This review contains spoilers

tl;dr Overproduced, misguided, focused on difficulty over the value in how the original delivers its message in both gameplay and writing, bad writing, fanservicey

To sum the experience up, Undertale Yellow feels like Undertale but without the soul that made the game stand out and become one of the best games of all time, and instead trying to fill that in with just overproduction.

Did you like Undertale for the characters being fleshed out and given just the right amount of time to actually add emotion to the moral choices of killing and sparing or the world feeling full enough that going through pacifist felt rewarding? Tough luck, the characters barely get explored, and when they do, it's either an archetype that was similarly done in Undertale and then beaten over your head anyways, or sprinkled into stuff that you won't encounter until you really can't be bothered to care anymore.

Did you like Undertale for the decent RPG gameplay balanced with a moral mechanic? Well, too bad! because now it's been "improved" by upping the difficulty and complexity of even the basic enemy encounters, defeating the whole point of the very carefully balanced system that the original game had, where a neutral route has a pretty average experience, pacifist comes with more character and joy and generally happier endings, but comes at the difficulty, because making the morally right choice is sometimes HARD, and genocide being the note on just grinding mechanics in RPGs in general, sprinkled in with some superbosses, You know, something nuanced, creative, deep.

Instead of that you're getting the rose tinted fan view of that idea, where the game is a means to an end for an overproduced superboss no matter which route you take, and worldbuilding and characters being more of an afterthought, I always thought it was a really cool part of the story being that you weren't seeing merely a slice of the Underground, you were seeing a decent chunk of it, They're oppressed, cramped, scared, trying to just live anyways, under the hopes that Asgore will free them with the seventh human soul, but no, Instead you get multiple new areas bursting with new characters, and even near the end implies that there's EVEN MORE to the underground you haven't seen, it's totally pointless.

Major characters are a massive blunder, you have Martlet which is just an okay crack at the type of personality Papyrus does in Snowdin, but it lasts like no time at all before you're split off and yet the game still expects you to care about them, there was no scene with setting up the puzzles and having amusing gags, there was just flavor text saying "The puzzles are a bit fucked up LMAO" Nothing really changes with her, but there'll be another note in the genocide ending section.
Starlo is just... another type of Papyrus character who's a bit over the top but intended to be endearingly so, it's the other half of his character, Not really much of note, it's similarly endearing and the scenes with coming to terms with his emotions are nice, even if they are predictable.
Ceroba, I thought she was just a neat character to have as an addition to Starlo, but then after you leave the dunes she's... following you... This can't end well, She ends up just being a bit of dialogue to constantly hammer into you "MY HUSBAND WORKED IN THIS LAB, THE LAB IS SHUT DOWN NOW" or "I AM UPSET" Not a fan of her design, and it only feels like a means to an end for her role overall in the Pacifist route, being an overdesigned superboss (surprise! her character was that she has a DEEP DARK SECRET!)

Neutral, you go through and suddenly Flowey says "WAIT YOU'RE GOING THE WRONG WAY, SUPERBOSS AND THEN ENDING NOW" and then finishing it off with "Okay now play the pacifist route"
Mediocre ending, Boss fight was really cool though excluding the annoying creepypasta level stuff and the glitch filters.
The heart of Undertale's neutral ending rests in the fact that it is still a full on ending, life goes on, it's a proper ending with a proper epilogue, though being fully text-based is supposed to make it feel a bit, bittersweet, to make you think "Could I have done better?" And then Flowey is supposed to be the voice to the player telling them yes, let's see if we can do better.

Pacifist, It's pretty much the same deal as neutral but with more Ceroba, because they wouldn't want their star of the show to have a dull fucked up backstory.
Long story short she's an idiotic hypocrite but since she was almost surely created just for this moment, she has to overpower all your friends and want to KILL YOU!!!
And then begin overproduced superboss fight.
Afterwards you get a weird mildly satisfying ending, but it struggles hard because they REFUSE to interact with anything seen in the base game, so it ends off feeling really shallow and more of a pointless tug on the heartstrings.
"u sacrificed urself... because then the monstres can live..." Why not have the neutral route be the canon ending to Undertale? Have the previous 6 humans be a little more trigger happy, to make it as reasonable that the monsters are afraid of the humans, why people like Undyne are around, why the Royal Guard exists, etc. and then let the Pacifist ending in Yellow be a "what if" where Clover just lives on, doing their best to help the monsters, and when the day comes that the Eigth human falls down, they can help them and potentially unite the underground, or find a way to pass through the barrier and destroy the divide forever, send home that Toriel was right, they could have found a way if they strived for peace instead of just trying to protect their own kind in fear.
EDIT: After a bit of extra research, it seems like this is just here because the other outcome to this route is killing Ceroba and then fighting Asgore, same end result but fits in with Undertale a lot better, no idea why the fully pacifist route doesn't end similarly, the reflection into self-sacrifice part is just a bit corny, I assume it's trying to convey the whole "Justice" thing but it isn't doing a great job at it.

Genocide, bad, major identity crisis too.
It can't decide if it's supposed to mimic the "oooh creepy Chara" stuff or the cold fist of justice, so it just does both whenever it feels like, but by trying fails at both.
If you're going for the Chara thing, skip the puzzles, the whole point is supposed to lampshade the culture of optimizing the fun and character out of a game, a mindless killer trying to be as powerful as possible, you know, the player CHARActer, but instead you have Clover, the angsty evil child.

Could have something going with the whole justice thing, Clover is looking for the 5 missing humans, and it could be treated as trying to lampshade the idea of "self defense" where if Toriel had another minute she would have told you, if a monster initiates battle "Try starting a conversation with them" and instead running the route with the idea of "Okay, most people going through this know what Undertale is about. So let's dial back the you're a monster part and leave the morals less written on the sleeve, less supernatural, more "who's really in the wrong here" and that could have been done by removing the genocide route, being totally out of character for Clover, and instead being more of a "Self-defense" route, where you're killing anything you come across, but not grinding them.

But nope, Clover the angsty evil child (with a gun) proceeds to go around murdering everyone they can find, and the gameplay isn't much better to make up for this, you g et to pick from 1 of 3 things, Hard mode fights, Pitiful bosses that can't do anything to you, and, you guessed it, MORE OVERPRODUCED SUPERBOSSES!

What's that? You enjoyed Sans and Undyne the Undying because it's a sad turn for the two protector characters of the game, trying to be major roadblocks, and Sans revealing that he knows what's going on behind the scenes? You thought those were cool moments that expanded on the characters?
Great! Here's a recycled fight from pacifist, now easier, who is meaner to you and that's it, there's your Undyne!
Aaaand here's some random shmuck who didn't get enough development in any route, now she's UNDYNE THE UNDYING's design and determination, mixed with Sans power level, Nothing interesting happens character wise, and then you just fucking nuke Asgore for no conceivable reason other than "U R SUPWER POWERED NOW CUZ U KILLED A REALLY STRONG PERSON" and then they're like "Oh shit wait a minute, this isn't a Chara thing" and rush to say "UHH CLOVER WAS DOING IT BECAUSE SHE WAS AVENGING THE FIVE HUMANS AND THEN SHE LEFT THE BARRIER NOW WITH THE HUMAN SOULS FREE MONSTERS DEFEATED FOREVER" which could have been an interesting route to take, if there was ANY reference to this at any other point in the game other than one of your starter items being the missing poster.
And to top it all off, they can't even make the character deaths sad, they're just, gross. There's an attempt to make you feel bad by having them suffer when they die and melt more gruesomely than Undyne did, but it just feels like a shitty creepypasta story, I don't feel bad when Super-Martlet melting disgustingly says "HELP ME" I felt bad when in her last moments, Undyne was still smiling confidently, her character still showed, it's the same character that you fall in love with in the other routes, but pushed to their limits.
Sure I feel a bit bad when the dance guy just gets ignored then murdered, but he's of no impact to the rest of the story.

Onto the nitpicks, Spritework is inconsistent as all hell, They try to stick with the undertale style, basic sprites, detailed but black and white battle sprites, which is good! but then as you go on, sprite complexities in both modes increases, leaving the older areas looking bad and outdated, they branch away farther from the zones of Undertale, and even make a massive sin of animating the sprites heavily, a part of the humor was with how basic the sprites were, seeing some movements were just funny, being lifted by a bird and you're just in the same pose, and it added a lot of impact to when a character was actually animated, like Asgore taking out his weapon from under his cloak, it's not something you see all the time, but instead basically any advanced movement is animated, RUNNING is animated, it's jarring going from a NES spritework walk to a "So retro!" Indie game run animation, It's something I feel Toby probably learned from Andrew Hussie, where in Homestuck a lot of quick little visual gags were something like a basic still sprite for a character wobbling around and falling over, or bouncing around all over the place, etc.

Clover interacts too much, The whole point of the silent protagonists is that they don't talk, outside of the basic decisions obviously, but they're supposed to be so basic you might as well not be talking, it's a game about tackling RPG tropes, you are a vessel for the player, and having a lot of moments where Clover goes in for a hug, or waves back at someone or something like that, it does both a disservice to the humor of the game like mentioned above, and just feels disconnected from the style of Undertale.

And another point on the writing, it just fails to be funny in general, it lacks that writing style, that self-referential humor seen in Undertale and Homestuck, and there's not even any hard hitting lines, nothing like the scarier lines from Genocide in Undertale like in New Home, or the famous "Despite everything, it's still you." It just feels like fanfiction made by people who loved the characters and gameplay of Undertale, but not people who loved the whole package, or even understood it.

I was just not fond of the soundtrack, it was weak minus a few parts and I feel this comes heavily from being too ambitious with the soundtrack, everything, even the stuff that heavily carries motifs of Undertale tracks has a lot more going on, more advanced soundfonts, it needed to be dailed back.

Lastly, balance was just fucked, throughout the middle of the game it was all over the place, then in all but Genocide (because it's always fucked up difficulty wise and that's the point) you're smacked with a sudden superboss that just grinds the game to a halt, and doesn't play fair like Omega Flowey or Asriel.
Sometimes bosses would just have suddenly bad difficulty curves in their own fights, having like 2 moderately difficult attacks, and 1 that can easily just be AFK dodged, and then putting you in one where you're likely to be hit 3-5 times in a row only 30% into the fight, forcing you to restart and make sure you're max health so you can understand what the hell is going on for the next attempt, in general it felt like a lot of the fights just wanted you to be juggling health items.

But then, in the final boss in the steamworks areas, you get NO VENDORS, You are told to get fucked if you wasted your healing items beforehand, because you can't backtrack, It was a huge pain in the ass and I have no idea that oversight didn't get noticed.

Regardless, after all of my complaints for the game, I think for any Undertale fan, you should at least play it, it's competently made enough that you'll probably at least come out thinking something, which is far better than I can say for the mods that are literally just boss fights, or just not having anything like Undertale instead.

What I expected to make me roll my eyes with honeymoon identity discovering slop that a lot of queer media seems to have a problem with, ended up just delighting me with a fun, humorous love letter to old-school RPGs that can manage to have the LGBT side as a major theme, without making it just about the only thing that matters.

this is like the same shit capcom was doing with street fighter games where to get the same game but with what you actually wanted for it you have to buy the same game again

if you don't own the one that came before it this one wins by far i guess, better maps, better gameplay, all the content from the game that came before it except some maps and some mediocre modes

I'm not "done" playing this game, but I really have just hit a point where I don't have much fun playing the game anymore, and am just sticking it to hang around with friends.

There's a million reasons why I could go into why it's kind of draining, but I'll just sum it up, it's just shallow, it's the Call of Duty of ARPGs, the gameplay is too easy and boring, it's laggy, there's a lot of clunkiness and the game is full price yet shoving MTX up your ass, with plans for paid DLCs in the future.

The nice things I can say of the game start and end with the visuals, it's a beautiful game, but there's no substance anywhere else, the story sucks, the characters aren't interesting, the cutscenes are boring and the pacing is glacial.

Just play D2 or even D3, this just isn't worth your time in it's current state.

Played through World of Assassination

Pretty much the same story gameplay wise as the first game, so I'll mainly just be talking about the experience with the different levels, the Sniper Assassin mode and potentially some personal thoughts as I played through more of the series.

Before that I want to iterate again, this always online shit is awful, and so are the elusive targets, whoever came up with this shit is a moron.

Anyways, the levels were just not it this time around, there's only 3 levels that are at the very least "good" because you're thrown so many levels which you can't dream of experimenting with until you've been railroaded through the "Mission Stories" and typically are overstuffed with NPCs because they're crowded third world areas or whatever, it's just a fucking disaster.

There was one out of those crappy bunch that had an interesting gimmick of an unknown target you have to discover... which went up in smoke when I was doing one of the "Mission Stories" and after fucking up disposing of a KOed disguise target and guard, a random NPC spotted me, so I just got frustrated and shot him before I reloaded my save, but right before I did that I was told "Great work 47, you found the target!" which really ruined any fun that could have been.

Anyways, halfway through you're dealt probably my favorite level in the reboot trilogy so far "Another Life" (not to be confused with A New Life from Blood Money) which is much more what you'd expect from the Hitman series, taking place in an American suburb with JUUUUST the right amount of NPCs, and there being plenty of things to explore, as well as having a lot of fun things around, and creative opportunities for kills, great time, didn't do any "Mission Stories" in it and managed to find a lot of interesting stuff regardless.

The other 2 levels I enjoyed were the 2 from the DLCs, one was the bank which was similarly good, but just not quite as good and a little hard to get around without following a "Mission Story" and the resort level which was just... Ok, I liked the fact that it was pretty open yet not too populated and filled with enough bushes that it basically invites you to just throw caution to the wind and try getting quick kills off by just popping them and immediately ducking into cover, in fact you can kill the first target within seconds of starting.

Story was a lot better this time, as in there's actually a story to follow, with things that happen and have weight in what happens in the actual levels, but it's nothing amazing, just some cheap b-movie spy thriller.

I tried to shift up my gameplay by forcing myself to experiment a little and not forcing myself to EXCLUSIVELY kill targets, to not feel as pressured, and I feel like I got a much better grip on the gameplay loop because of it this time around, but flaws with the AI are becoming more and more apparent, I hope the next time they do a set of Hitman games they lower the scope so they can tighten up things like AI.

EDIT: Whoops, forgot to mention Sniper Assassin!

It's okay, not really my thing, that's all.

"This game is so well written, a true return to form!" a passerby says, as I watch cartoonishly evil Russian #376 kill another civilian.

"FPS games at their finest" says a lobotomy patient as I play through a scene where you go through with kidnapping a wife and child and threatening to shoot them, and shooting right next to them, which is okay because they're the wife and child of a SUPER-TERRORIST!

"A truly deep story" says an actor from the "Your Mom Hates Dead Space 2" commercial as I watch the game blame a real world incident where Americans were shooting civilians on the Russians.

"Makes you love the franchise all over again" says the voices in my head, as I play through the scene where you play as a little girl doing Dead By Daylight loops around a gigantic cartoonishly evil Russian man who just killed your father and is now coming to kill you.

"oh sick is this the one where it was like the old ones the multiplayer is awesome" says that one guy you played MW2 with back in 2009 who always camped in every room and spammed OMA Noob-tubes, as I finally beat the waterboarding mini-game and am given my reward.

This game is fucking soulless, the old Modern Warfare games had a bit of a unique charm that you'd only get out of old IW, and the newer CoD games at least tried to have something unique going on, but good job guys, you proved that you'll eat this grey awful mush as long as it reminds you of what you had like 15 years ago.

Also the multiplayer is doo-doo buttcheeks, even Vanguard is better because it had the decency to at least give you Ninja as a perk.


The best overrated game you'll ever play.

What is there to say about this game that hasn't already been said? It's a master-class in third person action and juggles that with a tone only matched by Devil May Cry, great voice acting, and satisfying sound design.
This game not only defines its own series, or its own genre, but an entire point of time around its release.
If you haven't played this yet, you're missing out.

The perfect way to end a trilogy, AA3 is filled to the brim with charming characters, gripping stories and wonderful music, If you ever play a VN, let it be this one.

A wonderfully comedic entertaining experience coming from the idea of stepping back from Saints Row and thinking "What could we do to be more than just the wackier GTA clone?"
In the genre of GTA clones, this is probably the best one, including GTA itself, please give this game a good shot!

My personal favorite in the 2D sonic series, the Time Travel mechanic whilst finnicky to use is incredibly cool past the immediate novelty, and the soundtrack is killer.

A man wakes up, hungover in a trashed motel room, whatever his old life may be is as dead as disco, with whatever comes after picking up the pieces, He goes on a journey trying to solve a murder while rebuilding his personality from scratch in a dead-end town in a dead-end world.

If the main thing that interested you in BG3 was the branching dialogue and permanence of your choices in the story as well as them being continuously referenced for the rest of the game, then this is the game for you.

While this game fails in the department of environmental variety or interesting open-world design, it succeeds in making one of the most fun FPS experience I had in a decent while, making it feel like you're always coming up with your own solutions to combat encounters whilst not making it feel overbearing.
This has been an instant classic in a series I've grown up with since I was just a kid.

I'm not sure where Bethesda gets off not only buying out a very well crafted series only to drive it into the ground with 2 bland entries that progressively suck more and more at telling stories, with the most outlandishly bad writing with incredibly poor personalities.
Just hand the series over to Obsidian, they at least knew how to write a game that at least had a hint of the same style that the original 2 did.

The perfect way to remake a game, it succeeds at nailing the claustrophobic horror thought only possible with fixed cameras and has plenty of bonus content to keep you entertained far after the first clear.
Gameplay is tight, combining the puzzle solving, atmosphere and pace of the original whilst having the satisfying gameplay and silky movement more recent titles like 4 are known for.