In Stars and Time feels like when a director takes their short film they made for school and decides to film additional scenes to turn it into a full feature, ruining it because its really just stretching out an idea that worked well as something brief.

Not that I particularly buy into the idea of a so called "unbiased" review but if you are looking for the perspective of someone who simply stumbled across the game and purchased it on a whim, this account most definitely will not be it. Back in 2021 I played a short game called Start Again, Start Again, Start Again : A prologue and fell in love with it. It was short and sweet, set up a very neat idea of an adventurer stuck in a groundhog day esque timeloop in the final dungeon of an RPG. Its concept was novel, its implementation for the most part smart, the characters were compelling, the LGBT rep was cool and obvious sequel hook aside, I think it worked well as a self contained story.

I liked it so much in fact, that I wrote a walkthrough for it, because none existed at the time I wrote it. It was an interesting experience, and made me respect every guide writer whos services I had benefitted from all these years. I did get a bit sick of the game by the end of it, having had to play essentially the same sequence about 6 times or so to write the guide. How naïve I was, If I thought that that was an overlong amount of runs for the game, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

I loved the game so much in fact it was one of my first reviews on this very site and I even evangelized for it, getting my friend @MagneticBurn to play it and if my delusional ego can take the wheel for a second, I think I might have gotten the ball rolling on the site and now the page for the game is a lot more full of activity, and maybe even some of my mutuals' wishlisting/backlogging of ISAT? or Maybe not, but either way I was anticipating ISAT for a while now. I have definitely learned why I prefer to not do such a thing usually, and just let games drop on me without fanfare or hype of any kind. I think that was part of why I soured on ISAT.

If you have not played Start Again : A Prologue and are wondering if you need to play it to understand In Stars and Time, not only do you not, I would recommend that you do not play it if you are planning to play ISAT. A more appropriate name in hindsight would be Start Again : A Prototype because in the 17 hours I have played of ISAT the first 10 or so played out like a streeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetched out version of STAT:AP.

Sweet fucking merciful mother of mary, this game is way way way way way way way way way way too long for what it is. STAT:P was not a perfect game by any means but none of its flaws had a chance to become glaring in its short snappy package. The not particularly engaging combat? Whatever, the game was 4 hours long. The repetition of dialogue? 4 Hours Long. The writing not always landing the way it probably was intended to? 4Hours.

Its not as if ISAT is JUST STAT:P but stretched, there are some new bits of course, character moments, concepts, a whole ass hub town kinda. In short, it's a game which has expanded upon its original prototype to give a more complete experience, and oh how I wish I could appreciate it but I simply cannot. Clearly the developer has accrued a bunch of experience and the general production value has increased at least twofold, but its all in service of an idea which simply cannot support such an expansion. Its like building an airliner using toothpicks, impressive certainly but you'll have to forgive me for not wanting to get on it.

As much as the new interactions and character quests and all that are nice and well done, most of the game is in service to an appropriately named gameplay loop which is simply beyond tedious after a while. I don't even really want to discuss the mechanics at length but in short, like most timeloop games you will be going through the same areas over and over and over again. Somewhat ameliorated through the use of mechanics to skip forward and not have to redo the whole dungeon all over again, but still the game is not deep or interesting enough to make the repetition not grating. Especially when it seems to begrudge you at times for taking the skip dialogue options it keeps giving you. And that, in short is the issue I have. After 16 hours of the same thing over and over and not ending and not concluding and 3 million ways of saying the same thing I just want the goddamned game to end. And here's the thing, I'm sure at some point I am going to get the "that was the point!" from someone and admittedly I have not finished the game, but I reject this notion.

Spoiler Warning I suppose.

The whole thing in STAT:P which extends to ISAT is the absolute misery that Sif feels at having to relive the same day over and over again and their friends not even being aware of it, having to pretend to feel fine about it and not let them catch on to his existential nightmare. One could argue then, that the overlong nature of ISAT is meant to serve this, through putting the player through a similar experience. I reject this for 2 reasons: 1 in STAT:P a similar thing is achieved much more succintly, just because I agree to something being necessary does not mean you should not show restraint in how its implemented; and the other being that even if it was this point would not be worth making the game an unmerciful slog. Even the points which clearly are meant to at least be compelling on a first time around like the character quests and whatnot were so dampened by having to trudge through a million loops to get there that I didn't even really connect to their emotional cores much.

Anyways, the breaking point for me was getting to Act 4 after what feels like an eternity, trying to look up in the dev's own discord server the next steps in lieu of a walkthrough which does not currently exist (and Im definitely NOT going to be the one writing it this time) and seeing "act 6 spoilers" and my heart sank. NO, I'm sorry but get fucked. I will look up the ending on youtube whenever someone uploads a walkthrough, I am done. And I feel sad about it, I had looked forward to this game, I thought I would at the very least sort of like it. Clearly it has had a positive reception and I wish I could join the positive consensus but this game makes me miserable.

Tunic prepared me for a lot of things by wearing its influences really, REALLY prominently on its sleeve. The internet helped by preparing me for the kind of fiendish, higher-level puzzles that I associate with like, Fez and shit. What I did not expect was the degree to which they just put Dark Souls in here too. Like the first thing that happens is you find a big closed door and get told to ring two bells on opposite sides of the map to open it. Combat has the same weight. Boss fights are the same ur-DS boss that you circle strafe and block. This taught me a very important thing: that I'm still so fuckin sick of Dark Souls you have no goddamn idea. Holy shit I was so annoyed with every time I had to fight a boss. They aren't too tough it's just the cadence is grating to me.

Luckily, it's not just Dark Souls. It's also a bunch of other games I've already played. Primed for that kind of heavily referenced gameplay, I thought of Zelda 1 specifically. I thought of The Witness. I thought of Hydlide for a bit. The Fez comparison ultimately didn't bare out, and it's not really trying to be that. There's a language here, and I am pretty sure you can figure it out, but I don't care about that. The plot is clearly not intended to be interesting in any way that I care to learn and I got the good ending without needing to intuit a single word. I'm more interested in the text as a recreation of being a child with low/no reading ability, only able to slightly comprehend these simple video game worlds through context. Because that's what it is! Even without being able to read it, the manual clearly lays out the games big secrets for you directly. Tunic is pretending to be a simpler game than it is, kept from you by factors inherent to your outside-the-game existence. That's like the whole entire gimmick.

And god, it works. Manual pages are like, top-tier video game pickup to me. Each one is a little treasure trove of cute art and gameplay tips, and even the occasional little cheat of functionality that makes no sense, like the map pages actually showing your current location. Yeah a hookshot is cool but have you considered: a picture of a little fox doing a roll? I highly recco

So, while Tunic was all very nice and good, I do think it lacks that final oomph of real personality to be truely one of the greats. It's ultimately just a nostalgia piece, trying to recreate a feeling that never quite existed, at least for me. The time before I could read good was certainly not a time where I'd have had the level of patience needed for this. It's a charming puzzle box. I enjoyed the hell out of it while it was in front of me and now it's over and I'm not going to think super hard about it from here. Great gamepass game though I'll say that. Damn I love having a machine that can play real ass games.

Maybe the souls-like genre isn't for me. I can never seem to get into these games. But I've narrowed down why mostly.
I think these games are supposed to teach you through a die>learn>repeat loop until you figure it out. Unfortunately, with Sekiro, often that looks like this:
- Respawn at a camp
- Stealth or avoid 20 minutes worth of enemies
- Make it back to the boss
- Die in 2 seconds
- Repeat

If there is a 20 minute gap between me repeating a boss battle every time, I am not learning anything muscle memory wise. In Hollow Knight, for example, you die, you respawn in front of the boss. You learn. You repeat, you defeat, you feel satisfied.
But with Sekiro I just felt like I wasn't learning anything, and even when I did manage to beat a boss, I never felt like it was because I did a good job.

It's a shame because it's a beautiful game in a sea of games in this genre that are all dark and gothic and grey toned.

I cannot get myself to hate this game. However, this game has overstated its existence. This has absolutely improved over Breath of the Wild but not to the point I'd warrant such a sequel. The mechanics are fun and have so much potential but it feels as if it just ended up getting wasted over this game. They're creative enough to ensure freedom, but they're limiting enough for me to want as little to do with them unless I'm given the materials. From that, it feels as if it hits that terrible goldilocks zone of being the worst of both worlds. The puzzles are something to talk about as well, and the game's mechanics make it so that the puzzles are extremely difficult to make good. Only 2/5 dungeons are good and the rest are very forgettable, and the shrines can be cheesed very easily if one chooses to. The same map makes it far worse even if it feels new, as the sky has little and the depths also barely have anything. An open world game gets tiring, reusing it makes the game itself tired out. If this game released instead of Breath of the Wild, then I would have easily loved it. Play this game only if you haven't playing Breath of the Wild.

I feel really conflicted on this game. On one hand it´s amazing, a phenomenal and truly magical experience with a sense of wonder that is unmatched in relation to most games. But on the other hand, it feels kinda underwhelming.
I was one of those people that wanted this game to carve his own identity , and fixing botws problems , but it´s botw 2, which is fine, but not exactly what i wanted. It fixed some of botw problems by expanding on the gameplay loops, but the combat is basically the same, which isn´t great. The enemy variety is barely improved, because they use it soo much across the game, that it ends up feeling samey. The sky and the depths at first were a joy to explore, with everything i wanted, but as the game went on , those became less interesting, since the same things started being reused again and again.But they were still fun, as for the overworld, it´s ok, i rushed botw so i don´t really know if they did a good job remixing it or not, i did like seeing the changes, but in some places it felt like there was less there than in botw, like the shrine of resurrection or the forgotten temple. Most of this games problems stem from the fact that it´s too reliant on botw, like the story structure, that doesn´t work at all for this game, or the doubled down , handholding of the story in regards to the dungeons. It becomes kinda predictable knowing that korok seeds and shrines are the only thing that mostly ocupies the world. Shrines are much better this time around, even if repetitive , they are very fun. Speaking of which the abilities and the physic system are awesome, but the drawback is that it makes designing complex dungeons or puzzles very complicated.
Building vehicles is fun but very restrictive due to the piece requirement. The dungeons are ok for the most part, the fire temple was very good , even though it was easily cheesable (but it is a guilty pleasure to cheat ) , the desert temple was fun as well , the others were ok ( the water temple kinda sucks).
I love this game, even though it has many flaws , the intro and the end are the highlights of the game, and it made me appreciate this game much more, It also made me appreciate botw a lot more. It´s hard to strike a balance between criticizing and praising, in order to express your thoughts and feelings , but ultimately , despite it all it´s manages to be one of my favorite games of all time.

+ Visuals
+ Story / Concept
- Optimization
- Straightforwardness

I looked forward to Stray for months when I first heard about it. A cyberpunk-style, post-apocalyptic CAT GAME? WITH GOOD GRAPHICS? Sign me up! I was hooked in even the first scene where you cuddled up with fellow cats and purred. Adorable. Though, as the game continued, I found my nausea worse than ever. Usually taking a few pills would help but MY GOD. It is UNPLAYABLE for me. I've tried adjusting settings, but playing is difficult for me. I wish I could get into it more. The story is interesting and the character design is beautiful and creative. I wish I could finish it and continue though it is impossible for me to not get insanely nauseous every time I play.

I also find it difficult in some places to navigate. Yes, it's a puzzle game. But with all the alleyways and places you should and shouldn't be, I find it extremely difficult to be guided to the objective when I'm going in circles. Would love some more hints hidden within the scenery to guide you to your destination without being too obvious.