A nice game with a lot of content and some fun writing. It's way better than Torchlight II if you consider it an ARPG, and it's not overly complex and hard to play like the average CRPG, so it really can be a lot of fun. The game is a bit long, though, but if you see that as a negative, you could always do fewer side quests, since the XP rewards are not that significant, anyway. One thing I do have to warn you about, though, is that this game still has the stupid ARPG random loot system, even for unique gear, so if you do get a cool weapon or armour from a quest and it doesn't turn out to be so cool, just reload to before you got it and its stats will be different. I personally didn't do that, and (mild spoiler) got a frost effect on the Holy Weapon quest sword, so that even though the damage was garbage, I could freeze every enemy, even the final boss (/spoiler).

However, I'm sure my gear could have been a lot more impressive had I actually abused this system.

Still, if you can bear not really getting particularly powerful gear after the mid-game, and generally having progression slow down near the end when you unlock all the abilities you actually want and get decent enough gear to get through the rest of the game, it really is a fun one, and positively reminded me of Record of Lodoss War for the Dreamcast (if anyone except me actually played that). So, if you have played that, and were disappointed with Torchlight II, I can say from experience that you won't be so disappointed with this game.

This game has half the subtlety, half the length, and double the weapons of Silent Hill 2. The story was basically a re-hash of the first game, since it's a different villain essentially trying to do the same thing as the one from the original game. The game focuses too heavily on combat, and while there is still symbolic imagery plastered around the game, it's really not very striking considering that the game basically has no mystery to it (again, if you've played the first game, you know what is going to happen here). While it is a decent survival horror game as far as those go (at least, to my limited knowledge of the genre) I really can't find much reason to recommend this game in particular — you're not likely to get that much out of it.

The game gives the player freedom of approach regarding solving any given problem, and generally wants to ensure that players can approach any given situation in whatever way they like. However, the issue is that the game just ends up being far too easy — on my low chaos ghost run on very hard difficulty, I never had any trouble staying out of sight, and any situation which could potentially cause issues could be entirely circumvented by climbing in from outside, or stopping time and running through if you're feeling particularly cheesy.

The fact of the matter is that, especially with quicksaves, it is near impossible to get spotted unless you actively choose to, since you can always Blink out of the enemy's line of sight. Thus, whenever there was an obstacle which I could not easily walk around, I would hit the ground with my sword, have everyone in the vicinity look in my direction, Blink behind their backs, and be home free. This trick was fun the first couple of times, but it just works for the whole game.

The story is a load of nothing and the graphics are pretty. There's a bit of music in cutscenes, but not much else. The atmosphere and sound design was quite good, but I was too busy following objective markers and seeking out collectables with the Heart to get particularly engrossed... The game is quite fast-paced considering the player always has options to get through every obstacle, and never has to wait for guard patterns or anything of the sort.

This game is a big contrast to Human Revolution due to actually being open, rather than just a few corridors with set dressing, but it's just... not that interesting.

I loved my first five hours with the game -- the novelty of discovering an entire solar system, flying around with intuitive controls which remind me of what it feels like to fly in dreams, etc. However, the game soon started to drag on -- I was basically wandering aimlessly, filling out a checklist and looking for audio logs (bits of text on the wall) which slowly filled me in on a story I really didn't care for.

This went on for around ten hours, with me feeling like I was just filling out a checklist for no reason, until I suddenly started accessing all the "endgame" areas in quick succession in the last five hours, and it suddenly felt like I was making strides towards understanding how to finish the game. Thus, I went from making little to no progress within the first 15 hours, to suddenly beating the game. In retrospect, I feel like I could have beaten it in 10 hours if I had more of an idea of where to go to look for actually important information, and I wish there was something the game would have done to help me trim down the boring bit in the middle.

The ending is a definite highlight of the experience, and is probably why this game is so overwhelmingly positive. I don't want to sound cynical, but I think everyone knows that a good ending can overshadow a boring slog in the middle part of a story, in one's memories. I just wish this game didn't force you to do the same thing over and over so much, and maybe trimmed the fat with how much unnecessary information you end up "discovering".

Overall, it's certainly a good game, but it suffers from glaring issues with its pacing and tedious gameplay loop. That's all I can really say.

A solid Souls game, but it's definitely missing a lot of what made the next entry in the series so iconic -- the story is fairly simple (and the game has lore dumps to make sure you understand everything), the bosses are mostly complete jokes, the levels are not interconnected, and are generally simpler than Dark Souls' levels (still way better than DSII SotFS). The poison swamp is the worst that FromSoft have ever made, to my knowledge (haven't played Elden Ring, though).

Overall, it's a good game, but it is nothing special. We should be thankful that the series was able to evolve past this title.

This game is such a grind... I don't really play JRPGs, but man, this was a slog. The combat is slow, the exploration is slow, the story is slow. You constantly die and have to respawn and get back to where you were. The game throws maze-like environments filled with enemies at you and expects you to get through them just to experience more unfunny humour and give you more party members to make the combat even more difficult and complex? Just why?

Getting the second party member was a game changer, because death actually had a consequence now. It set me back so significantly that even holding down-left and pressing the turbo button couldn't fix my problems in a few minutes.

Okay, time for the actual review. The music was pretty good, and the premise was interesting. The pacing, however, was way too slow, with me logging over ten hours to get to Threed, at which point I just gave up. The combat mostly involved spamming damage and healing until I ran out, dying, respawning, and going back to where I was. Essentially, I'd fill up my inventory with healing items, try to physically go somewhere to progress the plot, get lost, get caught in a bunch of battles, die, and start over. It was horrid. The story ended up massively losing pace, and I pretty much dreaded playing the game until finally, after I was able to get out of Twoson, I realised that I hadn't had fun within the last five hours and quit on a high.

Basically, I don't get this game. I can die a hundred times in Dark Souls and come back until I can SL1 +0 No-hit Four Kings, but that's because in that game, victory is never more than ten minutes away, and defeat is always my fault for making a poor decision or having poor reflexes. This game feels like a brick wall, where you have to continuously punch it until you break through, only to reveal another, thicker wall for you to hit your head against. I'm more than open to discussion in the comments, but don't expect me to have anything meaningful to say about the story or the symbolism of the game, because the gameplay prevented me from getting to them.

The creator obviously understood what made The Witness a success, as both the puzzles and the audio recordings demonstrate the design principles behind The Witness, except Subcreation Studio put a funny spin on most of them. The game never really gets difficult like The Witness does, though there is one noteworthy puzzle near the end.

Which brings me to my next point: A lot of people will say, "This is a must-play for anyone who has played The Witness", and while I do agree, I would also add that you should play The Witness before playing this game, as it clearly expects you to understand the things which The Witness teaches you coming into the game, both in order to solve the puzzles, and (more importantly) to understand the humour. I could be wrong, of course, but as someone who has beaten The Witness, I feel that my experience with The Looker would have been considerably lessened had I not had the full experience of beating the original game coming into this one.

Overall, this game captures the pretty graphics of The Witness, and even manages to replicate a bit of the puzzle-solving brilliance of The Witness whilst poking fun at the whole thing. Would recommend.

I don't really understand the hype around this game. The "meaningful choices" mostly just felt like mechanical decisions, rather than tests of character (do you want to permanently de-buff the main character, or permanently lose this guy you were going to replace, anyway? I picked the latter), resulting in a game which seemed to aim to frustrate by actively weakening you as you went further into the game (or trying to -- more on that later) but ended up just making sacrifice feel par per course, and not particularly impactful.

Beyond that, you're left with a pretty fun RPG where you can experience a story which, while pretty tragic, has far too much comedic relief and too little, if any, actual development in the characters to really leave a lasting impact -- Brad's journey mostly feels like a short jog from point A to point B, point B being Buddy, who is constantly moving farther away; Gaining acquaintances, losing limbs, getting robbed, none of this particularly fazes Brad as he finds the various McGuffins he needs to continue on his path to save Buddy. Brad never finds retribution, never stops to question his actions, never forms new and meaningful connections, nothing. Buddy spends the whole game running away and cursing Brad, with whatever character development she might have clearly reserved for the DLC. Most of the companions are essentially just gags, with no banter, sidequests, or anything to make them serve a purpose beyond helping Brad in battle with ridiculously powerful status effects (allowing me to easily kill the secret superboss on my first try after being robbed of all of my stuff), dishing out damage, and serving as cannon fodder for the various story beats which threaten to permanently kill your party members (as well as suffering from insta-kill moves which also permanently kill them, but I wasn't terribly affected by those because, like any sane person, I played on normal mode for my first run). Essentially, you're given a glimpse into a terrible, satirical world, and a character study of a man broken by years of drug abuse and trauma. It's not a bad deal, but it didn't really shock me or move me. I did, however, laugh quite a few times, which does make me question my character.

The combat, as mentioned before, revolves around status effects, with the optimal strategy generally being to make enemies oiled up so that they take 2.5x fire damage; scare them, paralyze them, or knock them down so they don't attack you (or worse yet, pull out an instant-kill move), and go ham with fire attacks. For the curious ones, I beat the superboss with Brad, Jack, Birdie and Crisp. Jack scared him, Birdie oiled him up, and then Brad, Jack and Crisp all spammed fire moves. Jack also lucked out and poisoned him with a 'random status effect' move, which dealt 10% of his max health at the end of every turn (so, a ton of damage)The 'scared' status wore off, the boss swung and missed (not an insta-kill move, thankfully), Jack scared him again, and then he died.

This is a pretty good microcosm of the entire combat system, as it shows how you can effortlessly take down even the strongest of foes with basic party composition (this and Divinity: Original Sin 2 are the only turn-based RPGs I've ever beaten, so it's not like I'm an expert at this), so the combat system, while fun, is not exactly demanding or particularly impressive.

The last thing to mention is the aesthetics. I don't really like pixel art, and this game doesn't particularly stand out in the graphics department. The soundtrack was pretty good, with a few stand-out tracks, but there were also some tracks which utillised ear-piercing chiptune noise and made me take my headphones off.

...And that's LISA. I really don't have much more to say. The story wasn't that impactful, the combat wasn't outstanding, and neither was the presentation. It's good for a laugh, and is fairly dramatic, if rather predictable, but I don't really see why so many consider this the 'best RPG ever'. It's just fine, in my opinion.