its a humbling feeling to find a game that feels bigger than you

i dont even know where to start describing it. at its core, its a game about not understanding. the gameplay revolves around trying in vain to learn about your surroundings - to piece it all together and find a solution to a problem - only to die not because of a lack of trying, but because we just dont have the time.

the beauty of Outer Wilds lies right there. its galaxy is small, yet feels huge and only gets bigger the more you dig. by all means it should feel like a hopeless venture to continue exploring, but its too engaging not to. there is no end goal, and it makes no promises other than the fact you will die.

and the magic is that we did anyway. even if i didnt know what for, i kept exploring its planets to find its secrets. i felt giddiness meeting every character and hearing their stories. i pat myself on the back after solving puzzles once i asked the guy at the starting campfire how to.

Outer Wilds - despite playing as an alien - is a deeply human game. a journey about facing adversity through sheer willpower despite not having all the answers, and knowing youre not alone in that.

i cant do this game a service with my $5 speak and someone else could do a much better job, and thats ok. because like i said, this game - like its setting - is big. theres so much to talk about, yet its message is so precise. its mysteries are so complex, yet so simple in retrospect. games like these remind me how special this industry is, and what kind of art it can produce. Outer Wilds is a profound experience i likely wont forget for a very long time.

Outer Wilds is the only game I can think of where within its first moments, I knew I was in for something very, very special without really understanding why. The title screen is already so inviting, with its gentle acoustic glow fading in over a collage of shimmering stars. The game opens, I wake up on my back, looking up into the sky to see something explode in the distant orbit of a giant, green planet deep in space, and my imagination is immediately captured. I feel an intangible warmth as I speak to my fellow Hearthians and wander our village, a sense of wonder and anticipation as I walk through our peoples' museum, learning about things that I realize I will inevitably have to face or utilize in the adventures ahead. All this before even seeing my ship, let alone blasting off with it into the far reaches of space.

The expectations and tone of Outer Wilds are set up pitch perfectly in this opening. On the whole, the game captures the innate desire we all have to learn more, to reach out for what's next, even if we have no idea what it is we are searching for or why we seek it. It's the only thing Outer Wilds relies on to lead players forward. There are no objectives or goals, no waypoints to show you where to go next; there only those which you create for yourself. What drives us forward is the need to understand the world(s) around us, or at least attempt to understand. Is there a more human desire than that?

Outer Wilds is a masterpiece for its many balances: of warmth and intimacy with the melancholic loneliness of space; a constant sense of wonder with an equally constant fear of the unknown; its charming, colorful art style with its hard, scientific approach; its reverence for the teachings of both classical and quantum physics; its personal, micro-level character stories set against the fate of the universe. The list goes on. And that's without even mentioning the game's emotional linchpin: Andrew Prahlow's incredible score, a healthy mix of folk, ambient and post-rock that is a delicate tight-wire act in and of itself, managing to capture both the vastness of space and the intimate glow of a campfire without compromise.

Whatever feelings Outer Wilds brought out of me in its opening moments were only further heightened and more deeply understood as I began unraveling the mysteries of its clockwork solar system, spiraling faster and faster towards an ending that left me in awe of everything that came before it and soon yearning for other experiences that could fill the black hole that the game's sudden absence left in place of my heart. Outer Wilds is not only a perfect game, but also one of the medium's purest expressions of its most inspiring possibilities. If only I could breathe out a sigh of relief and wake up on Timber Hearth for the first time again.

was actually the HD Portable version that I played but I think it's fair to split my log for each game into the two different routes.

but yeah more or less as I expected, in that I'm slightly underwhelmed. would be really interested in talking to somebody who thinks this is the best Persona title and didn't play it before the others, because to me there's such an inescapable sense of "blueprint" about it. It's great how much of the formula is there from the get go but in most aspects it's just not on par with what followed. the diehard love for the story loses me a little too because it just seems so... silly? there's a poor balance of activities and events, with virtually nothing to do of an evening, Tartarus (though overhated), is also certainly just a little too repetitive and feels frustrating when it comes to elements like the golden hands, etc and so on and so forth...

but what works really works; for as negative as I'd like to be in many ways about this title, I'm just so hooked on the core experience in itself that I really didn't mind wasting all those hours. Even while I'm mixed on party members, for example, I think the characterisation is just nutso good. these social links are really short but at the same time they're full of richness and personality. dating Yuko and Yukari felt amazing because both feel like real people, even moreso than later links in P5. art direction is killer and the soundtrack is very good (if a little less solid than 4 and 5s). all round great vibes.

crazy that I finished it just before march 5th too.

good, good, stuff. it's definitely that conclusion that propels this into favourite territory but this is, regardless, easily one of the most unique, engaging, engrossing, captivating, smartest, and unique things in the medium. learning that this is somewhat originated from a TTRPG and novel isn't surprising, but in developing this into a game, everything is truly elevated in such a satisfying and provoking manner.

it's still imperfect of course, with some of the plotting requiring running up and down the same set of stairs to communicate between two people, with the possibility of locking yourself out of side quests (e.g.: I sold a fuel cannister I found on day 3 completely unaware it would have any relevance to a later side quest and was unable to buy it back or progress any further); but all of these complaints are effectively minor. Even tropes I might have issues with, an amnesiac protagonist, lost love, etc., are pulled off with such finesse that it's hard to come away from Disco Elysium as anything other than a resounding success.

luv kim simple as.

My number one JRPG of all time and by a significant margin. The base game was already amazing, but the release of Royal put it yet another tier higher.

The point most people are familiar with is the art. It's just chock full of unique, colorful, and energetic effects and UIs and animations. 3 and 4 were the same, but 5 made everything so much snappier and tactile. JRPGs are infamously glorified menu scrollers, but these are some of the most fun menus in gaming.

I wholly adore the story and characters. A story this long is inevitably going to have some pacing issues, but the emotions and themes are so compelling to me. Then every time I've replayed it, I'll pick up on another great detail I overlooked before. And then the new story added to the end with Royal is just incredible. It feels both complete as its own episode and yet fitting as an epilogue to the original plot. It turns the themes of prior events around but does so to strengthen the conclusion rather than invalidate it.

A lot of quality of life improvements were made to what was already the pinaccle of the classic line-up turn based system. It's as snappy as ever, but some moves were lifted into relevancy and several boss fights were made more complex and engaging.

Everything this series does drips with style and heart, and this is the drippiest, heartiest entry in it.

Game is good, tired of hearing its not. Strange mods allow review bombing and reviews before games release but remove reviews actually calling it out lol. This website is a mess. A day or two timer like metacritic has would be good.

About the game itself, I am most pleased with Ringo. Atlus did bad marketing but I'm hopeful this game sells well enough that they realize female and/or talking mcs are a thing the series needs more of.

Dungeons are not that great but lets be real dungeons in SMT rarely are.

Not every game needs negotiating, glad they tried something new but lack of ways to get demons isn't ideal.

Story is good. True ending is hidden but worth it. The characters are compelling and go through enjoyable arcs. The hangouts are a highlight.

I am excited for the future of the series. I love Persona but I hope Atlus makes more spinoffs like this. This is everything I wanted