Why do JRPGs have to be so goddamn long? It took me three fucking month of playing nothing other than this game. I'm either too old or too young to dedicate the sheer amount of time to a game.

Other than that, I liked it more than I didn't. At first I thought the game will give me a strict timer so in order to do all the stuff I wanted, I would have to perfectly manage my playtime. Thank god it was not an issue. The timer is pretty lenient and I managed to cap-off all activities and all confidants except two I really didn't want to spend my time on.

Speaking of confidants. As an average constantly horny teenager, you have the ability to romance everything with tits. Unfortunately, there are only three titwielders worth sticking your dick into.

Let's talk about the plot a bit. So you're an average teenage boy who tried to rescue a lady from a drunkard. Unfortunately for you, the drunkard is a politician and now you're in jail. Welp, shit happens, so now you have to just be a good boy and attend school and after a year without any complaints from people, you'll be spared. Unfortunately for you, you're a main character, so staying out of trouble is exact opposite of what you do. And, together with your first delinquent friend you organize your own gang of phantom thieves, fellow persona users who are able to infiltrate souls of people and either kill them or purge them from all evil.

The souls of depraved people build themselves palaces where treasure resides. That's nothing else but a fancy name for a dungeon at the end of which the boss is waiting. While in the palace the gameplay is your standard JRPG stuff, groups of enemies, turn-based combat, pokemon catching, level grinding, all that stuff. Fortunately, the game generously gives you check points to which you can teleport from the start area and continue where you left off after rest. It would all be fine and nice, but somewhere in the middle spaceport dungeon is coming for you. Mainly its boss. And for some reason the best (and in my case the only) way to deal with him is to crank your difficulty slider all the way to the max. There is just no way to defeat him with your average gameplay prior to this point. And the fun thing is, after this boss the gameplay goes back to what it was. So the dude just comes at you, rapes you, refuses to elaborate further and leaves.

Of course there is no way you would get away from adult people doing shitty things when you just wanted to make society great again. So now you're pursued for murder. And guess who was it that orchestrated everything you had to endure? Yes, in all glorious JRPG fashion, it's an evil god who you have to kill with a power of friendship. I'll not go into detail after this because the story actually starts to get good.

By the way, friendship. So in order to receive various gameplay benefits you have to develop your connections with fourteen-ish persons. And everyone of them has a story you have to help with. Honestly, the stories are pretty much hit or miss, but when it hits, it hits good. So don't just leave character behind because you didn't like him at first.

Now, after we dealt with all those messy stuff up there let's get to the juicy parts. For fucks sake the soundtrack slaps. Just so you know, you have somewhere around four renditions of daily life track which plays dependent on weather. You can feel the stakes are high for characters when you go to the boss of the palace after sending him a calling card. And when the vocal kicks in at the end of the game it's just chef's kiss. Crazy good soundtrack quality overall which I've been listening on my player for more than a year.

Should I talk about interface? I've seen that every single person is praising the UI as the final form of what was developed in previous installments. And yeah, I'm not going to argue. Everything is snappy and edgy and cool looking and at first I thought that red-black color scheme for everything is extremely edgy and silly, and it is, I'm ready to say that it fits perfectly for the vibe this game tries to give off. The only thing I'd change is confidant page because scrolling past so many people is kind of exhausting. I think there were more humane ways to do this menu.

Holy shit that was long. I've actually forgotten how to write stuff after all this time it took me to complete this but here we are.

Regular reminder: do not play JRPGs if you don't have a hundred or so hours to waste. Or do, I'm not your mum.

I cannot believe someone willingly gave Cage money for his next project after this. I cannot believe I'm asking, begging even, to make David put LESS gameplay into his games.

Lucas, our main boy, wakes up in a restaurant bathroom after just killing a man while he was possessed by some shady dude. Police arrives and Lucas has to run, making this the start point of our investigation. Who was that dude? How was Lucas possessed? Why him? What's next?

Well. That was a two-thousand year-old mayan priest trying to find a kid that has the secret to everything. Lucas was possessed with the power of ancient mayan ritual because he won possessing lottery. Nothing. I'm absolutely not sorry for spoilers by the way, fuck Cage and fuck you if you unironically love this game.

So now we are in the story about supernatural cults trying to conquer the world. Turns out, Lucas was supposed to die right after murder because everyone who did it in the past went mad and killed himself. But Lucas didn't. Why, you may ask. Midichlorians. That's literally the answer our uncaged storyteller gives us. Bloody midichlorians. And now, because Lucas knows he has them, he can fly, kill people with his mind, dodge bullets, and do anything else that could come to batshit insane mind of David Cage. A little bit later in the plot a sentient AI appears from author's ass to... ... ... look, it appears to give us third ending, okay? So, we find the prodigal kid, and all three powers gather for one last final battle to learn the secret of the universe.

Obviously Lucas destroys everyone with his huge midichlorianic balls and absolutely fucking nothing happens. The end.

Obviously evil cult kills everyone with the power of two thousand year-old priest-ness-y and absolutely fucking nothing happens. The end.

Obviously a sentient AI made from pure energy easily kills everyone and humanity fucking dies. The end.

Considering this was David's first experience with movie-as-a-game genre, let's see what he has for us in gameplay department. Three difficulties, wow. First being the literal movie and the third being fucking exhausting. Just so you know, the game has five minutes long QTE sequences where one mistake can send you to the start. And the timing is everything but generous. I'm talking about hard, of course. Stealth segments are absolutely retarded where you can't believe anything you see until you tried and errored your way through. And the dialogue options locking other dialogue options making you wonder what the bloody hell is going on here are making me hollow.

Do not under any circumstances touch this abomination. Even with a three meter stick.

By the way, the remaster you're offered is a disgrace. It's basically an emulator on a disc with the PS2 game. Thanks for nothing, David.

Considering the original game is no longer playable for me on new systems, this is a great and faithful way to experience that blast from the past.

So you play as either a chad nation of german porkies, trying to obtain a new fertile land for their poor people, or virgin french rabbits, preventing the first ones to do so. And you, by providing your tactical genius will bring victory to one of the warring kingdoms.

Basically, the campaign is just a set of missions without much plot or connection to cinematics inbetween them. You send your boys in tanks to shoot their boys in same tanks till dead. Every single one unit has their unique quirk like swimming, calling air support, digging himself a hole and all that. All units also have their costs, so you can't just spam the enemy with hundred mortars. Enemy can though. And they fucking will. The design work on units pleased me before and pleasing me still, they are just great to look at. Looking at wheeled unit to bobble backward and forward during stop animation, seeing your tanks swinging their turrets in search of enemy and overall animation work brings a little smile on my face. It's just great.

SHAME I CANT SAY THE SAME ABOUT ACCESSIBILITY THOUGH. BOY, WOULD IT BE NICE TO BE ABLE TO CHANGE YOUR KEYBINDS OR TURN SUBTITLES ON.

Yeah, the "remaster" word in subtitle is telling you literally this, absolutely same game from God knows what year but now working without having to sacrifice a goat every time you turn the game on. But the package you buy overall is absolutely great. Not only will you get a perfectly working and complete game for dirt cheap, you can also find a pseudo-artbook with silly concepts, dev diaries and full soundtrack, which is pretty good by the way.

Now, how long do I have to wait for someone to remake Hover Ace?

I'll declare right here and now that I'm an absolute sucker for these small games NIS gives us. And even if the story is not the best or not the most captivating out there, the visuals are worth it a hundred times over.

So this time we got ourselves a little girl with horns traversing dangerous post-apocalyptic factory following the green firefly. That's the only motivation she got and that's absolutely fine by me. Yeah, the story later unravels and brings to light its collection of closet skeletons but you just want your girl to survive. I mean, look at her go with that umbrella!

Unfortunately, the controls suck a major ass. Even more so when game throws you a labyrinth for you mouse and starts violently moving camera right at the moments you don't want it to. Also I cant believe how fucked up the boss in fourth chapter is. I mean, you have to perfectly go through twenty-four (24!) rounds guessing right in a shell game with each round going faster. There is no way I could've completed it without my dude OBS and its recording superpower.

So yeah, rough around the edges, borderline unplayable sometimes but still charming and making me smile. And I think that's totally worth it and want to thank our NIS overlords.

I can input lightning bolt spell in my sleep after playing the first one. I can not clean my sorrow after playing the second.

It all begun when the rogue wizard from Pieces Interactive decided that those other pesky wizards had too much power. Unlimited magic casting? Iron staffs shooting small projectiles at incredible speeds? Summoning Death himself in battle? "Preposterous!" he said, "That's not what magic is all about!" he said. And such, a curse was laid on land, making spells of old forbidden. A new order was installed, one of sorrow and emptiness. Fun left that land and the world was sent on its course to oblivion.

And he bared the corpse of a once well-known vampire on his shoulders, stating that he is here to save, to protect us from immeasurable dangers that we once knew. He threw mocking references around, thinking that's what we all want, thinking that's what will make us complacent. But he was wrong.

You, the descendant of the mages of old, you must come to light and save us. Seal the cursed land of Pieces Interactive, destroy the rogue wizard on its throne and bring back peace and color into our land!

Will you help us, hero?

I like how every installment of this series goes to a different genre while still saving some of its parts. We had a dumb slasher with War, diablo with Death, dark souls with Fury and now top-down shooter with Strife. I am eagerly waiting for an RTS or arcade racing in this universe.

Now answer me this. Why do you love Darksiders? Most likely this series has a warm spot in your heart but why? The story is nothing special, the gameplay is pretty dull after a while, puzzles are mostly tedious than interesting but I still can't make myself to hate this universe. I still love it after all those years, and I still don't know why.

But back to the game at hand. So here we have some isometric fun with our two dudes of the apocalypse - Strife and War. And if War gameplay hasn't changed at all since the first game, Strife offers us some extremely inconsistent top-down shooter perspective. Why is it inconsistent? Well, one moment you have great fun burning enemies in bulk with your flamethrower laughing like a madman and next you don't do any damage at all because game decided to fuck you for no reason whatsoever, making you burn through your entire ammo supplies just for one enemy. Also fuck black holes ammo, who thought it was a fun idea to include useless crowd control gimmick which deals no damage when you can jump around the arena with your four dashes like a dancing cockroach dodging bullets? Anyway, the design is still great and consistent, like all games before it, thanks Joe, you cool.

So the story this time is about some demons who are trying to conquer the world. And our brave horsemen have to tell those demons to please stop their evildoing in an easily comprehendible language, language of violence. That's, believe it or not, the entire story. And that, believe it or not, the end of my ramble.

Killing Dagon is a pretty miserable experience though. Also I'm kind of getting tired of those incredibly clever mentions of Garry Philipinos Warcraft and his bro Edwar Adam Pro in every game.

Shoutout to my boy Fuzzy Bearbarian and his sennin build. Without it I would never manage to bear with this.

So this is a Team Ninja's take on a pretty simple dark souls formula where you beat people with a stick and navigate through poison swamps. Except this one is bloated with unnecessary mechanics to the point of the game being extremely painful to play.

There are somewhat around ten different locations that somehow still manage to look like either a dilapidated village or burning fortress. With exact same enemies everywhere except for mines, where living breathing poison stones reside.

So you are an ordinary Irish pirate chilling in the waves with your ghost waifu Saoirse when suspicious bald man makes you transport some illegal stuff and gets you into prison. He also takes your waifu away and fucks right off to mysterious land of japan. Upon arrival, our boy Geralt becomes master swordsman because he read a book on how to use swords/spears/tonfas/etc unlike those island savages. Such begins a monster-slaying adventure of Garvard of Ireland who for absolutely no reason decides to help one of the sides of civil war. And after a long journey of collecting pokemon and completing same side missions, we finally meet Johnny Sins wannabe, kill giant monster snake and take back our girl and bring peace to the world. End of main story. After some more years we come back to japan because we still dream about including that mysterious moth-girl we saw on a battlefield into our harem. While doing so, Gerbert suppresses another rebellion, manages to defeat nine-tailed fox boss, who takes three quarters of the screen, and meet Maria, who done some bad deeds and just left refusing to elaborate further. But still, with acquired lightness in his soul after fulfilling his harem dreams, Gervant decided to stay in japan to protect the country from evil forevermore. The End.

The game still has some amazing flashy moves and cool designs buried under a toxic pulsating puss of minmaxing everything you have. I don't want to spend hundreds of hours playing inventory and gear management. I want to beat people with a stick and not being told that my gear is shit by exact same enemies from before who were dying to stick-bonking without issues before. The game in its essence boils down to stat check fest. And that makes me want to go hollow.

All of these, of course, do not relate to vanilla game, which can be completed naked and barehanded. But the game itself tells you that it only truly starts with way of the demon. Still, most of level design and enemy placement decisions are shit. And the gear system is garbage. Hope nioh 2 will be less braindead than this.

That feels like a love-letter to the first Sam. And I'm all in on it.

For a very long time I haven't feel such joy playing my boy running backwards holding left mouse button. This new guys from russia did extremely good with their first project. If atomic heart will be half as good as this - the game will be no brain buy for me.

Level design and enemy placing are great. Overall pacing is not taxing on any department and there even are some gorgeous visuals. I would without even thinking give this game all stars there is if only they would finally rid of rifle reloading and spread. I also miss my favourite four barreled gun shooting green lasers.

I also want to mention that environmental sound design is one of the best out there. Random steam hissing when you walk near pipes or bubbling boilers or some shit like this is making me a bit wet below the torso.

Thanks, random russian dudes, for making me not feel embarrassed playing this game again.

Playing this reminded me how much I miss commandos.

So you have a squad of three dudes, two dudettes and one bloodthirsty tanuki. The story begins with your three boys trying to blow up the castle in Osaka to help your beloved shogun win the war. Everything goes well, your sniper loses a leg and a new threat in the face of mysterious Kage-sama starts looming above your shogun-chan. That's how you'll be spending your days from now on - you really want to make your shogun happy and his enemy unhappy. Story itself is pretty generic, but some scenes in the end make if worth not dozing off while listening.

All characters have their own gimmicks bringing some variety on the table. You have your typical sniper, spy, trapper, big guy who can bring down other big guys and ordinary guy with a stone in hand. This game, of course, was not designed for your reflexes and requires you to utilize that shiny smooth brain you have. And developers really know their stuff. They actually understand that plan go well = brain give feel good chemicals. That's why, to enhance that jolt of good, they gave you a way with one button to simultaneously start your great plan that you built for ten minutes and which for sure will not backfire in a second.

Level design is extremely cool. Locations are colourful, we have some seasonal change which affect gameplay and it's just pleasant to look and traverse. I just wish we could enter building with their own little screens like in aforementioned commandos.

I'll also speak a little about Aiko's choice because I'm too lazy to write another entry just for a DLC. It's basically more of the same. But a lot more. Yeah, there are just three levels but every one of them is at least two hours long and in a new location all of which look stunning.

My only issue with this game is that this is not commandos 2 and I'm not a ten year old boy playing it deep into the night.

Ear raping developer logo screen when starting the game will forever haunt me though.

It's... not as good as I wanted it to be.

After playing through entire We Were Here series, this feels a little incompetent. Yeah, there are some interesting puzzles, but nothing I actually will remember. Except, probably, the moment my partner killed someone with a roomba.

I feel like the concept was not explored enough. The agent and hacker both feel exactly the same, slowly progressing mass. I think if there would be more actual gameplay weaved into puzzle-solving, like agent has to actually be fast on reflexes while running/hiding and hacker at the same time tries to disable drones coming out to get his partner to actually give players some tension, the game would be much better.

For now it's just inferior and less fun iteration of We Were Here. And the last puzzle is literally Keep Taking but shit.

I'll wait for their next game in hopes of all that getting better.

Amazing co-op fun 4: Nautilus' Rising.

Sadly I feel like this installment overstays it's welcome and some puzzles are more streamlined or can even be solved via brute force in a couple of tries. Although yeah, I can see that making so much riddles for the fourth time in the same location could be challenging. I'm all for developer dudes to embrace some new setting and get that much needed breath of fresh air.

Until then I'll patiently wait for their next project because that type of games is not so common those days but provides almost illegal amount of fun. Don't forget to push your friend in the water though, he surely will like it there.

Goddamn jumping floorboards on a beach are still slapping me in the face. I didn't know I missed you that much, you wooden bastards.

There is not much to say about this three hours run through rather than it was great. Artwork is lively, all characters has their unique flair in battles, April has ninja disintegrating camera flash and all that. Music is pretty banging in game although I didn't vibe with it that much outside it.

I feel like the game relies too much on special attacks, making you want to be sure you have full charges between fights. That somewhat kills the pacing. Also progression is meaningless and some bosses are outright outrageous to fight, making you jump around them until they let you punch them.

I still think the game that does a lot more justice to beat-em-up genre is River City Girls that you should definitely go play right now instead of reading my rambling. This game is a lot more nostalgia inducing project for those who played it on Sega in Paleozoic period rather than something new.

Holy shit, I almost killed myself while playing it.

I don't even know where to start. Lets begin with positives.

I liked characters. Most of them, at least. Yeah, they maybe aren't true according to history, but talking with constantly horny smug greeks and to be one of them was a fun experience. We wont mention generic quest giving NPCs because they might as well be carved pumpkins with task description and payment nearby.

I guess that's all there is in positive drawer.

Gameplay. Ugh. I do not know why, but for some reason dickfucks from montreal decided to scrap all progression there was in Origins (which I have absolutely no problem with) and present player a big pile of steamy shit. Ok, lets get an example. On medium difficulty and default settings you cannot assassinate anybody. And I mean ANYBODY. Your only hope is to have skill that gives you double assassination damage for one tension bar. And that doesn't work at least half the time. Fighting groups of enemies is absolutely no fun at all because if you spot anybody wielding dual knifes - it's too late for you to fight. Every fight can go either you steamrolling opponents or you dying in one hit. Progression is nonexistent. It stops at level 50, but you still have 49 more levels to go. And you won't get to it. I completed every single location and all quests and finished this garbage around level 74. I won't even talk about exponential growing cost of upgrading anything. Fuck this.

Plot. Well, you are a child of 300 year-old Socrates who wields the staff making him immortal and now it's your turn to take it from him. There, I spoiled you main plot, you don't have to touch this now. Additionally, you are searching for your family, killing cultists and gathering apples for... what, exactly? You have no motivation, all your family members are goddamn brats who deserve to get a punch in the face. Your father is nobody, but for some reason you are following his command. Templars are just... there? I mean, I killed most of them randomly not even know they were templars. This convoluted mess of incoherent writing coming from dementia driven monkey almost made me hollow.

I read a lot of shit regarding copy-paste world design in this game. And it's all true. And I don't mean that there are a hundred same-y bandit camps. I mean there are a hundred of EXACLTY. SAME. bandit camps. They didn't even bother to move some boxes or enemies to another place. Even neural network could handle this better. You know what this series is all about? It's about jumping on roofs of pretty cities and do retarded shit like syncing towers or opening chests. It's zen-like, you just relax and run around. How can I jump on roofs of pretty cities if all building there look like your first-night dirt house in minecraft? I don't even know why anybody in sane mind would play it.

Don't. Just don't. Stay away. It's better to watch the paint dry than play this.