Such a chill game. I would love to give it 4 stars, but the ending just kind of tipped over. The setup and mystery of this game are so cool. The idea of a television station potentially cosmically and unintentionally creating monsters for peoples need to be entertained is very cool.

Why do people need to see fighting on screen? Is it worth threatening a small town for that entertainment? There are some neat ideas in here, paired with some immaculate vibes, that just don't go anywhere at the end. Still a good time, but could have been great.

This is a bad game. Drakengard 1 was an interesting bad game. 3 is just bad and is not even interesting.

The writing, while funny for the first couple hours, just devolves and gets worse. The ending (big reveal why zero is doing stuff) just doesn't make up for the rest of the game being stupid. It's not even that cool of a concept. Also all the split timeline shenanigans are stupid and add nothing.

This game sucked. I want to replay Drakengard 1. Nier Replicant and Automata (and drakengard 1) are borderline accidental masterpieces. Yoko Taro makes bad games, but he can very rarely be absolutely brilliant. This is not one of those times. I have ZERO clue how someone could play this game and then go, yeah let's fund Nier Automata. I'm so glad they did, but how the hell did we go from this to that

A genuinely fantastic game with two major issues.

The issues: (1) No mid-late game map & (2) Unclear ability gates

The fantastic: Pretty much everything else
The movement is pretty boring at the start and finding movement upgrades is really unintuitive and difficult, but once you have a lot of abilities unlocked the movement is absolutely transcendent. I haven't had this much fun in a 3d platformer since Mario Odyssey. The music is great, the enemy designs are interesting (but I wish they were a bit better themed per zone and consistent narrative design). The world design is very fun and had a lot of "I'm not supposed to be here" type of moments where I felt like I was moving around a pre-existing world that was not created for my character to be in. Not in a bad game design sense, more in the cool and inventive ways I was able to use the movement to get around the existing world. I love the low frame rate animations and the low poly/texture aesthetic. It looks and plays so well. This game does so much right.

Going into specifics on my criticisms:
(1) No mid-late game map.
This is a self proclaimed metroidvania and therefore the player should be rewarded for memorizing the map and how it interconnects. Having no map is an interesting choice as the world feels expansive and undiscovered and the mental mapping of the terrain is a fun way of going about it. Unfortunately while the zones themselves are visually unique, the way each room connects to the next in each zone is not distinct enough to be mentally mappable. The doors that connect each room are mostly identical and fog covers anything past the door itself. This leads to constantly being turned around and not knowing which mystery fog door connects to which mystery box room and stringing them all together to get anywhere new feels exponentially incomprehensible. Castle Sansa and Sansa Keep especially are a nightmare to navigate given the amount of identical doors and small rooms. Mid to late game navigation turned into 15 minute excursions of wandering around hoping to find that one place I had been hours before with very little success. An unlockable and detail limited map for each zone would be a great collectible item that would go a long way I feel.

(2) Unclear ability gates.
MILD ABILITY AND END GAME GOAL SPOILERS
The platforming in this game is fun execution testing that never felt too hard for me. When I was platforming each challenge with the abilities they were designed for. Certain movement abilities are not clearly visually explained which challenges are designed for them. Specifically the wall cling gem and the fourth wall kick have zero visual indicator that you might need them for a specific section. This leads to platforming challenges feeling not impossible, just incredibly difficult. As an example of this, I was trying to get the Major Key in Sansa Keep but didn't have the wall cling gem yet. Using every other ability except the two abilities I mentioned, I was able to get almost to the end of the challenge, just barely. Using the wall kick I was able to complete sections of that challenge that felt hard, but doable. But the doable kept getting reduced bit by bit as the challenge continued until it was just actually impossible (unless you are a cracked speedrunner lol) with my current toolkit. But it felt like it was just a more narrow timing requirement that I wasn't quite meeting and just needed to get better at. Almost every other ability gate was clearly conveyed so I didn't waste my time on them or I at least knew I was trying to sequence break. The inconsistent way ability gates were presented lead to a platforming difficulty that felt very erratic and sometimes lead me along only to drop me off a difficulty cliff with no other options in sight. The way to fix this I would say would be to make it abundantly clear if the player is missing an ability in the menu screen. Like in Ocarina of Time where each item slots into an empty mold on the key items screen. We don't have to know what it is, but knowing I'm not yet fully equipped, plus making the start of challenges have more visual distinctions (such as a white paint on the walls for the wall cling gem) would have made this much better.
SPOILERS END

Overall this game is so much fun and if these two issues are addressed I would be absolutely over the moon about it. I still recommend it to support the dev, but it feel like a bit of an early access game with my current two criticisms in place. If you love good movement and the incredible retro presentation and are willing to accept a few major rough edges I very highly recommend this game and I'm looking forward to what the dev makes going forward!

Side notes:
The combat is completely adequate with some unique ideas. Dropping your sword from getting hit, throwing your sword, giving up power/range to heal. No major issues, but I would love to see more R&D put into the combat and it could be something really special. Also the lock on never worked in a way that felt helpful for me.
The story felt like a lot was left unused/explored. Felt like there was a great setup to a interesting loose/minimal story and then nothing was done with it. I would love just a tiny bit of additional context/lore and I would be satisfied.

Took me a little under 9 hours to get 90% completion and roll credits.

A metroidvania that actively tries to not follow in the footsteps of the genre, while simultaneously excelling in it.

There is no double jump. This game's movement upgrades are very different than what I expected from the genre in a very fresh and interesting way. The combat is chunky and satisfying, the platforming is a little clunky and frustrating, and the art atmosphere and music is absolutely immaculate.

Every horrifying creature and boss design is magnificently and thematically justifiably grotesque in such an artistic way.

Could not put this game down and it's definitely one of the best in the genre while not trying to be just another installment in the genre.

Absolutely recommend if you have the stomach for the justified gory tone and challenging gameplay. Peak metroidvania stuff right here.

This is a terrible game that hates you more than dark souls. I will (hopefully) never play this game again. I have touched zero other games with this thick of atmosphere. The soundtrack is an absolute masterpiece in immersive art. The characters are all insane, and insanely interesting.

Caim is a silent protagonist that lets his sword do all the talking. Literally. Caim cannot speak and the only language he can express himself in is violence. This game explores what happens when people lose what allows them to connect with others.

"Welcome to a world without song"

One of the most horrifically interesting and effective games I have ever hated playing through.

Played Leon, saving Clair for a later replay. Incredible game overall. I hate horror games, but I loved this one as it rewards methodical map memorization. Leon is my spirit animal. He says the immediate first thing that comes to my brain when playing this game. RE2 blends camp and cheese with horror and serious tones with such effortlessness that never seems to devalue either.
human deformed monster jumps out "What happened to you?!"
zombie shambling towards you "What the hell? Shit! Goddamnit!"
mysterious person appears "Who are you?!"

I love how it progressively increases the testing of map mastery/memory. You go into a new area and have to figure it out while clearing enemies, then new elements are introduced that test your execution in navigating the map in progressively more challenging ways.

My favorite thing is that there are (to my knowledge) no magically spawning enemies. Once you see a zombie, if you kill it (like completely) it will always stay dead. Blow off its leg and remember what room you left it in and it will always be there. The only exception to this is if more zombies crawl through a window you leave open and wander around. (or if other enemies crawl in through holes in the ceiling/walls that you can't patch, trying to not spoil anything). I really felt like I was in a real space that I had learned to navigate and it was very rewarding. I was surprised how much of this game felt like a zelda item trading quest with the environment, but I really enjoyed figuring out how everything fit together. Has a really solid story overall and the controls are just iconic and so effective. Loved this game way more than I was expecting to when I decided to force myself to play a horror game to completion.

Highly recommend sticking with it even if you are scared of horror games. 80% of the time jump scares are on you because you didn't board up a window, forgot you left a zombie alive, or you were just sprinting through an unknown space.

A shockingly heartfelt and emotional story with absolutely transcendent movement mechanics. This is probably the closest thing we will get to a Gravity Rush 3. The presentation when things get trippy are fantastic and the ending has some of the most emotional acting I've seen in a videogame. Loved it way more than I was anticipating given this is a super hero game.

Why not a 5 star imo:
my only real complaint is that literally 20 seconds after one crime gets solved, another one is already popping up. Like, I get that in the third act it should feel like chaos and like the city is falling apart, but going from one copied event to another so quickly just feels crowded and not necessarily deep.

Also I didn't love the MJ/Miles stealth sections. I don't mind playing as other characters with different mechanics, and I get that they were probably trying to remind players that Spiderman is a super hero by making you play as a normal human in a world lead by super villains, but they still felt kinda clunky and padded compared to how polished everything spiderman was.

Not a perfect game, but a game of so many perfect moments.

My GOTY for 2023. After the massively personally disappointing 'appeal to everyone, zero identity' Tears of the Kingdom, FFXVI boldly goes in the opposite direction with a 'game made entirely for a smaller group of people that will truly love it'.

I am so sick of the 'play your way' games that just devolve into mass appeal, egocentric gamer pandering. This game doesn't try to be everything. Hell it doesn't even try to be very many things. But what it does go for, it does with so much heart and grandeur that I fell in love with it.

I feel like even with its more focused approach it was still a bit too broad and suffered somewhat for it. The side quests and quality of animations are such stark contrasts to the main set pieces that it's pretty jarring. The upgrade paths for weapons are very tokenistic.

All that said, the art direction, voice acting, music, and boss battles are absolutely incredible in this. The combat is so satisfying and versatile. The visuals feel like an actual next gen game and playing on an OLED TV was a borderline spiritual experience.

I do not own a ps5, but bought this game and played it to completion on my brothers console. I will be buying this again for PC and excitedly going for 100%. Beat in ~36 hours focusing primarily on the main story and enjoying the atmosphere.

Not for everyone, but if you enjoy the NieR games (aka, somewhat awkward pacing, limited world, but fantastic atmosphere, music, and heartfelt story), this is a game made exactly for you.

Remember when Ocarina Of Time 64DD was cancelled to make Majora's Mask? Well they went for another half assed bonus expansion version of an insanely successful game and actually went through with it this time.

Swaps the tranquil minimalism of BOTW with a chaotic amalgamation of conflicting ideas that ultimately feels like a DIY craft kit full of mismatched pieces shoddily pasted together by thick green glue.

Story had one good idea and fumbled everything else. Already messed up the new timeline that was established just last game.

Beat the game in 80 hours in a little over 2 weeks. Objectively the most interactive of the Zelda games, but tonally a complete zombified Frankenstein monstrosity.

This game makes me actively angry. I am no longer a zelda fan and I should have bought physical so I could resell. I am so sick of talking and hearing about this game

Worked so much better on a replay. I played the especially unbalanced America release my first time through and remembered the ending was pretty cool.

Genuinely blown away. So many motifs that flew over my dumb kid brain. The moment right before the final encounter is probably one of my favorite moments in gaming.

Shadow of the Colossus being my favorite game of all time, I'm really in love with the minimalism and more personal story Ico tells in comparison. My mind will be exploring the halls and history of this castle for a long while.

I also absolutely love the playground of a backstory for personal theories and head canon. Masterpiece