The game's concept is alright but I just can't highly rate a game that relies so much on the cheap difficulty tricks you find in very old plateformers, such as placing a block right above the character so that your jump will end up killing you because you got blocked and forcing you to do near pixel perfect jumps.

Because of these things, the game gradually becomes tedious to play. Its concept doesn't do much either at some point, it's just a repetition of the same thing over eight layers and only one of them has special gimmicks. I was mainly interested in the game because of its scare factor and the description as "sadlet", but there's nothing "sad" in this game (there isn't a story at all) and the horror is just on the surface. Even the music is pretty tedious and repetitive.

This is the type of game where I think everything I could say has probably been said already and agreed on by most people. Tunic is a very solid throwback at old school zelda and a very fun game to go through, culminating in one of the best video game puzzles I've ever seen and I'll never forget it.

I think combat sucked, though. Giving the bosses the ability to dodge with i-frames. made every encounter infuriating. It's also a shame that some areas were inaccessible into the second part of the game and weren't integrated in it, cutting the game a little shorter of what it could have been.

A mediocre game that fails at fundamental levels. I think the game doesn't understand what it needs to do to be relaxing. Constantly having the camera taken away from me when I talk to a character doesn't feel relaxing, it's stressful and annoying. The incredibly slow pace of walking isn't relaxing, it's extremely frustrating. There's no jumping or anything either to do when you walk from place to place, nor much to see after you've been through an area once or twice.

The concept of finding animals is cool, but underdevelopped and there isn't much else to the game.

As a long time player, what did MH Rise offer to me?


A modern redesign of my favourite maps:

One of the things that blew my mind about Rise is how they recreated older generation maps, modernising them in a much needed way. Not only are they now in high definition but they have also been reworked into seamless maps. Some of those were my favourite and Rise makes you feel like you’re replaying a game from Gen 3 again.

The greatest addition to the maps is a lot of verticality. You can climb and find a lot of secrets or resources. Fights don’t take advantage of this though, for the most part.

The only regrettable aspect is that you can still see the corridors separating areas, an obvious leftover from the original design idea. We’ve learned that the developers didn’t initially intend to make the maps like this but after seeing the development of World, they decided to rework the maps. In my opinion, the result is worth it.


Solid roster and old favourites:

One of the undeniable additions that Rise did to World is bringing back many of the older monsters, which needed to be reworked into the newer engine. The selection is great and they didn’t just focus on the big classic ones, we get a lot of the smaller ones like Arzuros or Lagombi too and I think it’s great. Once again, the game just digs into my Gen 3 nostalgia.

The newer ones are also cool and Rise has a unique identity in that regard. For once, the monsters are not based on nature as much as they are designed on Japanese folklore. Still, I think they fit well into the series. I don’t think I was disappointed with any of them and I was especially impressed with Magnamalo, which I learned to love after grinding it in the demo challenge.


Further improvements to MHW’s weapon redesigns:

Rise takes the weapon redesigns in MHW and continues to improve them. As an example, the Switch Axe has many more moves during which it can now change forms. Additionally, the game brought back the hunter arts from MHGU into a new form and they’re also great additions. The combat is dynamic and perhaps the most refined the series has ever seen.

Some problems arise though. First, the new wirebug skills can be quite spammy for some weapons. The hammer meta for example is to throw Impact Crater as many times as possible. Of course, nobody forces you into doing that and it’s perfectly playable otherwise, just don’t aim for speedrunning times.

I also am not a fan of the Hunting Horn rework, it feels like a completely different weapon from World. Using the right move according to your position does not matter any more and the main combo is pretty much to spam A. It feels much faster paced and less heavy.


Some problems regarding immersion:

Immersion is a big deal for me and I have always loved what the Monster Hunter series has done. I am a person who enjoys spending hours gathering or going on hunts to kill small monsters, knowing I am hoarding a wealth of materials I would never need. It was a relaxing activity for me. I also happen to like the item management part and I wasn’t a fan of World removing a lot of them: pickaxes, hot/cool drinks… Well, Rise is pretty much the same in this regard.

The monster AI is where immersion suffers the most and I dare say it’s the worst the series has seen. For example, the ways the monster moves in the now seamless maps can get quite ridiculous and it also happens way too often. The monster encounters are also not only annoying but immersion breaking. They are very scripted events and the outcome is always the same: monsters which are not your target have a mount threshold which is very low so whenever they meet your hunting target, one hit from it will make them available for mounting so it’s always the same pattern. Whether you mount or not, which monster you chose to knock down: the outcome is always predictable and you just choose the most optimal choice, if not the most annoying.

You can also instantly locate them now, removing the entire searching process. This is not entirely a bad thing but it does contribute to giving the game a more arcadey feeling. I hope the next game will improve in this regard and find a proper immersion formula.


Some things have improved, others have not. I also don’t disagree that the games are getting easier. However, I am still very hopeful for this series. I can tell the devs understand what they’re doing and I appreciate that they always try to do something new, whether it’s hit or miss. If I want to play the older games, I still can and if I don’t enjoy an entry, maybe I’ll like the next one more!

It’s a short visual novel. It has good horror vibes and it’s quite intriguing when you start playing it but… it’s not much.

After about fifteen minutes you’ve reached the end and I replayed to see what more it had to offer. Out of so many choices, there is something bound to happen? Well no, not really. There is a bad ending you can get any time and the normal ending I got on my first run.

There are a few moments where you can input text. I didn’t find anything that would trigger a reaction different from usual. After looking it up, there are only one or two keywords each time and all you get is a very weak reaction.

I’m pretty disappointed with the lack of depth. It didn’t have to be a long game but not even having an impact in the choices is what I didn’t like the most.

This short game does tackle some interesting themes about the perspective of a mentally ill person. Seeing through their eyes is indeed terrifying but other than that it just seems to throw some random stuff here and there and that’s it, you’re done with the game. Some of the stuff is also pretty common such as the game characters breaking the fourth wall so not much to say about that.

I like the concept of this game: it's like Minecraft but with that one aspect of Terraria where you make houses to recruit NPCs and they can do things with you. There's also more emphasis on farming and sort of creating a village, and RPG elements.

However, what ruined my enjoyment is... this isn't actually a sandbox. It's a super linear game, everything you do feels so linear that every single bit of progression feels cheap and unrewarding. I get a new weapon? Yeah well it was part of the story. I'm in a new area, I have multiple objectives: I can only accomplish them in order because that's how the story wants me to do it. There isn't much point to exploring because areas are locked into the main quest and aside from a few collectibles, it makes it pointless to go anywhere but where the story wants you to.

While the story is very funny and the writing isn't bad, the game being this linear just made me not want to keep playing. And it's so excruciatingly slow! And you don't get to choose your own pace either, because of how linear it is. Want to play more and do new things? You must sit through the story now and read for the next ten minutes before you can procede to do something.

Just imagine if Minecraft had a main story quest where you have to do things in order. It asks you to cut a tree, then make your first tools, then mine, then build your first house, then farm; every area would be explored in the order the game wants you to; you only discover new things by progressing the story. It would remove all the magic about the game! Sometimes the game will even go as far as telling you exactly what a building should look like and you have to follow a blueprint, can you imagine that in Minecraft instead of making your own wonderful structures? Well, it certainly didn't sit well with me.

Will I ever have the courage to finish such a long game? No, probably not. I have replayed the game multiple game and really, I can't get close to the ending because it's so long. It doesn't mean I don't like the game though, I enjoyed it a great deal and it's also why I eventually replayed it.

Persona 5 is a game bursting with personality. The user interface is an absolute blast and overall, the visuals of the game really have a good direction. Starting from the beginning, the vibe of walking into the town really made me feel like I'm the new kid in a big city and it's the first time I've felt such a marvel at a video game. Taking the subway felt magical.

The gameplay is like a mix of dating sim and dungeon crawling. The slice of life part of the game is pretty cool but I find the stories to be a little too shallow. All the events are unfortunately short and don't really develop into any type of story arc, which makes me feel like this format is ultimately very limited. Every character only has one story which is basically spread through the multiple events and it feels very short. When you reach the end, you're just left desiring for more. Ultimately, the game is the story of the player growing and meeting people.

The dungeon crawling, I was not much of a fan and it's the part that tired me the most. It just doesn't change. The dungeons get boring fast and they're really long and tiring, especially the memento area which is extremely bland. Unfortunately, it also affects the pacing as you'll have a time limit to challenge a dungeon. I find it paradoxal that they made the slice of life events short as not to overwhelm the player, but the dungeons are so long and tedious. The game offers SMT combat but I really am not that much of a dungeon crawler fan to invest myself into it.

I think this is what ultimately tires me out everytime. It's also the same for every Persona, but at least the dungeons in this one are pretty good unlike the previous games where they were awful corridors.

It's hard to make a serious game and in my opinion, most big franchises have very corny and boring writing. They're very boring, full of annoying cutscene moments and various gameplay interruptions or other annoying this. This game... did not try to be anything like that and instead focused on being fun, and it's much easier to make a fun game.

From beginning to end, the game is mostly comedic and the story is very easy to follow, without too much cutscene or too many interruptions. Everything in the game seems to be designed to just be fun and not too serious. The gameplay is very similar to a GTA game but the guns are more crazy, the characters walking down the street are goofy, there are many mini-games which are just some sort of arcade games to have fun for a while... And all of this ultimately makes Saints Row 3 a pretty fun game.

That's all I have to say, really. I enjoyed my time with the game and I never felt like it was too long, too boring, too annoying. Hell, I could have even left midway through the game and not finished the story because it doesn't matter at all, it doesn't hook you or anything. It's mostly just some funny interactions between the funny characters. But I actually replayed this game like three times just because I thought it was fun.

Oh and the character creation and the fashionista potential are pretty strong, so that was cool too!

Throughout the whole game I was very confused whether the player is Sam or Katie because there's no explanation given for the "audio journal" that's being read out loud. Turns out the journal being read is the not the player character rambling, but the journal of her sister whose absence you investigate. I think this part really could have been introduce better. Why am I hearing this audio journal when I pick up random notes? Why isn't it given through cassettes or something? Very confusing and it also breaks the sensation of discovery compared to the rest of the game. In a game that focuses on environmental story telling, I don't think the main story should be a narrator's voice-over telling you everything in a very evident manner.

By the end of it, I was somewhat disappointed it ultimately focuses on a single character and the story is very simple. There are few points of relationship between the members of the family and the whole journal about Sam is really just about that one story, with a lot of details that feel unnecessary in my opinion. I would have liked seeing more notes on the parents and how the whole family interacted. The player character also has very few things about herself.

I think the game had very great opportunities to build the characters separately and show how they interact. How the daughter doesn't get along with the parents but then also notes from the other side, more details about their daily interactions...

It's an interesting concept though, exploring a rather normal house and just investigating normal things. Finding notes where they naturally belong (unlike the audio journal, you get why I didn't like it?) and learning about their daily lives. That's pretty much it. It's short but it was mostly enjoyable.

This is a vampire survivors clone with characters based on the Hololive company vtubers. I have no interest in Hololive though but I think the game is pretty good.

The biggest strength of the game is a solid roster of characters that each have their unique abilities and are very varied, yet all of them are fun to play and feel viable. I'm legitimately surprised at such an expensive and qualitative roster, it's impressive. The design is also quite cool and the pixel art is nice to look at.

The roster gives you a good amount of content to explore and grind. There are few stages so far though but the game is still in development after all.

The lack of features such as time acceleration is painful though. Each ruin is at least 20min and this can be quite tedious. There's also only one special stage for now (for an average of 5min runs).

The game has relatively few balancing issues and is very fun to play. The enemies and maps are diversified and great. While mostly a copy of VS, its twists make it a good game that I enjoyed.

In a way it's a pretty cool game, it's got a strong old-school JRPG and homemade vibe but they're also why this game isn't that good. Overall I'd say that the game would have gained a lot from being more modern especially on the interface side of things, but it plays like a SNES/PS1 game even though it came out in 2009.

The gameplay is fine honestly. It's very difficult and the controls are somewhat clunky but you can do a lot and it was relatively fun. Being able to control multiple characters in an action plateformer is something I've seen in no other game and that's amazing!

However the level design really leaves to be desired and it's mostly mindless dungeon grinding in maze-like repetitive areas. The story is also very slow and while it's funny and cute, the lack of any sort of accomplishment somewhat bored me. I've enjoyed slice of life games like Trails in the sky so maybe this one is just too childish for me. It's similar to a magical girl anime.