'm almost convinced that Nintendo hates Paper Mario fans so much that they hand crafted this game to be the worst shit ever.

People always (fairly) rag on this game for random encounters quite literally being a detriment and there being no point to them, but I'd argue that's the best part about the game. Combat here is so unenjoyable and if you were forced to actually fight random encounters it'd be SO much worse. Because it's pointless, I can just run away from everything and save myself the headache. Yeah the run button barely works and is just RNG dependent but like anything is better than having to sit through all of the random encounters.

Also bowser doesn't even have a line of dialogue here like wtf man he's the best Mario character have some respect.

Also also people who think this is disliked because it's different from the other Paper Mario games are weird. This game is genuinely terrible even if you haven't touched a single Paper Mario game. If you say this is overhated I'm stealing something out of your house.