On one hand, I have never played a game like Deathloop, a title that asks you to, in one span of a day (divided into 4 sections), eliminate 8 targets that all have their own schedule and motives. On the other hand I've played every "Deathloop", I've played Hitman and Dishonored (arguably the two biggest inspiration for this title) as well as games like Metroid, The Outer Wilds, and Dark Souls, all of which has heavy roots in this game. Deathloop some how masterly combines these 5 games and then some to make a game that truly feels unique despite the influence. Developer Arkane Lyon has truly showed that creativity is left in the games industry and shows they know how to evolve. Taking the Dishonored formula they improve the combat in simple ways, such as adding a dedicated kick button which can save you from having one bullet screw up your entire plan of attack for a mission. It simultaneously is their only title that feels truly balanced for both stealth as well as a "guns blazing" approach, paired with Arkane's excellent level and world design and you have one of the most fun, immersive games ever created. On top of that is some of the most brilliant art direction I have seen in a game, where these messages appear to you and even you as Colt, the main character, questions why you can see them but as you progress you realize that you left those messages for yourself, to help guide you and keep you on the straight and narrow. The voice actors for Colt and Julianna (who are arguably the two protagonists) also show great chemistry and every time they have a dialogue together its always a treat.

Some gripes I do have with this game is the lack of trust the developers seemed to have with the players. Once you solve each "quest" for the visionaries (the 8 targets Colt must kill to break the time loop he's stuck in) the game straight up tells you the correct order of execution for the targets, this was a major slap in the face. This game is best expierenced with quest markers turned off and that last "quest" truly proves why. I also had to manually close the game 3 times (on PlayStation 5) due to bugs that prevented me from closing the game. This is an issue because there's is no saving in levels as to prevent any kind of "save scumming", which led me to have to restart that portion of the day.

Overall, I wouldn't say its a game for everyone. There is a lot of repeating the same tasks and visiting the same areas to learn more about the world as well as the eight visionaries. However, Arkane Lyon has something special on their hands that everyone should try, even if that does mean waiting for an eventual sale.

I think this retroactively makes me like the base game of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 less, because this blows it out of the water in almost every single way.
This feels like what 3 always should have been and while the base game has great moments, some of the best in the whole franchise, Future Redeemed feels like what the marketing would told us 3 would be.
The OST is better, the progression is better, the cast is better (though that's mostly due to Rex and Shulk coming back and being quite faithful to their initial representation), and it does the whole message and theming of 3 in about 1/4 the amount of time in a way I enjoyed more.
The expansion does suffer from weird pacing issues but at least there's not a map-wide fetch quest right before the final dungeon!

Cult of the Lamb is really interesting because the flaws are so evident that every person that plays the game picks up on them, yet the hook is so addicting that you keep playing despite them. The initial premise is quite strong, half town sim, half rougelike with a really great artstyle that sells the tone they’re going for. But both concepts are not taking far enough and about halfway through it feels pretty repetitive. The devs smartly made the days feel about five minutes long though so you always have something to do in town, and you lose faith so fast while on dungeon runs you have to spend at least two days raising it back up when you return. But the town management is quite fun, seeing your numbers incrementally raise up every day so I didn’t hate the time I spent with the game. Unfortunately as the town grows, performance just got worse and worse for me (switch handheld) and there were frequent bugs and crashes as well.