BendakStarkiller
2022
The first (fourth) one still towers over this as a bigger achievement of it's time, but Ragnarok is definitely a worthy continuation, that has many surprises in store for those new and returning to it's world.
My initial gripes remained unchanged till the end (at times annoying writing and cringe inducing meta jokes), as did the elements that i liked or grew to like towards the middle of the game.
Currently my GOTY 2022.
My initial gripes remained unchanged till the end (at times annoying writing and cringe inducing meta jokes), as did the elements that i liked or grew to like towards the middle of the game.
Currently my GOTY 2022.
2021
Your classic Super Metroid type experience, controls very well, looks great, sounds just as impressive.
I think i had a bit more problem navigating it's world than i did in Super Metroid. I think. But nothing major. There was just a single instance were i was completely stumped, but i managed to solve it without looking into guides, so for a metroidvania game (i realize it looks ridiculous in the context of talking about a metroid game, but not all metroid games are actually metroidvanias, so..) the level design is, i wouldn't say top notch, but very solid.
I think i had a bit more problem navigating it's world than i did in Super Metroid. I think. But nothing major. There was just a single instance were i was completely stumped, but i managed to solve it without looking into guides, so for a metroidvania game (i realize it looks ridiculous in the context of talking about a metroid game, but not all metroid games are actually metroidvanias, so..) the level design is, i wouldn't say top notch, but very solid.
After 110+ hours spread across 6 years i've beaten BotW, or what i considered to be a desirable amount of completion (all main quests, 100 of 124 shrines, 30+ of 70+ side-quests).
The game is wonderful, it's world is picturesque and emits history. The exploration is wondrous and addictive. The gameplay loop is pleasant and engaging. My few gripes would be a lack of diversity in some of the main story structure, same-y visual presentation of "dungeons", and bit lacking story, although it can be argued that it's simplicity against a humongous world populated by stuff to do and discover was actually a touch of genius.
The game is wonderful, it's world is picturesque and emits history. The exploration is wondrous and addictive. The gameplay loop is pleasant and engaging. My few gripes would be a lack of diversity in some of the main story structure, same-y visual presentation of "dungeons", and bit lacking story, although it can be argued that it's simplicity against a humongous world populated by stuff to do and discover was actually a touch of genius.
The one missing piece i had with the original Cyberpunk release (some technical things aside) was lack of a truly special and engaging story, that says and shows something i didn't see in the genre. Phantom Liberty remedies that. It packs one hell of a punch, probably the best dlc experience i've had since "Old Hunters" (Bloodborne).
2017
It's a great game. Maybe a bit bloated, but at the same time, i can't point to one thing that feels out of place. It's just a big fucking game and not everyone's gonna find it in themselves to enjoy it for 60-70 hours. I did though, and i recommend it as one of the best metroidvania games ever.
I think the thing that impressed me the most was the consistency and confidence with which the developers executed the art style of the game. Modern metroidvanias almost always make it a point to impress the player with presentation (the backgrounds, boss designs, music), but compared to Hollow Knight, almost all of them seem a bit shaky and unpolished. Big props to Team Cherry for that.
The gameplay has it's annoying parts, but that's due to an unusual complaint i have. I find it a bit too precise. I know i know, this might sound strange, since the precision is the thing you want in such a hard videogame. But what i mean is that sometimes it could use a bit of a bigger "buffer of allowed timing error" when it comes to, for example, a downslash mechanic, that allows you to traverse above spiky sections of the map. Im sure true hardcore fans of the game would trash me for saying that, but it would improve my time with the game in a substantial way and make me feel a bit less shitty about my skills and my character. Same goes for some bosses, maybe they could've remove the aspect of you automatically taking damage just by standing to close to a boss. It' doesn't really make sense and makes an already hard fights just more annoying to deal with. Other than that, i find the mechanics and movement to be very polished and pleasant to engage with.
Very engaging 70 hours that could easily become 100+ hours, were i to take on all of it's challenges in Godmaster expansion. But I have too many games on my list to invest in that extra part of the game.
I think the thing that impressed me the most was the consistency and confidence with which the developers executed the art style of the game. Modern metroidvanias almost always make it a point to impress the player with presentation (the backgrounds, boss designs, music), but compared to Hollow Knight, almost all of them seem a bit shaky and unpolished. Big props to Team Cherry for that.
The gameplay has it's annoying parts, but that's due to an unusual complaint i have. I find it a bit too precise. I know i know, this might sound strange, since the precision is the thing you want in such a hard videogame. But what i mean is that sometimes it could use a bit of a bigger "buffer of allowed timing error" when it comes to, for example, a downslash mechanic, that allows you to traverse above spiky sections of the map. Im sure true hardcore fans of the game would trash me for saying that, but it would improve my time with the game in a substantial way and make me feel a bit less shitty about my skills and my character. Same goes for some bosses, maybe they could've remove the aspect of you automatically taking damage just by standing to close to a boss. It' doesn't really make sense and makes an already hard fights just more annoying to deal with. Other than that, i find the mechanics and movement to be very polished and pleasant to engage with.
Very engaging 70 hours that could easily become 100+ hours, were i to take on all of it's challenges in Godmaster expansion. But I have too many games on my list to invest in that extra part of the game.
2019
The Bloodstained cross over DLC gave me some vietnam flashbacks of Hollow Knight white palace sodomy. The game is great, but this dlc really exposes how inferior the platforming is compared to something like Hollow Knight, just nowhere near as precise and pleasant. But this DLC really puts added strain on the game's mechanics, due to it's exclusively platforming nature, the main game levels done in a way that make platforming work 90% of the time, which is still not perfect but good enough.
The true gem here is the spooky bloodsoaked spanish lore about martyrs, and sins, and penitence and all this delicious stuff. You should play it only in spanish laguage, since that's where the game takes all it's historic and religious inspirations. This game might be the closest to capturing the uniqueness and at times truly horrific nature of Dark Souls visual style.
The true gem here is the spooky bloodsoaked spanish lore about martyrs, and sins, and penitence and all this delicious stuff. You should play it only in spanish laguage, since that's where the game takes all it's historic and religious inspirations. This game might be the closest to capturing the uniqueness and at times truly horrific nature of Dark Souls visual style.
2010
Solid as a diamond puzzler with immense sense of atmosphere and style.
2016
A masterpiece of mood, art direction and storytelling. it is still mind bendingly good and on this (second) playthrough it managed to crack my TOP 15.
2023
Most valuable asset this game has over it's predecessors (Fallout, Elder Scrolls) is a different atmosphere. Space exploration, various landscapes (barren and not so barren), the groove you get into when you hop between worlds, the whole aesthetic of ships' interiors and exteriors, the different little animations in the cockpit that change depending on what ship you're using, the little cozy beeps and boops your suit makes alerting you to hazards of the planet's atmosphere. The sound design and minimalistic aesthetic of the menus. The visual design of everything from your space suit to food packages, pamphlets, various space constructions, street objects. They did a great job with all of this stuff. It's a pretty convincing vision of the future that manages to remain both realistic (yet not really) and fun to look at.
They did a very good job with both armor and weapon progression too. The shooting is just as good as it was in Fallout 4, which was a huge leap for Bethesda at the time. I especially enjoyed using low gravity with boost pack jumps while traversing the battle field and shooting goons. I think Starfield contains the single most fun shootouts of any of Todd's games. Add various boosters that make you superhuman for a period of time and this is some Doom shit right there.
I didn't care for settlement building, nor for the customization of weaponry and space suits. You find all this stuff upgraded down the road anyway, so to sink points into developing skills to upgrade all this stuff yourself felt counter-productive. The ship building mechanic is pretty neat and in-depth, so i can see how it can be fun and interesting, but just as i've built my perfect ship i never felt the need to come back to it.
The story is whatever. It's inspired by Interstellar and whole crop of other recent notable sci fi movies, and, as always with Todd's narratives, it serves as more of a foundation for everything else to happen and have narrative structure and drive. It's way less interesting than what one other Fallout-based-space-action-rpg Outer Worlds can offer. No shock here, Obsidian were always waaay more advanced in writing department than Bethesda, both in characters and story. But it works, and is not entirely useless. I would just advise not skipping all the major factions quest lines, cause they can contain some interesting stories and ideas that enrich the overall experience and feel of the universe. I would also advise to complete all 4 of your companions quests, since those can be interesting as well. Some minor side quests uncover more of the game's lore, so it's a good idea to consult guides on the internet to find out the most interesting side quests that you shouldn't miss. This way you'll be able to avoid many of the bullshit fetch quests, which this game has in abundance, and experience all the good stuff this game has to offer in under 60 hours easy.
p.s.: I hope someday devs will finally outgrow the need to stuff their open world narratives with useless crap just to pad the "value" i.e. the amount of hours you can sink into a game.
They did a very good job with both armor and weapon progression too. The shooting is just as good as it was in Fallout 4, which was a huge leap for Bethesda at the time. I especially enjoyed using low gravity with boost pack jumps while traversing the battle field and shooting goons. I think Starfield contains the single most fun shootouts of any of Todd's games. Add various boosters that make you superhuman for a period of time and this is some Doom shit right there.
I didn't care for settlement building, nor for the customization of weaponry and space suits. You find all this stuff upgraded down the road anyway, so to sink points into developing skills to upgrade all this stuff yourself felt counter-productive. The ship building mechanic is pretty neat and in-depth, so i can see how it can be fun and interesting, but just as i've built my perfect ship i never felt the need to come back to it.
The story is whatever. It's inspired by Interstellar and whole crop of other recent notable sci fi movies, and, as always with Todd's narratives, it serves as more of a foundation for everything else to happen and have narrative structure and drive. It's way less interesting than what one other Fallout-based-space-action-rpg Outer Worlds can offer. No shock here, Obsidian were always waaay more advanced in writing department than Bethesda, both in characters and story. But it works, and is not entirely useless. I would just advise not skipping all the major factions quest lines, cause they can contain some interesting stories and ideas that enrich the overall experience and feel of the universe. I would also advise to complete all 4 of your companions quests, since those can be interesting as well. Some minor side quests uncover more of the game's lore, so it's a good idea to consult guides on the internet to find out the most interesting side quests that you shouldn't miss. This way you'll be able to avoid many of the bullshit fetch quests, which this game has in abundance, and experience all the good stuff this game has to offer in under 60 hours easy.
p.s.: I hope someday devs will finally outgrow the need to stuff their open world narratives with useless crap just to pad the "value" i.e. the amount of hours you can sink into a game.
For some reason this game, having mildly entertaining combat mechanics pulled straight from the original God of War games (but done worse) decided that in addition to that it must be a Shadow of the Colossus game, but a very shitty and annoying one. That first Snow giant or whatever is such a terrible boss fight, and to encounter something as lame, unresponsive and frustrating as that after Ragnarok was like a whiplash.
I dumped the game, but still, some time later im willing to give the second game a chance. First one though, wow, what an incompetent rehash of games that came before. Performance is garbage too. This game actually embodies the worst tendency of the PS3/XBOX 360 generation games. Going full in on the graphical fidelity while totally abandoning performance as an important part of gaming experience. If you can't optimise it, own up to it and make it uglier! It's not like you're fooling anyone with those graphics when your frame rate is in a toilet. Damn.
I dumped the game, but still, some time later im willing to give the second game a chance. First one though, wow, what an incompetent rehash of games that came before. Performance is garbage too. This game actually embodies the worst tendency of the PS3/XBOX 360 generation games. Going full in on the graphical fidelity while totally abandoning performance as an important part of gaming experience. If you can't optimise it, own up to it and make it uglier! It's not like you're fooling anyone with those graphics when your frame rate is in a toilet. Damn.
2007
If The Last of Us is a "Citizen Kane moment in videogames", then Lost Odyssey is the "Waterworld moment in videogames", because this has to be one of the biggest scale failures i've ever played.
Had to drop this bad boy 9 hours in. The dialogue is dogshit, and there is A LOT of it. You'll think David Cage is David Mamet after this thing. Voice acting is dogshit, especially by one of the central characters that talks the most. Sound-mix is dogshit, at times you can't even hear what's being said. Sometimes actors are mumbling, other times it's a sound mixing issue, frequently it's both. Facial animations are straight from SIMS 2, but the camera is right in their face. The game pretends to have some cinematic aspirations it has no business at even beginning to pull off. The whole thing is in engine too, so it didn't have a common sense to help itself with some neat looking pre-rendered splendour. Next to something like MGS 4, which came around the same time and had the same cinematic ambitions, this looks like dumpster time.
It's a shame, though, because this game has many good things going for it. I didn't mind the gameplay, though the game is not balanced very well and has some insane difficulty spikes early on. I liked the music and art direction. I very much enjoyed how visual novel sections were done, and there is a clear difference between the writing in those and the rest of the game. The stories and atmosphere in these are sublime and are truly something to behold. To the point that i wish they were the main storytelling device. Everything else could go straight into shredder. The writing in this game is so terrible, i couldn't believe my own perception of reality.
I have limited experience with major 3d JRPGs, so maybe horrible dialogue and deplorable voice acting is par for the course, in which case i gotta say nope to that genre. It's probably not that dystopian, but this here is some aggressively annoying stuff that is fully deserving of it's obscurity. If this game became a hit, i would probably NOT harm myself (i had nothing to do with this game's advent in objective reality after all) but pretty plausibly lose my faith in humanity.
Had to drop this bad boy 9 hours in. The dialogue is dogshit, and there is A LOT of it. You'll think David Cage is David Mamet after this thing. Voice acting is dogshit, especially by one of the central characters that talks the most. Sound-mix is dogshit, at times you can't even hear what's being said. Sometimes actors are mumbling, other times it's a sound mixing issue, frequently it's both. Facial animations are straight from SIMS 2, but the camera is right in their face. The game pretends to have some cinematic aspirations it has no business at even beginning to pull off. The whole thing is in engine too, so it didn't have a common sense to help itself with some neat looking pre-rendered splendour. Next to something like MGS 4, which came around the same time and had the same cinematic ambitions, this looks like dumpster time.
It's a shame, though, because this game has many good things going for it. I didn't mind the gameplay, though the game is not balanced very well and has some insane difficulty spikes early on. I liked the music and art direction. I very much enjoyed how visual novel sections were done, and there is a clear difference between the writing in those and the rest of the game. The stories and atmosphere in these are sublime and are truly something to behold. To the point that i wish they were the main storytelling device. Everything else could go straight into shredder. The writing in this game is so terrible, i couldn't believe my own perception of reality.
I have limited experience with major 3d JRPGs, so maybe horrible dialogue and deplorable voice acting is par for the course, in which case i gotta say nope to that genre. It's probably not that dystopian, but this here is some aggressively annoying stuff that is fully deserving of it's obscurity. If this game became a hit, i would probably NOT harm myself (i had nothing to do with this game's advent in objective reality after all) but pretty plausibly lose my faith in humanity.