Just when you think "it can't get more complicated", this story will find a way to get more complicated.

Then Wake to Weep is a satisfying story finale for Penacony with some stunning setpieces - Dreamflux Reef is particularly pretty. It's about twice as long as the previous patch, but that's also because of the increasingly verbose explanations for everything related to the dream world, so if you're interested in all the additional worldbuilding, the storytelling of 2.2 might be right up your alley.

I wish Boothill would have gotten more screentime and relevance, considering the devs teased him playing a big role, but he's mostly a comic relief character here. Maybe he'll get his time to shine in the upcoming epilogue, since that should tie up some loose ends as well. With that out of the way, I still had a great time with the overall narrative and the twists and turns present in Then Wake to Weep, especially since a bunch of characters with overall less screentime in the previous two chapters got their spotlight here. The boss fight at the end was also a great way to wrap everything up and I loved the song that played during the final phase.

Despite some missed potential, it's a fitting end to Penacony with an interesting villain, and lured me in well enough to finish it within just a single day - but I can't say it sticks with me more than Aventurine's story in the previous patch, that one felt special.

Gotta go fast!

After Sonic Adventure has served as my personal gateway into the series and Sonic Adventure 2 gave me an even better experience, I can proudly call myself a fan of the series now. A fan who only played 3D Sonic. That being said, Sonic Origins opened up a whole new dimension to me: 2D Sonic!

Here's a quick rundown of the zones: Green Hill was surprisingly the least engaging zone for me, but I can appreciate it for how iconic it is and being a good introduction with a timeless theme. I didn't have an issue with Marble Zone's methodical approach for the most part, although some of the random pop-up spikes felt a little cheap. Spring Yard is fine, but gets repetitive after a while. Now, Labyrinth Zone seems to be pretty universally hated, but I didn't find myself having much of an issue with it and thought it was rather refreshing after going through Spring Yard, the underwater sections were cool. Star Light Zone had cool catapults and Scrap Brain was... rather hard compared to the rest of the game - but that makes sense, it's the last level for a reason! The final fight itself though was a bit underwhelming and the ending was cheap.

But in the end, I enjoyed my time with the Blue Blur's debut game, even if most of the level design goes against the whole "gotta go fast" motif, which apparently is a dealbreaker for many. And while 2D Sonic is fun, I'd be lying if I told you I didn't miss the homing attack from Adventure at first.

Oh, Sonic Adventure 2...

At first, the shift from hub worlds to linear storytelling was a change I had to get used to - the pace of doing levels back to back feels way different from walking around Station Square aimlessly to get to the next stage and I didn't like how it felt here. However, my stance changed about halfway through the HERO story (which I played first), and I began to appreciate the storytelling of the sequel over SA1, because you get the story (on your side atleast) told in chronological order without having to puzzle it together and you constantly switch characters, so it doesn't get boring. So on the HERO side you're already getting a full story about Sonic and his friends alone, but the villains are contextualized in the DARK story. Personally, I preferred the DARK story, it just felt like the more complete package overall and the cast is more interesting.

As for the gameplay, Adventure 2 brought some noticeable changes to the Treasure Hunt stages, put an extended focus on mech levels (which play similar to Gamma from SA1) and also changes the physics and controls a bit from the first game - nothing worse than no longer being able to overly rely on Sonic's spindash, as it's not overpowered anymore. You get used to it fast, but that was a death sentence in the first hours of playing! Concerning the Treasure Hunt stages... I'm not a fan of what they did to the radar, the beeping noise is even more obnoxious (and louder) than before and only having the shards show up in a set order is frustrating. However, sometime during Knuckles' final level it came to me that I've developed stockholm syndrome towards the Treasure Hunt gameplay and after reflecting and replaying the Knuckles stages again, I had a lot more fun with them than before. They're an acquired taste, a guilty pleasure.

You know what else is guilty of being TOO LOUD? The mech levels - just hold down the lock-on button and you'll get a free trial of tinnitus, all while you've got a full Michael Bay movie with thirteen different kinds of explosions going down in the background. Weapons Bed might actually be one of the loudest levels I have ever played in ANY game. It's not like the audio mixing was good to begin with, the volume of sound effects during regular gameplay is so comically overtuned and you might as well believe the conversations in cutscenes were recorded during a rave by how often the voices get drowned out by the music. But generally, the soundtrack of Adventure 2 really delivers. Favorite songs are Escape from the City, Live & Learn and E.G.G.M.A.N.

Not much more to say, except that I missed out on the Chao Garden in this playthrough entirely, just because I had no clue how to hatch the eggs. A shame, cause that's apparently a big aspect of the game - so I'll be sure to check it out sometime. What else, Shadow and Rogue are awesome and this game is a blast to play despite the issues. I'm considering bumping it up to five stars if the Chao part of the game turns out to be good. It's just chaotic and fun.

In which other game can you experience Tails using his special move of crashing the game twice after telling Eggman how powerful he is? I can't think of one.

Good enough as a multiplayer runner, matches are quick and it's basically the equivalent of Mario Kart Tour for Sonic games. I like the character designs here a lot and basically every major Sonic character is playable, including some unique redesigns.

Unfortunately, Speed Battle falls into the same trap as Clash Royale or similar games, gating character unlocks and even their respective upgrades behind lootboxes, which take several real-life hours to open up. Even then, you don't just get characters like that, they're locked behind a card system, so you could get like 20 out of 90 cards for Knuckles out of a chest, and it'd still take you some time to get him. Or you could pay, and buy something like this advertised 4X VALUE pack in the shop to get 1000 cards for Chaos instantly and you even get 75k coins on top - if that isn't a good deal, then what is. All for the low price of 60€. Not to mention that those deals are so good, the game has to constantly remind you of them through pop-ups whenever you just browse through the main menu. Also, you're forced to watch ads after every match. Awesome.

(Played this a while back, but forgot to log it.)

One of my friends really loves Class of '09, so I bought it sometime ago on a Steam Sale for cheap to try it out and played a bunch of routes, but the novelty wore off rather quickly and it got boring real fast. The humor was too over the top for my liking and the writing felt like it became generic satire early on, not to mention the same jokes were repeated over and over across several routes and it's lazy. Especially the pedophilia jokes were recycled way too much and I feel like a lot of swearing was thrown into the writing just to make it feel more mature and edgy, but it comes off as needlessly corny. Maybe I'm just not the target audience.

As I only played two routes, I don't have much to add in regards to content, except that I enjoyed the voice acting for the most part - especially Nicole's voice direction is very well done. Still, there are better visual novels out there, and funnier ones too. Class of '09 might be worth looking into if you're a fan of this very specific type of humor, else I wouldn't bother with it at all.

...or maybe I'll take it all!

Fun patch, lots of Aventurine content and also introduces storytelling from the perspective of multiple protagonists (something I'd like to see used again in the future). The new twists are nice, but ultimately many things still feel like a setup for the final act, as Act 2 literally ends on two separate cliffhangers, but I enjoyed Aventurine's little sidestory a lot - just wish the writing didn't overuse the "going all-in/betting your life" aspect so much, it felt like doing him a disservice by pushing that trait so much. Either way, I'm stoked to see where the finale is headed!

The NieR of Sonic games...? What?

I never played a Sonic game before, but after reading Phantasm's review and having heard Wheatie advocate for this game for quite some while now, I decided to finally check out the series with Sonic Adventure - and I'm glad I did!

To make sense of the weird opening one-liner, Sonic Adventure is a game told through the eyes of six different characters - which means you need to play through the story six different times to fully understand what's going on. Each character comes with an unique gimmick and win condition, ranging from collecting Emerald Shards as Knuckles to catching a pet frog as Big the Cat. The narrative itself is nothing groundbreaking, it's fairly standard fare with Eggman trying to use an ancient evil named Chaos to destroy the local Station Square and rebuild it under his management. Chaos is an interesting villain though, since he functions basically the same as Resident Evil's Nemesis and you fight him several times with different characters in different power levels, as he grows in power each time he consumes a Chaos Emerald (you see, the name is as straightforward as it gets). As for the individual character stories themselves, you're free to approach them in any order you'd like, as long as you met the character in Sonic's story and the game will notify you when a new story is available. Only after completing all six story modes, you'll gain access to an epilogue and be able to fight the true final boss.

The levels themselves have some interesting mechanics, and they especially get to shine in Sonic's levels (as he's not a gimmicky character), I'll take the Lost World level as an example. While Knuckles can just crawl up the walls here with his moveset, Sonic has to rely on switches that allow him to walk on certain anti-gravity tiles on the wall or use mirrors to shine light on mirrors to illuminate a dark path. But it doesn't always have to be so complex, sometimes snowboarding down a giant mountain with an avalanche in the background is all you need. Even if I had a fun time with most of the levels, one of my biggest complaints is still the rebellious auto camera, which especially hates Sonic zooming through the zones at lightning speed and then jumps to some nonsensical angles, causing you to have no clue what's going on and miss your inputs. I'm not particularly mad at those camera shenanigans (would be lying if I told you it wasn't funny), but there are times where the jank goes from charming to annoying territory. Another thing I'd like to address is the strange progression sometimes outside of levels in the hub worlds. Thankfully there are red hint orbs in the game telling you where to go when you're feeling lost, but even then, sometimes the hints are so vague that I still found myself resorting to GameFAQs guides in order to locate where to head next. This would hardly be an issue on replays, but I couldn't find the raft for the life of me the first time I had to use it.

Sonic Adventure is a very ambitious game for the time it released and it's not only reflected in the level design, but also in the soundtrack, which covers a variety of musical genres and also uses higher quality instruments as opposed to a MIDI soundfont, which was possible thanks to the Dreamcast's advanced audio hardware. My favorite song is Amy's theme, My Sweet Passion, but I'm also particularly fond of Tikal's Theme and Mechanical Resonance. The Egg Carrier Theme needs a shoutout for itself, just for how catchy it is.

In the end, Sonic Adventure was a nice little departure from all the JRPGs I've played recently and I'm now eager to try the acclaimed Adventure 2 and other Sonic games in general - this includes the Steam version of Sonic Adventure DX, where I'm hoping to go for 100% when I get to it :D

The real disillusion is the combat here.

A while ago, I found out about Disillusion in some youtube video and the game looked very intriguing with its bizarre art direction and strange vibe, so I wanted to play it in the near future. Considering this is an indie game that's about 3€ and won't go on sale anytime soon, I just decided to snag it recently and check it out (since I had nothing else I wanted to play at the time).

I'll give credit where it's due, the intended atmosphere is well done and the exploration was also exciting for most of the time: you navigate through the tower in a first-person dungeon crawler perspective, while stumbling upon various weird creatures and portals leading you to other places. Some of these places are a classroom, a shrine or even some... jumbled mess. It's fun to explore those areas, since they have a surreal feel to them I can't really put into words, even if there's not much gameplay here. I mean, there is gameplay with the combat, but it's not good. Sometimes an enemy blocks the way and you can't pass through, so you need to resort to the most basic and barebones RPG Maker combat out there to fend them off. While many people don't like OMORI's combat, atleast that game tried for an unique approach (which I personally liked too). With a plethora of useless skills and needlessly spongy enemies, the normally fun exploration comes to a screeching halt and you'll just engage in this really boring combat for a large amount of your playtime. I know the game is a walking simulator for the most part, so why even include fights in the first place? I'm sure me and many others are playing it just to run around those strange settings and not to fight monsters, which are all copy pasted and use the same three attacks anyways. The worst part is really dying to some random crit and having to do entire areas over again if you forgot to save, but to be fair, you're warned early on to save often. You get the gist.

Surprisingly, unlike games like Yume Nikki, Disillusion actually has a story, dealing with themes like rebirth and eternal damnation. It's not a central focus, as you only get vague hints spoonfed through your companion Mel and you're expected to piece together the remaining pieces for yourself. Speaking of Mel, she's pretty cool and probably one of the main reasons I didn't drop this game earlier, her banter at times is nice even if it's nothing special by writing standards. There's... not much else to be said about her, except that she's green and also plays a bigger role in the overarching narrative.

Alright, so Disillusion is a decent game, but I just can't get myself to finish it, knowing that it's going to mess with my PC's resolution again (for some reason it breaks windowed applications like Discord and you need to resize them anytime after going into this game's fullscreen mode) and I'd have to go through more arduous random encounters. Despite this, I'd still recommend it for the most part for anyone interested, as the exploration aspect is rather intriguing and you can get a few hours of content for the low price of 3€.

It has a character named Kino...

Future Connected takes place one year after the events of Xenoblade Chronicles and takes Shulk and Melia to an unexplored region of the Bionis, where they stumble upon two stowaways who help them against the seemingly untouchable Fog King terrorizing the local people. Yes, this premise is pretty basic, but it's more of an expansion to round off Melia's character arc than an actual story expansion.

The highlight and key aspect of Future Connected is the exploration of Bionis' Shoulder, a previously unreleased area that has been planned ever since the original release of Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii, but never made the cut. Now it has been repurposed as the central setpiece of the epilogue and I'm quite glad for this decision, as it's easily one of my favorite areas in the game now and I had a lot of fun exploring it. There are many great views and it looks particularly cool during thunderstorms (even better when there's a cutscene playing). Fairly early on you're introduced to the Ponspectors, a group of archaeologist Nopon, who have lost their boss and now are scattered all across the Shoulder, where you can pick them up (most of the times you need to do a short quest beforehand) and add them to your own personal Nopon army. This literal army of furball companions not only deals passive damage during combat, but also replaces the chain attacks with some QTE combos, which can be upgraded by adding more Ponspectors to your squad. They're also masters of taking a toll on the framerate, as things can get seriously laggy when there's a dozen Nopon hammering away on a bunch of enemies during a thunderstorm while several other flashy animations are playing. Despite this, I thought the Ponspectors were a fun change of pace in terms of combat usage, but there was something else I disliked instead in terms of combat, and that's the removal of vision attacks. This sounds insane at first, considering vision attacks only make your life harder, but the thing is that they're still in the game, you're just not informed when the enemy will hit you with them anymore. Always a pleasure to see a boss hit you with "Attack VIII" without warning just to survive with a mere sliver of health, so the existence of the Shield and Impulse Monado Art hardly justify themselves in Future Connected, as they are practically useless - you're better off using the Armor Art instead.

I don't think the story present here is that bad, just considerably weaker than the main narrative, which is to be expected from a free expansion that released 10 years after the source material. For me the main issues are the underwhelming villains (the fate of one major villain here is literally revealed in a sidequest) and the lack of any real stakes here, so the true highlight are the character interactions instead. The heart-to-heart mechanic from the main game has been rebranded to "quiet moments" and is now available anytime after certain points in the story have been passed, as long as the time is right and the party members you need for the support are in your current party setup. They're also fully voiced and do not require any previous affinity building between characters, which is something that would be very cool to see in future Xenoblade games (or atleast Xenoblade 3, considering 2 released before Future Connected), as voice acting alone in these moments can make them a lot more impactful and memorable already. While Kino's and Nene's supports help characterize Riki further, Melia's are particularly interesting as she as a person had to undergo significant changes after the events of the main storyline. Shulk takes the backseat here and is more of a mentor for the Nopon kids, which is sweet in its own way.

To wrap it up, it's a nice little bonus campaign after the grand scope of Xenoblade's main story and I'd recommend it to anyone who just wants more of the same. As far as I know, Future Connected is ultimately skippable, but there's no harm in giving it a try atleast - else you're missing out on some fantastic tracks like the Bionis Shoulder battle theme or the Fogbeasts encounter theme.

No matter how hard you try to break us, the future is ours to shape! Always!

The premise of Xenoblade Chronicles is simple, yet effective. Atop the colossal Bionis, the three childhood friends Shulk, Reyn and Fiora are living their best lives, until one day a particularly evil robot shows up to disturb the local peace. With the help of the legendary sword Monado, Shulk embarks on a journey across the Bionis to track down the unknown assailant and get his revenge. Not only is the Monado arguably one of the coolest weapons in fiction, it's also especially useful in combat against the machines and allows the wielder to see into the future. The theme of fate is ever-present, as Shulk has to deal with visions involving the people close to him dying several times, and only he can change the future to prevent these events from playing out, while also pursuing his own goals. I'll not take away any more from the story, since I found it to be pretty intriguing and well written until the end, despite having quite a few tropes here and there and also some predictability to it. Even with the sheer amount of downright meme-worthy lines or shonen shenanigans, the core narrative is still surprisingly solid and doesn't fall flat in terms of twists either. Yes, Dunban being "over there" is actually important to the plot. The setting of the two titans is incredibly unique and memorable, but also just straight up cool at the same time, the area progression is really satisfying here. As for the main cast, they all have their reasons to join Shulk in his fight against the Mechons and their voice acting is superb. It's a shame Adam Howden never got any major roles besides Shulk, since he especially nailed those screams and emotional moments. But honestly, the rest of the cast is just as good and I like how many unknown voice actors are featured here (and their British accents).

While the main storyline is not as long as I expected it to be, Xenoblade is still jam-packed with side content, rocketing up the overall possible playtime by a significant amount. Most of the side quests are just fetch quests or "kill x amounts of these monsters", but there are also several skill trees or other cool rewards locked behind others. It never crossed my thoughts until I beat the story, how much Xenoblade rewards interacting with the world on the side, as there's even a whole chart accessible through the main menu where you can see the relations between every single named NPC and the locale they belong to. There's an entire trading mechanic I didn't even pay attention to in my playthrough, but it's cool to know it's there, I think little things like this or the info you can read up on the named NPCs on the chart improve the already impressive worldbuilding by a lot again. Now, one of my biggest regrets is not interacting with the Colony 6 side-story at all, there were many side quests related to it and I couldn't complete any of them because I somehow didn't do the initial one. Honestly, it's a shame it took me so long to properly appreciate those aspects, so I'll definitely focus on them on my eventual New Game+ playthrough.

Amidst the fierce battle cries of "Now it's Reyn Time!", "Electric Gutbuster!" and "Star-searing flames of ABSOLUTION!", I actually ended up liking the combat very much and was surprised by how unique it was. By the end it devolved into chain attack spam for me, but before that point, I think the MMO-style approach is really fitting and fun overall, while the cheesy battle lines of the cast add a whole layer of entertainment as well. Here, good preparation is half the battle already, as you will need to decide which skills your AI-controlled party members should use and how to efficiently combine those with the tactics of the rest of the team for optimal results. I said the combat is "MMO-style", because skills are locked behind cooldowns and your active character is using auto-attacks in the downtime to fill the special bar, like in the case of Shulk it's used for the Monado Arts. His signature sword not only specializes in slicing through machinery, but can also buff him or his party in various other ways, like shielding them or granting everyone the ability to hit the Mechons. Each of those abilities uses different amounts of the special gauge, so it's up to you to decide what's the best approach for certain combat situations. It would be pretty unwise to keep throwing out Arts which use your full gauge, as enemies and especially bosses can counter those by attacking with so-called Vision Attacks. Those come in three forms, Red, White and Purple. By casting the Impulse Art on a party member, they can dodge a red attack, which is pretty straightforward. Things get interesting for the white attacks, as they require you to have a properly leveled Shield Art to even block the move - so if an enemy uses "Attack VII", you need the skill level of your Shield Art atleast at 7, anything below will not block. The use of haptic feedback is also really underappreciated from what I've seen, every time you hit with a chance attack you get vibration on hit and everytime you break an enemy's vision attack the controller emulates this "breaking" effect with a stronger rumble. There's also a pulse while seeing the animations for vision attacks playing out, resembling a heartbeat, and that's pretty cool if you ask me.

Teambuilding is a central mechanic in Xenoblade Chronicles, and also one that is handled in an interesting way. First of all, you get access to most of the cast fairly early into the story already, so you can experiment with different teams through many different areas and see who has your favorite playstyle, who you want to main and who you don't actually like at all. This availability of being able to build around your team without even getting to the meat of the main story yet is such a nice change of pace, since I know so many games where you get party members so late, that they're basically unusable, as you have probably already have a good team composition at that point. Looking at you, Fire Emblem. But Xenoblade doesn't have this issue and it's just really nice, so I hope the other two games in the trilogy adapt this approach as well. As for their actual involvement in gameplay, each teammate has an unique role and playstyle, so you can basically play any possible combination of party members together and it will work somehow. Another neat feature is the ability to choose any character besides Shulk as the leader, allowing you to control them in the overworld and battle, it's very handy for certain encounters (or if you're just a big fan of the character). Like personally I played Melia on Mount Valka so I could have an easier time reaching the airborne enemies and it ended up being a really pleasant change of pace! There is also a whole layer of customization here besides the current party setup, since you can tweak individual characters to your liking by equipping them with gems, certain armor pieces or adjusting the skill trees. I really like how skill trees are handled here, like you still can normally unlock character-specific skills of individual branches through EXP, but you're also able to make use of the skills of other characters if you raise the friendship between them accordingly. This is not a metaphorical statement, raising the affinity between two teammates comes with a nice amount of extras - you unlock new heart-to-heart events across the world, the possibility of extending chain attacks is higher and as mentioned before, you gain access to a bunch of the opposite character's skills. Very nice!

As for the soundtrack, the Definitive Edition features an (almost) entirely revamped OST with new arranged tracks. I've only heard a few of the original tracks in Smash before, so I won't compare the new arrangements to the original compositions. With that out of the way, I'm a big fan of the musical score for DE and especially the more emotional songs here really hit me at times. Hearing Engage the Enemy for the very first time in-game with the corresponding cutscene is an ethereal feeling and gave me shivers in combination with Adam Howden's performance there. Gaur Plain is also one of my favorites, even if that one's a basic pick - maybe because it's just a memorable, good song. My final nomination goes out to Mechanical Rhythm for just being a pretty sick standard battle theme, which could easily pass as a boss theme elsewhere.

Considering I'm planning to do a NG+ one day to catch up on the content I missed, it's needless to say that Xenoblade Chronicles left quite the impression on me, even after finishing the game. Now onto Future Connected and I'm looking forward to playing Xenoblade 2 in a while too. Here's hoping that the rest of the trilogy will be just as fun!

Who doesn't love Hatsune Miku?

As opposed to other characters, Miku can't dig on her own and is confined to using an unique weapon - her signature leek, which allows her to dash through enemies and break walls behind them. This dashing mechanic can be very powerful if used properly, as Miku can also move diagonally and each consecutive hit in a chain deals more damage than the previous one, but if you're not careful enough it can also make you end up in the middle of a bunch of enemies! Furthermore, she is balanced by taking damage on missed beats (similar to Aria), this definitely punishes you good enough for mashing while being swarmed (and I'm speaking from experience). Something else that's really cool in my opinion is how Miku's outfits change depending on the equipped armor, as she never actually wears armor and her dress just changes accordingly! She's also just a fun character to play overall, even if she has a bit of a learning curve because of her gimmick.

The DLC also adds 15 new songs to the game, 13 of those are already existing songs like Ten Thousand Stars, but there's also 2 new compositions, Too Real and My One and Oni. For the most part, I believe the chosen songs are a great fit and are a lot of fun to play, even if the BPM of some take a while to get used to - especially the fast pace of Can't Make A Song took some adjustment time.

This collab is a great gateway for anyone interested in Necrodancer and an easy recommendation for Miku fans in general!

Age of Advent is a collection of four minigames, one based on each member of hololive's group Advent. It's free, so I just decided to check it out to kill some time.

After booting up the game, you're greeted with a very stylish title screen: a big neon sign with the title on the left, various hololive references are scattered in the background. It pains me to say that this title screen was, in fact, my highlight of the game. I played the minigames in order - right off the bat, Bijou's Bejeweled was fun a few minutes, until the initial novelty ran out and it just became Bejewled with a fancy skin. Nerissa's cooking minigames features movement similar to Crypt of the Necrodancer, while also having the mechanics of Snake at the same time, as the ingredients you collect follow your lead until you dump them into the pot. It was alright. The next game was the most boring out of the bunch for me, Shiori's horror farming simulator. The PS1 styled aesthetic of this mode is well done and fits the vibe they were going for, however the actual gameplay here is... not fun. It's a walking simulator, where you can ironically barely see where you're walking, because of the darkness and amount of treestumps everywhere. The fourth and final minigame in Age of Advent is based on the twins and controls like a two-player Donkey Kong minecart section. This one is actually my favorite of the bunch, because it's so simple in execution, but the two-player perspective keeps you on your toes. (I actually don't know if you're supposed to play it by yourself, but it was a fun challenge nonetheless.)

While it wasn't as enjoyable as I would have hoped it to be, Age of Advent clearly has a lot of love put into it from the fans who made it and in the end it's ultimately a passion project - which I respect a lot.

Buckshot Roulette really respects your time - once you load into it and kick down two doors, you're already introduced to the unnamed dealer, who's gonna be your enemy in a game of life and death. The core mechanics are simple, you just have to shoot the dealer with live rounds or shoot yourself with blanks in order to get extra turns, so you can deplete the opposing health bar and win a round. After the first round, random items are introduced, which can give you advantages, like being able to see the current bullet or deal double damage for a turn, but the dealer is also able to use his items against you! After you beat the third and final round, you're already done with Buckshot Roulette, no strings attached.

I really appreciate how simple this game is kept and that there is no "hidden lore" or anything at all, it's just a cool concept packaged into a 3€ game and is all about the gameplay. You also unlock an endless mode after beating a normal run, where you can just play more for the sake of it, or try your luck for a bunch of achievements - in my opinion it's a good inclusion, so you get some more bang for your buck(shot).

In conclusion, if you're interested in this game, go for it! It might not be long, but the experience is definitely an unique one.

Katamari Dogmacy!

Despite being only around half an hour long, Doronko Wanko is a pretty entertaining game with a very straightforward premise - cause as much destruction as possible! Your goal is to paint or destroy as many valuable objects as you can, while also finding 12 dog prints along the way to unlock the final room. At first, painting the interior might seem like an arduous task, but interacting with the map and gradually getting rewards through raising the clean-up costs helps you significantly in no time.

I played with a controller and the controls were fairly understandable, however what wasn't understandable at first was the language, as the launch menu starts in Japanese. It took me a while to figure out, but what you need to do is to click オプション, then ビデオ, and 言語 in order and select English. There you go! As for optimization, this game unfortunately doesn't particularly run smoothly, but it's serviceable enough for the short playtime. I'd still recommend it to everyone interested, as Doronko Wanko is a cute little time-waster with a nice artstyle. Also, it's free. Everyone loves free stuff.

A great display of video games as an artform.

NieR: Automata is a game that goes above and beyond with its unique way of storytelling, taking full advantage of making the experience one that can't be substituted through a book or a movie - not just in terms of visual design, but also through the use of dynamic music and having its story told from the point of view of multiple protagonists.

Note that I have played NieR Replicant (the first game) right before this entry, so comparing the two games was inevitable for me. On one hand I still feel like I was doing Automata a disservice by doing so, but at the same time it was nice hearing remixes of familiar songs when they were still fresh in my memory. Either way, in my opinion something very important to anyone interested in this game, is to play Replicant first if you want the full experience. Not only because you would miss many cool references, but also because Automata doesn't hold back with spoiling the first game through the documents you can find in it and personally I'd be pretty upset if I read those before playing Replicant. Those documents are cool for returning players because you get more context for the events of the previous entry, but also spoil some of the biggest twists. Play this first at your own risk.

In contrast to Replicant, Automata's story has a lot more spectacle to it than Replicant's more grounded and personal narrative. This time you're not taking control of the teenage boy who wants to cure his sister, but instead slip into the role of android warrior 2B, who is fighting in an all-out war against machines to reclaim the planet. Considering the scale of the story, you're just one of many androids - Automata is less about the characters' personal struggles and more about the main conflict at hand. And while the overarching narrative is solid, the real highlight is how the story is told and the messages behind it. This game has multiple routes and endings and they're used particularly well here, compared to Replicant, where the routes were the same in terms of gameplay, but with new scenes. Even if Automata's Route A and B are the same string of events told through a different perspective (which turned a surprising amount of people off from doing multiple routes), the unique gameplay of 9S and some scenes from his perspective alone are worth warranting the second playthrough. Route C however is where the story really picks up in pace, while also being a fresh experience at the same time. New enemies, new plot, new soundtrack. (The enemy variety in Automata in general is way better than Replicant, there are so many machines and bosses with cool ideas!) Also, the finale of Route C completely blew me away with the "art direction" of it and the final battle at the end was the cherry on top. For those concerned about missables, after beating this route, you'll unlock Chapter Select and can freely return to any point in the story before, so there's no reason for FOMO, feel free to tackle the game at your own pace. In regards to achievements, what I found particularly interesting was the integration of a trophy shop. It's just like the name would suggest, a hidden in-game shop where you can buy the remaining achievements in exchange for virtual currency. Pretty cool if you locked yourself out of a trophy, but also really made me think about the actual point of trophies in general...

Combat and movement in Automata are definitely an upgrade to Replicant's combat... for the most part. Coming right from the first game, I was a bit surprised how slippery the controls felt, like they didn't have much weight to them. The most glaring difference was the missing vibration on hit though, it really gave the attacks more impact for me. Turns out the controls are actually quite good and responsive after spending a while with them, it just took me a bit to adjust. Now, the combat in Automata literally consists of hack-and-slash. As 2B, your main approach to offense will be slashing through the enemies (while looking really stylish) by dual-wielding a set of two weapons of choice, reaching from her signature katanas to the Beastbane from Replicant, you're free to mix and match towards whatever matches your own personal playstyle. Meanwhile the other protagonist, 9S, puts the emphasis on the "hack" in hack-and-slash. He does not have the luxury of using two weapons at once, as his model is not designed for combat, but rather for gathering intel - in gameplay terms this means you can hack into your enemies to deal large amounts of damage, destroying most normal enemies instantly. Hacking consists of a Space Invaders-like bullet hell minigame, where you need to shoot down hostile ships or towers which are shooting projectiles at you. If you get hit three times, you're getting kicked and need to hack the enemy again to get another shot at the minigame. In order to successfully complete a hack, normally all enemies need to be destroyed before being able to shoot the otherwise guarded core, but there are some exceptions, like bosses and special hacks have unique screens with other conditions attached to them. Hacking and slashing aside, there's actually a third type of combat (even if it's rarely used), the aerial combat. There are a few parts where you're mounting a flying mech and need to shoot down enemies in a rail shooter-like fashion. These segments are either 2D or top-down, your possible movements are defined by the camera angle.

Following up to the "possible movements", I'd like to talk about the possible movements in the overworld and the level design in general, because I'm really sold on both of those aspects. Moving around feels great, has a very parkour-ish feel to it and hopping or gliding onto certain structures is awesome. This also comes from the level design being a lot of fun to traverse and explore, a big step up from Replicant. All areas have an unique theme they're designed after and they're like semi-open worlds. No loading screens (aside from the ones disguised as elevators) are a huge plus and make for a really seamless experience. Not to mention those individual levels are gorgeous and still filled with so many small details, my favorites are the Forest Kingdom and Amusement Park. Shoutout to the Flooded City, although I wish that area was a bit larger. After reflecting on those areas, I'm not really sure if I prefer the medieval design of Replicant's world or the post-apocalyptic world of Automata. But one thing is for certain: traversing Automata's world didn't break my controller's right trigger spring. (Yeah, that happened in Replicant. Not even because I threw the controller or anything, it was just because I dashed a lot...)

The soundtrack is excellent. As I already stated in my opener, NieR Automata greatly makes use of the dynamic soundtracks - this means the songs shift between multiple variants, based on what is currently happening. Like when you hack an enemy as 9S, the current song slowly transitions into an 8-Bit version, depending on how much the hacking meter is filled, eventually the the hacking sequence starts and the full 8-Bit rendition plays until the minigame is completed, where it fades back to the normal version. But not only does the combat have changing music, the songs in individual areas also change based on location or story progress. An example fairly early on is the desert theme, Memories of Dust. As you walk into the desert for the first time, you will hear an instrumental version of this song, but as you get closer to the apartment ruins, the vocals fade in. It also works in reverse, because if you walk away from that location, the lyrics will fade out again. The most impactful use of the dynamic soundtrack for me was at the very end, and I won't specify this further, since you'll know what I mean when you get there.

Something very important for the PC players: Please do yourself a favor and set the anti-aliasing to SMAA, because MSAA looks really horrible in this port and also chugs performance for some reason; you won't even get consistent 60 frames, because there's some built-in limiter. Meanwhile the FidelityFX CAS option makes the colors look off, so I'd recommend turning that off too. These two things unironically took me three hours to figure out and I don't want you to go through the same pain.

In the end, I absolutely adored NieR Automata as an experience. While it didn't emotionally impact me nearly as much as Replicant, I prefer the direction and creative approach in this one, like using the route system for something a lot more meaningful than playing through the exact same events three times (and the final area four times!). It's definitely a game I will be thinking about for quite some time, as it really opened my eyes on games as an artform. Thanks for reading and glory to mankind!