GRAPHICS: Horrifying where they need to be, beautiful where they need to be. A genuinely unique and characteristic style that does exactly what it's meant to.
CHARACTERS: There's no spoken dialogue in this game, so you won't be getting to know characters' personalities that way, but you grow fond of them regardless. I wanted to protect Six (and then I was proud of her, and then I was a little freaked out by her), the Lady is eerily beautiful, the Chefs are perfectly revolting, and the first time I saw the Janitor was a shock to the system in the best way possible in a horror game.
GAMEPLAY: Controls can be a little finicky sometimes, but it was never enough to bother me -- only in the sense that some jumps may take a few tries to get the timing and angle right. I never found the 2.5D perspective unfair or misleading when it came to making leaps or deciphering where surfaces were, but a lot of people have complained about that so your mileage may vary; keep it in mind before you play.
MULTIPLAYER: None.

Overall, I prefer the sequel story-wise, but this game has a little place in my heart. Additionally, note that the game only takes ~3 hours to complete, so I would personally feel a little cheated paying the current Steam price of £15.99 for it. I'd advise picking it up on sale.

Favourite OST: The Death Waltz

GRAPHICS: Dated now for sure, but gorgeous when I first played in my childhood/early teens. Not so bad now that it takes away from my enjoyment of the game, but I'm fueled by nostalgia and a general preference for story > graphics anyway, so your mileage may vary.
CHARACTERS: Genuinely iconic and full of life. John is beloved in gaming history for a reason, and I've loved Bonnie since I first played. Even characters with less obvious depth, like Bill and Javier, are seen through a completely different lens if you go back to this after playing RDR2.
GAMEPLAY: Typically Rockstar - a little clunky, LR + aim to shoot, ride around on a horse. Using the clunk to throw John around on the floor when he's drunk entertained younger me for longer than it should have.

Favourite Male Character: John
Favourite Female Character: Bonnie
First Character I Liked: John
Favourite Character Design: John
Favourite OST: Far Away, Deadman's Gun
Favourite Scene: Riding into Mexico for the first time
Least Favourite Character: Ross

A shorter and less serious review than usual, but I feel like this game's major sticking point to me is its potential. Even though I've long since gotten over the promise Versus XIII had, I still wonder what it would have entailed - and then there's the lost potential of what we did get, in Luna and Niflheim and Ravus and Regis, the relationships and characters and storylines that could have been so much more than they were.

But we got Ignis. And him and his relationship with Noctis, as well as his DLC, are carrying two of these three stars on their backs for me. Love you team mom.

Favourite Male Character: Ignis
Favourite Female Character: Gentiana, Crowe if we're counting Kingsglaive
First Character I Liked: Ignis
Favourite Character Design: Ignis (I'm seeing a pattern)
Favourite OST: Calling for Rain
Favourite Scene: Ignis putting on the ring in Episode Ignis
Least Favourite Character: I actually can't think of any

GRAPHICS: Not amazing or anything, but perfectly fine for a visual novel. Character designs are cute, backgrounds are serviceable, and the little details are cool (such as Monika having black socks while the other three have white).
CHARACTERS: Decent range of personalities for a four-character group. I liked Sayori fast, but Natsuki ended up kind of creeping up on me as an underdog favourite due to being the most 'normal' of the cast (and thus the least scary). I thought I'd like Yuri more based on her personality archetype at the beginning and her design, but MAN did she end up creeping me out more than I thought she would. Monika is iconic, obviously. MC is pretty much a non-entity, but it turns out that's kind of the point.
GAMEPLAY: Not much to say here; it's a visual novel. Lots of reading, lots of clicking, some dialogue options and plot choices as well as different 'paths' for the girls. If you don't like visual novels, you probably won't like the gameplay of this, but I do, so I didn't mind it.
MULTIPLAYER: None.

I went into this knowing it was a psychological horror and that Monika wasn't what she seemed, so I have no idea how much harder it could've hit me if I'd been entirely spoiler-free, but even with that, holy SHIT. I didn't know just how sudden it got - that first moment walking into Sayori's room and finding her hanging with the jumpscare and the distorted music had me YELLING.

Favourite Male Character: ...Um.
Favourite Female Character: Natsuki
First Character I Liked: Yuri
Favourite Character Design: Monika
Favourite OST: TBA
Favourite Scene: For what it meant and kicked off, Sayori's suicide
Least Favourite Character: None

I think Until Dawn is overrated and I personally greatly prefer The Quarry both in terms of characters and gameplay, but it is still massively superior to all of the Dark Pictures Anthology installments.

The characters are shallow and stereotypical, but the game doesn't really pretend they're anything deeper than that - it's a campy B-movie "dumb teens stuck in a cabin" horror, and they all serve their purposes fine. You'll probably enjoy some and dislike others, which adds some nice stakes in who you're trying hardest to keep alive.

I think the "it has so many endings!" note is overblown considering all of those 'endings' are just the same ending with different combinations of characters alive at the end and thus slightly different people having lines to say in the police interview montage at the end. For that reason, I wouldn't really expend too much energy on trying to get multiple endings unless you want to 100% it or you messed up first run and want to try an 'everyone survives' playthrough for the sake of it.

Graphics are nice, and were very impressive at the time, but the facial expressions are janky to the point of unintentional hilarity (characters will smile and have it look more like a pained grimace, with Jess and Emily specifically coming to mind here).

Still, it's fun for what it is. Just don't take it too seriously.

Favourite Male Character: Josh
Favourite Female Character: Beth
First Character I Liked: Beth
Favourite Character Design: Beth (I'm seeing a pattern)
Favourite OST: TBA
Favourite Scene: The cabin explosion at the end with the helicopter flying over the survivors (especially in an 'everyone lives' playthrough)
Least Favourite Character: Ashley

GRAPHICS: Cute, consistent, and charming. The character designs are varied and fitting for their personalities. The town is lovely and I'd move there in a heartbeat if I wasn't too damn lazy to put up with countryside.
CHARACTERS: A broad range of personalities and outlooks -- they're all pretty likeable to me, including less popular characters like Demetrius and Clint. Personal favourite is Sebastian and his introversion, and I'll always have a soft spot for Leah who was my first romance route. Linus is endearing, too.
DIALOGUE: Can get pretty repetitive. As someone usually aiming to talk to characters every day to build my relationships with them, I run into repeated chunks of dialogue within an in-game week, which is a pretty big deal when you can only have one individual conversation with each character per day, and has me losing motivation to check in with everyone.
PLOT: Far more character-driven than story-driven. Each major NPC has their own sort of mini character arc, especially if you romance them, and there are small storylines such as the Joja Mart vs. Community Center struggle, but ultimately you won't be playing this for any in-depth story. It's a game about the characters and about building your farm up from the ground.
GAMEPLAY: Completely fine for what it is. I'm not a fan of the time limit, it feels like I barely have time to do anything before the day is over and I'm forced to sprint back to the house lest I want to collapse and pass out on the ground on the dot at 2AM and go into the next day with an energy level hit. It makes it hard to enjoy the game and its aesthetics as you play because you feel like you're rushing around and shoving all your objectives in before shops close and you get tired.
MULTIPLAYER: Has up to four-player co-op. I've played it with one other player, but I do want to try it with a full game sometime. The co-op is fun, everyone gets their own relationships with NPCs, can marry characters, do all the usual stuff around town, etc. You share a farm, but other players get their own little guest houses on the land.

As surprising as it might be with the high rating and the general praise, Stardew Valley really isn't subjectively for me. I'm not a fan of games where you have to live out every day doing tasks, where you're dropped into the game with little hand-holding and left to come up with your own objectives (you'll probably need to do some Googling first playthrough, because the game Will Not explain how to do anything to you), the time limit is stressful, the repetitive dialogue is tiring, and I've never been able to get past the second season in any solo game I've tried.

And yet it's so damn endearing and charming that I can't justify giving it any less. The fact that this game was made by one guy - yeah, I know, everyone harps on about that in their reviews, but that shit is MIND-blowing. I almost want to give it five stars for that fact alone, because one person creating everything in this game is such a struggle to comprehend.

As a side note, there's a great modding community for this game, including the well-known Stardew Valley Expanded which introduces entirely new characters, marriage candidates, and storylines.

Favourite Male Character: Sebastian
Favourite Female Character: Leah
First Character I Liked: Sebastian
Favourite Character Design: Caroline
Favourite OST: TBA
Least Favourite Character: Leah's ex

It's hard to get a full, active lobby going online with strangers in 2023 -- the game's popularity has definitely died a lot. However, if you can get a group of friends going (a full lobby of 10-15 is best) this is SO much fun.

Always worth playing a bit regardless because of how memetically impactful this game was (not many games have fundamentally changed language and slang like this one has), but otherwise it probably won't be engaging for long if you're just playing alone with strangers via the in-game chat.

I always end up going back to this whenever I find people willing to play it with me - it's funny, addictive, and charming.

GRAPHICS: Pretty, particularly the character models. I loved the glowing reds and almost gory designs of the roots taking over the city.
CHARACTERS: Fun, charismatic, interesting, and if you've played the former DMC games they're endearingly familiar. My personal favourite is V, who neatly slots into character tropes I tend to enjoy, but I also liked (the sadly little we get of) Lady, and Dante was hilarious as always. I particularly enjoyed the Dante-and-Vergil dynamic.
DIALOGUE/VOICE ACTING: Voice acting is brilliant, particularly Dante's. Nico's accent grated on me a little, but that's entirely a me thing.
PLOT: Nothing mind-blowing or unique, but you probably don't come to Devil May Cry for the complex story. It's interesting enough to service the game.
GAMEPLAY: Genuinely fun to play through, and combat feels satisfying and flashy. I found V's combat style most fun to play, Dante's trickiest to do well at, and Nero's easy to master but not as engaging.
MULTIPLAYER: I didn't focus on it overly much during my playthrough, but it had a fairly interesting take on it from what I recall. In certain sections of the game, you can see other players controlling the other playable characters in the distance in their own sections of the map, and at the end you can give them a ranking on how well they did. I pretty much just gave everyone a Stylish rating, which grants them a gold orb, because why not? I'll have to delve more deeply into this aspect of the game when I replay.

Favourite Male Character: V
Favourite Female Character: Lady
First Character I Liked: Lady
Favourite Character Design: Repetitively, V and Lady
Favourite OST: Devil Trigger
Favourite Scene: V's hair turning white
Least Favourite Character: None

GRAPHICS: Gorgeous and consistent visuals, realistic character designs, impressive mo-cap animation and facial expressions.
CHARACTERS: All solid, though they vary in quality. Connor's story is widely regarded as the best part of the game, while Kara's and Markus' are more divisive. Side characters are endearing when meant to be, infuriating when meant to be, and a broad range between. My personal favourites were Connor and Hank and their found family buddy cop dynamic, Simon and his quiet support, and Ralph and his zany unpredictability.
DIALOGUE/WRITING: I think it's overhated. Sure, the racism allegories are clumsy and obvious, but I'll take well-meaning in-your-face anti-racism sentiments over none at all. The branching paths are incredible, and the flowcharts after each chapter make it clear to see how much work has gone into diverging playthroughs and choices. I do think some things that were cut are a shame, though, such as the Markus/Simon relationship, especially as they left certain scenes leading up to it in which can be jarring. In the same vein, the fact that meeting North on the rooftop and being vaguely friendly to her (as in, literally any response that isn't straight-up leaving before the conversation begins) immediately shoots you to "Lovers" status even if you were rivals or mere acquaintances before was bizarre at best.
GAMEPLAY: If you're not a fan of QTE sequences and Telltale-esque gameplay loops, you probably won't be a fan of it here, but fortunately I am so I enjoyed it. The beginning of Kara's story can be quite slow (though oddly doing chores in-game is way more therapeutic than doing them in real life), but frankly the beginning of most games are slow on replays, so that's not all that surprising. Some of the QTE sequences are genuinely fast-paced and exciting -- a favourite that sticks out in my mind is a chase scene over the rooftops with Connor which was so fun to play I actually reloaded to do it again.
MULTIPLAYER: None.

I will say, though, that the plot twist with Alice was extremely stupid and completely ruined the entire point of her and Kara's story arc up to that point. No clue who thought that was a good idea.

Favourite Male Character: Connor
Favourite Female Character: Alice
First Character I Liked: Alice
Favourite Character Design: Ralph, Rose
Favourite OST: TBA
Favourite Scene: The 'good ending' montage - I cried
Least Favourite Character: Perkins

I know it's blasphemous to say so, but this game is just... fine. For me personally, it's probably the most overrated game I can think of. The Road did the story first and better. Lee and Clementine from The Walking Dead did the 'badass father figure with questionable past and young girl who slowly become family' trope first and better. The gameplay was clunky and shots didn't feel weighty enough, and everything in here has just... been done before somewhere else. It's a fine game, even a good one, you won't find me claiming otherwise, but I just don't see the mind-blowing masterpiece everyone else seems to, and I genuinely don't understand the reputation this still has to this day. Have people just not played enough other games?

The graphics were stunning at release (I remember at the time saying it was the most realistic-looking game I'd ever seen), characters are relatively believable as people, the acting is brilliant. As a video game, though, it's a strong "meh", and the more it's lauded as the best of all time the more resentful I grow toward it.

There are just so many better games and so many better stories that are pushed to the side in favour of this trope-fest.

GRAPHICS: Gorgeous, obviously. Do these need to be commented on? It's well-known to be one of the most graphically beautiful and detailed games ever made, and it holds up as such to this day.
CHARACTERS: Arthur is widely regarded as one of the best video game characters of all time, and for the most part I have to concur. I'm a John Marston kind of guy myself, but I grew to love Arthur more than I ever could've expected, and he and his writing and development certainly deserve the love and praise they received. I could write you an essay on how vital and important it was for RDR2's protagonist to be a gentle, fundamentally kind-hearted and artistic man in a world of game protagonists who take pride in being violent and "gritty" and apathetic. I loved all of the other characters, too, with some obvious meant-to-be-hated exceptions -- personal favourites are Sean MacGuire and his Irish charm, Karen Jones and her shamelessness, Hosea Matthews and his wise wit, and (a less popular pick) Molly O'Shea and her very overlooked tragedy.
VOICE ACTING/DIALOGUE: Great, charming, witty -- can't think of any duds in the major cast.
PLOT: Takes a while to get going, but God when it does it blows you away. There's a reason this game had a lot of grown adult gamers crying.
GAMEPLAY: I had far fewer issues with this than others did. I'm accustomed to the sort of clunky RDR style of movement -- sure, sometimes I would try to turn and fall flat on my face over a small stone on the ground instead, but honestly that just added to the hilarity at times -- and I had no particular problem with the slow realism of looting, skinning, opening cupboards, etc. I found it appropriately weighted and immersive.
MULTIPLAYER: There is an online mode to the game, but I haven't dabbled in it much myself. I hear it's not as active or well-maintained as GTA online (obviously), but from what I've seen of others playing it in videos and such it seemed much the same as single-player, just with more chaos. I seem to recall there is something of an Online mode storyline/'campaign' as well for those interested.

Favourite Male Character: Sean
Favourite Female Character: Molly
First Character I Liked: John
Favourite Character Design: Molly
Favourite OST: That's The Way It Is
Favourite Scene: The gang approaching Braithwaite Manor
Least Favourite Character: Micah

To get the negatives out of the way, the things that keep me from rating it higher would be:
- The tedious and drawn-out podcast ending; genuinely, who thought that was the way to go?
- The weird and abrupt halt to the Ryan romance plotline, where you can build up a relationship with Dylan or Kaitlyn (especially Dylan) and then suddenly no matter what your choices he says "maybe neither" in favour of having a weird flirtation with Laura, who already has a boyfriend serving as her entire motivation.
- Shooting could be a little janky at times, though it only caused me issues once; almost at the end, in the final confrontation in the cabin, Kaitlyn ended up dying because the game didn't register that I shot the werewolf even though I did. Wasn't a huge deal because I have the Deluxe Edition so I used a rewind, but for someone who doesn't have that available on first playthrough it could be super frustrating.
- Some characters didn't get enough screentime, particularly Nick and Max.
- The werewolves just looked like the wendigo from Until Dawn. No idea if that was a budget/reusing assets thing or what, but there's no way they didn't notice they were essentially using identical models. I want to see actual werewolves, damnit.

That said, I actually really enjoyed this. I connected with the characters much more in this than Until Dawn, where my strongest feelings towards any protagonist were "they're fine" ranging to "vague annoyance". I felt genuinely invested in keeping my favourites alive - hell, I actually had favourites! - and that made it so much more tense and high-stakes. The graphics are gorgeous, the story was fun and campy, and the soundtrack was enjoyable.

Favourite Male Character: Nick, Dylan
Favourite Female Character: Kaitlyn
First Character I Liked: Kaitlyn
Favourite Character Design: Ryan
Favourite OST: TBA
Favourite scene: I thought Dylan and Ryan's campfire kiss was genuinely sweet
Least Favourite Character: Constance