2017 game that would have been revolutionary in 2007.

The entire art team deserves some awards for their achievement on this, the game is still beautiful and a lot of effort went into tiny flourishing details.

The rest of the teams who worked on this just made a by the book gamey game for gamers.

You climb on yellow stuff, you talk in worthless dialogue trees, you unlock basic gameplay through skill trees, you craft shit, you buy gear with colorful rarity, you slowly farm nonsense off of the ground, you go on dumb side quests. You do it all in a giant open world filled with icons. It's a game and all those things are there because that's what you do in games like these, and I'm so tired of it.

I think I would've appreciated a straight forward, linear, 10-20 hours experience a lot more, maybe I just want to play Enslaved again.

13 Sentinels may not be a perfect game but the way it juggles more than a dozen non linear character driven plotlines that intertwine into an actual coherent and unique (despite hitting off every scifi trope ever conceived) story - it's a master craft second to none.

The visual novel parts are the main meat, they're lean on mechanics but have rich beautiful visuals.
the combat part is more abstract but carries a surprising amount of impact and velocity.

Fantastic experience

For me the biggest flaw of Rollerdrome is that it doesn't feel like a sport. There are no other rollers in this drome other than your character. You're the only thing moving around shooting down mooks that manifest out of thin air and stay mostly static.

The Tony Hawk mechanics leave much to be desired, eveything feels too floaty and imprecise, I didn't find the flow I could with THPS.

Shooting isn't bad, the slow mo mechanic is pretty sweet but the whole thing is hindered by the movement.

Cool art style, 2nd game I played that borrowed from Moebius. I'm not complaining.

I like the idea of deadly sports match, it's a fantasy perfectly suited for video games. Rollerdrome is sadly not really it.

I have little interest in God of War and this relaunch didn't change that.

I feel this game tried to reinvent itself in several opposite ways, there's no harmony in it.
It tries to be The Last of us but opts for an odd open world structure which kills the pacing, it is also a collectathon for some reason but also it's a gear crafting heavy RPG that only means you can run into mobs that can KO you in one hit because they have bigger numbers.

The camera is atrociously close to the player, it kills combat flow and turns exploration into a literal spinning headache.

I shelved it pretty early but I had a hunch it keeps its machoistic approach after you find out the mom is a corpse.
According to other reviews here it seems it doesn't improve and also that I pretty much encountered most of the enemies in the game a few hours in.

I maaaay give this game another go sometimes but I don't see what's the big deal is.
The axe was fun for a while and it's very pretty but that's about it and it doesn't carry a game with a jigsawed design like this.

Untapped potential.

The mixture of Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle is a great idea and it works here to some degree but the game never really manages to balance itself around the mechanics. Instead it resorts to level design that focuses on large maps swarmed with mostly weak units. Despite that finishing levels well below the turn limit is an easy task that takes a whole lot of time, even if you completely turn off battle animation.

The micromanagement aspect has similar issues, it starts out fun and intriguing but quickly bloats out of control. You assign up to 9 units to squads, assign 2-3 traits per unit, and then assign 3 gear pieces per squad. Later levels allows you to deploy up to 20 squads, shit adds up quickly and with how easy the game is -it turns from tactical to menial.

Story is not that bad but it's not very engaging either. There are few moments and characters that rise above but they're scarce. The 2nd half of the story just drags.
World building is mostly generic with a couple interesting flares like the Donari temple.

The game does try to say something about zealots and curroption but it doesn't commit to it.

Graphics are a very mixed bag and it's where the game shows its budget.
There like 4 different styles going on that don't mix.
Cutscenes are RPG Maker assets complete with overused low res fx.
This era of RPG Maker sprites just looks bad (2000 forever!!)

The battlemap grid and sprites look much better but the cherry on top is the combat sprites who had a lot of love and talent poured into them (though I could do without the pronounced buttcheeks of a certain titan).
The updated portraits are lovely, something about this mixture of western art with anime influences works on me.

Overall it's a nice experience for fans of the genre that overstays its welcome.

RIP Zorro, you were a real one.

A dopamine machine with some sophistication that sinks its claws and fangs into you.

The schtick is that it costs like 4 bucks and not whatever vile freemium scheme its mobile clones use, and that's honestly amazing.

It's better to play Vampire Survivors than to become a whale for some half assed mobile game.

30 minutes runs are way too long, especially since they can be lost with mere seconds on the clock. Every parameter in the game should have been doubled and runs capped at 15.

Had Final Fantasy XV enjoyed a healthier development cycle it would have been considered a modern classic.

In its core FFXV is a coming of age story mixed with a Greek tragedy - Stand by Me is one of my favourite films and FFXV channels it's themes and dynamics throughout - the titular song literally opens and closes the game.

Fittingly the game strengths lie with its cast and their evolving friendship and bond, the grand sense of road trip adventure that shines thanks to the extreamly refined peripheral mechanics like setting camp, cooking, fishing, and taking pictures. Even driving around in this game can feel magical as the cast have a wide arrey of different animations and behaviours - these 4 dudes wearing very bland black can feel very much alive.
The food here is the best rendered food I've ever seen. Fishing is very fun - the game does a better job letting you combat fish than anything else.

The story is good but suffer from the weirdest pacing I've seen in an RPG, this is the most sudden and severe case of "disc 4 syndrome". There are some holes and oddities but overall it feels complete and I didn't feel the need to watch whatever films and anime shows this game spawned.

Combat fucking sucks - FFXV crawled through glass so FFVII:R could run. You get used to its quirks but it never really clicks and becomes coherent, the shitty camera definitely doesn't help.

Side quests range from fine to terrible with a few exceptions.

Ardyn is a great villain 10/10 - charismatic, deranged but simpathetic.

DLCs are alright they add important bits to the story but the writing is a bit mixed. They take the combat mechanic in a different direction in each one which is interesting but the core is still kind of a mess.

I like Final Fantasy XV, it's not very good but it's also great. I like how deeply these 4 guys care for one another and I wish they could do so in a finished, better recieved game.

This remake is a very charming recreation that still doesn't match the original Gameboy aesthetics.

Fun and whimsical with a pinch of sadness. Most of the dungeons are fairly straight forward aside from level 8 that has a lot of backtracking and those obnoxious, joystick bound, tile snake puzzles.

I played a fair amount of Zelda games, this is the first one that I beat.
It was a good time but it mostly made me miss my memories of the original. Given the game's theme, it's fitting.

Writing improves as the game goes along, and it can be very touching and heartbreaking at times.

The many farming mechanics are odd and don't fit the game at all, they just slow it down for no reason.

Nobody plays this game for the excitement of gathering 20 cedar logs.

It's a very good game that could have and should have been shorter.

Low key my favourite of the trilogy.

Not without faults but I feel that mechanically it's the closest to to what I think the trilogy wanted to be.

A few nitpicks are - the map still sucks.
There are a ton of neat weapons to try but the game doesn't really want you to? Guns are hella expensive and require upgrades on top of it, you also can't freely change your loadout during missions and are severely limited by carrying capacity.
Galaxy scanning ia somehow worse - hot and cold with reapers on your tail got dull very fast.

I really liked the story - there are a few sore spots like the Metal Gear Reject and a couple beats at the ending but overall I felt there were good dramatic beats and most of the cast recieved a satisfying arc conclusion.

I liked that none of the endings are perfect, it felt true to the theme of the game.

Citadel DLC was a breath of fresh air, it's very wheadon-ish but I think it works well as a pallet cleanser and a momentarily pause before shit goes down.

I have some hot takes about choices and romances in the trilogy but I'll keep it for the Legendary Edition.

A Marvel themed tactical deck builder with persona like social elements is supposed to be a perfect match for me but unfortunately the experience is severely bugged down by weird pacing and bloat.

The game was clearly designed as a live service and while there is no mtx in the final product the design philosophy poisons every aspect of the game.

There are like seven currencies and four different types of loot boxes. Cosmetics are double locked - you randomly get them from loot boxes or activities and then they need to be purchased with another currency.
Some activities require all sort of currencies despite them being limited and unfarmable. - these things don't feel like a balance decision, they feel like things that originally meant to suck actual cash out of players. It's hard to ignore.

The pacing is off, there are a million things going on between battles. It's actually mostly fun stuff like hangouts and club meetings the characters form that all carry small social plots that make the game come alive, it's nice but they stack up and every single conversation in this game goes on for too long.
There's also a whole exploration part that I don't care for but seem to be significant for the other aspects of the game.

I always end a session feeling like I achieved very little compared to the time I've put on.

The gameplay itself is very fun! The tactical elements mesh well with the deck building and ends up being a fairly unique experience. The different characters are very well defined by their cards and most of them are fun to use. The combat has a lot of kick to it.

Letting characters change their clothes and costumes daily is a spark of brilliant design.

The story is kinda basic but the characters are fun (though overly chatty) and even the player's avatar is not a complete cardboard. They actually have enough history and personality traits to help them relate to the cast, it's well thought out.

I like that they chose a rather obscure team and featured minor characters like Magik and Nico, I wish they would go all in and avoid slapping the Avengers on top of them. On the other hand I wouldn't mind seeing an Xmen game in this style.

Just tone it down a little and drop the predatory design.