Ended up playing this on a whim after it being in my backlog for so long, really glad I did. It's aged quite well, the visuals still hold up as does the unique level design. The writing is really great too, haven't laughed at a game this much in a long time. I think the pacing is a bit odd but I guess with a game that can be beaten in <10 hours it needs to ramp up pretty immediately. I think the end drags on a bit long but maybe that's just the effect of the Meat Circus on a players psyche....

....also its a shame the game peaks in the first minute with the introduction of dogen boole, love that guy.

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!

Sea of Stars is certainly a game that rewards you the more time you put into it... until it doesn't. The art is great, the soundtrack? Even better. It really does feel like it pulls from the best parts of Earthbound, FInal Fantasy VI, Super Mario RPG/Paper Mario, and Chrono Trigger. The gameplay is a really great evolution of turn-based rpgs that makes really smart changes to how mp systems usually work and they add a lot of tools to make overworld exploring quite fun and rewarding.

The writing is fine when the scope of the story is small, but as it slowly and then quickly expands into typical rpg-fare- which is to say, save the world from a malevolent being, the cracks really start to form. The biggest of those cracks being really boring main protagonists. The choice of making two protagonists makes sense when doing a whole sun/moon thing sure, but they are both just super plain avatar characters. The rest of the party is fun but don't do nearly enough to make up for having cardboard main characters.

The other major crack is how rushed the third act of this game feels like. Characters leave and join your party/cargo so quick none of it feels natural. The ending too feels so stinted it made me knock this down half of a star because of how let down I was. There is a true ending but looking into how to achieve, it was a bit too much of a time sink for a game I was already starting to feel burnt out in.

Overall though I did really enjoy my time spent in this world and would happily return for DLC or some kind of sequel.

One of my most anticipated of the year... and I really tried to love it. I interacted with all of it's systems; outpost creating, ship building, researching, spending a countless amount of time in the character creator, and I just can't find myself to love this game, or even like it that much.

Most if not all of that comes from this games terrible gameplay loop, it feels like it's designed in the most intentionally obnoxious way possible. Open a cumbersome menu -> loading screen -> menu -> loading screen... you get it. Not only that but the strengths that have gotten Bethesda's previous works so much acclaim just aren't here due to a want of a massive size of a world you don't want to spend any time in. Elder Scrolls and Fallout's emphasis on having this huge world to explore with handcrafted location is replaced with autogenerated repeating structures and I'm not really sure as to why they decided to do that. Planets are just not fun to explore and because of that the resources to do ANYTHING else is just tedium.

The one highlight is how the story ends, it's without a doubt the most unique thing this company has done with one of it's titles in a long time and because of that I would be willing to return to this game down the road... if there is a ton of QoL added to the game as well. I don't think I'll ever get the constant scratch to visit the expansiveness of the Starfield like I do returning to Tamriel or the Wasteland.

(Leon's Route)

Played on a whim after finishing Alan Wake II so I could better formulate my opinion on that game and on the survival horror genre overall since that was really my first dive into it. Really enjoyed this.

I thought the first half of this game was amazing. RCPD's design was so much fun to explore and even when I didn't know where to go the game does a pretty great job at guiding you and making you feel somewhat smart about it. I do wish Tyrant was in the game more because he was easily the part of the game that was most fun and felt like something I had never played before. The story, I wish wasn't so backloaded but I imagine that's probably different for Claire's run. Also, the sewer is awful, the G mutants are just not fun with the items you are given during that section.

Could certainly see myself returning to this every few years, I also really want to check out Route B at some point (and of course go back to REmake).

It's really good, like REALLY good, but honestly I think it might take me another go around to truly call this a 10/10. I think most of that comes down to its narrative. The most interesting thing about it is thinking about all the possible permutations that could take place, otherwise it's just pretty standard fantasy-fare. Also, I found Act 3 somewhat tiresome, level scaling just gets so out of wack towards the end of Act 2, I'm not sure if this is due to how I played, game design, or the difficulty I was on, which is why I think I should play it again. Which I don't mind, because its SUPER fun.

Sadly J.K. Simmons is in this game for like a total of 15 minutes though so I have to deduct it points for that as well.

Fortunately , a lot of the positives from the first game come back here. The psychosis is still unlike anything another game I've played has done, paired with incredible use of spatial audio once again. NinjaTheory's interpretation of this era of Vikings is stunning too with its art direction (though, noticeably much less varied than the first). This is pretty easily in the top three best looking console-games I've played falling ever slightly behind Alan Wake II (mostly due to UE5 feeling grating to me personally after staying in the same "biome" for extended bits). The cutscene direction is stellar which may be a negative to some but as someone who has come to watch a lot more movies these last few years some of the combat animations actually had made my jaw drop, seriously unlike anything I've seen before in a game. The combat though is kind of questionable, it seems somewhat stripped down from the first which already felt barebones, more scripted, less gamey.

Where it struggles for me though is the narrative and with that I guess the point of all of this? Senua's arc in the first one I find so moving and this one it feels... almost nonexistent? There is maybe one moment in this story where there is something tangible, but other than that there's no real through-line for this story. Beyond that though I just found this whole plot to be somewhat contrived we are giving next to nothing as to why the plot is in motion, I would've loved to see what happens leading up to the opening cutscene as I think that would have done a lot for both the character of Senua and add urgency to it.

This all leads me to having really conflicted feelings towards why this sequel even exists. Announced alongside Xbox Series brand consoles a game like this makes PERFECT sense to be a show-pony for what your new systems can do... but it has released a quarter away from the consoles fourth year on the market. I may had been more lenient if this was a trimmed down version ready to go at some point in 2021, that would make sense. Now, I am glad that if Xbox is doing anything right currently, it's giving their studios as much time as possible to work on their games, but the five years of anticipation they sought for this game... isn't really amounting to much. I'm also wondering if being a "show-pony" is why this was greenlit to begin with, because the story does not do really anything meaningful to Senua in my opinion. I'd almost prefer it just didn't exist at all, especially with some of the choices towards the end.