Banjo Tooie - The skeleton of Donkey Kong 64 begins to form. Too big. Too meandering. Takes too long to see progress and get where you need to go. Downgrade from the golden ratio density of Banjo Kazooie levels. Grunty Industries is like the Water Temple. Still charming. Grunty's game show was really funny. Collecting cheats makes the end of the game much more trivial, but not a bad reward.

Mega Man 3 - Adds some new mechanics, but not very smoothly. Some levels are MM1 level of troll. Last few levels are incredibly frustrating. Power-ups aren't as good as MM2. Rocking soundtrack.

Yakuza 0 - A cocaine laden conspiracy story that somehow manages to be incredibly dramatic and the silliest thing ever in the same universe. Awesome characters. The detailed faces still look good. Majima's introduction is one of the best ever. Haven't played the others so it makes me sad how much Majima will change. Ridiculous amount of variety mini-games to play. Fighting systems are easy to exploit on the Normal difficulty. Great game.

Dragon Warrior IV - DQ attempts to broaden its appeal as a storytelling game by providing chapter-based gameplay. Lot of interesting concepts for the NES, but FF was starting to pull away on some much needed QoL features (such as re-targeting from dead enemies or making interactions single button.) The most accessible DQ thus far. Easiest to complete and less grindy than the previous entries. Character AI wasn't terrible but felt unnecessary.

Bomberman 64 - Fun romp if you're going for any%. Completely different story for 100%. Why does the first level require difficult application of the game's advanced tech when none of the other early levels do? Why do you have to get all five gold cards at once against bosses but not on exploration levels? Lag abounds and bosses can be janky. Speaking of jank, bomb jumping: a poorly implemented mechanic. Made certain levels nightmarish. Worlds 5 and 6 ramped up in difficulty by an outstanding degree. The game having continues made no sense because it literally just meant you would waste a little more time clicking on the start screen again. The lives system was sometimes helpful, sometimes tedious. A game I loved as a child had a dark underbelly. Outstanding soundtrack, though.

Subnautica: Below Zero - Decent, but fails to live up to the amazing experience I had with the first game. The narration was disappointing because so much of the first game was carried by its atmosphere of isolation and my inner voice driving the narrative. The dialogue was often... cringe. Extremely mysterious, unknowable aliens who were akin to gods in the first game are represented in the second by an entity who acts like a baby robot as the protagonist blasts inspirational Facebook quotes at them to teach them that us humans are enlightened through can-do attitudes and optimism! The tone felt like a parody. Underwater exploration was still really fun. It was still a game that allowed me to move at my own pace. The areas were aesthetically interesting. Wasn't personally a fan of large chunks of underwater exploration being replaced by land based exploration. Vehicles were a step down as well. Prawn Suit was still OP.

Baldur's Gate III - Near incomprehensible levels of detail and interactions. Travelling companions are very well written and acted. Most characters feel very "real." Good level of player agency. Game forces a lot of tough choices that really illustrate the "cost of heroism." Act III was the noticeably weakest part of the game, mechanically -- lots of glitches and interactions that seem incomplete. Game is still being updated. Combat is less like D&D RP and more like a war game that needs to be min-maxed. Loooooooong, but great.

Lies of P -Very good, almost great. There's some Bloodborne, some Sekiro, and even some NieR, imo. It's, ironically, like a well made puppet. A facsimile that strives to be close, but you can see it isn't. The level design is a lot more linear that From style. The story, while interesting, isn't constructed as interesting as From style. Aside from maybe the story, the combat's mix of BB with Sekiro is the most interesting unique aspect of the game. You can play it both ways most of the time, HOWEVER, Sekiro forces itself into the game, especially late in the game. Last few bosses are incredibly tough. Puppet Ripper was a cheese machine for mobs. Good music.

Persona 4 Arena - Nice animations. Few good moments of fan service impeded by extremely repetitive gameplay. Fights so simple that I didn't have to learn anything about the mechanics to win. Labrys was a surprisingly good character with a story that completely cleared the rest. Some flanderizations take place here.

Persona 4 Arena Ultimax - A direct continuation of Arena. The gameplay structure is less repetitive than arena, but there aren't any highs that match Labrys' story from the first. Sho is a made to be tragic villain that doesn't have enough support to connect with, and thus falls flat. Gameplay even easier than Arena. The epilogue was a nice sendoff to the casts, and I enjoyed the heavy P3 involvement (personal taste).

FFVII Remake - Subersive masterpiece or toothless betrayal? Will have to play the whole series to determine where I land. Characters were the strong point despite SE's efforts (damsels in distress too often, Barrett too cartoonish, etc.). Many narrative decisions were sanitized. Cloud and Sephiroth have become Kiryu and Majima. Some nice song remixes and new additions. Very linear with lots of obvious padding. Warmed up to the gameplay a decent bit. Preparation is more important than action combat skills which reminds me of old-school RPGs. Haven't tried Hard Mode, though.

Star Ocean: The Second Story - A tinkerer's delight. Menus upon menus, and probably many, many ways to creatively break the game at several points in the story. Like other experimental PS1 RPGs, it has some antiquated design. The Eternal Sphere being an immensely useful weapon locked as an early quest missable is egregious. The hardest boss in the game is locked behind a Private Action that must be accessed very early as well (I think). Battles feel like brute force matchups that either end in your characters completely dominating or the enemies completely dominating. Doesn't seem to be much skill expression in battles themselves. Long, heavily animated magic completely interrupts the flow of otherwise quick paced fights. Story is ok -- becomes more interesting in the second half when the metaphysical, space influences start appearing. Private Actions give a little bit more depth to the very shallow side characters. Don't know what Sakuraba was cooking with this soundtrack. It's wild. PS1 localization was way too literal and stiff.

Mega Man 4 - "Just another Mega Man." A little bit better than 3... I think? Early stages were quite hard, but the late game stages were easier than the late stages from previous MM games. The level design is still dominated by the idea of instant death everywhere and enemies that spawn at the edge of the screen to knock you into said instant death. Still tough. Power ups are more useful than MM3, but still not on the level of the Metal Blade. Good soundtrack and visuals (as long as you're not seizure prone.) Pretty much everything to like and dislike about NES Mega Man is unchanged.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance - The most average Castlevania. One of the most average games I've played period. Just Belmont's physics are too "floaty" in this one. Whipping feels imprecise, but bosses are super easy, so it's not really noticeable. Magic and sub-weapons can quickly tear through anything. One of the more annoying castles to navigate -- too many power-ups and warp points are unlocked very late. Story is unapologetically forgettable. Music sounds kind of like a GBC Pokemon game. It's alright. Same can be said about the whole experience. It's alright. But for Castlevania, such a complete lack of style is kind of... not alright.

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Gawd. Xenoblade crosses the event horizon away from its funky Gundam roots and full into wacky harem Sword Art Online stylings. There were elements of goodness in the story. I like Nia a lot (even though she becomes simply another one of the Poke-wives for the 15 year old boy.). Morag is fine even though she seemed to represent some "harsh reality of war" imperialist message that kind of got... abandoned? And I also like the designs of most of the blades. Not to be prudish, but the fan-service was too much even for me. None of the emotional beats of the game are delivered precisely or powerfully enough to fully convey the intended emotion. Emotionally, it feels like a hollow reflection of XC1. Stylistically, it's not a bad game at all, but it doesn't hit the sheer coolness of XCX, especially the music. Orienting across the maps felt a bit too confusing. I enjoyed questing. The gameplay is surprisingly in-depth, especially the post-game, but too marred by some silly design choices. Why are Premium Cylinders RNG locked and also disappearing? Why does finishing Korra's quest involve having every single blade with Girls' Talk? Why did they decide to introduce the idea of "kill this boss quickly before it one shots you" with the very final boss? Why does Poppi QT Pi require 600 Blade combo finishers to fill out the affinity chart??? Why didn't travel methods stay open once you passed the field requirements? The gacha tie in was too annoying. Quest progress and exploration being tied so heavily into RNG was not fun. Neither was switching blades around just to open a door. Despite not liking the story that much and having a lot to criticize, I did put 145 hours into it and didn't find myself hating it after finally putting it down. I guess my love of the grind and smashing powerful foes pulled through in the end, which is something XC relishes.

Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light - Not even actually a "Final Fantasy." The precursor to Bravely Default. A game that tries to appeal to old-school charms with sparse story, quick pacing, limited inventory space, lots of dungeons, and weird spikes in difficulty. It does the old-school gimmick almost to a fault, sometimes to the detriment of the game. The story doesn't always do a good job of directing you where to go, and without intricate knowledge of job system mechanics, the game can be extremely difficult and "grindy." The job system is interesting but (it seems to me) that only half of them are really useful. Grinding for gems to upgrade weapons is tedious, and the post-game is excruciatingly tedious. Randomized, 100 floor towers with little treasure and giant rooms that take very long to navigate. Without the jobs that help run from battles, they might have been too much to tolerate. Music and graphics were alright. It's a very 7/10 mediocre Dragon Quest style game.

Saga Frontier - An unfinished memory from my childhood. Unfinished because I had never beaten it and because the game is literally unfinished. Seven separate stories revolving around characters that sometimes intertwine. Some of the stories have some meat on the bones (Red, T260, Asellus), and others feel like they were placed in the game at the last second (Blue, Lute). It's a neat idea borrowing from the Live-A-Live formula that would later give way to games like the Octopath series, but sloppy in execution. The pacing can be erratic (Asellus' story in general was quite bad because you literally meander until enemies randomly fight you), and knowing where to go wasn't always obvious. Combat is mostly offensive-centric with a surprising level of customization depth, but easily cheesed with broken strats like DSC. The remastered edition adds some big QoL features to make getting through the stories quicker and easier -- a speed-up button, the ability to transfer over equipment and stats (leading to some super broken strats), arrows indicating exits/entrances, and a story-recap that will sometimes tell you where to go. While I appreciated the way the features sped up my gameplay time, it's obvious these systems are being brute forced into a game not designed for it because the difficulty of the game becomes a joke with NG+. I still appreciate them though because the repetitive nature of exploring the worlds and grinding would have been very grating. The remastered edition also adds the Fuse story line, which is actually seven mini-story lines that provide a fan-fiction retelling of each story with Fuse as the main character. This is super repetitive as you have to re-recruit and re-equip every character for each new Fuse story, but it does add a little bit more commentary on the lore of the game. There is also a new optional ninja boss in the Developer's Room which would take so much NG+ grinding that I didn't bother. Art style is kind of purposefully grimy yet colorful with a really weird universe of thematic worlds, and the soundtrack from Kenji Ito is pretty good.

Red Dead Redemption - This plus RDR2 is the best story Rockstar has told. Still contains some of the heavy-handed, preach dialogue found in games like GTAIV, but less so, and is a more grounded game with interesting characters. Dutch is one of the best characters with the rich context given from RDR2. Charismatic cult leader or good man who was broken? Marston's ending gives meaning to the themes of the game (cycles of revenge, the difficulty of change, the difficulty of others letting you change.) Shooting felt like how a 2011 game feels -- ok but dated. Rapid tab auto-targeting was the shooting meta. Horses ran kind of wild, and their AI was dumb. Extremely impressive world that gave players the Wild West. Checkpointing wasn't very good. Too many calls for help from random civilians. Bears are the devil.

Earthbound Beginnings (Mother 1) - Dragon Quest 2.5, essentially. Similar menus in both form and function. A sparse story that contains elements of the eccentric Itoi charm. Decent graphics and good music. Very little meaningful plot except for a few blocks of exposition text at the very end. Very grindy. Lots of wild and stupid events/characters. Just like many NES games, it's a "guide game" for sure. Obtuse direction and very little guidance. Unreal difficulty spikes that would require a ton of luck and grinding if played completely legit. No revival items and just one spell. Some absolute balls-kicking encounter design in the last few areas that was very unenjoyable. No tank mechanics meant the spell user had to guard to not get obliterated, except she was too important to actually win battles. Strategy guides literally recommended running from every battle at the end of the game. Charming for 70 - 80% of the game, and then C&B torture for the rest.

Mischief Makers - The Bomberman 64 good ending. Wacky N64 robot aesthetics and art create a unique universe. Story telling was shallow but a bit more charming and present than I expected. Platforming mechanics worked well, the levels provided variety, and the game was fun. I honestly enjoyed how some levels were very short or based around a single gimmick. The pacing was very good, mostly. The mini-boss level was an exception to that, being maybe the longest. The game was quite easy, and did not provide much challenge to get the Gold Gem collectibles. A rank time attacks were tougher to get than Gold Gems, and the S ranks are so strict they require mastery of the game. The exception to the difficulty is a couple of bosses. Major bosses require no damage to get Gold Gems. I had to "prog" Cerberus Alpha for well over an hour to memorize the attack patterns to not get hit. And yet, I felt good after beating them. The game was well designed enough that I was able to reasonably carve a path to getting all Gold Gems without feeling like the game provided unfair challenge or janky mechanics baring my path. Two bosses were hard, but they were well designed. The game is an underrated classic.

Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree - Having a hard time solidifying my feelings on this. It's a DLC that adds over 40 hours worth of content, which is a decent amount, but base ER was so big that the DLC, in comparison, feels a little bit smaller than I was expecting. As an exploration experience, it continues to be peak. Imaginative, beautiful areas and big-brained dungeons brilliantly interwoven. Lots of new weapons and spells to grab and times to craft. As a combat experience? Mixed. The bosses hit hard, and will punish those who do not explore and engage with the independent DLC leveling system. The bosses also hit fast and furious, and transition from one attack pattern to the next very quickly, punishing those who heal or wait too long for an opening. Openings almost have to be "taken" rather than "given." Half the bosses are still reasonable without summoning as long as the blessings are collected and the build is decent. Midra was my favorite. Good back and forth action with a tangible sense of progress through each failed attempt. Messmer, while very difficult, was also a good fight. However, there were a couple of bosses that push the envelope on what is enjoyable for midcore players. The last boss especially did not feel well placed in Souls-style combat. There was no sense of progression. Just summoning my Mimic Tear and praying to get lucky attack patterns. It is for this reason that I have come to the conclusion that ER is some of my least favorite combat in the Souls or Souls-like games I've played. Get wrecked by dodge roll spam fights or summon the Mimic Tear and risk trivializing the fight with little middle ground, or (such as with the final boss and Malenia in the base game) just die for hours even with Mimic Tear. The camera was also a huge problem with the DLC bosses, and I put a curse on that damn hippo's hitboxes. The loot game is impressive, but the highly customizable difficulty loosens the tight balance and rhythm that the other games have achieved. In some ways ER really is Dark Souls 2-2

Edit: had a section talking about the lore but let's be honest I don't know Jack. As I do more research it feels... alright. The premise for the ending was kind of weird and fan-fiction'y but I accept it. Wish more was said about other entities such as Melina, The Gloam Eyed Queen, etc. But only so much can be given with a DLC.